In _A New Way to pay Old Debts_ we have an ingenious plot which never flags, adequate comedy, and characters which are appropriately, if not very carefully, drawn. The style is strong and natural; it is not far from this play to Goldsmith, and indeed the eighteenth century must have owed much to it. In its atmosphere of ease and propriety there are no harsh lights or discordant tints. The central idea of the plot was probably borrowed from a play of admirable vivacity and dexterity, Middleton’s _Trick to catch the Old One_, which appeared in 1607. What has Massinger added to Middleton? He has made the plot more probable, refining the characters, and raising the whole thing from prose to poetry. We laugh less, but we admire more, for we feel that we are seeing something transacted which might have happened. Sir Giles Overreach is Massinger’s masterpiece, a superman of colossal wickedness, with no belief in the honour or virtue of men or women.(451) Though fond of money, he is not a miser, but loves to lavish his gains; power is rather his foible; repeated success has made him reckless; his aim is to increase his estates by bullying his poorer neighbours, and by employing the sharp practices of the law. But he has yet one other ambition, to see his only daughter married to a lord and to hear her styled “Right Honourable.” His unscrupulousness is expressed in often-quoted passages of great power; his frantic anger in the fifth act is depicted with a skill which leaves no sympathy in our minds for a father whose only daughter has treated him badly. Here Massinger is more successful than his great model in the case of Shylock and Jessica. I cannot agree that it is inconsistent with the character of Sir Giles that he should be anxious for his daughter to marry a lord—there are several passages in the earlier part of the play which show that he is not only a bully but a base-born snob.(452) Where so much is admirable it is difficult to make selection, but we may point out that Wellborn’s character is a fine piece of work; we pity his disgrace, we rejoice in his success, we believe in his desire to do better in the future. The grief of Lady Allworth for her husband and the jealous fears of young Allworth when Lord Lovell is to meet Margaret are excellently drawn. There are, moreover, touches of poetry in the play of a high order, as, for instance: ALLWORTH. If ever The queen of flowers, the glory of the spring, The sweetest comfort to our smell, the rose, Sprang from an envious briar, I may infer, There’s such disparity in their conditions, Between the goodness of my soul, the daughter, And the base churl, her father.(453) Or in Allworth’s speech about his love: