In 1703 Nicholas Rowe's domestic drama The Fair Penitent, an adaptation of Massinger and Field's Fatal Dowry, was pronounced by Dr Johnson to be one of the most pleasing tragedies in the language.
M.D. Edinburgh, 1781; his essay on Massinger reprinted in Gifford's edition (1805); physician of the Manchester Infirmary, 1789–1815; introduced many sanitary reforms when on the Manchester board of health; published works including Medical Histories and Reflections 1792-5-8, and Illustrations of Sterne 1798.
Norwich became a de facto base of operations for Jolly's company, where they played at the King's Arms Inn; their repertory in this period appears to have included Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Cooke's Greene's Tu Quoque, Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, and the Fletcher/Shirley play The Night Walker among other works.
A crucial source for the sole existing text has been identified as La fuerza de la costumbre (1625) by Guillén de Castro y Bellvis — though this could have been the source for Massinger's revision only, which must have been executed after that date.
Massinger dedicated the play to Philip Herbert, then the Earl of Montgomery and later Earl of Pembroke and Lord Chancellor.
Massinger's sources for Italian history in the relevant era were William Thomas's The History of Italy (1561) and Francesco Guicciardini's Historia d'Italia, most probably in Geoffrey Fenton's translation (third edition, 1618).
John Philip Kemble, an admirer of Massinger's dramas, staged an adaptation of the play called Camiola, or The Maid of Honour, at Drury Lane in 1785.
Scholars have disputed the nature of that collaboration: it has been suggested that the extant text may be a revision by Massinger of the lost play Diocletian (1594).