Wurzbach, W. von: _Philip Massinger_. Shakesp. Jahrb., vols. XXXV and XXXVI. Footnotes: Preface and Introduction [1] Fleay (_Chron. Eng. Dra._, I, 208) thinks that the otherwise lost Massinger play, _The Judge_, licensed by Herbert in 1627, and included in the list of Warburton’s collection, may have been _The Fatal Dowry_. He declares, moreover, that “the decree in favor of creditors in I, ii _a_ was a statute made in 1623,” and suggests that Massinger after this date made over an independent play of Field’s, now lost. But I think that any one who surveys in _The Fatal Dowry_ the respective hands of its authors will incline strongly to the conviction that this drama is the offspring of joint effort rather than the re-handling of one man’s work by another. The decree to which Fleay has reference appears to be that to be found in _Statutes of the Realm_, IV, ii, 1227-9, recorded as 21º Jac I, 19. This is an act passed by the parliament of 1623-4; it somewhat increases the stringency of the already-existing severe laws in regard to bankrupts, but contains nothing which even faintly suggests the decree in our play, by which the creditors are empowered to withhold the corpse of their debtor from burial; and, indeed, it is obviously impossible that a statute permitting any such practice could have been passed in Christian England of the seventeenth century. The fact is that this feature of the plot is taken direct from a classical author (see under SOURCES), and it would be gratuitous to assume in it a reference to contemporaneous legislation. As for the hypothesis that _The Fatal Dowry_ and _The Judge_ are the same play, in the utter absence of any supporting evidence it must be thrown out of court. This sort of identification is a confirmed vice with Fleay. _The Judge_ is, moreover, listed as a comedy (see reprint of Warburton’s list in Fleay’s _The Life and Work of Shakespeare_, p. 358). [2] Two other arguments--both fallacious--have been advanced for a more assured dating. Formal prologues and epilogues came into fashion about 1620, and the absence of such appendages in the case of _The Fatal Dowry_ has been generally taken as evidence for its appearance before that year; but for a Massinger production no such inference can be drawn--there is no formal prologue or epilogue in any of his extant plays before _The Emperor of the East_ and _Believe as You List_, which were licensed for acting in 1631.