A New Way to Pay Old Debts

A New Way to Pay Old Debts
Edmund Kean as Sir Giles Over-reach
Written by	Philip Massinger

A New Way to Pay Old Debts (c. 1625, printed 1633) is an English Renaissance drama, the most popular play by Philip Massinger. Its central chararacter, Sir Giles Over-reach, became one of the more popular villains on English and American stages through the 19th century.

Massinger probably wrote the play in 1625, though its debut on stage was delayed a year as the theatres were closed due to bubonic plague. In its own era it was staged by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane. It was continuously in the repertory there and at the Red Bull Theatre, under the managements of Christopher Beeston, William Beeston, and Sir William Davenant, down to the closing of the theatres at the start of the English Civil War in 1642.

Though Massinger's play shows obvious debts to Thomas Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One (c. 1605), it transcends mere imitation to achieve a powerful dramatic effectiveness – verified by the fact that, apart from the Shakespearean canon, it was almost the only pre-Restoration play that was continuously in the dramatic repertory through much of the modern era. After David Garrick's 1748 revival, the play remained popular throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. (It was praised by Thomas Jefferson.) Edmund Kean's version of Sir Giles, which debuted in 1816, was in particular a tremendous popular success, and drove the play's reputation through the remainder of the century.

The play remains in the active theatrical repertory; modern stagings are usually amateur or student productions, though the Royal Shakespeare Company performed the play in 1983, directed by Adrian Noble and with Emrys James as Sir Giles.