''The Old Law, or A New Way to Please You'' is a seventeenth-century

tragicomedy Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragedy, tragic and comedy, comic forms. Most often seen in drama, dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the ov ...

written by

Thomas Middleton Thomas Middleton (baptised 18 April 1580 – July 1627; also spelt ''Midleton'') was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. He, with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson, was among the most successful and prolific of playwrights at work in the Jac ...

William Rowley William Rowley (c. 1585 – February 1626) was an English Jacobean dramatist, best known for works written in collaboration with more successful writers. His date of birth is estimated to have been c. 1585; he was buried on 11 February 1626 in ...

, and

Philip Massinger Philip Massinger (1583 – 17 March 1640) was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including ''A New Way to Pay Old Debts'', ''The City Madam'', and '' The Roman Actor'', are noted for their satire and realism, and their politi ...

. It was first published in 1656, but is generally thought to have been written about four decades earlier.

The first edition

The play first appeared in a badly-printed 1656

quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

issued by the bookseller Edward Archer (his shop was "at the sign of the Adam and Eve"), with the three dramatists' names on the title page. Scholars have little doubt about the general accuracy of the attribution; the doubt that does exist centres on the role of Massinger, since the play shows many typical signs of being a Middleton/Rowley collaboration. "Probably all critics are sure of the presence of Middleton and Rowley, but Massinger's contribution has been difficult to trace." David Lake, in his study of attribution problems in the Middleton canon, holds that Massinger's share consisted only of a light revision, and that signs of his hand are strongest in the first half of the single scene in Act V, the trial scene. Lake's breakdown of the play as a whole is this: :Rowley — Act I; Act III, scene 1; Act V, 1 (second half); :Middleton — Act II; Act III, 2; Act IV, 2; :Rowley and Middleton — Act IV, 1; :Massinger — Act V, 1 (first half). An earlier study by George Price reached similar conclusions, though Price gave Massinger's revision a larger role in shaping the result. Middleton was primarily responsible for the serious main plot, involving the characters Cleanthes and Simonides and their families, and Rowley the comic subplot involving Gnotho—a division of responsibilities wholly in keeping with their usual manner of collaboration. (Rowley also wrote the opening and closing scenes, as he did in another of his collaborations with Middleton, '' The Changeling''.) Price judged that the 1656 quarto was set into type from a theatre prompt-book. Critics have placed the original version's date of authorship in the 1614–18 period, based on the limited evidence available; Massinger's revision was done perhaps c. 1626, for a new production by the King's Men.

Catalogue

The quarto of ''The Old Law'' is noteworthy in that it included a list of plays published to that date, an expansion of a list published earlier in 1656 in the first edition of ''

The Careless Shepherdess ''The Careless Shepherdess'' is a Jacobean era stage play, a pastoral tragicomedy generally attributed to Thomas Goffe. Its 1656 publication is noteworthy for the introduction of the first general catalogue of the dramas of English Renaissance ...

.'' These were the first attempts to catalogue the entire field of the printed drama of

English Renaissance theatre English Renaissance theatre, also known as Renaissance English theatre and Elizabethan theatre, refers to the theatre of England between 1558 and 1642. This is the style of the plays of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson ...

. The list in ''The Old Law'' contains 651 titles. The 1656 lists would later be expanded by

Francis Kirkman Francis Kirkman (1632 – c. 1680) appears in many roles in the English literary world of the second half of the seventeenth century, as a publisher, bookseller, librarian, author and bibliographer. In each he is an enthusiast for popular litera ...

in his play lists of 1661 and 1671.

Anachronisms

The play is set in "Epire", or

Epirus sq, Epiri rup, Epiru , native_name_lang = , settlement_type = Historical region , image_map = Epirus antiquus tabula.jpg , map_alt = , map_caption = Map of ancient Epirus by Heinrich ...

, an independent polity in what appears to be

Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...

; the characters have Greek names and refer to

Lycurgus Lycurgus or Lykourgos () may refer to: People * Lycurgus (king of Sparta) (third century BC) * Lycurgus (lawgiver) (eighth century BC), creator of constitution of Sparta * Lycurgus of Athens (fourth century BC), one of the 'ten notable orators' ...

Draco Draco is the Latin word for serpent or dragon. Draco or Drako may also refer to: People * Draco (lawgiver) (from Greek: Δράκων; 7th century BC), the first lawgiver of ancient Athens, Greece, from whom the term ''draconian'' is derived * ...

Solon Solon ( grc-gre, Σόλων; BC) was an Athenian statesman, constitutional lawmaker and poet. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline in Archaic Athens.Aristotle ''Politics'' ...

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

, and

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

. Yet this is a neverland world of literary fairy tale; as

William Gifford William Gifford (April 1756 – 31 December 1826) was an English critic, editor and poet, famous as a satirist and controversialist. Life Gifford was born in Ashburton, Devon, to Edward Gifford and Elizabeth Cain. His father, a glazier and ...

remarks in his edition of Massinger's works, "To observe upon the utter confusion of all time and place, of all customs and manners, in this drama, would be superfluous; they must be obvious to the most careless observer." One egregious example: despite the putative setting in the ancient world, one character is given a birth date of 1539. (For comparable anachronisms, see ''

The Faithful Friends ''The Faithful Friends'' is an early seventeenth-century stage play, a tragicomedy associated with the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators. Never printed in its own century, the play is one of the most disputed works in English Renai ...

'' and ''

Thierry and Theodoret ''Thierry and Theodoret'' is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators that was first published in 1621. It is one of the problematic plays of Fletcher's oeuvre; as with ''Love's Cure,'' there are ...

''.)

Synopsis

Duke Evander of Epire has promulgated a law that mandates a program of

euthanasia Euthanasia (from el, εὐθανασία 'good death': εὖ, ''eu'' 'well, good' + θάνατος, ''thanatos'' 'death') is the practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering. Different countries have different eut ...

: every man who reaches the age of eighty, and every woman who reaches sixty, will be put to death, thrown from a cliff into the sea. (So the statute of the title is not an ''old'' law, but a ''new'' law that deals with the elderly, a law for the "old"—just as the Elizabethan "poor laws" dealt with the "poor.") The play portrays the consequences of this law, principally in the families of two young men, Simonides and Cleanthes. The cynical and heartless Simonides is delighted with the law, since his elderly father Creon will be put to death and Simonides will come into his inheritance. The virtuous Cleanthes has precisely the opposite reaction. (He also condemns the

sexism Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primari ...

of the law, observing that "There was no woman in this senate, certain" when the statute was enacted.) Cleanthes is appalled that his father Leonides is facing death—so much so that he and his wife Hippolita devise a plan to fake the old man's demise and hide him away in the countryside. The two stage a false funeral, at which Cleanthes laughs—and the onlooking courtiers assume he is rejoicing over his impending inheritance. Much of the play is devoted to broad and cynical humour of this type: ruthless people looking forward to the advantages they will gain when a father, mother, husband, or wife is executed. The clown character Gnotho has a wife who will soon fall victim to the law; he takes up with a courtesan in anticipation. An old man named Lysander tries to reclaim his lost youth by dying his white hair and taking lessons from a dancing master. Spendthrift sons, cashiered servants, and lawyers without principles all receive comic examination. Cleanthes and Hippolita manage to keep their secret for a time, though Hippolita's compassion leads her to betray it. Hippolita's cousin Eugenia is married to the elderly Lysander; when Hippolita observes Eugenia's tears over his looming fate, she tells her cousin about their ruse with Leonides, and advises her to do the same. The virtuous but naive Hippolita does not realise that Eugenia's are

crocodile tears Crocodile tears, or superficial sympathy, is a false, insincere display of emotion such as a hypocrite crying fake tears of grief. The phrase derives from an ancient belief that crocodiles shed tears while consuming their prey, and as such is pr ...

, and that Eugenia is already being courted by suitors even as her husband still lives. In time, the good couple learn Eugenia's true nature; their reproofs provoke Eugenia to divulge their secret to the authorities. Leonides is exposed and arrested. This leads to the play's culmination in the trial scene that fills all of Act V. It is eventually revealed that the Duke's harsh law is a sort of public test of virtue. The old people supposedly executed are in fact still alive, and have been kept in pleasant seclusion. Cleanthes, Hippolita, and the elderly pseudo-victims are promoted to be the judges of a new moral order, with appropriate correction for the guilty.

References

External links