diff options
| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 20:01:10 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 20:01:10 -0700 |
| commit | 25cf1f210b35badd67828e8e5dd7db0bb9cab197 (patch) | |
| tree | a26bc3f951547e676abd05b75547cad7d5c1b261 /34214-h | |
Diffstat (limited to '34214-h')
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/34214-h.htm | 18532 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image01.jpg | bin | 0 -> 41558 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image02.jpg | bin | 0 -> 55551 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image03a.jpg | bin | 0 -> 74299 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image03b.jpg | bin | 0 -> 70035 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image04.jpg | bin | 0 -> 36154 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image05.jpg | bin | 0 -> 90980 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image06.jpg | bin | 0 -> 72259 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image07.jpg | bin | 0 -> 30012 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image08.jpg | bin | 0 -> 45105 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image09.jpg | bin | 0 -> 36153 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image10.jpg | bin | 0 -> 21042 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image11.jpg | bin | 0 -> 39535 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image12.jpg | bin | 0 -> 42097 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image13.jpg | bin | 0 -> 30910 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image14.jpg | bin | 0 -> 34590 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/image15.jpg | bin | 0 -> 38989 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 34214-h/images/publogo.jpg | bin | 0 -> 17291 bytes |
18 files changed, 18532 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/34214-h/34214-h.htm b/34214-h/34214-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ecb5ddf --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/34214-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,18532 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Francis Beaumont: Dramatist, by Charles Mills Gayley</title> + <style type="text/css"> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + + div.main {margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + margin-top: 0; + padding-top: 1em; + padding-bottom: 1em; + clear: both; + page-break-after: always; + max-width: 32em; } + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; +} + +h1.tall {line-height: 2em;} +h2.tall {font-size: 200%; line-height: 1.2em; word-spacing: .20em;} +h3.tall {font-weight: normal; font-size: 140%; line-height: 1.5em; word-spacing: .20em;} +h3.topchap {margin-top: 2em; font-weight: normal; word-spacing: .20em;} +h3.regchap {margin-top: 3em; font-weight: normal; word-spacing: .20em;} +h3.table {margin-bottom: .25em;} +h4.table {margin-top: 0; word-spacing: .30em;} + + + +p { + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; +} + +p.cap:first-letter { float: left; clear: left; + margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; + padding: 0; + line-height: 1em; font-size: 220%;} + +.subtitle {font-size: 110%; text-align: center; word-spacing: .30em;} +.sublg {font-size: 125%; letter-spacing: .05em; line-height: 1.7em;} +.author {margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 0; text-align: center; font-size: 120%; + line-height: 1.7em; word-spacing: .30em;} +.author span.little {font-size: 70%;} +.author2 {margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: 4em; text-align: center; font-size: 80%; word-spacing: .30em;} +.publisher {margin-top: 3em; text-align: center; font-size: 120%; word-spacing: .30em;} +.publisher span.small {font-size: 80%;} +.publisher span.tiny {font-size: 70%;} +.copyright {margin-top: 4em; font-size: 80%; text-align: center;} +.copyright2 {font-size: 80%; text-align: center;} +.sig {text-align: right; padding-right: 1.5em;} +.sigplace {margin-left: 1.5em;} +.sigplace span.date {padding-left: 2em;} +.contents {margin-top: 1.5em; text-align: center;} +.chaphead {margin-bottom: 1.5em; text-align: center; font-size: 90%; word-spacing: .30em; line-height: 1.2em;} +.artist {margin-top: 0; text-align: right; font-weight: bold; font-size: 70%;} +.artistl {margin-top: 0; text-align: left; font-weight: bold; font-size: 70%;} +.imtitle {padding-top: .75em; padding-bottom: .75em; padding-left: 5%; padding-right: 5%; + font-weight: bold; font-size: 90%; word-spacing: .30em; line-height: 1.2em; text-align: center;} +.section {margin-top: 1.5em; text-align: center;} +.sectionl {margin-top: 1.5em;} + + +hr { + width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; +} + +table { + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + border-collapse: collapse; +} + +table.family {font-size: 80%;} + +td.head {padding-top: 2em; text-align: center; font-size: 115%;} +td.headtop {text-align: center; font-size: 115%} +td.headtitle {padding-bottom: 2em; text-align: center;} +td.tcol1 {text-align: right; padding-right: 3ex; vertical-align: top;} +td.tcol2 {text-align: left; padding-left: 1em; text-indent: -1em; padding-right: 5ex; vertical-align: top;} +td.tcol3 {text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;} +td.tcol4 {text-align: left; text-indent: -1em; padding-right: 5ex; vertical-align:top;} +td.tcol5 {text-align: left; text-indent: -1em; vertical-align:top;} + +.bor_bottom {border-bottom: 2px solid gray;} +.bor_right {border-right: 2px solid gray;} +.bor_right_dot {border-right: 2px dotted gray;} + +.pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; +} /* page numbers */ + +.pagenumidx { + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + padding-left: 2em; +} /* to compensate for hanging indents in index */ + +.pagenumidx4 { + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + padding-left: 4em; +} /* to compensate for secondary hanging indents in index */ + +.linenum { + position: absolute; + top: auto; + right: 17%; +} /* poetry number */ + +.blockquot { + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +.bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + +.bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + +.bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + +.br {border-right: solid 2px;} + +.bbox {border: solid 2px; margin-top: 1em;} + +.bbox2 {border: solid 2px; margin-top: 2em;} + +.center {text-align: center;} + +.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + +.allcaps {font-size: 80%;} + +.nowrap {white-space: nowrap;} + +.stress {vertical-align: sub; font-weight: bold;} + +.pad3r {padding-right: 3em;} + +.lgtext {font-size: 120%; font-weight: bold;} + +.smtext {font-size: 90%;} + +.tinytext {font-size: 70%;} + +.revindent {padding-right: .50em;} + +.dots {letter-spacing: 1.5em;} + +.u {text-decoration: underline;} + +.caption {font-weight: bold; font-size: 90%;} + +.noshow {display: none; visibility: hidden; } +/* for verse and pooem presentation in non-css browsers */ + +/* Images */ +.figcenter {margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +.figcenter2 {margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 3em; padding-bottom: 3em;} + + +/* Footnotes */ +.footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + +.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + +.footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: + none; +} + +.tr { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 5%; + margin-bottom: 5%; + padding: 2em; + background-color: #f6f2f2; + color: black; + border: dotted black 1px; +} + +ul { list-style-type:none; } + body > ul.IX {margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + font-size: 90%; + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -2em;} +.IX li { display: block; + margin-top: 0.25em; + line-height: 1.2em; +} +li.sect {margin-top: 1.5em; } + + +/* Poetry */ +.poem { + margin-left:10%; + margin-right:20%; + text-align: left; +} + +.poem br {display: none;} + +.poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + +.poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i0h {display: block; margin-left: .50em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i1 {display: block; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i3 {display: block; margin-left: 3em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i5 {display: block; margin-left: 5em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i6 {display: block; margin-left: 6em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i7 {display: block; margin-left: 7em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i11 {display: block; margin-left: 11em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i14 {display: block; margin-left: 14em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i9 {display: block; margin-left: 9em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i8 {display: block; margin-left: 8em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i10 {display: block; margin-left: 10em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i12 {display: block; margin-left: 12em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} +.poem span.i13 {display: block; margin-left: 13em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + + +span.hemi5 {padding-left: 5em;} +span.hemi7 {padding-left: 7em;} +span.hemi9 {padding-left: 9em;} + + hr.full { width: 100%; + margin-top: 3em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + height: 4px; + border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */ + border-style: solid; + border-color: #000000; + clear: both; } + pre {font-size: 95%;} + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Francis Beaumont: Dramatist, by Charles Mills +Gayley</h1> +<pre> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Francis Beaumont: Dramatist</p> +<p> With Some Account of His Circle, Elizabethan and Jacobean, and of His Association with John Fletcher</p> +<p>Author: Charles Mills Gayley</p> +<p>Release Date: November 5, 2010 [eBook #34214]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCIS BEAUMONT: DRAMATIST***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Christine Aldridge,<br /> + and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3> +<p> </p> +<div class="tr"> +<h3>Transcriber's Note</h3> + +<p>Footnotes have been moved collectively to the chapter ends. Anchors +and footnotes have been renumbered sequentially and links provided.</p> + +<p>In order to make this e-text viewable across the greatest variety of +browsers the following character substitutions have been used:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>A broken bar character "¦" in place of the feminine caesura, +which resembles a vertical ellipsis "...".</p> + +<p>A subscripted caret is used for the stress syllable symbol, +which resembles an subscripted upside-down capitol V.</p></div> + +<p>Detailed notes about spelling variations, and other transcriber notes +are located at the end of this e-text.</p> +</div> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 392px;"><a name="Frontispiece" id="Frontispiece"></a> +<img src="images/image01.jpg" width="392" height="500" alt="By permission of the Right Hon. Lord Sackville, G. C. M. G. +PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS BEAUMONT +From the original painting at Knole Park" title="By permission of the Right Hon. Lord Sackville, G. C. M. G. +PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS BEAUMONT +From the original painting at Knole Park" /> +<p class="artistl">By permission of the Right Hon. Lord Sackville, G. C. M. G.</p> +<div class="bbox"> +<p class="imtitle">PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS BEAUMONT<br /> +<span class="smtext">From the original painting at Knole Park</span></p> +</div></div> + +<h1 class="tall">Francis Beaumont: Dramatist<br /> +<small>A Portrait</small></h1> + +<p class="subtitle">WITH SOME ACCOUNT<br /> +OF HIS CIRCLE, ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN,<br /> +AND OF HIS ASSOCIATION WITH<br /> +<span class="sublg">JOHN FLETCHER</span></p> + +<p class="author"><span class="little">BY</span><br /> +CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY, LITT.D., LL.D.</p> + +<p class="author2"><i>Professor of the English Language and Literature<br /> +in the University of California</i></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 165px;"> +<img src="images/publogo.jpg" width="165" height="178" alt="Publishers Logo: DESORMAIS" title="Publishers Logo: DESORMAIS" /> +</div> + +<p class="publisher"><span class="small">LONDON</span><br /> +DUCKWORTH & CO.<br /> +<span class="small">3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN</span><br /> +<span class="tiny">1914</span></p> + + + +<p class="copyright"><i>Copyright</i>, 1914, <i>by<br /> +The Century Co.</i></p> + +<p class="copyright2"><i>Published, February</i>, 1914</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h3>TO MY WIFE</h3> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> + + +<p class="cap">In this period of resurgent dramatic creativity when +once more the literature of the stage enthralls the +public and commands the publisher, it is but natural +that playwright, play-lover, and scholar alike should +turn with renewed and enlightened interest to the +models afforded by our Elizabethan masters of the age +of gold, to the circumstances of their production and +the lives of their imperishable authors. Very close to +Shakespeare stood Beaumont and Fletcher; but, though +during the past three centuries books about Shakespeare +have been as legion and studies of the "twin +literary heroes" have run into the hundreds, to +Fletcher as an individual but one book has been devoted, +and to Beaumont but one.</p> + +<p>A portrait of either Beaumont or Fletcher demands +indeed as its counterpart, painted by the same brush +and with alternating strokes, a portrait of his literary +partner and friend. But in spirit and in favour the +twain are distinct. In this book I have tried to present +the poetic and compelling personality of Francis +Beaumont not only as conjoined with, and distinguished +from, the personality of Fletcher, but as seen +against the background of historic antecedents and +family connections and as tinged by the atmosphere +of contemporary life, of social, literary, and theatrical +environment. No doubt the picture has its imperfections, +but the criticism of those who know will assist +one whose only desire is to do Beaumont justice.</p> + +<p>I take pleasure in expressing my indebtedness to the +authorities of the Bodleian Library and the British +Museum, to those of the National Portrait Gallery +(especially Mr. J. D. Milner), to our own Librarian +of the University of California, Mr. J. C. Rowell, +for unfailing courtesy during the years in which this +volume has been in preparation; to Mr. J. C. Schwab, +Librarian of Yale University, for the loan of rare and +indispensable sources of information, and to my colleague, +Professor Rudolph Schevill, for reading proof-sheets +and giving me many a scholarly suggestion. I +deplore my inability to include among the illustrations +carefully made by Emery Walker, of 16 Clifford's +Inn, a copy of the portrait of Beaumont's friend, Elizabeth, +Countess of Rutland, which hangs at Penshurst. +On account of the recent attempt to destroy by fire +that time-honored repository of heirlooms as precious +to the realm as to the family of Sidney, the Lord de +L'Isle and Dudley has found it necessary to close his +house to the public.</p> + +<p class="sig"> +<span class="smcap">Charles Mills Gayley</span>.</p> + +<p class="sigplace">Berkeley, California,<br /> +<span class="date">December 15, 1913.</span></p> + + +<div class="main"> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<div class="center"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents"> +<tr> +<td style="width: 10%;"> </td> +<td style="width: 10%;"> </td> +<td style="width: 10%;"> </td> +<td style="width: 65%;"> </td> +<td style="width: 5%;"> </td></tr> +<tr><td class="headtop" colspan="5">PART ONE</td></tr> +<tr><td class="headtitle" colspan="5">BEAUMONT'S LIFE, HIS ACQUAINTANCES, AND HIS CAREER AS POET AND DRAMATIST</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1"><span class="allcaps">CHAPTER</span></td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3"> </td><td class="tcol3"><span class="allcaps">PAGE</span></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">I</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">THE CASTOR AND POLLUX OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">II</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">BEAUMONT'S FAMILY; HIS EARLY YEARS: GRACE-DIEU, OXFORD</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">III</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">AT THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY; THE POEMS ASSIGNED TO THESE EARLIER YEARS</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">IV</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">THE VAUX COUSINS AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOT</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">V</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">FLETCHER'S FAMILY, AND HIS YOUTH</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">VI</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">SOME EARLY PLAYS OF BEAUMONT AND OF FLETCHER</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">VII</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">THE "BANKE-SIDE" AND THE PERIOD OF THE PARTNERSHIP</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">VIII</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">RELATIONS WITH SHAKESPEARE, JONSON, AND OTHERS IN THE THEATRICAL WORLD</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_114">114</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">IX</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">THE "MASQUE OF THE INNER TEMPLE": THE PASTORALISTS, AND OTHER CONTEMPORARIES AT THE INNS OF COURT</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_124">124</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">X</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">AN INTERSECTING CIRCLE OF JOVIAL SORT</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XI</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">BEAUMONT AND SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S DAUGHTER; RELATIONS WITH OTHER PERSONS OF NOTE</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XII</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">BEAUMONT'S MARRIAGE AND DEATH; THE SURVIVING FAMILY</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XIII</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">THE PERSONALITY, AND THE CONTEMPORARY REPUTATION OF BEAUMONT</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_190">190</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XIV</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">TRADITION, AND TRADITIONAL CRITICISM</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XV</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">A FEW WORDS OF FLETCHER'S LATER YEARS</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="head" colspan="5">PART TWO</td></tr> +<tr><td class="headtitle" colspan="5">THE COLLABORATION OF BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER</td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcol1"><span class="allcaps">CHAPTER</span></td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3"> </td><td class="tcol3"><span class="allcaps">PAGE</span></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XVI</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM; CRITICAL APPARATUS</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XVII</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">THE DELIMITATION OF THE FIELD</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_236">236</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XVIII</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">THE VERSIFICATION OF FLETCHER AND OF BEAUMONT</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_243">243</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XIX</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">FLETCHER'S DICTION</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_260">260</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XX</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">FLETCHER'S MENTAL HABIT</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XXI</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">BEAUMONT'S DICTION</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_281">281</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XXII</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">BEAUMONT'S MENTAL HABIT</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XXIII</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">THE AUTHORSHIP OF THREE DISPUTED PLAYS</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XXIV</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">"THE WOMAN-HATER," AND "THE KNIGHT"</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_307">307</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XXV</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">THE FIVE CENTRAL PLAYS</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_332">332</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XXVI</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">THE LAST PLAY</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_368">368</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XXVII</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">THE DRAMATIC ART, PRINCIPALLY OF BEAUMONT</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_378">378</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XXVIII</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">DID THE BEAUMONT "ROMANCE" INFLUENCE SHAKESPEARE?</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_386">386</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1">XXIX</td><td class="tcol4" colspan="3">CONCLUSION</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#Page_396">396</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="head" colspan="5">APPENDIX</td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcol1"> </td><td class="tcol5">Table</td><td class="tcol4">A</td><td class="tcol3" colspan="2"><a href="#Page_419">419</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1"> </td><td align="left">"</td><td class="tcol4">B</td><td class="tcol3" colspan="2"><a href="#Page_420">420</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1"> </td><td align="left">"</td><td class="tcol4">C</td><td class="tcol3" colspan="2"><a href="#Page_421">421</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1"> </td><td align="left">"</td><td class="tcol4">D</td><td class="tcol3" colspan="2"><a href="#Page_422">422</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1"> </td><td align="left">"</td><td class="tcol4">E</td><td class="tcol3" colspan="2"><a href="#Page_423">423</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol1"> </td><td class="tcol5">INDEX</td><td align="left"> </td><td class="tcol3" colspan="2"><a href="#Page_425">425</a></td></tr> +</table></div> + + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + + +<div class="center"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="List of Illustrations"> +<tr><td class="tcol2">Portrait of Francis Beaumont</td><td class="tcol3"><i><a href="#Frontispiece">Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2"></td><td class="tcol3"><span class="allcaps">FACING<br /> + <span class="revindent">PAGE</span></span></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">The Ruins of Grace-Dieu Nunnery</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image22">22</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">Ruins of Grace-Dieu</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image26-1">26</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">A Priory, Ulveston, Extant in 1730</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image26-2">26</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">Thomas Sackville, First Earl of Dorset</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image66">66</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">The Temple</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image96">96</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">The Globe Theatre, with St. Paul's in the Background</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image104">104</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">Ben Jonson</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image120">120</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">Francis Bacon</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image146">146</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, and Family</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image160">160</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">John Selden</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image170">170</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">The Beaumont of the Nuneham Portrait</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image192">192</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">Michael Drayton</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image202">202</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">John Fletcher</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image226">226</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">John Earle, Bishop of Worcester and Salisbury</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image244">244</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcol2">Don Diego Sarmiento, Count Gondomar</td><td class="tcol3"><a href="#image372">372</a></td></tr> +</table></div> +</div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="tall">BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST<br /> + +PART ONE</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">BEAUMONT'S LIFE, HIS ACQUAINTANCES, AND HIS +CAREER AS POET AND DRAMATIST.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p> +<h2 class="tall">BEAUMONT,<br /> +THE DRAMATIST</h2> + +<h3 class="topchap">CHAPTER I</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">THE CASTOR AND POLLUX OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA</p> + + +<p class="cap">"Among those of our dramatists who either were +contemporaries of Shakespeare or came after +him, it would be impossible to name more than three +to whom the predilection or the literary judgment +of any period of our national life has attempted +to assign an equal rank by his side. In the Argo +of the Elizabethan drama—as it presents itself to +the imagination of our own latter days—Shakespeare's +is and must remain the commanding figure. +Next to him sit the twin literary heroes, Beaumont +and Fletcher, more or less vaguely supposed to be +inseparable from one another in their works. The +Herculean form of Jonson takes a somewhat disputed +precedence among the other princes; the rest of these +are, as a rule, but dimly distinguished." So, with +just appreciation, our senior historian of the English +drama, to-day, the scholarly Master of Peterhouse. +Sir Adolphus Ward himself has, by availing +of the inductive processes of the inventive and indefatigable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> +Fleay and his successors in separative criticism, +contributed not a little to a discrimination between the +respective efforts of the "twin literary heroes" who +sit next Jason; and who are "beyond dispute more +attractive by the beauty of their creations than any +and every one of Shakespeare's fellow-dramatists." +But even he doubts whether "the most successful series +of endeavours to distinguish Fletcher's hand from +Beaumont's is likely to have the further result of enabling +us to distinguish the mind of either from that +of his friend." Just this endeavour to distinguish not +only hand from hand, but mind from mind, is what I +have had the temerity to attempt. And still not, by +any means, a barefaced temerity, for my attempt at +first was merely to fix anew the place of the joint-authors +in the history of English comedy; and it has been +but imperceptibly that the fascination of the younger +of them, of Frank Beaumont, the personality of his +mind as well as of his art, has so grown upon me as +to compel me to set him before the world as he appears +to me to be clearly visible.</p> + +<p>In broad outline the figure of Beaumont has been, +of course, manifest to the vision of poet-critics in the +past. To none more palpably than to the latest of +the melodious immortals of the Victorian strain. "If +a distinction must be made," wrote Swinburne as early +as 1875, "if a distinction must be made between the +Dioscuri of English poetry, we must admit that Beaumont +was the twin of heavenlier birth. Only as Pollux +was on one side a demigod of diviner blood than Castor +can it be said that on any side Beaumont was a +poet of higher and purer genius than Fletcher; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> +so much must be allowed by all who have eyes and +ears to discern in the fabric of their common work a +distinction without a difference. Few things are +stranger than the avowal of so great and exquisite a +critic as Coleridge, that he could trace no faintest +line of demarcation between the plays which we owe +mainly to Beaumont and the plays which we owe +solely to Fletcher. To others this line has always +appeared in almost every case unmistakable. Were +it as hard and broad as the line which marks off, for +example, Shakespeare's part from Fletcher's in <i>The +Two Noble Kinsmen</i>, the harmony would of course +be lost which now informs every work of their common +genius.... In the plays which we know by evidence +surer than the most trustworthy tradition to be +the common work of Beaumont and Fletcher there is +indeed no trace of such incongruous and incompatible +admixture as leaves the greatest example of romantic +tragedy ... an unique instance of glorious imperfection, +a hybrid of heavenly and other than heavenly +breed, disproportioned and divine. But throughout +these noblest of the works inscribed generally with +the names of both dramatists we trace on every other +page the touch of a surer hand, we hear at every turn +the note of a deeper voice, than we can ever recognize +in the work of Fletcher alone. Although the beloved +friend of Jonson, and in the field of comedy his loving +and studious disciple, yet in that tragic field where his +freshest bays were gathered Beaumont was the worthiest +and the closest follower of Shakespeare.... The +general style of his tragic or romantic verse is as +simple and severe in its purity of note and regularity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> +of outline as that of Fletcher's is by comparison lax, +effusive, exuberant.... In every one of the plays +common to both, the real difficulty for a critic is not +to trace the hand of Beaumont, but to detect the touch +of Fletcher. Throughout the better part of every +such play, and above all of their two masterpieces, +<i>Philaster</i> and <i>The Maid's Tragedy</i>, it should be clear +to the most sluggish or cursory of readers that he has +not to do with the author of <i>Valentinian</i> [Fletcher] +and <i>The Double Marriage</i> [Fletcher and Massinger]. +In those admirable tragedies the style is looser, more +fluid, more feminine.... But in those tragic poems +of which the dominant note is the note of Beaumont's +genius a subtler chord of thought is sounded, a deeper +key of emotion is touched, than ever was struck by +Fletcher. The lighter genius is palpably subordinate +to the stronger, and loyally submits itself to the impression +of a loftier spirit. It is true that this distinction +is never grave enough to produce a discord; +it is also true that the plays in which the predominance +of Beaumont's mind and style is generally perceptible +make up altogether but a small section of the work +that bears their names conjointly; but it is no less true +that within this section the most precious part of that +work is comprised."</p> + +<p>The essay in which this noble estimate of Beaumont +occurs remains indeed "the classical modern +criticism of Beaumont and Fletcher," and although +recent research has resulted in "variety of opinion +concerning the precise authorship of some of the plays +commonly attributed to those writers" its value is +substantially unaffected. The figure as revealed in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> +glorious proportions to the penetrative imagination +and the sympathy of poetic kinship, remains, but by +the patient processes of scientific research the outlines +have been more sharply defined and the very lineaments +of Beaumont's countenance and of Fletcher's, +too, brought, I think, distinctly before us. Though +Swinburne attributes, almost aright, to Beaumont +alone one play, <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, and ascribes to +him the predominance in, and the better portions of +<i>Philaster</i> and <i>The Maid's Tragedy</i>, and the high interest +and graduated action of the serious part of <i>A King +and No King</i>, and also justly associates him with +Fletcher in the composition of <i>The Scornful Lady</i>, and +gives him alone "the admirable study of the worthy +citizen and his wife who introduced to the stage and +escort with their applause <i>The Knight of the Burning +Pestle</i>," and implies his predominance in that play, he +does not enumerate for us the acts and scenes and +parts of scenes which are Beaumont's or Fletcher's, or +Beaumont's revised by Fletcher, in any of these plays; +and consequently he points us to no specific lines of +poetic inspiration, no movements distinctively conceived +by either dramatist and shaped by his dramatic +pressure, no touchstone by which the average reader +may verify for himself that "to Beaumont his stars +had given as birthright the gifts of tragic pathos and +passion, of tender power and broad strong humour," +and that "to Fletcher had been allotted a more fiery +and fruitful force of invention, a more aerial ease and +swiftness of action, a more various readiness and fullness +of bright exuberant speech." Though he is right +in discerning in the homelier emotion and pathetic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> +interest of <i>The Coxcombe</i>, and of <i>Cupid's Revenge</i> +the note of Beaumont's manner, he couples with the +former <i>The Honest Man's Fortune</i> in which it is +more than doubtful whether Beaumont had any share. +To speak of Arbaces in <i>A King and No King</i> as +Beaumont's, is mainly right, but not wholly, and to +assign to him the keen prosaic humour of Bessus and +his swordsmen, is to assign precisely the scenes that +he did not compose. To speak of Beaumont's <i>Triumph +of Love</i> is perhaps defensible; but, with grave +reluctance, we now question the attribution. He is +justified in withdrawing "the noble tragedy of +<i>Thierry and Theodoret</i>" from the field of Beaumont's +coöperation and ascribing it to Fletcher and Massinger; +but he is undoubtedly wrong when he fails to couple +the latter's name with that of Fletcher as author of +<i>Valentinian</i>. Writing as Swinburne did after a study +of Fleay's first investigations into the versification +of Fletcher, Beaumont, and Massinger, the wonder +is not that once or twice, as a critic, he makes an +incorrect attribution, but that his poetic instinct so +successfully defied the temptation to enumerate in +detail the respective contributions of Beaumont and +Fletcher on the basis of metrical tests <i>par excellence</i>,—so +surprisingly novel and seductively convincing were +the tests then recently formulated. Swinburne's mistakes +are of sane omission rather than of supererogation. +By his judgments as a critic one can not +always swear; but here he is, in the main, marvelously +right, and a thousand times rather to be followed +than some of the successors of Fleay who have +swamped the personality of Beaumont by heaping on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> +him, foundered, sods from a dozen turf-stacks which +he never helped to build.</p> + +<p>But the <i>chorizontes</i>—those who would separate +every scene and line of the one genius from those of +the other—are not lightly to be spoken of. It is only +by combining their methods of analysis with the intuitions +of the poet-critics that one may hope to see +Frank Beaumont plain: "the worthiest and closest +follower of Shakespeare in the tragic field; the earliest +as well as ablest disciple of Ben Jonson in pure comedy, +varied with broad farce and mock-heroic parody." +The labour is well bestowed if by its means lovers of +poetry and the drama, while not ceasing to admire +the elder dramatist, Fletcher, may be led to accede +at last to the younger his due and undivided honour, +may come to speak of him by unhyphenated name—a +personality of passion and of fire, a gracious power +in poetry, of effulgent dramatic creativity;—if, like +the ancients, they may protest occasionally in the name +of Pollux alone.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER II</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">BEAUMONT'S FAMILY; HIS EARLY YEARS: GRACE-DIEU, +OXFORD</p> + + +<p class="cap">Francis Beaumont, the dramatist, came of +the younger line of an ancient and distinguished +family of Anglo-Norman descent in which there had +been Barons de Beaumont from the beginning of the +fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century. +They lived, as did the dramatist later, in the forest of +Charnwood in Leicestershire,—part of the old forest +of Arden. And it is of a ride to their family seat that +John Leland, the antiquary, speaks when in his itinerary, +written between 1535 and 1543, he says: +"From Leicester to Brodegate, by ground well +wooded three miles.... From Brodegate to Loughborough +about a five miles.... First, I came out of +Brodegate Park into the forest of Charnwood, commonly +called the Waste. This great forest is a twenty +miles or more in compass, having plenty of wood.... +In this forest is no good town nor scant a village; +Ashby-de-la-Zouche, a market town and other villages +on the very borders of it.... Riding a little further +I left the park of Beau Manor, closed with stone walls +and a pretty lodge in it, belonging of late to Beaumonts.... +There is a fair quarry of alabaster stone +about a four miles from Leicester, and not very far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> +from Beau Manor.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>... There was, since the Bellemonts +[Beaumonts], earls of Warwick, a baron +[at Beaumanoir] of great lands of that name; and the +last of them in King Henry the Seventh's time was a +man of simple wit. His wife was after married to the +Earl of Oxford."<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> These barons "of great lands," +living in Charnwood Forest,—where, as another old +writer tells us, "a wren and a squirrel might hop from +tree to tree for six miles; and in summer time a traveler +could journey from Beaumanoir to Burden, a good +twelve miles, without seeing the sun,"—these barons +are the de Beaumonts, from the fourth of whom, +John, Lord Beaumont, who died in 1396, our dramatist +was descended.</p> + +<p>The barony ran from father to son for six generations +of alternating Henries and Johns, <i>c.</i> 1309 to 1460. +John, fourth Baron; was grandson of Alianor, daughter +of Henry, Earl of Lancaster, and so descended +from Henry III and the first kings of the House of +Plantagenet. The second Baron, husband of Alianor +of Lancaster, was through his mother, Alice Comyn, +descended from the Scotch Earls of Buchan, and thus +connected with the Balliols and the royal House of +Scotland; through his father, Henry, the first Baron +de Beaumont, who died in 1343, he was great-grandson +of John de Brienne, titular King of Jerusalem, +1210-1225.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> In a quaint tetrastich in the church of +Barton-upon-Humber, the memory of these alliances is +thus preserved:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Rex Hierosolymus cum Bellomonte locatur,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bellus mons etiam cum Baghan consociatur,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bellus mons iterum Longicastro religatur,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bellus mons ... Oxonie titulatur.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The sixth Baron became, in 1440, the first Viscount +of English creation; he married a granddaughter of the +Lord Bardolph of Shakespeare's <i>2 Henry IV</i>; but with +his son "of simple wit," who died in 1507, the viscounty +died out. Beaumanoir to the east of Charnwood +is seven miles north of Leicester and nine from +Coleorton where, west of the Forest, an older branch +of the Beaumont family of which we shall hear, later, +continued to live and is living to-day; and the old +barony was revived, in 1840, in a descendant of the +female line, Miles Thomas Stapleton, as ninth Baron +Beaumont.</p> + +<p>The grandfather of the dramatist, John Beaumont, +was in the third generation from Sir Thomas Beaumont, +the younger son of the fourth Lord Beaumont. +John evidently had to make his way before he could +establish himself near the old home in Leicestershire; +but he must have had some competence and position +from the first, for he was admitted early, in the reign of +Henry VIII, a member of the Inner Temple; in 1537 +and 1543 he performed the learned and expensive +functions of Reader, or exponent of the law in that +society, and later was elected treasurer or presiding +officer of the house. He started brilliantly in his +profession. In 1529 he was counsellor for the corporation +of Leicester; and, by 1539, he had means or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> +influence sufficient to secure for himself the old Nunnery +of Grace-Dieu in Charnwood Forest, which, as an +ecclesiastical commissioner he had four years earlier +helped to suppress. That he entered into possession, +however, only with difficulty, is manifest from a letter +which he wrote in 1538 to Lord Cromwell, enclosing +£20 as a present and beseeching his lordship's intercession +with the king that he may be confirmed in his +ownership of the "demenez" as against the cupidity +of George, first Earl of Huntingdon, who "doth labour +to take the seyd abbey ffrom me; ... for I do ffeyre +the seyd erle and hys sonnes do seeke my lyffe."<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> He +occupied various important legal and administrative +positions in the county, and, shortly before the death +of Edward VI, was appointed to the high office of +Master of the Rolls, or Judge of the Court of Appeal. +A year or two later, however, early in 1553, +he was removed from his seat on the bench, for +defalcation and other flagrant breach of trust. He +was imprisoned and fined in all his property, +and died the next year. His vast estates were bestowed +on Francis, Earl of Huntingdon, by Edward +VI, but soon afterward, as a result of legal manœuvre +and by the assistance of that Earl and his eldest son, +the widow of the Master of the Rolls contrived to +retain the manor of Grace-Dieu; and it long continued +to be the country seat of the Beaumonts.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> This prudent, +strenuous, and high-born lady, Elizabeth Hastings,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +was the daughter of Sir William Hastings, a +younger son of the incorruptible William, Lord Hastings, +whom in 1483 Richard of Gloucester had decapitated. +Her grandmother, Catherine Nevil, was +daughter to the Earl of Salisbury, who died at Pomfret, +and sister to Richard, Earl of Warwick, the King-maker. +Elizabeth's aunt, Anne Hastings, was the wife +of George Talbot, fourth Earl of Shrewsbury, and her +uncle, Edward, was the second Lord Hastings. Edward's +children, our Elizabeth's first cousins, were +Anne, Countess to Thomas Stanley, second Earl of +Derby, and that George, first Earl of Huntingdon, +whom, with certain of his five sons, the master of +Grace-Dieu "ffeyred."<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> We may conjecture that the +feud expired with the marriage of Elizabeth Hastings +and John Beaumont, or with the death of the first Earl +in 1544; and that the policy of his successors, Francis +and Henry, in securing to the Huntingdon family the +reversion of the forfeited estates of the Master of the +Rolls and, later, releasing a portion of them to Elizabeth, +was dictated by cousinly affection.</p> + +<p>The great Francis, second Earl of Huntingdon, lived +in the castle of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, about an hour's +walk from Mistress Beaumont's, and had, in 1532, +allied himself to royalty by marrying Katherine Pole, +niece of the Cardinal, and great-granddaughter of +that George, Duke of Clarence (brother to Edward +IV), who was "pack'd with post-horse up to heaven" +by the cacodemon of Gloucester. When Edward +VI died, Francis declared for Lady Jane Grey and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> +was for a time imprisoned. His daughter was +the beautiful Lady Mary Hastings who, being of +the blood royal, was wooed for the Czar, and +might have been "Empress of Muscovy" had she +pleased. From the Huntingdon family Elizabeth +Hastings introduced at least one new Christian +name into that of the Beaumonts. For the second +Earl, she named her oldest son Francis. One of her +daughters, Elizabeth, became the wife of William, +third Lord Vaux of Harrowden, in the adjoining +county of Northampton; and thus our dramatist, +through his aunt, was connected with another of the +proudest Norman families of England,—one of the +most devoted to the Catholic faith and, as we shall see, +active in Jesuit interests that during the dramatist's +life in London assumed momentous political proportions. +Aunt Elizabeth, Lady Vaux, died before our +Frank Beaumont was born; and her son Henry died +when Frank was but ten years of age,—but in an +entry in the State Papers of 1595 concerning "the entail +of Lord Vaux's estates on his children by his first +wife [John] Beaumont's daughter,"<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> several "daughters" +are mentioned. These, his cousins of Harrowden, +Frank knew from his youth up. In 1605 all +England was to be ringing with their names.</p> + +<p>John and Elizabeth were succeeded at Grace-Dieu +by their son, Francis. He was a student at Peterhouse, +Cambridge; afterwards, at the Inner Temple, +where like his father before him, he proceeded Reader +and Bencher. In 1572 he sat in Parliament as member +for Aldborough; in 1589 he was made sergeant-at-law;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> +and in 1593 was appointed one of the Queen's +Justices of the Court of Common Pleas. His method +of trying a case, technical and merciless, may be +studied in the minutes of the Lent assizes of 1595 at +which the unfortunate Jesuit priest, Henry Walpole, +was sentenced to death for returning to England.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> His +career on the bench was both successful and honourable; +and he is described by a contemporary, William +Burton, the author of the <i>Description of Leicestershire</i>, +as a "grave, learned, and reverend judge." He married +Anne, the daughter of a Nottinghamshire knight, Sir +George Pierrepoint of Holme-Pierrepoint; and their +children were Henry, born 1581; John, born about +1583; Francis, the subject of this study, born in 1584 +or 1585; and Elizabeth, some four years younger than +Francis.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> That we know nothing of the life or personality +of this mother of poets, is a source of regret. +Her family, however, was of a notable stock possessed, +immediately after the Conquest, of lands in Sussex +under Earl Warren. Their estate of Holme-Pierrepoint +in Nottinghamshire they had inherited from +Michael de Manvers during the reign of Edward I. +Anne's ancestors had been Knights Banneret, and of +the Carpet and the Sword, for generations. Her +brother, Sir Henry Pierrepoint, born 1546, married +Frances, the eldest daughter of the Sir William Cavendish +who began the building of Chatsworth, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> +his redoubtable Lady, Bess of Hardwick, who finished +it. This aunt of the young Beaumonts of Grace-Dieu, +Lady Pierrepoint, was sister to William Cavendish, +first Earl of Devonshire in 1611 and forefather +of the present Dukes,—to Henry Cavendish, +the friend of Mary, Queen of Scots, and +son-in-law of her kindly custodian, George Talbot, +sixth Earl of Shrewsbury,—to Sir Charles Cavendish, +whose son, William, became Earl, and then +Duke of Newcastle,—to Elizabeth Cavendish, Countess +of Lennox, the wife of Henry Darnley's brother, +Charles Stuart, and the mother of James I's hapless +cousin, Lady Arabella Stuart,—and to Mary Cavendish, +Countess of Shrewsbury, wife of Gilbert, seventh +Earl. The son of Sir Henry and Lady Pierrepoint, +Robert, born in the same year as his cousin, Francis +Beaumont, the dramatist, married a daughter of the +Talbots, became in due time Viscount Newark and +Earl of Kingston, and was killed in 1643 during the +Civil War. From him descended Marquises of Dorchester +and Dukes of Kingston, and the Earls Manvers +of the present time. Through their mother, Anne +Pierrepoint, the Beaumont children of Grace-Dieu +were, accordingly, connected with several of the most +influential noble families of England and Scotland; and +in their comradeship with the cousins of Holme-Pierrepoint +they would, as of the common kin, be thrown into +familiar acquaintance with the children of the various +branches of these and other houses that I might mention.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> +Holme-Pierrepoint is seventeen miles northeast<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> +of Grace-Dieu, near the city of Nottingham, +in the red sand-stone country along the River Trent. +The Park is but a two or three hours' drive from +Charnwood, and the old house to which Anne used to +take her children to see their grandparents still stands, +altered only in part from what it was in 1580. It +belongs to the Earl Manvers of to-day. In the church +is the tomb of the poet's uncle, Sir Henry Pierrepoint, +who died the year before Francis.</p> + +<p>Since no entry of Francis' baptism has been discovered +it is uncertain whether he was born at Grace-Dieu. +The probabilities are, however, in favour of +that birth-place, since his father was not continuously +occupied in London until a later date. As to the exact +year of his birth, there is also uncertainty but I think +that the records indicate 1584. The matriculation +entry in the registers of Oxford University describes +him as twelve years of age at the time of his admission, +February 4, 1597 (new style), which would establish +the date of his birth between February 1584 +and February 1585. The funeral certificate issued at +the time of his father's death, April 22, 1598, speaks +of the other children, Henry, John, and Elizabeth as, +respectively, seventeen, fourteen, and nine, years of +age, "<i>or thereaboutes</i>"; but of Francis as "of thirteen +yeares <i>or more</i>."</p> + +<p>Justice Beaumont was a squire of considerable means. +When, in 1581, he qualified himself to be Bencher by +lecturing at the Inner Temple upon some statute or +section of a statute for the space of three weeks and +three days, his expenses for the entertainment at +table or in revels, alone, must have run to about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> +£1500, in the money of to-day. He held at the time +of his death landed estates in some ten parishes of +Leicestershire, between Sheepshead on the east and +and Coleorton three miles away on the west, and scattered +over some seven miles north and south between +Belton and Normanton. In Derby, too, he had two +or three fine manors. His will shows that he was able +to make generous provision for many of his "ould and +faythefull servauntes," besides bequeathing specifically +a handsome sum in money to his daughter Elizabeth. +He was a considerate and careful man, too, +for the morning of his death he added a codicil to +his will: "I have left somewhat oute of my will +which is this, I will that my daughter Elizabeth have +all the jewells that were her mother's." His sons are +not mentioned, for naturally the heir, Henry, would +make provision for John and Francis.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> His chief +executor was Henry Beaumont of Coleorton, his kinsman,—worth +mentioning here; for at Coleorton another +cousin, Maria Beaumont, the mother of the +great Duke of Buckingham, had till recently lived as +a waiting gentlewoman in the household.</p> + +<p>Grace-Dieu where the youth of these children was +principally spent, was "beautifully situated in what +was formerly one of the most recluse spots in the +centre of Charnwood Forest," within a little distance +of the turn-pike road that leads from Ashby-de-la-Zouch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> +to Loughborough. It lies low in a valley, near +the river Soar. In his <i>Two Bookes of Epigrammes +and Epitaphs</i>, 1639, Thomas Bancroft gives us a picture +of the spot:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Grace-Dieu, that under Charnwood stand'st alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As a grand relicke of religion,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I reverence thine old, but fruitfull, worth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That lately brought such noble Beaumonts forth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose brave heroicke Muses might aspire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To match the anthems of the heavenly quire:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The mountaines crown'd with rockey fortresses,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sheltering woods, secure thy happiness<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That highly favour'd art (tho' lowly placed)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Heaven, and with free Nature's bounty graced.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And still another picture of it is painted, a hundred +and seventy years later by Wordsworth, the friend +of the Sir George Beaumont who in his day was possessed +of the old family seat of Coleorton Hall, within +half an hour's walk of Grace-Dieu:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Beneath yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rugged and high, of Charnwood's forest ground<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stand yet, but, Stranger! hidden from thy view,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The ivied Ruins of forlorn Grace-Dieu,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Erst a religious house, which day and night<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With hymns resounded, and the chanted rite:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And when those rites had ceased, the Spot gave birth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To honourable Men of various worth:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There, on the margin of a streamlet wild,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Did Francis Beaumont sport, an eager child:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There, under shadow of the neighboring rocks,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sang youthful tales of shepherds and their flocks;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unconscious prelude to heroic themes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heart-breaking tears, and melancholy dreams<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Of slighted love, and scorn, and jealous rage,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With which his genius shook the buskined stage.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Communities are lost, and Empires die,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And things of holy use unhallowed lie;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They perish;—but the Intellect can raise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From airy words alone, a Pile that ne'er decays.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So far as the "youthful tales of shepherds" go, +Wordsworth is probably thinking of the verses of +Francis' brother, Sir John, which open:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A shepherdess, who long had kept her flocks<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On stony Charnwood's dry and barren rocks,—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>written long after both brothers had left boyhood +behind; indeed after Francis was dead; or he is attributing +to our Beaumont a share in Fletcher's <i>Faithfull +Shepheardesse</i>. Francis, himself, has given us +nothing of the pastoral vein, save sweet snatches in +the dramas "with which his genius shook the buskined +stage."</p> + +<p>There is no doubt that from childhood up, the +brothers and, as I shall later show, their sister Elizabeth +breathed an atmosphere of literature and national +life. At an early age John was sufficiently confessed +a versifier to be assigned the Prelude to one of the +nobly patronized Michael Drayton's <i>Divine Poems</i>, +and there is fair reason for believing that the younger +brother Francis was writing and publishing verses in +1602, when he was barely eighteen years of age. +Their father was going to and fro among the great +in London who made affairs. The country-side all +about them was replete with historic memories and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> +inspirations to poetry. In the Grey Friars' at Leicester, +eleven miles south-east, Simon de Montfort +allied by marriage to the first Anglo-Norman de Beaumonts, +Earls of Leicester, lay buried. There, too, until +his ashes were scattered on the waters of the Soar, +King Richard the Third. In the Blue Boar Inn of that +"toune,"—in our young Beaumont's day, all "builded +of tymbre,"—this last of the Plantagenets had spent +the night before the battle of Bosworth. The field itself +on which the battle was fought lies but eight +miles west of Leicester and about nine south of Grace-Dieu. +No wonder that Francis Beaumont's brother +John in after days chose Bosworth Field as the subject +of an heroic poem:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The Winter's storme of Civill Warre I sing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose end is crown'd with our eternall Spring;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where Roses joyn'd, their colours mixe in one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And armies fight no more for England's Throne.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The Beaumonts were living in the centre of the counties +most engaged. Three of their predecessors had +fallen fighting for the red rose, John Beaumont of +Coleorton and John, Viscount Beaumont, at Northampton +in 1460, and a Henry Beaumont at Towton +in 1461. In his description of the battle, John introduces +by way of simile a reference to what may have +been a familiar scene about Grace-Dieu:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Here Stanley and brave Lovell trie their strength....<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So meete two bulls upon adjoyning hills<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of rocky Charnwood, while their murmur fills<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The hollow crags, when striving for their bounds,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They wash their piercing homes in mutuall wounds.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p> + +<p>Lovell, himself, was a Beaumont on the mother's side. +And the poet takes occasion to pay tribute, also, to his +own most famous ancestor on the grandmother's side, +the "noble Hastings," first baron, whose cruel execution +in <i>Richard III</i>, Shakespeare had dramatized more +than twenty years before John wrote.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"><a name="image22" id="image22"></a> +<img src="images/image02.jpg" width="500" height="333" alt="Steel Engraving by W. Finden +THE RUINS OF GRACE-DIEU NUNNERY" title="Steel Engraving by W. Finden +THE RUINS OF GRACE-DIEU NUNNERY" /> +<p class="artist">Steel Engraving by W. Finden</p> +<span class="caption">THE RUINS OF GRACE-DIEU NUNNERY</span> +</div> + + +<p>Just south of Charnwood Forest stood, in the day +of John and Francis, the Manor House in Bradgate +Park where Lady Jane Grey was born, and where she +lived from 1549 to 1552 while she was being educated +by her ambitious father and mother, the Marquis and +Marchioness of Dorset, "to occupy the towering position +they felt assured she would sooner or later be +called to fill"—that of Protestant queen of England. +Here it was that Roger Ascham, as he tells us in his +<i>Schoolmaster</i>, after inquiring for the Lady Jane of +the Marquis and his lady who were out hunting in +Charnwood Forest, came upon the twelve-year old +princess in her closet "reading the <i>Phædon</i> of Plato +in Greek, with as much delight as gentlemen read the +merry tales of Boccaccio." The grandmother of the +young Beaumonts, who was still alive in 1578, may +have lived long enough to take our Francis on her +knee and tell him of the hopes her Protestant kinsmen +of Ashby-de-la-Zouch had fixed upon the Lady +Jane, and of how her cousin, the Earl, Francis of +Huntingdon, had been one of those who in Royal +Council in June 1553, abetted the Dukes of Northumberland +and Suffolk in the scheme to secure +the succession of Lady Jane to the throne, and +how, with these dukes and the Archbishop of Canterbury, +and other lords and gentlemen (among<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +them a certain Sir John Baker of Sissinghurst, Kent, +whose family later appears in this narrative), he +had signed the "devise" in accordance with which +Jane was proclaimed Queen. And the old lady +would with bated breath tell him of the cruel fate of +that nine-days' queen. Of how Francis of Huntingdon +was sent to the Tower with Queen Jane, she also +would tell. But perhaps not much of how he shortly +made his peace with Queen Mary, hunted down the +dead Jane's father, and brought him to the scaffold. +And either their grandmother or their father, the +Judge, could tell them of the night in 1569 on which +their cousin, Henry, third Earl of Huntingdon, had +entertained in the castle "rising on the very borders" +of the forest to the east, Mary, Queen of Scots, when +she was on her way to her captivity in the house of +another connection of theirs, Henry Cavendish, at Tutbury +in the county of Stafford, just east of them.</p> + +<p>In the history of culture not only John and Francis, +but the Beaumonts in general are illustrious. In +various branches and for generations the poetic, +scholarly, and artistic vein has persisted. John +Beaumont's son and heir, the second Sir John, edited +his father's poems, and lived to write memorial verses +on Ben Jonson, and on Edward King, Milton's +"Lycidas"; and another son, Francis, wrote verses. +A relative and namesake of the dramatist's father,—afterwards +Master of Charterhouse,—wrote an Epistle +prefixed to Speght's <i>Chaucer</i>, 1598; and still another +more distant relative, Dr. Joseph, Master of Peterhouse, +and author of the epic allegory, <i>Psyche</i>, was +one of the poetic imitators through whom Spenser's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> +influence was conveyed to Milton. The Sir George +Beaumont of Wordsworth's day to whom reference +has already been made was celebrated by that poet +both as artist and patron of art. And, according to +Darley,<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was of the +race and maiden name of our dramatist's mother, +Anne Pierrepoint. From which coincidence one may, +if he will, argue poetic blood on that side of the family, +too; or from Grosart's derivation of Jonathan Edwards +from that family, polemic blood, as well.</p> + +<p>The three sons of Justice Beaumont of Grace-Dieu +were entered on February 4, 1597, at Broadgates +Hall, now Pembroke, which at that time was one of +the most flourishing and fashionable institutions in +Oxford. These young gentlemen-commoners were +evidently destined for the pursuit of the civil and common +law, since, as Dyce informs us, their Hall was +then the principal nursery for students of that discipline. +But one cannot readily visualize young Frank, +not yet thirteen, or his brother John, a year or so older, +devoting laborious hours to the <i>Corpus Juris</i> in the +library over the south aisle of St. Aldate's Church, or +to their Euclid, Strabo, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian. +We see them, more probably, slipping across St. Aldate's +street to Wolsey's gateway of Christ Church, +and through the, then unfinished, great quadrangle, +past Wolsey's tower in the southeast corner, and, by +what then served for the Broad Walk, to what now +are called the Magdalen College School cricket +grounds, and so to some well-moored boat on the +flooded meadows by the Cherwell. And some days,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> +they would have under arm or in pocket a tattered +volume of Ovid, preferably in translation,—Turberville's +<i>Heroical Epistles</i>, or Golding's rendering of the +<i>Metamorphoses</i>,—or Painter's <i>Palace of Pleasure</i>, or +Fenton's <i>Tragical Discourses</i> out of Bandello, dedicated +to the sister of Sir Philip Sidney—Sir Philip, +whose daughter young Francis should, one day, revere +and celebrate in noble lines. Or they would +have Harington's <i>Orlando Furioso</i> to wonder upon; +or some cheap copy of <i>Amadis</i> or <i>Palmerin</i> to waken +laughter. And, other days, fresh quartos of <i>Tamburlaine</i> +and <i>Edward II</i> and <i>Dido</i>, or Kyd's <i>Spanish +Tragedy</i> and Lyly's <i>Gallathea</i>, or Greene's <i>Frier Bacon</i> +and <i>James IV</i>, or Shakespeare's <i>Richard II</i>, and +<i>Richard III</i>, and <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, and <i>Love's Labour's +Lost</i>. These, with alternate shuddering and +admiring, mirth or tears, to declaim and in imagination +re-enact. And certainly there would be mellow +afternoons when the <i>Songs and Sonnettes</i> known as +<i>Tottel's Miscellany</i> and <i>The Paradyse of Daynty +Devises</i>, with their poems of love and chivalry by +Thomas, Lord Vaux,—of which they had often heard +from their cousins of Harrowden,—and Chapman's +completion of <i>Hero and Leander</i> or Shakespeare's +<i>Venus and Adonis</i>, and Drayton's fantastic but +graceful <i>Endimion and Phoebe</i> would hold them +till the shadows were well aslant, and the candles +began to wink them back to the Cardinal's quadrangle +and the old refectory, beyond, of Broadgates Hall. +For the Char and the boats were there then, and all +these El Dorados of the mind were to be had in +quarto or other form, and some of them were appearing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> +first in print in the year when Frank and his brothers +entered Oxford.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"><a name="image26-1" id="image26-1"></a> +<img src="images/image03a.jpg" width="500" height="347" alt="View taken by Buck in 1730 +RUINS OF GRACE-DIEU" title="View taken by Buck in 1730 RUINS OF GRACE-DIEU" /> +<p class="artist">View taken by Buck in 1730</p> +<span class="caption">RUINS OF GRACE-DIEU</span> + +<p class="center">Note: After Buck's time the ruins were "carried away to mend the roads" +See John Throsby, Select Views of Leicestershire, Vol. II, 461</p> +</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"><a name="image26-2" id="image26-2"></a> +<img src="images/image03b.jpg" width="500" height="343" alt="Taken by Buck +A PRIORY, ULVESTON, EXTANT IN 1730" title="Taken by Buck +A PRIORY, ULVESTON, EXTANT IN 1730" /> +<p class="artist">Taken by Buck</p> +<span class="caption">A PRIORY, ULVESTON, EXTANT IN 1730</span> +</div> + +<p>We may be sure, that many a time these brothers +and sworn friends in literature, and Henry, too, loyal +young Elizabethans,—and with them, perhaps, their +cousin, Robert Pierrepoint, who was then at Oriel,—strolled +northwest from the Cherwell toward Yarnton, +and then Woodstock with its wooded slopes, to see the +island where Queen Elizabeth, when but princess, had +been imprisoned for a twelvemonth, and, hearing a +milk-maid singing, had sighed, "She would she were +a milkmaid as she was"; and that they took note of +fair Rosamund's well and bower, too. They may have +tramped or ridden onward north to Banbury, and got +there at the same cakeshop in Parsons Street the same +cakes we get now. Or, some happy Michaelmas, +they would have walked toward the fertile Vale of +Evesham, north, first, toward Warwickshire where at +Compton Scorpion Sir Thomas Overbury, the ill-fated +friend of their future master, Ben Jonson, +was born, and on by the village of Quinton but +six miles from Shakespeare's Stratford, toward +Mickleton and the Malvern Hills; and then, turning +toward the Cotswolds, to Winchcombe with its +ancient abbey and its orchards, to see just south +of it Sudely Castle where Henry VIII's last wife, +the divorced Catherine Parr, had lived and died,—where +Giles, third Baron Chandos, had entertained +Queen Bess, and where in their time abode the +Lord William. With this family of Brydges, Barons +Chandos, the lads were acquainted, if not in 1597 +at any rate after 1602, when the fifth Baron, Grey,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> +succeeded to the title. For, writing <i>Teares</i> on the +death of that hospitable "King of the Cotswolds," +which occurred in 1621, John Beaumont describes him +with the admiration begotten of long intimacy,—"the +smoothnesse of his mind," "his wisdome and +his happy parts," and "his sweet behaviour and discourse."</p> + +<p>Or,—and how could any young Oxonian fail of it?—they +started from Broadgates, down the High, +crossed Magdalen Bridge, where the boats were lazily +oaring below them, and set out for the climb to Rose +Hill; then down by sleepy ways to Littlemore, and to +Sandford; then up the two long sharp ascents to +Nuneham,—where now, in the fine old manor house, +hangs Frank's own portrait in oils,—one of the +two contemporary likenesses of him that exist to-day.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> Leland's <i>Itinerary</i>, Ed. L. T. Smith, Vol. I, 18-19.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Leland's <i>Itinerary</i>, Ed. L. T. Smith, Vol. IV, 126.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Collins, <i>Peerage of England</i>, IX, 460.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> J. Nichols, <i>Collections toward the History of Leicestershire</i> +(<i>Biblioth. Topogr. Brit.</i>, VII, 534). See, below, Appendix, A.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Letters relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries</i>, pp. +251-252, Camden Society, 1843. The editor, Thos. Wright, describes +the petitioner as of Thringston, Co. Leicester.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> J. M. Rigg, <i>Dict. Nat. Biog.</i> art., <i>John Beaumont</i>; and +Nichols's <i>History of Leicestershire</i>, III, ii, 651, <i>et seq.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Collins, <i>Peerage</i>, VI, 648, <i>et seq.</i>; H. N. Bell, <i>The Huntingdon +Peerage</i>, 1821. See also, below, Appendix, Table B.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Calendar of State Papers</i> (<i>Domestic</i>), 1595, p. 154.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Challoner, <i>Missionary Priests</i>, I, 347.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> For the preceding details, and some of those which follow, +see the respective articles in the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i>; +Dyce's <i>Works of Beaumont and Fletcher</i>, Vol. I, <i>Biographical +Memoir</i>; Grosart, <i>Sir John Beaumont's Poems</i>, and the +sources as indicated. See also, below, Appendix, Table C.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> See Shaw's <i>Knights of England</i>; Collins, <i>Peerage</i>; and articles +in <i>D. N. B.</i> under names.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Dyce says that the Judge was knighted; so Rigg (<i>D. N. B.</i>) +and others. The <i>Inner Temple Records</i> speak of him thirty times, +but only once, Nov. 5, 1581, as "Sir," though others in memoranda +running to 1601 which mention him are given the title. In +the codicil to his will he is plain "Mr. Beaumont"; and he is +not included in Shaw's <i>Knights of England</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>For a Seat in the Groves of Coleorton.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Works of B. and F.</i>, XVI.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER III</h3> + +<p class="chaphead"> +AT THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY; +THE POEMS ASSIGNED TO THESE EARLIER YEARS.</p> + + +<p class="cap">The career of the Beaumonts at the University +was shortened by the death of their father, some +fourteen months after their admission. Henry had +been entered of the Inner Temple, November 27, 1597, +at his father's request. Some say with John, but I do +not find the latter in the Records. Francis may have +remained at Oxford until 1600. On November 3 of +that year, he, also, was admitted a member of the +Inner Temple, his two brothers acting as sponsors for +him. We notice from the admission-book that he was +matriculated <i>specialiter</i>, <i>gratis</i>, <i>comitive</i>,—because his +father had been a Bencher,—was excused from most +of the ordinary duties and charges, and was permitted +to take his meals and to lodge outside the Inn of Court +itself. I gather that, like other young students at the +time, he lodged and pursued his studies in one of +the lesser Inns, called Inns of Chancery, attached to the +Inner Temple and under its supervision: Clifford's +Inn across Fleet Street; or, across the Strand, Lyon's +Inn,—or, let us hope, by preference, Clement's Inn; +where had lain Jack Falstaff in the days when he was +"page to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk," and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> +was seen by lusty Shallow to "break Skogan's head +at the court-gate when 'a was a crack not thus high;" +where had boozed Shallow himself and his four +friends—"not four such swinge-bucklers in all the +Inns of Court again"; and where, no doubt, they were +talking in Beaumont's day "of mad Shallow yet."</p> + +<p>In 1600, the Inns of Chancery lodged about a +hundred students each, and served as preparatory +schools for the Inns of Court. At one of these lesser +Inns<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> Beaumont would acquire some elementary +knowledge of civil procedure by copying writs of the +Clerks of Chancery, would listen to a reader sent over +by the Inner Temple to lecture, and would be +"bolted," or sifted, in the elements of law by the +"inner" or junior barristers; and he would attend +"moots" over which senior or "utter" barristers +presided. At the end of about two years or earlier, +if he proved a promising scholar, he would be transferred +to the Inn of Court, itself. We may assume +that about 1602, Beaumont would be sitting in Clerks' +Commons in the Hall of the Inner Temple. Bread +and beer for breakfast,—provided on only four days +of the week. At 12 o'clock he would be summoned to +dinner by the blowing of a horn,—"thou horne of +hunger that cal'st the inns a court to their manger." +For his mess of meat,—in Lent, fish,—on other occasions, +loins of mutton, or beef,—he would make +himself a trencher of bread. At 6 or 7 o'clock would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> +come supper,—bread and beer again. After dinner, +and again after supper, he would enjoy bolts and exercises +conducted by the utter barristers, day in and +day out through nearly the whole year. As he advanced +in proficiency he would appear as a "moot-man" +in the arguments presented before the Benchers, +or governing fellows, seated as judges. And perhaps +he resigned himself, meanwhile, to the proper wear +within the Inn, which was cap and gown, "but the +fashion was to wear hats, cloaks or coats, swords, +rapiers, boots and spurs, large ruffs and long hair. +Even Benchers were found to sit in Term Time with +hats on."<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p> + +<p>Whether Beaumont gave promise or not we are +ignorant. The routine of the Inn was impeccable; +but students and benchers were not. There were not +infrequently other exercises than "moots" after supper: +cards and stage-plays, revels and sometimes riots. +This much we know, that before young Frank could +have fulfilled his seven or more years as student and +"moot-man," he was already in the rank of poets +and dramatists. But, that by no means precludes his +continuance for several years, perhaps till 1608, in +the juridical university, or his intimate association +with and residence in the stately old quadrangles of +what would be his college,—the Inner Temple. And +for a young man of his temperament the atmosphere +was as poetic as juridical. The young man's fancy +was fired by the poetry and the drama that for centuries +had enlivened the graver pursuits of the Gothic +halls that rose between Fleet Street and the Thames,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +Whitefriars and Paget Place,—"the noblest nurseries +of humanity and liberty in the kingdom," as Ben +Jonson calls them in his dedication<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> to the Inns of +Court of <i>Every Man out of his Humour</i>, first published +in the year when Beaumont entered.</p> + +<p>According to Aubrey, while the garden-wall of +Lincoln's Inn, close by, was building, a Bencher +of that society "walking thro' and hearing" a +young bricklayer "repeat some Greek verses out of +Homer, discoursed with him, and finding him to +have a witt extraordinary gave him some exhibition +to maintaine him at Trinity College, Cambridge." +That young bricklayer was, later, Beaumont's friend +and master, Ben Jonson. Lincoln's Inn had long been +a nursing mother to dramatic effort. At the beginning +of Queen Elizabeth's reign it was one of its +members, Richard Edwardes, who, as Master of the +Chapel Children, produced the "tragicall comedie" +<i>Damon and Pythias</i>, and the tragedy of <i>Palamon and +Arcite</i>, to the great edification of the Queen, and the +permanent improvement of the Senecan style of +drama by the fusion of the ideal and the commonplace, +of the romantic, the serious, and the humorous +in an appeal to popular interest. "He was highly +valued," this Edwardes, "by those that knew him," says +Anthony Wood, "especially his associates in Lincoln's +Inn." And it was in the Middle Temple, just fourteen +months after Beaumont joined the Inns of Court, that +Manningham, one of the barristers, witnessed the performance +for the Reader's Feast on Candlemas Day of +Shakespeare's <i>Twelfth Night</i>. If Beaumont of the Inner<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> +Temple, within a stone's throw, did not hear more +than the applause, he was not our Frank Beaumont. +We may be sure that he had sauntered through the +Temple Gardens many an afternoon, and knew the +spot immortalized by Marlowe and that same Shakespeare, +as the scene of the quarrel between Plantagenet +and Somerset when the white and red roses were +plucked, and that he would hear Shakespeare when he +could.</p> + +<p>But much as the Middle Temple and Lincoln's +favoured the drama and costly entertainments on the +major feast-days, they were outdone in Christmas +revels and masques and plays by the closely affiliated +societies of Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple. Between +these Houses, says Mr. Douthwaite, the historian +of the former, "there appears anciently to have +existed a kindly union, which is shown by the fact that +on the great gate of the gardens of the Inner Temple +may be seen to this day [1886] the 'griffin' of Gray's +Inn, whilst over the great gateway in Gray's Inn +Square is carved in bold relief the 'wingèd horse' +of the Inner Temple." The two societies had long +a custom of combining for the production of theatrical +shows; and as we shall see, they combined +some thirteen years after Beaumont entered the +Inner Temple in the production at Court of one of +the most glorious and expensive masques ever presented +in London, Beaumont's own masque for the +wedding of the Elector Palatine and the Princess +Elizabeth. They were influential as patrons of the +early drama, and as producers of amateur dramatists. +For centuries Gray's Inn had permitted "revels"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +after six o'clock supper of bread and beer; and when +Beaumont was of the Inner Temple close by, there +was a Grand Week at Gray's in every term. "They +had revels and masques some of which," as a member +of that society has recently said, "have never been +forgotten, and I think cannot be forgotten while English +history lasts."<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> From a very early date, perhaps +not long after the society was established in Edward +the Third's reign in the old manor of Portpool, "they +were addicted at the Christmas season to a great outburst +of revelry of every kind. The revelings began +at All Hallows; at Christmas a Prince of Portpoole +was appointed; who was also Lord of Misrule, +and he kept things gaily alive through Christmas and +until toward the end of January." These and other +disguises, masques, and mummeries, are lineal descendants +of the mummings of the Ancient Order of +the Coif, such as regaled King Richard II at Christmas +1389; and, amalgamated with St. George plays +and other folk-shows and even with sword-dances, they +influenced the course of rural drama throughout the +realm. It may be a bow drawn at a venture but I cannot +withhold the suspicion that the Lord of Pool of the +<i>Revesby Sword-Play</i> and of other popular compositions +derives from the historic Prince of Misrule of +the Gray's Inn Christmas revels. It was George Gascoigne +of Gray's Inn who by a translation from +Ariosto introduced the Renaissance treatment of the +Greek New Comedy and the Latin Comedy into England +with his <i>Supposes</i> in 1566, and in the same year,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> +with Francis Kinwelmersh, produced at Gray's Inn +an English rendering of Ludovico Dolce's <i>Giocasta</i>, +a tragedy descended from Euripides' <i>Phoenissae</i> by +way of a Latin version. "Altogether," remarks +Professor Cunliffe,<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> "the play must have provided a +gorgeous and exciting spectacle, and have produced +an impression not unworthy of Gray's Inn, 'an +House', the Queen said on another occasion, 'she was +much beholden unto, for that it did always study for +some sports to present unto her.'" To this house +and to Gascoigne, Shakespeare, too, was beholden, +for from the <i>Supposes</i> proceeds more or less directly +the minor plot of <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i>. In +1588, Gray's Inn figures prominently again in the +career of the pre-Shakespearian drama, with the production +by one of its gentlemen, Thomas Hughes, of +a tragedy of English legend and Senecan type, <i>The +Misfortunes of Arthur</i>, played by the society before +the Queen at Greenwich. And, in 1594, Gray's Inn +connects itself with the Shakespearian drama directly +by witnessing in the great hall in the Christmas season +a play called <i>A Comedy of Errors</i>, "like to Plautus +his <i>Menaechmus</i>."</p> + +<p>It is diverting to note that on the eve of just that +season of 1594, a very pious woman, the second wife +of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and the mother of Anthony +and Francis, is writing to the elder brother "I trust +that they will not mum nor sinfully make revel at +Gray's Inn." Anthony was not a very strict Puritan, +Francis still less so; and Francis, who had been of +Gray's Inn since 1575, was, till his fall from power,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> +the keenest devotee and most ardent and reckless promoter +of masquing that Gray's Inn or, for that matter, +England, had ever known. According to Spedding,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> +the speeches of the six councillors for the +famous court of the Prince of Purpoole in 1594 were +written by him and him alone. He furnished the +money and much of the device for gorgeous masques +before Queen Elizabeth; and under her successor he +was prime mover in many a masque, like that of the +<i>Flowers</i>, presented by the gentlemen of Gray's Inn, in +1614, which, alone, cost him about £10,000 as reckoned +in the money of to-day. The masques by the +four Inns, in honour of the Elector Palatine's marriage, +the year before, are said to have cost £20,000,—five +hundred thousand dollars in the money of to-day! +And it would appear that much of this expense +was assumed by Sir Francis Bacon, who in the years +of his greatness as Solicitor-General and Attorney-General +retained intimate relations with the life of +Gray's Inn, and whom our Beaumont during the years +of studentship before 1603, when the gallant Sir Walter +Raleigh was consigned to the Tower, must many +times have seen strolling with Sir Walter in the walks +that Bacon himself had laid out for his fellow-benchers +of the Inn.</p> + +<p>If Beaumont's family had deliberately set about +preparing him for his career of poet and dramatist, +especially of dramatist who, with John Fletcher, should +vividly reproduce the life, manners and conversation +of young men of fashion about town, they could not +have placed him in a community more favourable to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> +these ends than that of the Inns of Court. As the +name itself implies the members were gentlemen of +the Court of the King. They must be "sons to persons +of quality"; they must be trained to the possibility +of appearance before the King at any time; they +must be ready not merely as a privilege, but as a function, +to entertain royalty upon summons. As Gray's +Inn had its flavour of romance, its literary and dramatic +history, its Sidney, its Bacon, its Gascoigne; +so also the "anciently allied House" of the Inner +Temple. There lingered the tradition, to say the +least, of Chaucer's stirring poetry; there the spirit of +Sir Francis Drake,—stirring romances of the Spanish +main; there the memory of the Christmas revels +of 1562 at which was first acted the <i>Gorboduc</i> of +Thomas Sackville (afterwards Earl of Dorset, and +connected by marriage with the Fletchers), and +Thomas Norton,—whose "stately speeches and well +sounding phrases, clyming to the height of Seneca his +stile," whose national quality, romantic illumination +of classical form, impressive, and novel dramatic +blank verse were to influence imperishably the course +of Elizabethan tragedy. There, too, had been produced, +by five poets of the House, in 1568, "the first +English love-tragedy that has survived,"<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> <i>Gismond of +Salerne</i>, a distant but unmistakable forerunner in tempestuous +passion and pathos of plays in which young +Beaumont was to compose the major part, <i>The Maides +Tragedy</i> and <i>A King and No King</i>.</p> + +<p>Here, in the intervals between moots and bolts in +the day time or during the long evenings about the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> +central fire in Hall or in Chambers, a young man of +poetic proclivities would find ample opportunity to indulge +his genius. And, even after he ceased to be an +inmate, the Inner Temple would still be for him a +club, in which by the payment of a small annual fee +he might retain membership for life. And membership +in one 'college' of this pseudo-university implied +an honorary 'freedom' of the others. +Beaumont would know not only William Browne, the +poet of the Inner Temple from 1611 on, and all +Browne's poetic fellows in that House, but Browne's +less poetic friend, Christopher Brooke, counsel for +Shakespeare's company of King's Players, who earlier +in the century had entered Lincoln's Inn; and, also, +Brooke's chamber-fellow, John Donne, whose secret +marriage with the daughter of the Lieutenant of the +Tower, in 1609, got the young scapegraces into jail. +And at Gray's Inn Beaumont would be even more at +home. It was the 'House' of his kinsman, Henry +Hastings of Ashby,—in 1604 Earl of Huntingdon,—two +years younger than Frank, and admitted as early +as 1597; and of Robert Pierrepoint, who had come +down with Frank from Oxford and was entered of the +Inns at the same time; and, two years later, of Robert's +cousin, William Cavendish, afterwards second Earl of +Devonshire.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>If we could be sure that a poem called <i>The Metamorphosis +of Tabacco</i>, a mock-Ovidian poem of graceful +style and more than ordinary wit, published in +1602, and ascribed by some one writing in a contemporary +hand upon the title-page, to John Beaumont,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +was John's we might regard the half dozen verses in +praise of "thy pleasing rime," signed F. B., and beginning,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">My new-borne Muse assaies her tender wing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And where she should crie, is inforst to sing,—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>as young Francis' earliest effort in rhyme. The +dedication of the <i>Metamorphosis</i> to "my loving +friend, Master Michael Drayton," favours the conjectured +composition by John, for he is writing other +complimentary poems to Drayton in the years immediately +following 1602. But, though F. B.'s lines prefatory +to the <i>Metamorphosis</i> are not unworthy of +a fanciful youngster, they are negligible; as is +the evidence of their authorship. Certain flimsy +love-poems included in a volume published forty years +later, twenty-four years after Beaumont's death, as +of his composition, have also been attributed to his +boyhood at the University, or at the Inner Temple. +Most of them have been definitely traced to other authors, +and of the rest of this class still unassigned +there is no reason to believe that he was the author. +In the same volume, however, there appears as by +Beaumont a metrical tale based upon Ovid, called +<i>Salmacis and Hermaphroditus</i>, of which we cannot +be certain that he was not the author. The poem was +first published, without name of writer, in 1602,<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> and +was not assigned to Francis Beaumont until 1639, +when Lawrence Blaiklock included it among the +<i>Poems</i>: By Francis Beaumont, Gent., entered on the +Stationers' Registers, September 2, and published,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> +1640. Blaiklock evidently printed from John +Hodgets's edition of 1602, carelessly omitting here +and there a line, and introducing absurd typographical +mistakes. Either because he had private information +that Beaumont was the author, or because he wished +to profit by Beaumont's reputation, he goes so far as +to sign the initials, F. B., to the verse dedication, <i>To +Calliope</i>, and to alter the signature, A. F., appended to +an introductory sonnet, <i>To the Author</i>, so as to read +I. F. (suggesting John Fletcher.) These licenses, in +addition to the reckless inclusion in the 1640 volume +of several poems by authors other than Beaumont, +vitiate Blaiklock's evidence. On the other hand, the +original publisher, Hodgets, was the publisher also, in +1607, of <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, a play now reasonably +accepted as by Beaumont, originally alone; and, in +Hodgets's edition of the <i>Salmacis and Hermaphroditus</i>, +one of the introductory sonnets is signed J. B., +and another W. B. The 'J. B.' sonnet is not unworthy +of Beaumont's brother John. And if the +W. B. of the other verses, <i>In Laudem Authoris</i>, +is William Basse,—who in a sonnet, written after +Beaumont's death, speaks of him as "rare Beaumont,"—there +is further justification for entertaining +the possibility of Beaumont's authorship of the <i>Salmacis</i>. +For Basse was one of the group of pastoralists +to which Francis' friend Drayton, and Drayton's +friend, William Browne, belonged,—a group with +which Francis must have been acquainted. But of +that we shall have more to say when we come to +consider Beaumont's later connection with Drayton, +and with the dramatic activities of the Inner Temple<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> +at a time when Browne and other pastoralists were +members of it. For the present it is sufficient to +say that Basse was himself issuing a pastoral romance +in the year of <i>Salmacis</i>, 1602; and that he was by way +of subscribing himself simply W. B.</p> + +<p>The external evidence for Beaumont's authorship +of this metrical tale is, at the best, but slight. As +regards the internal, however, I cannot agree with +Fleay and the author of the article entitled <i>Salmacis +and Hermaphroditus not by Beaumont</i>.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> Both diction +and verse display characteristics not foreign to +Beaumont's heroic couplets in epistle and elegy, nor +to the blank verse of his dramas,—though they do +not markedly distinguish them. The romantic-classical +and idyllic grace may be the germ of that which +flowers in the tragicomedies; and the joyous irony +is not unlike that of <i>The Woman-Hater</i> and <i>The +Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>. The poem is a voluptuous +and rambling expansion of the classical theme +"which sweet-lipt Ovid long agoe did tell." The +writer, like many a lad of 1602, has steeped himself +in the amatory fable and fancy of Marlowe, Chapman, +and Shakespeare; and the passionate imaginings are +such as characterize poetic lads of seventeen in any +period. It is not impossible that here we have Francis +Beaumont's earliest attempt at a poem of some proportions, +and that he was stirred to it by exercises +like <i>The Endimion and Phoebe</i> of Drayton, probably +by that time the friend of the Grace-Dieu family. +Francis, indeed, need not have been ashamed of such +a performance, for in spite of the erotic fervour and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> +the occasional far-fetched conceits, the poet has visualized +clearly the scenes of his mythological idyl, +and enlivened the narrative with ingenuous humour; +he has caught the figured style and something of the +winged movement of his masters; and every here and +there he has produced lines of more than imitative +beauty:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Looke how, when Autumne comes, a little space<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Paleth the red blush of the Summer's face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Searing the leaves, the Summer's covering,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Three months in weaving by the curious Spring,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Making the grasse, his greene locks, go to wracke,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tearing each ornament from off his backe;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So did she spoyle the garments she did weare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tearing whole ounces of her golden hayre.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The earliest definite indication that I have found +of Beaumont's literary activity, and of his recognition +by poets, connects him with his brother John, and is +highly suggestive in still other respects. John had already +written, in 1603 or 1604, verses prefatory to +Drayton's poetic treatment of <i>Moyses in a Map of his +Miracles</i>, published in June of the latter year; and also, +in 1605, to Drayton's revision of the <i>Barrons Wars</i>. +On April 19, 1606, Drayton issued a volume entitled +<i>Poems Lyrick and Pastoral</i>, which included with other +verses a revision, under the name of <i>Eglogs</i>, of his +<i>Idea, the Shepheard's Garland</i>, first published in 1593. +In the eighth eclogue of this new edition, Drayton, +writing of the ladies of his time to whom "much +the Muses owe," adds to his praise of Sidney's (Elphin's) +sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, an encomium<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> +upon the two daughters of his early patron, +Sir Henry Goodere, Frances and Anne (Lady Ramsford); +then he celebrates a "dear Sylvia, one the best +alive," and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Then that dear nymph that in the Muses joys,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That in wild Charnwood with her flocks doth go,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mirtilla, sister to those hopeful boys,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My lovèd Thyrsis and sweet Palmeo;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That oft to Soar the southern shepherds bring,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Of whose clear waters they divinely sing.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">So good she is, so good likewise they be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As none to her might brother be but they,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor none a sister unto them, but she,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To them for wit few like, I dare will say:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In them as Nature truly meant to show<br /></span> +<span class="i1">How near the first, she in the last could go.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The "golden-mouthed Drayton musical" had spent +his youth not many miles from "wild Charnwood," +at Polesworth Hall, the home of the Gooderes, in +Warwickshire. The dear nymph of Charnwood is +Elizabeth Beaumont, in 1606 a lass of eighteen,—and +the "hopeful boys" who bring the southern shepherds +(Jonson, perhaps, and young John Fletcher, as +well as Drayton) to their Grace-Dieu priory by the +river Soar, are John, then about twenty-three, and +the future dramatist, about twenty-two.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> Under the +pastoral pseudonym of Mirtilla, Elizabeth is again +celebrated by Drayton twenty-four years later, in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> +<i>Muses Elizium</i>. Since these Pastorals are in confessed +sequence with those of "the prime pastoralist +of England," and the pastoral Thyrsis and young +Palmeo have already sung divinely of the clear waters +of their native stream, it would appear that they too +are disciples at that time of Master Edmund Spenser +in his <i>Shepheards Calender</i>. And since these +brothers, so like in wit and feature, and in charming +devotion to their sister, are all the brothers that she +has, it is evident that this portion of the <i>Eglog</i> was +written after July 10, 1605; for up to that date, the +eldest of the family, Henry, was still living, and at +the manor house of Grace-Dieu. This friendship +between Drayton and the "hopeful boys" continued +through life; for, as we shall later note and more at +length, in 1627, the year of John's death, and many +years after that of Francis, the older poet still celebrates +the twain as "My dear companions whom I +freely chose My bosome-friends."</p> + +<p>When James I made his famous progress from +Edinburgh to London, April 5 to May 3, 1603, "every +nobleman and gentleman kept open house as he +passed. He spent his time in festivities and amusements +of various kinds. The gentry of the counties +through which his journey lay thronged in to see him. +Most of them returned home decorated with the +honours of knighthood, a title which he dispensed with +a profusion which astonished those who remembered +the sober days of Elizabeth."<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> One of those thus +decorated was the poet's brother Henry, who was +dubbed knight bachelor at Worksop in Derbyshire, on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> +the same day as his uncle, "Henry Perpoint of +county Notts," and William Skipwith of Cotes in the +Beaumont county—who appears later as a friend +of Fletcher. Two days afterwards, Thomas Beaumont +of Coleorton received the honour of knighthood +at the Earl of Rutland's castle of Belvoir.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p> + +<p>Sir Henry of Grace-Dieu did not long enjoy his +title. He died about the tenth of July 1605, and +was buried on the thirteenth. By his will, witnessed +by his brother Francis, and probated February 1606, +Sir Henry left half of his private estate to his sister, +Elizabeth "for her advancement in marriage," and +the other half to be divided equally between John and +Francis. He was succeeded as head of the family +by John,<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> who later married a daughter of John Fortescue—also +of a poetic race—and left by her a +large family. The sister, Elizabeth (Mirtilla) probably +continued to live at Grace-Dieu until her marriage +to Thomas Seyliard of Kent. And that Francis +occasionally came home on visits from London we have +other proof than that afforded by Drayton. The +provision of a competence made by Sir Henry's will +leads us to conjecture that the subsequent dramatic +activity of the younger brother was undertaken for +sheer love of the art; and that, while his finances may +have been occasionally at low ebb, the association in +Bohemian <i>ménage</i> with John Fletcher, which followed +the years of residence at the Inner Temple, was a +matter of choice, not of poverty.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>Inns of Court and Chancery</i> (Lond., 1912), p. 45; W. R. +Douthwaite, <i>Gray's Inn, its History and Associations</i> (Lond., +1886), pp. 36, 78, 253. For the Beaumonts, and what follows, see, +also, Inderwick, <i>Inner Temple Records</i> (Lond. 1896), I, 421; II, +435; Introductions, and subjects as indexed.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Inns of Court, etc.</i>, p. 163.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> The Dedication first appears in the folio of 1616.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> H. E. Duke, K. C., M. P., <i>Gray's Inn in Six Lectures on the +Inns of Court and of Chancery</i>, 1912.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Early English Classical Tragedies</i>, Introduction, p. lxxxvi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, I, 342.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Cunliffe, <i>E. E. Class. Tragedies</i>, p. lxxxvi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> Reprinted by <i>Dramaticus, Sh. Soc. Pap.</i> III, 94 (1847).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>Dramaticus</i>, (as above).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> On these identifications, see Fleay, <i>Chron. Eng. Dr.</i>, I, 143-145; +Elton, <i>Michael Drayton</i>, pp. 13, 58; Child, <i>Michael Drayton</i> +(in <i>Camb. Hist. Lit.</i>, IV, 197, <i>et seq.</i>).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> Gardiner, <i>Hist. Engl.</i> 1603-1607, p. 87.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Shaw's <i>Knights of Engl.</i>, Vol. II, under dates.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> Grosart (<i>D. N. B.</i> art. <i>John Beaumont</i>) says that John had +been admitted to the Inner Temple with Henry. John does not +appear in Inderwick.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER IV</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">THE VAUX COUSINS AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOT</p> + + +<p class="cap">Certain political events of the years 1603 to +1606 must have occasioned the young Beaumonts +intimate and poignant concern. Their own family was, +of course, Protestant, but it was closely connected by +blood and matrimonial alliance with some of the most +devoted and conspicuous Catholic families of England. +Some of their Hastings kinsmen, sons of Francis, Earl +of Huntingdon, were Catholics; and their first cousins, +the Vauxes, whose home at Great Harrowden near by +had been for over twenty years the harbourage of persecuted +priests, were active Jesuits. After the death +of his first wife,—Beaumont's aunt Elizabeth, who left +four children, Henry, Eleanor, Elizabeth, and Anne,—William, +Lord Vaux, had married Mary, the sister of +the noble-hearted and self-sacrificing Catholic, Sir +Thomas Tresham of Rushton in Northamptonshire; +and this lady had brought up her own children, George +and Ambrose, as well as the children of the first marriage, +in strict adherence to the Roman faith and practice. +Henry, the heir to the title, had been one of that +zealous band of young Catholic gentlemen who received +Fathers Campion and Persons on their arrival in +England in 1580.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> Before 1594, Henry, "that blessed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> +gentleman and saint," as Father Persons calls him, had +died, having resigned his inheritance of the Barony to +his brother George some years earlier in order to spend +his remaining days in celibacy, study, and prayer. In +1590, George, the elder son by the second marriage, +had taken to wife, Elizabeth Roper, also an ardent +Catholic, the daughter of the future Lord Teynham. +She was left a widow in 1594 with an infant son, Edward, +whom she educated to maintain the Catholicity +of the family. In 1595, the old Baron, Beaumont's +uncle, died—"the infortunatest peer of Parliament +for poverty that ever was" by reason of the fines and +forfeitures entailed upon him for his religious zeal. +Meanwhile, in 1591, we find the daughters of the first +marriage, Eleanor, whose husband was an Edward +Brookesby, of Arundel House, Leicestershire, and +Anne Vaux, concealing in a house in Warwickshire, +the well-known Father Gerard and his Superior, +Father Garnet, from priest-hunters, or pursuivants. +These two cousins of Beaumont are described in +Father Gerard's <i>Narrative</i><a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> as illustrious for goodness +and holiness, "whom in my own mind I often compare +to the two women who received our Lord." The +younger, Anne, "was remarkable at all times for her +virginal modesty and shamefacedness, but in the cause +of God and the defence of His servants, the <i>virgo</i> +became <i>virago</i>. She is almost always ill, but we have +seen her, when so weakened as to be scarce able to utter +three words without pain, on the arrival of the pursuivants +become so strong as to spend three or four hours +in contest with them. When she has no priest in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> +house she feels afraid; but the simple presence of a +priest so animates her that then she makes sure that no +devil has any power over her house." In the years +that follow to 1605, the Vauxes are identified as recusants +and as sympathizers with the untoward fortunes +of Fathers Southwell, Walpole, Garnet, and others. +In 1601, their kinsman and Frank Beaumont's, Henry +Hastings, nephew to George, fourth Earl of Huntingdon, +has joined the ranks and in 1602, we find him in a +list of Jesuits "to be sought after" by the Earl of +Salisbury,—"John Gerard with Mrs. Vaux and young +Mr. Hastings." Father Gerard's headquarters in fact +are from 1598 to 1605 with Mrs. Vaux and her son +Edward, the young Baron, at Great Harrowden, and +there others of the fifteen Jesuit fathers in England at +that time, and prominent Catholics, such as Sir Oliver +Manners, brother of Roger, Earl of Rutland, Sir +Everard Digby, and Francis Tresham, a first cousin +of Mrs. Vaux, were wont to foregather.</p> + +<p>When James I came to the throne, the Catholics had +hope of some alleviation of the penalties under which +they laboured. Disappointed in this hope, the discontented, +led by two priests, Watson and Clarke, embarked +upon a wild scheme to kidnap the King and set +as the price of his liberty the extension to Catholics of +equal rights, religious, civil, and political, with the +Protestants. The plot was betrayed, the priests executed, +and the other leaders condemned to death,—then +reprieved but attainted. Among those thus reprieved +were Lord Grey de Wilton and "a confederate +named Brookesby." This Brookesby was Bartholomew, +the brother of Eleanor Vaux's husband. When<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> +new and more stringent measures were immediately +adopted for the repression of priests and recusants, the +indignation of the Catholics reached a climax. "They +saw," says Gardiner, "no more than the intolerable +wrong under which they suffered; and it would be +strange if there were not some amongst them who +would be driven to meet wrong with violence, and to +count even the perpetration of a great crime as a meritorious +deed."<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a></p> + +<p>In 1603 Father Gerard took a new house in London +in the fields behind St. Clement's Inn,—just across the +Strand from the Inner Temple where Francis Beaumont +was living at the time. "This new house," says +Gerard, "was very suitable and convenient and had +private entrances on both sides, and I had contrived in +it some most excellent hiding-places; and there I +should have long remained, free from all peril or even +suspicion, if some friends of mine, while I was absent +from London, had not availed themselves of the house +rather rashly."<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> These friends were Robert Catesby, +a cousin of the Vauxes of Harrowden; his cousin, +Thomas Winter; Winter's relative, John Wright, and +Thomas Percy, a kinsman of Henry, ninth Earl of +Northumberland,—all gentlemen of distinguished +county families. In May 1604, these men with one +Guy Fawkes of York and Scotton, a soldier of fortune +and "excellent good natural parts," and, like the rest, +fanatic with brooding over the wrongs of the Catholic +Church, met at Father Gerard's house behind St. +Clement's Inn, swore to keep secret the purpose of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> +their meeting, received in an adjoining room the Sacrament +from Father Gerard, an unwitting accomplice, in +confirmation of their oath; and then, retiring, learned +from Catesby that the project intended was to blow up +the Parliament House with gunpowder when the King +and the royal family next came to the House of Lords. +Within a few days "Thomas Percy hired a howse at +Westminster," says Fawkes in his subsequent Confession, +"neare adjoyning Parlt. howse, and there wee +beganne to make a myne about the XI of December, +1604." The rest of the story is too well-known to call +for repetition. How the gunpowder was smuggled +into a cellar running under the Parliament House; +how, when Parliament was prorogued to November +5th, 1605, the conspirators, running short of money to +equip an insurrection, added to their number a few +wealthy accomplices,—most significant to our narrative, +that old friend of the Vauxes, Sir Edward Digby, +and Francis Tresham, cousin of Catesby and the Winters, +and as I have said of the Vauxes themselves.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> +How Tresham, recoiling from the destruction of innocent +Catholic Lords with the detested Protestants, met +Catesby, Winter, and Fawkes at White Webbs, "a +house known as Dr. Hewick's house by Enfield Chace," +and laboured with them for permission to warn their +friends, especially his brothers-in-law, Lord Stourton +and Monteagle; and how, when permission was refused,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> +he wrote an anonymous letter to Monteagle, begging +him "as you tender your life, to devise some +excuse to shift of your attendance at this Parliament; +for God and man hath concurred to punish the wickedness +of this time." How Monteagle informed the +Council and the King. How Guy Fawkes was discovered +among his barrels of gunpowder, and on the +fourth of November arrested as "John Johnson," the +servant of Thomas Percy, one of the King's Gentlemen +Pensioners. How "on the morning of the fifth, +the news of the great deliverance ran like wildfire along +the streets of London," and Catesby and Wright, Percy +and the brothers Winter, were in full flight for Lady +Catesby's house in Ashby St. Legers, Northamptonshire, +not far from Harrowden.</p> + +<p>With the rest of the world Francis Beaumont would +gasp with amazement. But what must have been his +concern when on the first examination of "John Johnson," +November 5th, the identity of that conspirator +was established not by any confession of his, but from +the contents of a letter found upon him, written by—Beaumont's +first cousin, Anne Vaux!<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p> + +<p>As intelligence oozed from the Lords of Council, +Beaumont would next learn that Anne's sister-in-law, +Mrs. [Elizabeth] Vaux of Harrowden had expected +something was about to take place, and that Father +Gerard and "Walley" [Garnet, the Father Superior +of the English Jesuits] "made her house their chief +resort"; and then that Fawkes had confessed that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> +Catesby, the two Winters, and Francis Tresham—all +of the Vaux family connection—and Sir Everard +Digby of their close acquaintance, were implicated in +the Plot; and that the conspiracy was not merely to +blow up the older members of the royal family but to +secure the Princess Elizabeth, place her upon the +throne, and marry her to an English Catholic,<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a>—therefore, +an enterprise likely to implicate his Catholic +cousins, indeed. His friend, Ben Jonson, is meanwhile +blustering of private informations, and Francis +would be likely to hear that Ben has written (November 8) +to Lord Salisbury offering his services to unravel +the web "if no better person can be found," and +averring that the Catholics "are all so enweaved in it +as it will make 500 gent. lesse of the religion within +this weeke." Then he is apprised that John Wright, +Catesby, Percy, etc., have been seen at "Lady" Vaux's +on the eighth. The next day, that these three and +Christopher Wright have been overtaken and slain; and +then that, on the ninth, Fawkes has confessed that they +have been using a house of Father Garnet's at White +Webbs as a rendezvous. Perhaps White Webbs means +nothing to Francis just yet, but it soon will. Three +days later, Tresham under examination acknowledges +interviews with his cousins, Catesby and Thomas Winter, +and with Fathers Garnet and Gerard; but says he +has not been at Mrs. Vaux's house at Harrowden for a +year. Soon afterwards, December 5, the Inner Temple +itself is shaken to the foundations by the intelligence +that Jesuit literature has been discovered by Sir +Edward Coke in Tresham's chamber,—a manuscript<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +of Blackwell's famous treatise on <i>Equivocation</i>, +destined to play a baleful rôle in the ensuing examination +of certain of the suspects.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, Francis would observe with alarm that +his Vaux cousins are from day to day objects of +deeper suspicion. On November 13, Lord Vaux's +house at Harrowden is searched; his mother gives up +all her keys but no papers are found. She and the +young lord strongly deny all knowledge of the +treason; the house, however, is still guarded. On the +eighteenth, Elizabeth, Mrs. Vaux, is examined and says +that she does not know "Gerard, the priest"[!]; but +among the visitors at her house she mentions Catesby, +Digby, and "Greene" [Greenway] and "Darcy" +[Garnet], priests. She acknowledges having written +to Lady Wenman, the wife of Sir Richard, last Easter, +saying that "Tottenham would turn French," but fails +to explain her meaning. From other quarters, however, +it is learned that she bade that lady "be of good +comfort for there should soon be toleration for religion," +adding: "Fast and pray that that may come +to pass which we purpose, which yf it doe, wee shall +see Totnam turned French." And Sir Richard, examined +concerning the contents of Mrs. Vaux's letter to +his wife, affirms that he "disliked their intercourse, because +Mrs. Vaux tried to pervert his wife." On +December 4, Catesby's servant, Bates, acknowledges +that he revealed the whole Plot to Greenway, the +priest, in confession, "who said it was a good cause, +bade him be secret, and absolved him." From Henry +Huddleston's examination, December 6, it appears +that Mrs. Vaux has not been telling the whole truth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> +about Harrowden, for not only were the two other +priests most suspected, Garnet and Greenway, there +sometimes, but also Gerard, whom Huddleston has +met there. On January 19, Bates definitely connects +Gerard and Garnet with the proceedings; and all three +priests are proclaimed. Gerard cannot be found, but +from his own <i>Narrative</i> it appears that he had been +hiding at Harrowden before, that now he is concealed +in London, and Elizabeth Vaux knows where.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> When +she is brought again before the Lords of Council and +threatened with death if she tell not where the priest +is, we may imagine the interest of the Beaumonts. +Francis, though no sympathizer with the Plot, cannot +have failed to admire the bearing of Elizabeth during +the examination:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"As for my hostess, Mrs. Vaux," writes Father +Gerard, "she was brought to London after that long +search for me, and strictly examined about me by the +Lords of the Council; but she answered to everything +so discreetly as to escape all blame. At last they produced +a letter of hers to a certain relative, asking for +the release of Father Strange and another, of whom I +spoke before. This relative of hers was the chief man +in the county in which they had been taken, and she +thought she could by her intercession with him prevail +for their release. But the treacherous man, who had +often enough, as far as words went, offered to serve +her in any way, proved the truth of our Lord's +prophecy, 'A man's enemies shall be those of his own +household!' for he immediately sent up her letter to +the Council. They showed her, therefore, her own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> +letter, and said to her, 'You see now that you are entirely +at the King's mercy for life or death; so if you +consent to tell us where Father Gerard is, you shall +have your life.'</p> + +<p>"'I do not know where he is,' she answered, 'and +if I did know, I would not tell you.'</p> + +<p>"Then rose one of the lords, who had been a former +friend of hers, to accompany her to the door, out of +courtesy, and on the way said to her persuasively, +'Have pity on yourself and on your children, and say +what is required of you, for otherwise you must certainly +die.'</p> + +<p>"To which she answered with a loud voice, 'Then, +my lord, I will die.'</p> + +<p>"This was said when the door had been opened, so +that her servants who were waiting for her heard what +she said, and all burst into weeping. But the Council +only said this to terrify her, for they did not commit +her to prison, but sent her to the house of a certain +gentleman in the city, and after being held there in +custody for a time she was released, but on condition +of remaining in London. And one of the principal +Lords of the Council acknowledged to a friend that he +had nothing against her, except that she was a stout +Papist, going ahead of others, and, as it were, a leader +in evil."</p></div> + +<p>What follows of Elizabeth's devotion to the cause, +would not be likely to filter through; but the Beaumonts +may have had their suspicions. According to +Father Gerard:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>"Immediately she was released from custody, knowing +that I was then in London, quite forgetful of herself,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> +she set about taking care of me, and provided all +the furniture and other things necessary for my new +house. Moreover, she sent me letters daily, recounting +everything that occurred; and when she knew that I +wished to cross the sea for a time, she bid me not spare +expense, so that I secured a safe passage, for that she +would pay everything, though it should cost five thousand +florins, and in fact she sent me at once a +thousand florins for my journey. I left her in care +of Father Percy, who had already as my companion +lived a long time at her house. There he still remains, +and does much good. I went straight to Rome, and +being sent back thence to these parts, was fixed at +Louvain."<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> So much at present of Elizabeth. We +shall hear of her, as did Beaumont, during the succeeding +years.</p></div> + +<p>In the tribulations of Anne Vaux, his own first +cousin, Francis must have been even more deeply interested. +That she was in communication with Fawkes +had been discovered, November 5. She was apprehended, +committed to the care of Sir John Swynerton, +but temporarily discharged. When Fawkes confessed, +November 9, that the conspirators had been using a +house of Father Garnet's at White Webbs, in Enfield +Chace, the house called "Dr. Hewick's" was searched. +"No papers nor munition found, but Popish books and +relics,—and many trap-doors and secret passages." +Garnet had escaped but, on examination of the servants, +it developed that under the pseudonym of "Meaze" he +had taken the house "for his sister, Mrs. Perkins,"—[and +who should "Mrs. Perkins" turn out to be but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> +Anne Vaux!] The books and relics are the property +of "Mrs. Jennings,"—[and who should she be but +Anne's sister, Eleanor Brookesby!] "Mrs. Perkins +spent a month at White Webbs lately;" and "three +gentlemen [Catesby, Winter, and another] came to +White Webbs, the day the King left Royston" [October +31]. On November 27, Sir Everard Digby's servant +deposes concerning Garnet that "Mrs. Ann +Vaux doth usually goe with him whithersoever he +goethe." On January 19, as we have seen, warrants +are out for the arrest of Garnet. On January 30, he is +taken with another Jesuit priest, Father Oldcorne, at +Hindlip Hall, in Worcestershire, where for seven days +and nights they have been buried in a closet, and nourished +by broths conveyed to them by means of a quill +which passed "through a little hole in a chimney that +backed another chimney into a gentlewoman's chamber." +True enough, the deposition, that whithersoever +her beloved Father Superior "goethe, Mrs. Ann Vaux +doth usually goe"; for she is the gentlewoman of the +broths and quill,—she with Mrs. Abington, the sister +of Monteagle. Garnet and Oldcorne are taken prisoners +to the Tower; and three weeks later Anne is in +town again, communicating with Garnet by means of +letters, ostensibly brief and patent, but eked out with +tidings written in an invisible ink of orange-juice. On +March 6, Garnet confesses that Mrs. Anne Vaux, alias +Perkins, he, and Brookesby bear the expenses of White +Webbs. On March 11, Anne being examined says that +she keeps the place at her own expense; that Catesby, +Winter, and Tresham have been to her house, but that +she knew nothing of the Plot; on the contrary, suspecting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> +some mischief at one time, she had "begged Garnet +to prevent it." Examined again on March 24, she says +that "Francis Tresham, her cousin, often visited her +and Garnet at White Webbs, Erith, Wandsworth, etc., +when Garnet would counsel him to be patient and quiet; +and that they also visited Tresham at his house in Warwickshire." +Garnet's trial took place at Guildhall on +March 28, Sir Edward Coke of the Inner Temple acting +for the prosecution. Garnet acknowledged that the +Plot had been conveyed to him by another priest +[Greenway] in confession. He was convicted, however, +not for failing to divulge that knowledge, but for +failing to dissuade Catesby and the rest, both before +and after he had gained knowledge from Greenway. +He was executed on May 3. Of Anne's share in all +that has preceded, Beaumont would by this date have +known. One wonders whether he or his brother, John, +ever learned the pathetic details of the final correspondence +between Anne and the Father Superior. How, +March 21, she wrote to him asking directions for the +disposal of herself, and concluding that life without +him was "not life but deathe." How, April 2, he +replied with advice for her future; and as to Oldcorne +and himself, added that the former had "dreamt there +were two tabernacles prepared for them." How, the +next day, she wrote again asking fuller directions and +wishing Father Oldcorne had "dreamt there was a +third seat" for her. And how, that same day, with +loving thought for all details of her proceedings, and +with sorrow for his own weakness under examination, +the Father Superior sends his last word to her,—that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> +he will "die not as a victorious martyr, but as a penitent +thief,"—and bids her farewell.</p> + +<p>All this of the Harrowden cousins and their connection +with Catholicism and the Gunpowder Plot, I have +included not only because it touches nearly upon the +family interests and friendships of Beaumont's early +years, but also because it throws light upon the circumstances +and feelings which prompted the satire of his +first play, <i>The Woman-Hater</i> (acted in 1607), where +as we shall see he alludes with horror to the Plot itself, +but holds up to ridicule the informers who swarmed the +streets of London in the years succeeding, and trumped +up charges of conspiracy and recusancy against unoffending +persons, and so sought to deprive them, if +not of life, of property. It is with some hesitancy, +since the proof to me is not conclusive, that I suggest +that the animus in this play against favourites and intelligencers +has perhaps more of a personal flavour than +has hitherto been suspected. An entry from the +Docquet, calendared with the State Papers, Domestic, +of November 14, 1607, may indicate that John Beaumont, +the brother of Francis, though a Protestant, had +in some way manifested sympathy with his Catholic relatives +during the persecutions which followed the discovery +of the Gunpowder Plot:—"Gift to Sir Jas. +Sempill of the King's two parts of the site of the late +dissolved monastery of Grace-Dieu, and other lands in +Leicester, in the hands of the Crown by the recusancy +of John Beaumont." At first reading the John Beaumont +would appear to be Francis' grandfather, the +Master of the Rolls. But the Master lost his lands not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> +for recusancy (or refusal on religious grounds to take +the Oath of Allegiance, or attend the State Church), +but for malfeasance in office, and that in 1552-3, while +the Protestant Edward VI was King. He had no +lands to lose after Mary mounted the throne,—even if +as a Protestant he were recusant under a Catholic +Queen. The recusancy seems to be of a date contemporaneous +with James's refusal, October 17, 1606, to +take fines from recusants, the King, as the State Papers +inform us, taking "two-thirds of their goods, lands, +etc., instead." The "two-thirds" would appear to be +the "two parts" of Grace-Dieu and other lands, specified +in the Gift; and that the sufferer was Francis Beaumont's +brother is rendered the more likely by the fact +that the beneficiary, Sir James Sempill, had been distinguishing +himself by hatred of Roman Catholics +from November 16, 1605, on; and that on July 31, +1609, he is again receiving grants "out of lands and +goods of recusants, to be convicted at his charges."</p> + +<p>There is nothing, indeed, in the career of Beaumont's +brother, John, as commonly recorded, or in the temper +of his poetry to indicate a refusal on his part to disavow +the supremacy of Rome in ecclesiastical affairs, +or to attend regularly the services of the Protestant +Church. His writings speak both loyalty and Protestant +Christianity. But it is to be noted that not only +many of his kinsmen but his wife, as well, belonged to +families affiliated with Roman Catholicism, and that +his eulogistic poems addressed to James are all of later +years,—after his kinsman, Buckingham, had "drawn +him from his silent cell," and "first inclined the +anointed head to hear his rural songs, and read his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> +lines"; also that it is only under James's successor that +he is honoured by a baronetcy. It is, therefore, not at +all impossible that, because of some careless or over-frank +utterance of fellow-feeling for his Catholic connections, +or of repugnance for the unusually savage +measures adopted after the discovery of the Gunpowder +Plot, he may have been accused of recusancy, +deprived of part of his estate, and driven into the seclusion +which he maintained at Grace-Dieu till 1616 or +thereabout.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> John Morris, <i>Life of Father John Gerard</i>, p. 311, <i>et seq.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Morris, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 113. See below, Appendix, Table D.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> Gardiner, <i>Hist. Engl.</i> 1603-1642, I, 234.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Morris, p. 360. See also, below, Appendix, Table D.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> Fletcher's connections, also, the Bakers, Lennards, and +Sackvilles were interested in the fortunes of Francis Tresham; +for he had married Anne Tufton of Hothfield, Kent, granddaughter +of Mary Baker who was sister of Sir Richard of +Sissinghurst and of Cicely, first Countess of Dorset.—Collins, +III, 489; Hasted, VII, 518. See below, Appendix, Tables D, E.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> The facts as here presented are drawn from the <i>Calendar +of State Papers (Domestic)</i>, the <i>Gunpowder Plot Book</i>, and +Father Gerard's <i>Narrative</i> (in Morris), in the order of dates as +indicated.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Nov. 5-8.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> Morris, <i>Life of Father Gerard</i>, p. 385.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Morris, pp. 413-414.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER V</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">FLETCHER'S FAMILY, AND HIS YOUTH</p> + + +<p class="cap">The friendship between Francis Beaumont and +John Fletcher may have commenced at any time +after Francis became a member of the Inner Temple, +in 1600,—probably not later than 1605, when Beaumont +was about twenty-one and Fletcher twenty-six. +The latter was the son of "a comely and courtly +prelate," Richard, Bishop, successively of Bristol, +Worcester, and London. Richard's father, also, +had been a clergyman; and Richard, himself, in his +earlier years had been pensioner and scholar of Trinity, +Cambridge (1563), then Fellow of Bene't College +(Corpus Christi), then President of the +College. In 1573 he married Elizabeth Holland at +Cranbrook in Kent, perhaps of the family of Hugh +Holland, descended from the Earls of Kent, who later +appears in the circle of Beaumont's acquaintance; became, +next, minister of the church of Rye, Sussex, +about fifteen miles south of Cranbrook; then, Chaplain +to the Queen; then, Dean of Peterborough. +While he was officiating at Rye, in December 1579, +John the fourth of nine children, was born. This +John, the dramatist, is probably the "John Fletcher +of London," who was admitted pensioner of Bene't +College, Cambridge, in 1591, and, as if destined<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> +for holy orders, became two years later a Bible-clerk, +reading the lessons in the services of the college +chapel. At the time of his entering college, his father +had risen to the bishopric of Bristol; and, later in +1591, had been made Lord High Almoner to the +Queen; he had a house at Chelsea, and was near the +court "where his presence was accustomed much to +be." By 1593 the Bishop had been advanced to the +diocese of Worcester; and we find him active in the +House of Lords with the Archbishop of Canterbury +in the proposal of severe measures against the Barrowists +and Brownists.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> The next year he was +elected Bishop of London,—succeeding John Aylmer, +who had been tutor to Lady Jane Grey,—and was +confirmed by royal assent in January 1595. From +Sir John Harington's unfavourable account<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> it would +appear that the Bishop owed his rapid promotion to +the combination of great mind and small means which +made him a fitting tool for "zealous courtiers whose +devotion did serve them more to prey on the Church +than pray in the Church." But his will, drawn in +1593, shows him mindful of the poor, solicitous concerning +the "Chrystian and godlie education" of his +children and confident in the principles and promises +of the Christian faith,—"this hope hath the God of +all comforte laide upp in my breste."</p> + +<p>We have no record of John's proceeding to a degree. +It is not unlikely that he left Cambridge for the city +when his father attained the metropolitan see. From +early years the boy had enjoyed every opportunity of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> +observing the ways of monarchs and courtiers, scholars +and poets, as well as of princes of the Church. +Since 1576, his father had "lived in her highnes," +the Queen's, "gratious aspect and favour." <i>Præsul +splendidus</i>, says Camden. Eloquent, accomplished, +courtly, lavish in hospitality and munificence, no wonder +that he counted among his friends, Burghley, the +Lord Treasurer, and Burghley's oldest son, Sir +Thomas Cecil, Anthony Bacon, the brother of Sir +Francis, and that princely second Earl of Essex, +Robert Devereux, who had married the widow of +Sir Philip Sidney, and with whom the lame but clever +Anthony Bacon lived. Sir Francis Drake also was +one of his friends and gave him a "ringe of golde" +which he willed to one of his executors. Another of +his "loveinge freindes," and an assistant-executor of +his will, was the learned and vigorous Dr. Richard +Bancroft, his successor as Bishop of London and +afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. As for immediate +literary connections, suffice it here to say that +the Bishop's brother, Dr. Giles Fletcher, was a cultivated +diplomat and writer upon government, and that +the sons of Dr. Giles were the clerical Spenserians, +Phineas, but three years younger than his cousin the +dramatist,—whose fisher-play <i>Sicelides</i> was acting at +King's College, Cambridge, in the year of John's +<i>Chances</i> in London, and whose <i>Brittain's Ida</i> is as +light in its youthful eroticism as his <i>Purple Island</i> is +ponderous in pedantic allegory,—and Giles, nine +years younger than John, who was printing verses +before John wrote his earliest play, and whose poem +of <i>Christ's Victorie</i> was published, in 1610, a year or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> +so later than John's pastoral of <i>The Faithfull Shepheardesse</i>. +Bishop Fletcher could tell his sons stories +of royalty, not only in affluence, but in distress; for +when John was but eight years old the father as +Dean of Peterborough was chaplain to Mary, Queen +of Scots, at Fotheringay, adding to her distress "by +the zeal with which he urged her to renounce the +faith of Rome." It was he who when Mary's head +was held up after the execution cried, "So perish all +the Queen's enemies!"<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> He could, also, tell them +much about the great founder of the Dorset family, +for at Fotheringay at the same time was Thomas +Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, afterwards first Earl of +Dorset, who had come to announce to Mary, Queen +of Scots, the sentence of death.</p> + +<p>From 1591 on, the Bishop was experiencing the +alternate "smiles and frowns of royalty" in London; +about the time that John left college more particularly +the frowns. For, John's mother having died about +the end of 1592, the Bishop had, in 1595, most unwisely +married Maria (daughter of John Giffard of +Weston-under-Edge in Gloucestershire), the relict of a +few months' standing of Sir Richard Baker of Sissinghurst +in Kent. The Bishop's acquaintance with +this second wife, as well as with the first, probably derived +from his father's incumbency as Vicar of the +church in Cranbrook, Kent, which began in 1555 and +was still existing as late as 1574. The young Richard +would often have shuddered as a child before Bloody +Baker's Prison with its iron-barred windows glowering +from the parish church, for Sir John hated the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> +primitive and pious Anabaptists who had taken up their +abode about Cranbrook, and he hunted them down;<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> +and Richard would, as a lad, have walked the two miles +across the clayey fields and through the low-lying +woods with his father to the stately manor house, +built by old Sir John Baker himself in the time +of Edward VI, and have seen that distinguished +personage who had been Attorney-General and Chancellor +of the Exchequer under Henry VIII,—and who +as may be recalled was one of that Council of State, +in 1553, which ratified and signed Edward VI's 'devise +for the succession' making Lady Jane Grey inheritress +of the crown. And when young Richard returned +from his presidency of Bene't College, in 1573, to +Cranbrook to marry Elizabeth Holland, he would +have renewed acquaintance with Sir Richard, who had +succeeded the "bloody" Sir John as master of Sissinghurst, +sixteen years before. He may for all we +know have been present at the entertainment which +that same year Sir Richard made for Queen Elizabeth. +Maria Giffard was twenty-four years old, then. +Whether she was yet Lady Baker we do not know—but +it is probable; and we may be sure that on his +various visits to Cranbrook, the rising dean and bishop +had frequent opportunity to meet her at Sissinghurst +before his own wife's death, or the death of Sir Richard +in 1594. Since the sister of Sir Richard Baker, +Cicely, was already the wife of Thomas Sackville, +Lord Buckhurst, when, in 1586-7, Buckhurst and Richard +Fletcher, Dean of Peterborough, were thrown together +at Fotheringay, it is not unlikely that the closer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> +association between the Fletchers and Lady Buckhurst's +sister-in-law of Sissinghurst grew out of this +alliance of the Sackvilles with the Bakers.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 367px;"><a name="image66" id="image66"></a> +<img src="images/image04.jpg" width="367" height="500" alt="THOMAS SACKVILLE, FIRST EARL OF DORSET +From the portrait in the possession of Lord Sackville, at Knole Park" title="THOMAS SACKVILLE, FIRST EARL OF DORSET +From the portrait in the possession of Lord Sackville, at Knole Park" /> +<div class="bbox"> +<p class="imtitle">THOMAS SACKVILLE,<br /> FIRST EARL OF DORSET<br /> +<span class="smtext">From the portrait in the possession of Lord Sackville,<br /> at Knole Park</span></p> +</div></div> + +<p>Lady Baker was in 1595 in conspicuous disfavour +with Queen Elizabeth, and with the people too; for, +if she was virtuous, as her nephew records,<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> "the more +happy she in herself, though unhappy that the world +did not believe it."<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> Certain it is, that in a contemporary +satire she is thrice-damned as of the most ancient +of disreputable professions, and once dignified as "my +Lady Letcher." Though of unsavoury reputation, she +was of fine appearance, and socially very well connected. +Her brother, Sir George Giffard, was in service +at Court under Elizabeth; and in Sackville, Lord +Buckhurst, she had a brother-in-law, who was kinsman +to the Queen, herself. But not only did the Queen +dislike her, she disliked the idea of any of her prelates, +especially her comely Bishop of London, marrying a +second time, without her express consent. For a year +after this second marriage the Bishop was suspended +from his office. "Here of the Bishop was sadly sensible," +says Fuller, "and seeking to lose his sorrow in +a mist of smoak, died of the immoderate taking +thereof." Sir John Harington, however, tells us that +he regained the royal favour;—"but, certain it is that +(the Queen being pacified, and hee in great jollity +with his faire Lady and her Carpets and Cushions in +his bed-chamber) he died suddenly, taking Tobacco +in his chaire, saying to his man that stood by him, +whom he loved very well, 'Oh, boy, I die.'"</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p><p>That was in 1596. The Bishop left little but his +library and his debts. The former went to two of +his sons, Nathaniel and John. The latter swallowed +up his house at Chelsea with his other properties. +The Bishop's brother and chief executor of the will, +Giles, the diplomat, is soon memorializing the Queen +for "some commiseration towards the orphans of the +late Bishopp of London." He emphasizes the diminution +of the Bishop's worldly estate consequent upon +his translation to the costly see of London, his extraordinary +charges in the reparation of the four +episcopal residences, his lavish expenditure in hospitality, +his penitence for "the errour of his late marriage," +and concludes:—"He hath left behinde him 8 +poore children, whereof divers are very young. His +dettes due to the Quenes Majestie and to other creditors +are 1400<i>li.</i> or thereaboutes, his whole state is but +one house wherein the widow claimeth her thirds, his +plate valewed at 400<i>li.</i>, his other stuffe at 500<i>li.</i>" Anthony +Bacon, who sympathized with the purpose of +this memorial, enlisted the coöperation of Bishop +Fletcher's powerful friend and his own patron, the +Earl of Essex, who "likewise represented to the Queen +the case of the orphans ... in so favourable a light +that she was inclin'd to relieve them;" but whether +she did so or not, we are unable to discover.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a></p> + +<p>What John Fletcher,—a lad of seventeen, when, in +1596, he was turned out of Fulham Palace and his +father's private house in Chelsea, with its carpets and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> +cushions and the special "stayre and dore made of +purpose ... in a bay window" for the entrance of +Queen Elizabeth when she might deign, or did deign, +to visit her unruly prelate,—what the lad of seventeen +did for a living before we find him, about 1606 or +1607, in the ranks of the dramatists, we have no means +of knowing. Perhaps the remaining years of his boyhood +were spent with his uncle, Giles, and his young +cousins, the coming poets, or with the aunt whom his +father called "sister Pownell." The stepmother of +eighteen months' duration is not likely with her luxurious +tastes and questionable character to have tarried +long in charge of the eight "poore and fatherless +children." She had children of her own by her previous +marriage, in whom to seek consolation, Grisogone +and Cicely Baker, then in their twenties, and +devoted to her.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> And with one or both we may surmise +that she resumed her life in Kent, or with the heir +of sleepy Sissinghurst, making the most of her carpets +and cushions and such of her "thirds" as she could +recover, until—for she was but forty-seven—she +might find more congenial comfort in a third marriage. +Her permanent consoler was a certain Sir Stephen +Thornhurst of Forde in the Isle of Thanet; and he, +thirteen years after the death of her second husband, +buried her in state in Canterbury Cathedral, 1609.</p> + +<p>In 1603 her sister-in-law, Cicely (Baker) Sackville, +now Countess of Dorset and the Earl, her husband, +that fine old dramatist of Beaumont's Inner Temple, +and former acquaintance at Fotheringay of John<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> +Fletcher's father, had taken possession of the manor +of Knole, near Sevenoaks in Kent, where their descendants +live to-day. Before 1609, Fletcher's stepsister +Cicely, named after her aunt, the Countess, had +become the Lady Cicely Blunt. Grisogone became the +Lady Grisogone Lennard, having married, about 1596, +a great friend of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, +and of his Countess (Sir Philip Sidney's sister), Sir +Henry, the son of Sampson Lennard of Chevening and +Knole. The Lennard estate lay but three and a half +miles from that of their connections, the Dorsets, of +Knole Park. If young Fletcher ever went down to see +his stepmother at Sissinghurst, or his own mother's +family in Cranbrook, he was but twenty-six miles by +post-road from Chevening and still less from Aunt +Cicely at Knole. Beaumont, himself, as we shall see, +married the heiress of Sundridge Place a mile and a +half south of Chevening, and but forty minutes across +the fields from Knole. His sister Elizabeth, too, married +a gentleman of one of the neighbouring parishes. +The acquaintance of both our dramatists with Bakers +and Sackvilles was enhanced by sympathies literary and +dramatic. A still younger Sir Richard Baker, cousin +to John Fletcher's stepsisters, and to the second and +third Earls of Dorset, was an historian, a poet, and a +student of the stage—on familiar terms with Tarleton, +Burbadge, and Alleyn. And the literary traditions +handed down from Thomas Sackville, the author +of <i>Gorboduc</i> and <i>The Mirror for Magistrates</i> were +not forgotten by his grandson, Richard, third Earl +of Dorset, the contemporary of our dramatists,—for +whom, if I am not mistaken, their portraits, now hanging<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> +in the dining-room of the Baron Sackville at Knole, +were painted.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>I have dwelt thus at length upon the conditions antecedent +to, and investing, the youth of Beaumont and of +Fletcher, because the documents already at hand, if +read in the light of scientific biography and literature, +set before us with remarkable clearness the social +and poetic background of their career as dramatists. +When this background of birth, breeding, and family +connection is filled in with the deeper colours of their +life in London, its manners, experience, and associations, +one may more readily comprehend why Dryden +says in comparing them with Shakespeare, +"they understood and imitated the conversation of +gentlemen [of contemporary fashion] much better; +whose wild debaucheries and quickness of wit in repartees, +no poet before them could paint as they have +done."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Cal. State Papers (Dom.)</i>, April 7, 1593.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>Briefe View of the State of the Church.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> Nichols's <i>Progresses of Queen Elizabeth</i>, II, 506-510.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> See the story in <i>Camden Miscellany</i>, III (1854).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Sir Richard Baker, in his <i>Chronicle of the Kings of England</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Fuller's <i>Worthies</i>, as cited by Dyce, I, x, xi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> The materials as furnished by Dyce, <i>B. and F.</i>, I, xiv-xv, +from Birch's <i>Mem. of Elizabeth</i>, and the Bacon Papers in the +Lambeth Library are confirmed by <i>Cal. St. Papers</i> (<i>Dom.</i>), +June 1596, July 9, 1597, <i>etc.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> As her monument in Canterbury would indicate. Hasted, +<i>Hist. Kent</i>, XI, 397.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> For the Bakers and their connections, see Hasted, <i>Hist. Kent</i>, +III, 77; IV, 374, <i>et seq.</i>; VII, 100-101; for the Sackvilles.—Hasted, +III, 73-82; for the Lennards,—Hasted, III, 108-116; the +<i>Peerages</i> of Collins, Burke, etc., and the articles in <i>D. N. B.</i> +See also, below, Appendix, Table E.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER VI</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">SOME EARLY PLAYS OF BEAUMONT AND OF FLETCHER</p> + + +<p class="cap">Beaumont and Fletcher may have been friends +by 1603 or 1604,—in all likelihood, as early as +1605 when, as we have seen, Drayton and other +"southern Shepherds" were by way of visiting the +Beaumonts at Grace-Dieu. In that year Jonson's +<i>Volpone</i> was acted for the first time; and one may +divine from the familiar and affectionate terms +in which our two young dramatists address the +author upon the publication of the play in 1607 +that they had been acquainted not only with Jonson +but with one another for the two years past. +We have no satisfactory proof of their coöperation +in play-writing before 1606 or 1607. According to +Dryden,—whose statements of fact are occasionally +to be taken with a grain of salt, but who, in this instance, +though writing almost sixty years after the +event, is basing his assertion upon first-hand authority,—"the +first play that brought 'them' in esteem was +their <i>Philaster</i>," but "before that they had written +two or three very unsuccessfully." <i>Philaster</i>, as I +shall presently show, was, in all probability, first acted +between December 7, 1609 and July 12, 1610. Before +1609, however, each had written dramas independently, +Beaumont <i>The Woman-Hater</i> and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> <i>The +Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>; Fletcher, <i>The Faithfull +Shepheardesse</i>, and maybe one or two other plays. +Our first evidence of their association in dramatic +activity is the presence of Fletcher's hand, apparently +as a reviser, in three scenes of <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, +which was licensed for publication May 20, 1607, as +"lately acted by the Children of Paul's." From contemporary +evidence we know, as did Dryden, that +two of these plays, <i>The Knight</i> and <i>Faithfull Shepheardesse</i> +were ungraciously received; and Richard +Brome, about fourteen years after Fletcher's death, +suggests that perhaps <i>Monsieur Thomas</i> shared "the +common fate."</p> + +<p><i>The Woman-Hater</i> was the earliest play of either +of our dramatists to find its way into print. +Drayton's lines, already referred to, about "sweet +Palmeo" imply that Beaumont was already known +as a poet, before April 1606. A passage in the +Prologue of <i>The Woman-Hater</i> seems, as Professor +Thorndike has shown, to refer to the narrow escape +of Jonson, Chapman, and Marston from having their +ears cropped for an offense given to the King by +their <i>Eastward Hoe</i>. If it does, "he that made this +play," undoubtedly Beaumont, made it after the publication +of <i>Eastward Hoe</i> in 1605. The title-page of +1607 says that the play is given "as it hath been +lately acted." The ridicule of intelligencers emulating +some worthy men in this land "who have discovered +things dangerously hanging over the State" +has reference to the system of spying which assumed +enormous proportions after the discovery of the Gunpowder +Plot in November 1605. An allusion to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> +King James's weakness for handsome young men, +"Why may not <i>I</i> be a favourite in the sudden?" may +very well refer, as Fleay has maintained, to the restoration +to favour of Robert Ker (or Carr) of Ferniehurst, +afterwards Earl Somerset,—a page whom +James had "brought with him from Scotland, and +brought up of a child,"<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> but had dismissed soon after +his accession. It was at a tilting match, March 24, +1607, that the youth "had the good fortune to break +his leg in the presence of the King," and "by his +personal activity, strong animal spirits," and beauty, +to attract his majesty anew, and on the spot. The +beauty, Beaumont emphasizes as a requisite for royal +favour. "Why may not <i>I</i> be a favourite on the +sudden?" says the bloated, hungry courtier, "I see +nothing against it." "Not so, sir," replies Valore; +"I know you have not the <i>face</i> to be a favourite on +the sudden." The fact that James did not make a +knight bachelor of Carr till December of that year, +would in no way invalidate a fling at the favour bestowed +upon him in March. Indeed Beaumont's slur +in <i>The Woman-Hater</i> upon "the legs ... very +strangely become the legs of a knight and a courtier" +might have applied to Carr as early as 1603, for on +July 25 of that year James had made him a Knight of +the Bath,—in the same batch, by the way, with a certain +Oliver Cromwell of Huntingdonshire.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> Without<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> +violating the plague regulations, as laid down by the +City, <i>The Woman-Hater</i> could have been acted during +the six months following November 20, 1606. A passage +in Act III, 2,<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> which I shall presently quote in full, +is, as has not previously been noticed, a manifest parody +of one of Antony's speeches in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i><a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> +which, according to all evidence, was not acted before +1607. It would appear, therefore, that Beaumont's +first play was completed after January 1, 1607, probably +after March 24, when Carr regained the royal +favour, and was presented for the first time during the +two months following the latter date.</p> + +<p><i>The Woman-Hater</i> affords interesting glimpses of +the author's observation, sometimes perhaps experience, +in town and country. "That I might be turned +loose," says one of his <i>dramatis personae</i>, "to try my +fortune amongst the whole fry in a college or an inn +of court!" And another, a gay young buck,—"I +must take some of the common courses of our nobility, +which is thus: If I can find no company that likes +me, pluck off my hat-band, throw an old cloak over +my face and, as if I would not be known, walk hastily +through the streets till I be discovered: 'There goes +Count Such-a-one,' says one; 'There goes Count Such-a-one,' +says another; 'Look how fast he goes,' says +a third; 'There's some great matters in hand, questionless,' +says a fourth;—when all my business is to +have them say so. This hath been used. Or, if I +can find any company [acting at the theatre], I'll after +dinner to the stage to see a play; where, when I first +enter, you shall have a murmur in the house; every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> +one that does not know, cries, 'What nobleman is +that?' All the gallants on the stage, rise, vail to +me, kiss their hand, offer me their places; then I pick +out some one whom I please to grace among the rest, +take his seat, use it, throw my cloak over my face, and +laugh at him; the poor gentleman imagines himself +most highly graced, thinks all the auditors esteem +him one of my bosom friends, and in right special +regard with me." And again, and this is much like +first-hand knowledge: "There is no poet acquainted +with more shakings and quakings, towards the latter +end of his new play (when he's in that case that he +stands peeping betwixt the curtains, so fearfully that +a bottle of ale cannot be opened but he thinks somebody +hisses), than I am at this instant." And again,—of +the political spies, who had persecuted more than +one of Beaumont's relatives and, according to tradition, +trumped up momentary trouble for our young +dramatists themselves, a few years later: "This +fellow is a kind of informer, one that lives in ale-houses +and taverns; and because he perceives some +worthy men in this land, with much labour and great +expense, to have discovered things dangerously hanging +over the state, he thinks to discover as much +out of the talk of drunkards in tap-houses. He +brings me information, picked out of broken words +in men's common talk, which with his malicious misapplication +he hopes will seem dangerous; he doth, +besides, bring me the names of all the young gentlemen +in the city that use ordinaries or taverns, talking +(to my thinking) only as the freedom of their +youth teach them without any further ends, for dangerous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> +and seditious spirits." Much more in this +kind, of city ways known to Beaumont; and, also, +something of country ways, the table of the Leicestershire +squire—the Beaumonts of Coleorton and +the Villierses of Brooksby,—and the hunting-breakfasts +with which Grace-Dieu was familiar. The hungry +courtier of the play vows to "keep a sumptuous +house; a board groaning under the heavy burden of +the beast that cheweth the cud, and the fowl that cutteth +the air. It shall not, like the table of a country-justice, +be sprinkled over with all manner of cheap +salads, sliced beef, giblets and pettitoes, to fill up room; +nor shall there stand any great, cumbersome, uncut-up +pies at the nether end, filled with moss and stones, +partly to make a show with, partly to keep the lower +mess [below the salt] from eating; nor shall my meal +come in sneaking like the city-service, one dish a quarter +of an hour after another, and gone as if they had +appointed to meet there and mistook the hour; nor +should it, like the new court-service, come in in haste, +as if it fain would be gone again [whipped off by the +waiters], all courses at once, like a hunting breakfast: +but I would have my several courses and my +dishes well filed [ordered]; my first course +shall be brought in after the ancient manner +by a score of old blear-eyed serving-men in +long blue coats."—And not a little of life at Court, +and of the favourites with whom King James +surrounded himself:—"They say one shall see +fine sights at the Court? I'll tell you what you +shall see. You shall see many faces of man's making, +for you shall find very few as God left them; and you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> +shall see many legs too; amongst the rest you shall +behold one pair, the feet of which were in past times +sockless, but are now, through the change of time +(that alters all things), very strangely become the legs +of a knight and a courtier; another pair you shall see, +that were heir-apparent legs to a glover; these legs +hope shortly to be honourable; when they pass by they +will bow, and the mouth to these legs will seem to +offer you some courtship; it will swear, but it will lie; +hear it not."</p> + +<p>Keen observation this, and a dramatist's acquaintance +with many kinds of life; the promise of a satiric +mastery, and very vivid prose for a lad of twenty-three. +The play is not, as a dramatic composition, of any +peculiar distinction. Beaumont is still in his pupilage +to the classics, and to Ben Jonson's comedy of humours. +But the humours, though unoriginal and boyishly +forced, are clearly defined; and the instinct for fun +is irrepressible. The Woman-Hater, obsessed by the +delusion that all women are in pursuit, is admirably +victimized by a witty and versatile heroine who has, +with maliciously genial pretense, assumed the rôle of +man-hunter. And to the main plot is loosely, but not +altogether ineffectually, attached a highly diverting +story which Beaumont has taken from the Latin treatise +of Paulus Jovius on Roman fishes, or from some +intermediate source. Like the Tamisius of the original, +his Lazarillo,—whose prayer to the Goddess of +Plenty is ever, "fill me this day with some rare delicates,"—scours +the city in fruitless quest of an umbrana's +head. Finally, he is taken by intelligencers, +spies in the service of the state, who construe his passion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> +for the head of a fish as treason aimed at the head +of the Duke. The comedy abounds in parody of +verses well known at the time, of lines from <i>Hamlet</i> +and <i>All's Well that End Well</i>, <i>Othello</i>[50] and <i>Eastward +Hoe</i><a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> and bombastic catches from other plays. To me +the most ludicrous bit of burlesque is of the moment +of last suspense in <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i> (IV, +14 and 15) where Antony, thinking to die "after the +high Roman fashion" which Cleopatra forthwith emulates, +says "I come my queen,"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i14">Stay for me!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where souls do couch on flowers, we'll hand in hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all the haunt [of Elysium] be ours.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So Lazarillo, in awful apprehension lest his love, his +fish-head, be eaten before he arrive,—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>If it be eaten, here he stands that is the most dejected, +most unfortunate, miserable, accursed, forsaken slave +this province yields! I will not sure outlive it; no, I +will die bravely and like a Roman;</p></div> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And after death, amidst the Elysian shades,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I'll meet my love again.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Shakespeare's play was not entered for publication till +May 20, 1608, but this passage shows that Beaumont +had seen it at the Globe before May 20, 1607.</p> + +<p>I have no hesitation in assigning to the same year, +1607, although most critics have dated it three or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> +four years later, Beaumont's admirable burlesque of +contemporary bourgeois drama and chivalric romance, +<i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>. Evidence both +external and internal, which I shall later state, points +to its presentation by the Children of the Queen's +Revels at Blackfriars while they were under the business +management of Henry Evans and Robert Keysar, +and before the temporary suppression of the company +in March 1608. The question of date has been complicated +by the supposed indebtedness of the burlesque to +<i>Don Quixote</i>; but I shall attempt to show, when I consider +the play at length, that it has no verbal relation +either to the original (1604) or the translation (1612) +of Cervantes' story. <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i> +is in some respects of the same boyish tone and outlook +upon the humours of life as <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, +but it is incomparably more novel in conception, more +varied in composition, and more effervescent in satire. +It displays the Beaumont of twenty-two or -three +as already an effective dramatist of contemporary +manners and humours, a master of parody, side-long +mirth, and ironic wit, before he joined forces with +Fletcher and developed, in the treatment of more +serious and romantic themes, the power of poetic characterization +and the pathos that bespeak experience +and reflection,—and, in the treatment of the comedy +of life, the realism that proceeds from broad and sympathetic +observation. The play, which as the publisher +of the first quarto, in 1613, tell us was "begot +and borne in eight daies," was not a success; evidently +because the public did not like the sport that it +made of dramas and dramatists then popular; especially,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> +did not stomach the ridicule of the bombast-loving +and romanticizing London citizen himself,—was +not yet educated up to the humour; perhaps, because +"hee ... this unfortunate child ... was so unlike +his brethren." At any rate, according to Walter +Burre, the publisher, in 1613, "the wide world for +want of judgement, or not understanding the privy +marke of Ironie about it (which showed it was no ofspring +of any vulgar braine) utterly rejected it." And +Burre goes on to say in his Dedication of the quarto +to Maister Robert Keysar:—"for want of acceptance +it was even ready to give up the Ghost, and was in +danger to have bene smothered in perpetuall oblivion, +if you (out of your direct antipathy to ingratitude) +had not bene moved both to relieve and cherish it: +wherein I must needs commend both your judgement, +understanding, and singular love to good wits."</p> + +<p>The rest of this Dedication is of great interest as +bearing upon the date of the composition of the play; +but it has been entirely misconstrued or else it gives +us false information. That matter I shall discuss in +connection with the sources and composition of the +play.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> Suffice it to say here that <i>The Knight</i> followed +<i>The Travails of Three English Brothers</i>, acted. +June 29, 1607, and that the Robert Keysar who rescued +the manuscript of <i>The Knight</i> from oblivion had, +only in 1606 or 1607, acquired a financial interest in +the Queen's Revels' Children, and was backing them +during the last year of their occupancy of Blackfriars +when they presented the play, and where only it was +presented.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p> +<p>In the same year, 1607, both young men are writing +commendatory verses for the first quarto of Ben Jonson's +<i>Volpone</i>, which had been acted in 1605. Beaumont, +with the confidence of intimacy, addresses Jonson +as "Dear Friend," praises his "even work," +deplores its failure with the many who "nothing +can digest, but what's obscene, or barks," and implies +that he forbears to make them understand its merits +purely in deference to Jonson's wiser judgment,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i9">I would have shewn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To all the world the art which thou alone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hast taught our tongue, the rules of time, of place<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And other rites, deliver'd with the grace<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of comic style, which only is far more<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than any English stage hath known before.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But since our subtle gallants think it good<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To like of nought that may be understood ...<br /></span> +<span class="i7">... let us desire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They may continue, simply to admire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fine clothes and strange words,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and offensive personalities.</p> + +<p>Fletcher in a more epigrammatic appeal to "The +true master in his art, B. Jonson," prays him to forgive +friends and foes alike, and then, those "who +are nor worthy to be friends or foes."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Concerning Fletcher's beginnings in composition the +earliest date is suggested by a line of D'Avenant's, +written many years after Fletcher's death (1625), +"full twenty years he wore the bays."<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> It has been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> +conjectured by some that the elder of our dramatists +was in the field as early as 1604, with his comedy of +<i>The Woman's Prize</i> or <i>The Tamer Tamed</i>,—a well +contrived and witty continuation of Shakespeare's +<i>Taming of the Shrew</i>,—in which Maria, a cousin of +Shakespeare's Katherine, now deceased, marries the +bereaved Petruchio and effectively turns the tables +upon him. If acted before 1607, <i>The Woman's +Prize</i> was a Paul's Boys' or Queen's Revels' play. But +while the upper limit of the play is fixed by the mention +of the siege of Ostend, 1604, other references and the +literary style point to 1610, even to 1614, as the date +of composition or revision.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p> + +<p>It is likely that Fletcher was writing plays before +1608, but what we do not know. In that year was +acted the pastoral drama of <i>The Faithfull Shepheardesse</i>, +a composition entirely his own. This delicate +confection of sensual desire, ideal love, translunar +chastity, and subacid cynicism regarding "all ideas of +chastity whatever,"<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> was an experiment; and a failure +upon the stage. It has, as I shall later emphasize, +lyric and descriptive charm of surpassing merit, but +it lacks, as does most of Fletcher's work, moral depth +and emotional reality; and following, as it did, a literary +convention in design, it could not avail itself of +the skill in dramatic device, and the racy flavour which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> +a little later characterized his <i>Monsieur Thomas</i>. +The date of its first performance is determined by the +combined authority of the Stationers' Registers (from +which we learn that the publishers of the first quarto, +undated, but undoubtedly of 1609,<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> were in unassisted +partnership only from December 22, 1608 to July 20, +1609), of a statement of Jonson to Drummond of +Hawthornden that the play was written "ten years" +before 1618, and of commendatory verses to the first +quarto of 1609, by the young actor-dramatist, Nathaniel +Field. If we may guide our calculations by +the plague regulations of the time, it must have been +acted before July 28, 1608.</p> + +<p>On the appearance of the first quarto, in 1609, +Jonson sympathizing with "the worthy author," on +the ill reception of the pastoral when first performed, +says:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I, that am glad thy innocence was their guilt,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="blockquot">for the rabble found not there the "vices, which they +look'd for," I—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Do crown thy murder'd poem; which shall rise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A glorified work to time, when fire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or moths shall eat what all these fools admire.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And Francis Beaumont writing to "my friend, Master +John Fletcher" speaks of his "undoubted wit" +and "art," and rejoices that, if they should condemn +the play now that it is printed,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Your censurers must have the quality<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of reading, which I am afraid is more<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than half your shrewdest judges had before.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p> +<p>In the first quarto two commendatory poems are +printed, the first by N. F., the second by the Homeric +scholar and well known dramatist, George Chapman. +The latter writes "to his loving friend, Master John +Fletcher," in terms of generous encouragement and +glowing charm. Your pastoral, says he, is "a poem +and a play, too,"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i14">But because<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your poem only hath by us applause,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Renews the golden world, and holds through all<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The holy laws of homely pastoral,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where flowers and founts, and nymphs and semi-gods,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all the Graces find their old abodes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where forests flourish but in endless verse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And meadows nothing fit for purchasers;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This iron age, that eats itself, will never<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bite at your golden world; that other's ever<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lov'd as itself. Then like your book, do you<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Live in old peace, and that for praise allow.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>If Jonson, Chapman, and Beaumont suspected the undercurrent +of satire in this Pastoral, and they surely +were not obtuse, they concealed the suspicion admirably. +As for Fletcher he continued to "live in +old peace." "When his faire Shepheardesse on the +guilty stage, Was martir'd between Ignorance and +Rage.... Hee only as if unconcernèd smil'd." An +attitude toward the public that characterized him all +through life.</p> + +<p>The admiration of younger men is shown in the +respectful commendation of N. F. This is Nathaniel +Field. He was acting with the Blackfriars' Boys +since the days when Jonson presented <i>Cynthia's Revels</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> +and, as one of the Queen's Revels' Children, he +had probably taken part in <i>The Faithfull Shepheardesse</i> +when the undiscerning public hissed it. Field +came of good family, had been one of Mulcaster's pupils +at the Merchant Taylors' School, and was beloved +by Chapman and Jonson. He was then but twenty-two,—about +three years younger than Fletcher's +friend, Beaumont,—but for nine years gone he had +been recognized as a genius among boy-actors. That +the verses of so young a man should be accepted, and +coupled with those of the thunder-girt Chapman, was +to him a great and unexpected honour; and the youth +expresses prettily his pride in being published by his +"lov'd friend" in such distinguished literary company,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Can my approovement, sir, be worth your thankes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose unknowne name, and Muse in swathing clowtes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is not yet growne to strength, among these rankes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To have a roome?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now he is planning to write dramas himself; and it +is pleasant to note with what modesty he touches upon +the project:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But I must justifie what privately<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I censur'd to you, my ambition is<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(Even by my hopes and love to Poesie)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To live to perfect such a worke as this,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Clad in such elegant proprietie<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of words, including a morallitie,<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">So sweete and profitable.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He is alluding to his not yet finished comedy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> <i>A</i> +<i>Woman is a Weather-cocke</i>. The youth must have +been close to Beaumont as well as to Fletcher; he soon +afterwards, 1609-10, played the leading part in their +<i>Coxcombe</i>,—which, I think, was the earliest work +planned and written by them in collaboration; and +when, a little later, his own first comedy was acted +by the Queen's Revels' Children no auditor of literary +ear could have failed to detect, amid the manifest +echoes of Chapman, Jonson, and Shakespeare, the +flattering resemblance in diction, rhythm, and poetic +fancy to the most characteristic features of Beaumont's +style. This is very interesting, because in another +dramatic composition <i>Foure Playes in One</i>, written +in part by Fletcher, certain portions have so close +a likeness to Beaumont's work, that until lately they +have been mistakenly attributed to that poet and assigned +to this early period of his career. The portions +of <i>The Foure Playes</i> not written by Fletcher were +written by no other than Nat. Field. And since in +Field's <i>Address to the Reader</i> of the <i>Weather-cocke</i>, +licensed for publication November 23, 1611, he still +speaks as if the <i>Weather-cocke</i> were his only venture +in play-writing, we may conclude that <i>The Foure +Playes in One</i> was not put together before the end of +1611, or the beginning of 1612. That series need not, +therefore, be considered in the present place; all the +more so, since Beaumont had in all probability nothing +directly to do with its composition.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></p> + +<p>Of the other dramas written by Fletcher alone and +assigned by critics to his earlier period, that is to +say before 1610, or even 1611, the only one beside<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> +<i>The Faithfull Shepheardesse</i> that may with any degree +of safety be admitted to consideration is a comedy +of romance, manners, and humours, <i>Monsieur +Thomas</i>. The romance is a delightful story of self-abnegating +love. The father, Valentine, and the son +Francisco, supposed to have been drowned long ago, +and now known (if the texts had only printed the +play as Fletcher wrote it) as Callidon, a guest of Valentine, +love the same girl, the father's ward. This +part of the play is executed with captivating grace. +It shows that Fletcher had, from the first, an instinct +for the dramatic handling of a complicated story, an +eye for delicate and surprising situations, an appreciation +of chivalric honour and genuine passion, and a +fancy fertile and playful. In the subplot the manners +are such as would appeal to a Fletcher not yet +thirty years of age; and the humours are those of a +student of the earlier plays of Ben Jonson, and of +Marston—who ceased writing in 1607. It has indeed +been asserted, but without much credibility, that "the +notion of the panerotic Hylas," who must always "be +courting wenches through key-holes," was taken from +a character in Marston's <i>Parasitaster</i>, of 1606.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> The +name of this Captain, Hylas, was in the mouth of +Fletcher in those early days; he uses it again in his part +of the <i>Philaster</i>, written in 1609 or 1610, and elsewhere. +The snatches of song and the names of ballads +are those of contemporary popularity between 1606 +and 1609; and in two instances they are those of +which Beaumont makes use in his <i>Knight of the Burning +Pestle</i> of 1607. The play was acted, too, apparently<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> +by the same company, the Queen's Revels' Children, +and in the same house as was Beaumont's. It +could not have been played by them at "the Private +House in Black Fryers" later than March 1608, unless +they squeezed it into that last month of 1609 which +serves as a telescope basket for so many of the plays +which critics cannot satisfactorily date.</p> + +<p>For my present purpose, which is to show how +Fletcher, not assisted by Beaumont, wrote during his +youth, it makes little difference whether <i>Monsieur +Thomas</i> was written as early as 1608 or only before +1611. The fact is, however, that a line in the +last scene, "Take her, Francisco, now no more +young Callidon," shows clearly that Callidon, a name +not occurring elsewhere in the play, and necessary +to the dramatic complication, had been used by +Fletcher in his first version; and when we put the +names Callidon and Cellidée together (she is Francisco's +belovèd) we are pointed at once to the source +of the romantic plot—the <i>Histoire de Celidée, +Thamyre, et Calidon</i> at the beginning of the Second +Part of the <i>Astrée</i> of the Marquis D'Urfé.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> The +First Part of this voluminous pastoral romance had +been published, probably in 1609, in an edition which +is lost; but a second edition, dedicated to Henri IV, +who died May 14, 1610, appeared that year. Some +of Fletcher's inspiration, as for the name and general +characteristic of Hylas, was drawn from the First +Part. The Second Part was not printed till later in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> +1610. It would, therefore, appear that Fletcher +could not have written <i>Monsieur Thomas</i> before the +latter date. On the other hand, as Dr. Upham<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> has +indicated, the <i>Astrée</i> had been read as early as February +12, 1607, by Ben Jonson's friend, William +Drummond, who, on that day, writes about it critically +to Sir George Keith. If the First Part had been circulated +in manuscript, and read by an Englishman, in +1607, it is not at all unlikely that the Second Part, +too, of this most leisurely published romance, which +did not get itself all into covers till 1647, had been +read in manuscript by many men, French and English, +long before its appearance in print, 1610;—may be +by Fletcher himself, as early as 1608. Or he may +have heard the story, as early as that, from some one +who had read it. The fact that he alters some of +the names, follows the plot but loosely, characterizes +the personages not at all as if he had the original +before him, and uses none of their diction, would +favour the supposition that he is writing from hearsay, +or from some second hand and condensed version of +the story.</p> + +<p>No matter what the exact date of composition, +<i>Monsieur Thomas</i> is the one play beside <i>The Faithfull +Shepheardesse</i> from which we may draw conclusions +concerning the native tendencies of the young Fletcher. +The subplot of Thomas, concocted with clever ease, +and furnished with varied devices appropriate to +comic effect—disguisings, mouse-traps, dupers duped, +street-frolics and mock sentimental serenades, scaling-ladders, +convents, and a blackamoor girl for a decoy-duck,—is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> +conceived in a rollicking spirit and executed +in sprightly conversational style. Sir Adolphus Ward +says that "as a picture of manners it is excelled by few +other Elizabethan comedies." I am sorry that I cannot +agree; I call it low, or farcical comedy; and though +the 'manners' be briskly and realistically imagined, +I question their contemporary actuality,—even their +dramatic probability. Amusing scapegraces like the +hero of the title-part have existed in all periods of +history; and fathers, who will not have their sons +mollycoddles; and squires of dames, like the susceptible +Hylas. But manners, to be dramatically probable, +must reflect the contacts of possible characters in a +definite period. And no one can maintain that the +contact of these persons with the women of the play +is characterized by possibility. Or that these manners +could, even in the beginning of James I's reign, have +characterized a perceptible percentage of actual Londoners. +Thomas, whose humour it is to assume sanctimony +for the purpose of vexing his father, and blasphemy +for the purpose of teasing his sweetheart—racking +that "maiden's tender ears with damns and +devils,"—is no more grotesque than many a contemporary +embodiment of 'humour.' But what of his +contacts with the "charming" Mary who "daily hopes +his fair conversion" and has "a credit," and "loves +where her modesty may live untainted"; and, then, +that she may "laugh an hour" admits him to her bed-chamber, +having substituted for herself a negro wench? +And what of the contacts with his equally "modest" +sister, Dorothy, who not only talks smut with him and +with the "charming" Mary, but deems his fornication<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> +"fine sport" and would act it if she were a man? I +fear that much reading of decadent drama sometimes +impairs the critical perception. In making allowance +for what masquerades as historical probability one +frequently accepts human improbabilities, and condones +what should be condemned—even from the +dramatic point of view. I have found it so in my +own case. With all its picaresque quality, its jovial +'humours' and its racy fun, this play is sheer stage-rubbish: +it has no basis in the general life of the +class it purports to represent, no basis in actual manners, +nor in likelihood or poetry. Its basis is in the +uncritical and, to say the least, irresponsible taste of +a theatre-going Rump which enjoyed the spurious +localization, and attribution to others, of the imaginings +of its own heart.</p> + +<p>The characters are well grouped; and the spirit of +merriment prevails. The reversals of motive and fortune, +the recognitions and the dénouement are as excellently +and puerilely absurd as could be desired of +such an amalgam of romance and farcical intrigue. +Richard Brome, writing in praise of the author for +the quarto of 1639, implies that the play was not well +received at its "first presenting,"—"when Ignorance +was judge, and but a few What was legitimate, what +bastard knew." That first presenting was between +1608 and 1612; and the few might have cared more for +Jonson's <i>Every Man in his Humour</i> or <i>Volpone</i>, or +something by Shakespeare, or soon afterwards for +Beaumont and Fletcher's <i>Philaster</i> or <i>A King and No +King</i>. But, as Brome assures us, "the world's grown +wiser now." That is to say, it had learned by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> +1639 "what was legitimate," and could believe that +in Fletcher's <i>Monsieur Thomas</i> and the like, "the +Muses jointly did inspire His raptures only with +their sacred fire." But even as transmogrified by +D'Urfey and others the play did not survive its century.</p> + +<p>No better example could be afforded of the kind of +comedy that Fletcher was capable of producing in his +earlier period. It shows us with what ability he could +dramatize a romantic tale; with what license as a +realist imagine and portray an unmoral, when not immoral, +semblance of contemporary life. That was +either before Beaumont had joined forces with him; +or when Beaumont was not pruning his fancy; was +not hanging "plummets" on his wit "to suppress Its +too luxuriant-growing mightiness," nor persuading him +that mirth might subsist "untainted with obscenity," +and "strength and sweetness" and "high choice of +brain" be "couched in every line." I am not claiming +too much for Beaumont. In his later work as in +his earlier there is the frank animalism, at times, of +Elizabethan blood and humour; but one may search +in vain his parts of the joint-plays as well as his youthful +<i>Knight of the Burning Pestle</i> and those portions +of <i>The Woman-Hater</i> which Fletcher did not touch, +for the Jacobean salaciousness of Fletcher's <i>Monsieur +Thomas</i> and the carnal cynicism which lurks beneath +the pastoral garb of innocence even in <i>The Faithfull +Shepheardesse</i>;—characteristics that find utterance +again, untrammeled, in the dramas written after the +younger poet was dead,—and Fletcher could no +longer, as in those earlier days,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> +<span class="i7">wisely submit each birth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To knowing Beaumont e're it did come forth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Working againe untill <i>he</i> said 'twas fit;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And make him the sobriety of his wit.<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>During the years of Beaumont's apprenticeship to +Poetry cloaked as Law things had changed but little in +his world of the Inner Temple. In its parliament, Sir +Edward Coke, judicial, intrepid, and devout is still +most potent. The chamber, lodging, and rooms which +his father, Mr. Justice Beaumont, and his uncle Henry +had built and occupied near to Ram Alley in the north +end of Fuller's Rents are still held by Richard Daveys, +who as Treasurer moved into them in 1601. Dr. +Richard Masters is still Master of the Temple; and in +the church, where Francis was obliged to receive the +Sacrament at stated times, he, sitting perhaps by his +uncle Henry's tomb, would hear the assistant ministers, +Richard Evans and William Crashaw. The +sacred place was still the refuge of outlaws from +Whitefriars who claimed the privilege of sanctuary. +If Beaumont wished to steal, after hours, into the +Alsatia beyond Fuller's Rents, he must skirt or propitiate +in 1607 as in 1602 the same Cerberus at the +gates,—William Knight, the glover. Outside awaited +him the hospitality of the Mitre Inn, or of Barrow at +the "Cat and Fiddle," or of the slovenly Anthony +Gibbes in his cook's shop of Ram Alley.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> The King's letter to Salisbury (undated, but of 1608). +Gardiner, <i>Hist. Engl.</i> 1603-1642, II, 43-45.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> This much more distinguished favour has been overlooked +by Thorndike and other critics. But it is possible that Shaw, +<i>Knights of England</i>, I, 154, may be confounding him with another +Carr, a favourite of Queen Anne's.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> Dyce, <i>B. and F.</i>, Vol. I, p. 53.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Act IV, 14, 50-54.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <i>Cf.</i>, Lazarillo's <i>Farewells</i>, Act III, 3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> See Chap. XXIV, below.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Prologue, for a revival, in 1649, of <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, which +D'Avenant mistakenly attributes to Fletcher.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Reasons for dating an earlier version of the play about 1604 +are given by Oliphant, <i>Engl. Studien</i>, XV, 338-339, and Thorndike, +<i>Infl. of B. and F.</i>, 70-71. In its present form, however, the +play dates later than Jonson's <i>Epicoene</i>, 1610. See Gayley, <i>Rep. +Eng. Com.</i>, III, <i>Introd.</i>, § 15.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> I heartily concur with W. W. Greg's interpretation, <i>Pastoral +Poetry and Pastoral Drama</i>, p. 274.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> See Fleay, <i>Chron. Eng. Dr.</i>, I, 312, and Thorndike, <i>Infl. of +B. and F.</i>, 64.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> Folio, 1647, 'mortallitie'; a misprint.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> See Chap. XXIII, below.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> See Guskar, <i>Anglia</i>, XXVIII, XXIX.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Stiefel, <i>Zeitschr. f. Vergl. Litt.</i>, XII (1898), 248; <i>Engl. Stud.</i>, +XXXVI; Hatcher, <i>Anglia</i>, Feb. 1907; and Macaulay, <i>C. H. L.</i>, +VI, 156.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> <i>French Influence in English Literature</i>, pp. 300, 308.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> Adapted from Cartwright in the <i>Commendatory Poems</i>, +Folio of <i>B. and F.</i>, 1647.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> Details in Inderwick, <i>op. cit.</i>, Vols. I and II, passim.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER VII</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">THE "BANKE-SIDE" AND THE PERIOD OF THE PARTNERSHIP</p> + + +<p class="cap">As we shall presently see, Beaumont during his +career in London retained his connection with +the Inner Temple, which would be his club; and it +may be presumed that up to 1606 or 1607, his residence +alternated between the Temple and his brother's home +of Grace-Dieu. About 1609, however, he was surely +collaborating with his friend, Fletcher, in the composition +of plays. And we may conjecture that, in +that or the previous year, our Castor and Pollux were +established in those historic lodgings in Southwark +where, as Aubrey, writing more than half a century +later, tells us, they lived in closest intimacy. That +gossipy chronicler records the obvious in his "there +was a wonderfull consimility of phansey between him +[Beaumont] and Mr. Jo. Fletcher, which caused that +dearnesse of friendship between them";<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> but when +he proceeds "They lived together on the Banke-side, +not far from the Play-house, both batchelors; lay +together (from Sir James Hales, etc.); had one wench +in the house between them, which they did so admire, +the same cloaths and cloake, etc., between them," we +feel that so far as inferences are concerned the account<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> +is to be taken with at least a morsel of reserve. +Aubrey was not born till after both Beaumont and +Fletcher were dead; and, as Dyce pertinently remarks, +"perhaps Aubrey's informant (Sir James Hales) +knowing his ready credulity, purposely overcharged +the picture of our poets' domestic establishment." To +inquire too closely into gossip were folly; but it is +only fair to recall that sixty years after Fletcher's +death, popular tradition was content with conferring +the "wench," exclusively upon him. Oldwit, in +Shadwell's play of <i>Bury-Fair</i> (1689) says: "I myself, +simple as I stand here, was a wit in the last age. +I was created Ben Jonson's son, in the Apollo. I knew +Fletcher, my friend Fletcher, and his maid Joan; well, +I shall never forget him: I have supped with him at +his house on the Banke-side; he loved a fat loin of +pork of all things in the world; and Joan his maid +had her beer-glass of sack; and we all kissed her, i' +faith, and were as merry as passed."<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> It is hardly +necessary, in any case, to surmise with those who sniff +up improprieties that the admirable services of the +original "wench," whether Joan or another, far exceeded +the roasting of pork and the burning of sack +for her two "batchelors."</p> + +<p>To the years 1609 and 1610 may be assigned with +some show of confidence Beaumont and Fletcher's +first significant romantic dramas <i>The Coxcombe</i> and +<i>Philaster</i>. The former was acted by the Children +of her Majesty's Revels, I think before July 12, 1610. +If at Blackfriars, before January 4, 1610; if at +Whitefriars, after January 4. There are grounds for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> +believing that it was the play upon which Fletcher +and Beaumont were engaged in the country when +Beaumont wrote a letter, justly famous, probably toward +the end of 1609, to Ben Jonson; and, since the +play was not well received, that it was one of the unsuccessful +comedies which as Dryden says preceded +<i>Philaster</i>. <i>Philaster</i> was acted at the Globe and +Blackfriars by the King's Men, for the first time, it +would appear, between December 7, 1609 and July +12, 1610. My reasons in detail for thus dating both +of these dramas are given later. But a word about +the <i>Letter to Ben Jonson</i> may be said here.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"><a name="image96" id="image96"></a> +<img src="images/image05.jpg" width="500" height="373" alt="THE TEMPLE +From Ralph Agas's Map of London, about 1561" title="THE TEMPLE +From Ralph Agas's Map of London, about 1561" /> +<span class="caption">THE TEMPLE<br /> +<span class="smtext">From Ralph Agas's Map of London, about 1561</span></span> +</div> + +<p>It was first printed at the end of a play called +<i>The Nice Valour</i> in the folio of 1647. Owing to a +careless acceptance of the rubric prefixed to it by the +publishers of that folio, historians have ordinarily +dated its composition at too early a period. The +poem itself mentions "Sutcliffe's wit," referring to +three controversial tracts of the Dean of Exeter, +printed in 1606; but Beaumont might jibe at the Dean's +expense for years after 1606. The rubic inscribed +a generation after the death of both our dramatists, +and therefore of but secondary importance, tells us +that the <i>Letter</i> was "written, before he [Beaumont] +and Master Fletcher came to London, with two of the +precedent comedies, then not finish'd, which deferr'd +their merry meetings at the Mermaid." We know +that the young men had been in London for years +before 1606. If the rubric has any meaning whatever, +it is merely that the customary convivialities at +the Mermaid, as described in the <i>Letter</i>, had been +interrupted by a visit to the country during which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> +they were finishing two of the comedies which precede +<i>The Nice Valour</i> in the folio; and it indicates a date +not earlier than 1608, for the writing of the letter, +and probably not later than July 1610. For only +three of the fifteen plays which appear in the folio +before <i>The Nice Valour</i> could have been completed +during the career of Beaumont as a dramatist, and +none of the three antedates 1608. In two of these +Beaumont had no hand: <i>The Captaine</i>, which may +have been composed as late as 1611, and <i>Beggars' +Bush</i>,<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> which shows the collaboration of Massinger, +but Fletcher's part of which may have been written +in 1608. The only one of the "precedent comedies" +in which we may be sure that Beaumont collaborated +is <i>The Coxcombe</i>. If, as I believe, it was acted first +between December 1609 and July 1610<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> it may well +have been written in the country during the latter +half of 1609, while the plague rate was exceptionally +high in London. Both <i>Beggars' Bush</i> and <i>The Coxcombe</i> +abound in rural scenes; but the latter especially, +in scenes that might have been suggested by Grace-Dieu +and its neighborhood.</p> + +<p>The rubric prefixed to the <i>Letter</i> by the publishers +is of negligible authority. The 'me' and 'us' of +the <i>Letter</i> itself do not necessarily designate Fletcher +as the companion of Beaumont's rustication: they stand +at one time for country-folk; at another for the Mermaid +circle, Jonson, Chapman, Fletcher, probably +Shakespeare, Drayton, Cotton, Donne, Hugh Holland,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> +Tom Coryate, Richard Martin, Selden (of Beaumont's +Inner Temple), and other famous wits and poets; +at another for Jonson and Beaumont alone. The date +of the poem must be determined from internal evidence. +It is written with the careless ease of long-standing +intimacy. It is of a genial, jocose, and fairly +mature, epistolary style. It betrays the literary assurance +of one whose reputation is already established. +Beaumont is in temporary banishment from London, +for lack of funds—therefore, considerably later than +1606, when he was presumably well off; for in that +year he had just come into a quarter of his brother, +Sir Henry's, private estate. He longs now for the +stimulus of the merry meetings in Bread-street, as one +whose wit has been sharpened by them for a long +time past:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Methinks the little wit I had is lost<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since I saw you; for Wit is like a Rest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Held up at Tennis, which men do the best<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the best gamesters; ...<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>up here in Leicestershire "The Countrey Gentlemen +begin to allow My wit for dry bobs." "In this warm +shine" of our hay-making season, soberly deferring +to country knights, listening to hoary family-jests, +drinking water mixed with claret-lees, "I lye and +dream of your full Mermaid Wine":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">What things have we seen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So nimble, and so full of subtill flame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As if that every one from whence they came<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And had resolv'd to live a foole, the rest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of his dull life. Then, when there hath been thrown<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wit able enough to justifie the Town<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For three daies past,—wit that might warrant be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the whole City to talk foolishly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till that were cancell'd,—and, when that was gone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We left an Aire behind us, which alone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was able to make the two next Companies<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Right witty; though but downright fooles, more wise.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When he remembers all this, he "needs must cry," +but one thought of Ben Jonson cheers him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Only strong Destiny, which all controuls,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I hope hath left a better fate in store<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For me thy friend, than to live ever poore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Banisht unto this home. Fate once againe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bring me to thee, who canst make smooth and plaine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The way of Knowledge for me, and then I,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who have no good but in thy company<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Protest it will my greatest comfort be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To acknowledge all I have to flow from thee.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ben, when these Scaenes are perfect, we'll taste wine;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I'll drink thy Muses health, thou shalt quaff mine.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The <i>Letter</i> was written after Beaumont's Muse had +produced something worthy of a toast from Jonson,—the +<i>Woman-Hater</i> and the <i>Knight</i>, for instance (both +marked by wit and by the discipline of Jonson); but +not later than the end of 1612, for during most of +1613 Jonson was traveling in France as governor to +Sir Walter Raleigh's "knavishly inclined" son; and +after February of that year Beaumont wrote so far +as I venture to conclude but one drama,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> <i>The Scornful +Ladie</i>; and that does not precede this <i>Letter</i> in the +folio of 1647; is not printed in that folio at all. Nor +was this <i>Letter</i> of a disciple written later than the +great Beaumont-Fletcher plays of 1610-1611, for then +Jonson was praising Beaumont for "writing better" +than he himself. If there is any truth at all in the +rubric to the <i>Letter</i>, the "scenes" of which Beaumont +speaks as not yet "perfect" were of <i>The Coxcombe</i>; +and evidence which I shall, in the proper place, +adduce convinces me that that was first acted before +March 25, 1610, perhaps before January 4. The +play would, then, have been written about the end of +1609.</p> + +<p>I do not wonder that, as the Prologue in the first +folio tells us, it was "condemned by the ignorant +multitude," not only because of its length, a fault removed +in the editions which we possess, but because +the larger part of the play is written by Fletcher, and +in his most inartistic, and irrational, licentious vein. +Beaumont, though admitted to the partnership, had +not yet succeeded in hanging "plummets" on his +friend's luxuriance. He contented himself with contributing +to a theme of Boccaccian cuckoldry the subplot +of how Ricardo, drunk, loses his betrothed, and +finds her again and is forgiven,—a little story that +contains all the poignancy of sorrow and poppy of +romance and poetry of innocence that make the comedy +readable and tolerable.</p> + +<p>As to the first production of the <i>Philaster</i> a word +must be said here, because the event marks the earliest +association, concerning which we have any assurance, +of the young dramatists with Shakespeare. Until<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> +about 1609 they appear to have written for the Paul's +Boys, who acted, probably in their singing-school, until +1607; and for the Queen's Revels' Children who, +under various managements, had been occupying +Richard Burbadge's theatre of Blackfriars since 1597. +Their association with the Paul's Boys would of itself +have brought them into touch with other Paul's +dramatists, Dekker, Webster, Middleton, and Chapman. +In their association with the Queen's Revels' +Children they had been thrown closely together with +Chapman again, with Jonson, and with John Day, all +of whom wrote for Blackfriars; and with Marston, +who not only wrote plays for the Children but had a +financial interest in the company. Some of these +dramatists,—Jonson, for instance, and Webster,—had +occasionally written for Shakespeare's company +during these years; but we have no proof that Beaumont +and Fletcher had any connection with the King's +Players of Shakespeare's company, as long as the +Children's companies continued in their usual course +at St. Paul's singing-school and Blackfriars. After +1606, however, the Paul's Boys were on the wane. +Perhaps they are to be indentified with the new Children +of the King's Revels, and an occupancy of Whitefriars, +in 1607; but that clue soon disappears. And as +to the Queen's Revels' Children, we find that in April +1608 they were suppressed for ridiculing royalty +upon the stage.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a> Their manager, Henry Evans, to +whom with three others Richard Burbadge had let +Blackfriars in 1600, now sought to be set free from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> +the contract; and in August 1608, the Burbadges +(Richard and Cuthbert), Shakespeare, Heming, Condell, +and Slye of the King's Company, took over the +lease which still had many years to run.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> Shakespeare's +company had been acting at the Burbadges' +theatre of the Globe since 1599,—as the Lord Chamberlain's +till 1603; after that, as his Majesty's Servants. +Now Shakespeare's company took charge of +Blackfriars, as well; and, under their management, +for about a month between December 7, 1609 and +January 4, 1610 the Queen's Revels' Children, being +reinstated in royal favour, resumed their acting at +Blackfriars. On the latter date, the Children as reorganized, +opened at Whitefriars under the management +of Philip Rossiter and others; and among the +first plays presented by them, there, were Jonson's +<i>Epicoene</i> and, I believe, Beaumont and Fletcher's +<i>The Coxcombe</i>.</p> + +<p>But, in the process of readjustment at Blackfriars, +our young partners in dramatic production must have +been drawn into professional relationship with the +members of Shakespeare's company and undoubtedly +with Shakespeare himself. From the first quarto of +<i>Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding</i>, published in 1620, +we learn that this, the earliest of their great tragicomedies, +was acted not by the Queen's Revels' Children, +but by the King's Players, and at the Globe. +From the second quarto, of 1622, we learn that it was +acted also at Blackfriars: it may indeed have been +first presented there. Our earliest record of the play<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> +shows that it was in existence before October 8, 1610. +<i>The Scourge of Folly</i> by John Davies of Hereford, +entered for publication on that date, contains an epigram +to "the well deserving Mr. John Fletcher," +which runs—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Love lies a-Bleeding</i>, if it should not prove<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her utmost art to show why it doth love.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou being the <i>Subject</i> (now), It raignes upon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Raign'st in <i>Arte, Judgement, and Invention:</i><br /></span> +<span class="i1"><i>For this I love thee; and can doe no lesse</i><br /></span> +<span class="i1"><i>For thine as faire, as faithfull</i> Sheepheardesse.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Since there is nothing in <i>Philaster, or Love Lies +a-Bleeding</i>, to indicate a date of composition earlier +than 1608, and since this is the first of Beaumont and +Fletcher's dramas to be performed by Shakespeare's +company, we may be fairly certain that the performance +followed the readjustment of affairs between the +Globe and Blackfriars in August of that year. Now, +there had been regulations for years past of the City +authorities and the Privy Council in accordance with +which theatre in the City proper and the suburbs +of Surrey and Middlesex were closed whenever the +number of deaths by plague exceeded a certain limit +per week. In and after 1608 this limit was set at +forty; and it is probable that, in accordance with a +still older regulation, the ban was not lifted until it +was evident that the decrease in deaths was more than +temporary.<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> That actors sometimes performed at +Court while the plague rate was still prohibitive in +and about the City, does not by any means justify us<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> +in assuming that they were ever allowed at such times +to play in theatres thronged by the public.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> Between +August 8, 1608 and October 8, 1610, the only continuous +period in which plays might have been presented +by Shakespeare's company at the Globe or Blackfriars, +without violating the plague law, was from December +7, 1609 to July 12, 1610; and we therefore conclude +that it was during those months that Beaumont and +Fletcher's <i>Philaster</i> was first acted. The only other +abatement of the plague that might have given promise +of continuance was between March 2 and 23, 1609; +but on March 9 the rate of deaths rose again above +forty, and it is not likely that the authorities would +have permitted the theatres to resume operations during +those three weeks.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 440px;"><a name="image104" id="image104"></a> +<img src="images/image06.jpg" width="440" height="500" alt="THE GLOBE THEATRE, WITH ST. PAUL'S IN THE BACKGROUND +From Vischer's long view of London, 1616" title="THE GLOBE THEATRE, WITH ST. PAUL'S IN THE BACKGROUND +From Vischer's long view of London, 1616" /> +<span class="caption">THE GLOBE THEATRE, WITH ST. PAUL'S IN THE BACKGROUND<br /> +<span class="smtext">From Vischer's long view of London, 1616</span></span> +</div> + +<p>With <i>Philaster</i> Beaumont and Fletcher leaped into +the foremost rank as dramatists. I have so much to +say of this tragicomedy in my discussion of the authorship +of its successive scenes, that but a word may +here be said concerning the reasons for its success. +Hitherto, practically Shakespeare alone had written for +the King's Servants romantic comedies of a serious +cast; and they were generally based upon some well-known +story. Here was a comedy of serious kind with +a romantic and original plot, by authors comparatively +new to the general public, written in a style refreshingly +unhackneyed, and played in the best theatres +and by the best company that London possessed. The +Hamlet-like hero seeking his kingdom and his princess—the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> +daughter of the usurper—and, through misunderstandings +and misadventures, tragic apprehensions, +swiftly succeeding crises, bloodshed, riot, and +surprising reversals of fortune, attaining both birth-right +and love; the pathetic innocence and nobly futile +devotion of his girl-page; the triangular affair of the +affections; the humour of the secondary characters; the +allurements of spectacle and masque; the atmosphere +of the palace, heroic,—of the country, idyllic,—of +Mile-end and its roarers of the borough, somewhat +burlesque,—the diapason of the poetry from bourdon +to flute,—all combined to win immediate and long continuing +favour, both of the City and the Court. Beaumont +had, here, become to some extent "the sobriety +of Fletcher's wit"; he had restrained "his quick free +will,"—not, however, so much by pruning what +Fletcher wrote as by admitting him to but one-quarter +of the composition. Something of the intrigue, the +bustle, the spectacle, the easy conversation are Fletcher's; +and his, such sexual vulgarity—very little—as +stamps a scene or two. The rest is Beaumont's. As +in the two great romantic dramas which followed, +and in Beaumont's subplot of <i>The Coxcombe</i>, the +story is of the authors' own invention. It is not necessary +to trace the girl-page and her devotion to the +Diana of Montemayor, or to Bandello, or even to +Sidney's <i>Arcadia</i>. The girl-page was a commonplace +of fiction at the time; and the differences in the conduct +of this part of the story are greater than the +resemblances to any one of those sources. Much more +evidently is the devoted Euphrasia-Bellario a +younger sister of Shakespeare's Viola. But, in general,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> +external influences bear upon details of character, +situation, and device, not upon the construction of the +play as a whole.</p> + +<p>Toward the end of 1610 or early in 1611, the +partner-dramatists gave Shakespeare's company another +play,—in many respects their greatest,—<i>The +Maides Tragedy</i>. Here, again, the novelty of the +plot attracted, in a degree heightened even beyond that +of <i>Philaster</i>. The terrible dilemma of the duped husband +between allegiance to the King who has wronged +him and assertion of his marital honour, the astounding +effrontery of his adulterous wife, her gradual acquirement +of a soul and her attempted expiation of lust +by murder, the mingled nobility and unreason of her +brother and her husband, and the pathetic devotion +and self-provoked death of the hero's deserted sweetheart, +will be sufficiently discussed elsewhere. This +was the highly seasoned fare that the Jacobean public +desiderated, served in courses, if not more novel, at +any rate of more startling variety than even Shakespeare +had offered—whose devices, restrained within +limit, these young dramatists were exaggerating to +the <i>n</i>-th degree. As four-fifths of the composition of +this tragedy was Beaumont's, so, too, we may be sure, +four-fifths of the conception and invention of the +plot.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> I have remarked, incidentally, that none of +the great Beaumont-Fletcher plots is borrowed. +Nearly every play, on the other hand, which Fletcher +contrived alone, or in company with others than +Beaumont, borrows its plot, major and minor, from +some well known source, classical, historical, French,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> +Spanish, or Italian. Mr. G. C. Macaulay states the +bare truth, when he says that "in constructive faculty, +at least, Beaumont was markedly superior to his colleague." +Here there are traces, indeed, of external +suggestion: something of Aspatia's career in relation +to Amintor, who has deserted her, may be an echo of +Parthenia's in the <i>Arcadia</i>; and the quarrel of Melantius +and Amintor reminds one of that between Brutus +and Cassius in <i>Julius Cæsar</i>; but the plot has no +definite source.</p> + +<p>The characterization and the poetry, "the strength +and sweetness, and high choice of brain" are Beaumont's; +so, too, the marvelous subtlety of dramatic +device. Save in that one-fifth to which Fletcher was +admitted. There Fletcher, in beauty and in tragic +power, is giving us the best that he has so far produced: +over-histrionic, to be sure, but of victorious +excellence. And that one-fifth, for the first and almost +only time in Fletcher's career as a dramatist is "untainted +by obscenity."</p> + +<p>In an anecdote preserved by Fuller, who was seventeen +years of age when Fletcher died, we may fancy +that we catch a glimpse of our bachelors at work upon +this very play. The dramatists "meeting once in a +Tavern to contrive the rude draught of a Tragedy, +Fletcher undertook to <i>Kill the King</i> therein; whose +words being overheard by a listener (though his Loyalty +not to be blamed herein) he was accused of high +Treason, till the mistake soon appearing, that the plot +was only against a Drammatick and Scenical King, +all wound off in merriment."<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> History and fable have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> +fastened similar stories upon famous men; but if +this one is authentic it undoubtedly refers to the writing +of <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, for, as we shall see, the +killing of its King was one of the few scenes contributed +by Fletcher. And the story adds colour to +the ridicule which Beaumont in 1607 had heaped +upon the intelligencer that lives in ale-houses and taverns; +... "and brings informations picked out of +broken words in men's common talk."</p> + +<p>The connection thus formed with Shakespeare's +company was continued by Beaumont, at any rate, +until 1612, and by Fletcher as long as he lived. Before +the end of 1611 the King's Players had presented +to the public the last of this trio of dramatic masterpieces, +<i>A King and No King</i>. In terrible fascination, +this story of a man and woman struggling against +love because they think they are brother and sister +is as powerful as <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>. In poetry +and in characterization, as well as in humour, it is +grander than <i>Philaster</i>. But in beauty and pathos its +subject did not permit it to equal either; and in +dénouement, tragicomic and perforce somewhat +strained, it is surpassed by the <i>Tragedy</i>. Of its defects +as well as merits, I have so much to say later, +that I must refrain now. The plot is as striking an +example of constructive invention as those that had +preceded. Some of the names are to be found in +Xenophon's <i>Cyropædeia</i> (Books III-VI) and in +Herodotus (Book VII); and hints for situation and +characterization may have been derived from these +sources, and the passion of Arbaces for his supposed +sister from Fauchet's account of Thierry of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> +France,—but such indebtedness is naught.<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> Three-quarters +of the play is Beaumont's; and that large +portion includes the majestic passion and conflict, the +tragic irony and suspense, of <i>A King and No King</i>; +in fact,—the whole serious plot, and part of the humorous +by-play. Fletcher's slight contribution is +principally of complementary scenes and low comedy. +In these the curb upon his fanciful rhetoric and hilarious +wit has been somewhat relaxed. In the character +of the roaring Bessus, Beaumont himself gives rein +with the <i>élan</i> of the comic artist; for the Bessus of +Beaumont's scenes would have gone on a strike if +he had not been suffered to "talk bawdy" between +brags. Beaumont for all his sobriety and clean +mirth was not a prude; and he wasn't writing the +psalms of Robert Wisdom.</p> + +<p>This play was as popular as those that had preceded. +The King's Players acted it at Court in December of +the year in which it had been first performed. And +between October 1612 and March 1613, assisting in +the festivities for the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth +with the Elector Palatine, they presented before +royalty all three of the great Beaumont-Fletcher plays. +These were numbers in a series of thirteen that included, +as well, the <i>Much Ado</i>, <i>Tempest</i>, <i>Winter's +Tale</i>, <i>Merry Wives</i>, <i>Othello</i>, and <i>Julius Caesar</i> of +Shakespeare. They also presented about the same +time, in a series of six acted before the King (including +<i>I Henry IV</i>, <i>Much Ado</i>, and <i>The Alchemist</i>), one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> +of Fletcher's comedies of manners and intrigue, <i>The +Captaine</i>, and a play utterly lost, called <i>Cardenna</i>, in +which it is supposed that Fletcher collaborated with +the Master himself.</p> + +<p>That our dramatists, however, after their association +was formed with Shakespeare and his company, +by no means severed their connection with the company +for which they had written in their younger days, the +Children of the Queen's Revels, appears from the fact +that during the same festivities a tragedy written by +them about 1611, <i>Cupid's Revenge</i>, was played by +the Children three times, and their romantic comedy, +<i>The Coxcombe</i> twice; and that, in 1615 or the beginning +of 1616, the Children presented at the new +Blackfriars what was, probably, the last product of +the Beaumont-Fletcher partnership, <i>The Scornful +Ladie</i>.</p> + +<p>Neither <i>Cupid's Revenge</i> nor <i>The Scornful Ladie</i> +(though the latter, at least, was very popular and had +a long life upon the stage) is a drama of high distinction. +The former is a blend of two stories from +Sidney's <i>Arcadia</i>,—the story of the vengeance of +Cupid upon the princess Erona (Hidaspes in the play) +who caused to be destroyed the images and pictures +of Cupid, and was consequently doomed to an infatuation +for a base-born man,—and the painful career +of Plangus (Leucippus in the play) who, having an +intrigue "with a private man's wife" (the monstrous +Bacha of the play) gave her up to his father, swearing +to her virtue, only to find that she should attempt to +renew her <i>liaison</i> with him and, failing, scheme his +downfall. The dramatists made considerable alteration,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> +and added to the sources. But though the main +plot—that of Leucippus and Bacha—offered magnificent +possibilities, they fail of realization. Beaumont +wrote about one-half of the play, and it +is in his scenes that whatever there is of moral struggle +and sublimity, of pathetic irony and of poetry, appears.</p> + +<p><i>The Scornful Ladie</i>, which I assign to this late date +partly because of an allusion to the negotiations for +a Spanish marriage, 1614-1616, is principally of +Fletcher's composition. It is of the type of his earlier +and later comedies of intrigue. Like most of them +it is extremely well contrived for presentation upon +the stage and it was, as I have said, most successful. +The merit of the play lies, not in any element of +poetry or vital romance, but in humorous and realistic +characterization, easy dialogue, and clever device. +The dramatists deserve all credit for the ingenious +invention, for here again there is no known source. +Beaumont's contribution, about one-third, is distinguished +by the observation and the <i>vis comica</i> already +displayed in the <i>Woman-Hater</i> and the <i>Knight of +the Burning Pestle</i> and <i>King and No King</i>. But he +is not dominating the details. When they wrote a +comedy of intrigue, Fletcher sat at the head of the +table. It is possible, however, that some of the "rules +and standard wit" which Francis was so soon to leave +to his friend "in legacy" were here applied; for the +play is less exuberantly reckless in tone than several +which Fletcher wrote alone. The three masterpieces +of romantic drama, Beaumont controlled in composition,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> +and revised. Of this play he did not finish the +revision. It was written about 1614 or 1615, after he +had settled in the country with his wife, and not long +before his death.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> Aubrey's <i>Brief Lives</i>, Ed. Clark, I, 94-95.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> Dyce, <i>B. and F.</i>, I, XXVI, <i>n</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> Based upon Dekker's <i>Bellman of London</i>, 1608. Acted at +Court, 1622.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> See Chapter XXV, below.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Despatch of the French Ambassador in London, April 5, +1608, quoted by Collier, <i>Hist. Eng. Dram. Poetry</i>, I, 352.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> Answer of Heming and Burbadge to Kirkham's complaint, +1612, <i>Greenstreet Papers</i> in Fleay, <i>Hist. Stage</i>, p. 235.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> See Murray, <i>Eng. Dram. Comp.</i>, II, 171-191.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> As suggested by Thorndike, <i>Infl. B. and F. on Shakespeare</i>, +16-18. See Murray, <i>Engl. Dram. Companies</i>, II, 175.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> Further discussion of the <i>Philaster</i> date will be found in +Chapter XXV, below.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> See Chapter XXV, below.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> Dyce, as above, <i>B. and F.</i>, I, xxxii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> See Alden's edition, p. 172 (<i>Belles Lettres</i>), and Thorndike's +citation of Fauchet, <i>Les Antiquitez et Histoires Gauloises, etc.</i> +(1599), <i>Infl. of B. and F.</i>, p. 82.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> See below, Chapter XXVI.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER VIII</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">RELATIONS WITH SHAKESPEARE, JONSON, AND OTHERS +IN THE THEATRICAL WORLD</p> + + +<p class="cap">Though the young poets did not begin to write +for the King's Men before 1609, it is impossible +that they should not have met Shakespeare, face to +face, earlier in the century, whether at the Mermaid +in Bread-street, Cheapside, where perhaps befel those +"wit-combates betwixt him and Ben Jonson," or about +the Globe in Southwark or the theatre in Blackfriars,—which, +though leased to the Revels' Children, belonged +to Shakespeare's friend Richard Burbadge,—or at +the lodgings with Mountjoy the tiremaker, on the +corner of Silver and Monkwell Streets, where the +master had lived from 1598 to 1604, and where, for +anything we know to the contrary, he continued to live +for several years more.<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> They would pass the house +on their way from the Bankside north to St. Giles, +Cripplegate, when they wished to observe what Juby +and the rest of the Prince's Players were putting on +at the Fortune, or on their way back to take ale with +Jonson at his house in Blackfriars, or to follow Nat. +Field or Carey, acting in one of their own or Jonson's +plays at the private theatre close by.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span></p> +<p>That the young poets, even during their discipleship +to Jonson were familiar with the poetry and dramatic +methods of Shakespeare the most cursory reader will +observe. Their plays from the first, whether jointly +or singly written, abound in reminiscences of his work. +But more particularly is he echoed by Beaumont. The +echo is sometimes of playful parody, as in the "huffing +part" which the grocer's prentice of the <i>Knight of the +Burning Pestle</i> steals from Hotspur:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">By heaven, methinks it were an easie leap<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac'd Moon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or dive into the bottom of the Sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where never fathome line toucht any ground,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And pluck up drownèd honour from the lake of Hell;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>or as in <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, where it looks very much +as if this stylist of twenty-two was poking fun at the +circumlocutions of Shakespeare's Helena in <i>All's Well +that Ends Well</i>. Labouring to say "two days" in accents +suitable to a monarch's ear, she had evolved:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their fiery torches his diurnal ring,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ere twice in murk and accidental damp<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Moist Hesperus hath quenched his sleepy lamp;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or four and twenty times the pilot's glass<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In terms strikingly reminiscent of this, Beaumont's +courtier Valore instructs the gourmand of <i>The +Woman-Hater</i>, how to address royalty:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">You must not talk to him [the Duke]<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As you doe to an ordinary man,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Honest plain sence, but you must wind about him.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For example: if he should aske you what o'clock it is,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You must not say, "If it please your grace, 'tis nine";<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But thus, "Thrice three aclock, so please my Sovereign";<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or thus, "Look how many Muses there doth dwell<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon the sweet banks of the learned Well,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And just so many stroaks the clock hath struck."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And when the Duke asks Lazarillo, thus instructed, +"how old are you?" we can imagine with what mirth +the graceless Beaumont puts into his mouth:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Full eight and twenty several Almanacks<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Have been compiled all for several years,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Since first I drew this breath; four prentiships<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Have I most truly served in this world;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And eight and twenty times hath Phoebus' car<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Run out his yearly course since—.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="revindent">Duke.</span> I understand you, sir.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="revindent">Lucio.</span> How like an ignorant poet he talks!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Is it possible that associating with the literary school +of the day, his brother John, Drayton, Chapman, and +Ben Jonson, the young satirist, here vents something +like spleen? Or is this purely dramatic utterance?</p> + +<p>Like parodies of phrases in <i>Hamlet</i>, <i>Antony and +Cleopatra</i>, and other Shakespearean plays ripple the +stream of Beaumont's humour. They are, however, +always good-natured. But if Beaumont laughs when +Shakespeare exaggerates, he also pays him in his later +plays the tribute of imitation in numerous poetic borrowings +of serious lines and telling situations: as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> +where the King in <i>Philaster</i> tries to pray but, like the +kneeling Claudius, despairs—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i11">How can I<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Looke to be heard of gods that must be just,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Praying upon the ground I hold by wrong?—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>or "in the Hamlet-like situation and character of +Philaster" himself; as, for instance, when to the usurping +King who has said of him, "Sure hees possest," +Philaster retorts:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Yes, with my fathers spirit. Its here, O King,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A dangerous spirit! Now he tells me, King,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I was a Kings heire, bids me be a King,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And whispers to me, these are all my subjects.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tis strange he will not let me sleepe, but dives<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In to my fancy, and there gives me shapes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That kneele and doe me service, cry me king:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But I'le suppresse him: he's a factious spirit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And will undoe me.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The resemblance of the controversy between Melantius +and Amintor to that of Brutus with Cassius has +already been noticed; and everyone will acknowledge +the resemblance of the "quizzical reserve" of his +Scornful Lady to Olivia's, of Aspatia's melancholy in +the <i>Maides Tragedy</i> to Ophelia's, and of Bellario's situation +in <i>Philaster</i> to that of Viola in <i>Twelfth Night</i>.<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> +This last play, indeed, acted, as we have seen, in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> +Middle Temple when Beaumont was a freshman in +the Inns of Court, affects Beaumont's method and +style, more than any other save the <i>Pericles</i> (1607, +or January to May 1608), which prepared the way +for the more important later romantic dramas of +Shakespeare himself as well as for those of Beaumont +and Fletcher.</p> + +<p>During the years when Shakespeare's company was +producing their romantic dramas, they were breathing, +with Shakespeare, Burbadge, and Heming, the atmosphere +of the Globe and Blackfriars; and, after Shakespeare +had taken up a more continuous residence at +Stratford, in 1611, Fletcher, at any rate, not only kept +in touch with the remaining shareholders and actors +of the Globe but with the Master himself, and conversed +and wrote with him on various occasions. +These may have fallen either at the New Place at +Stratford, where the now wealthy country gentleman +was wont to entertain his friends, or when Shakespeare +came to town—as in May 1612. At that time +his former host, Mountjoy's, son-in-law was suing the +tiremaker for his wife's unpaid dower, and "William +Shakespeare of Stratford upon Avon in the Countye of +Warwicke, Gentleman" who had helped to make the +marriage, was summoned as a witness.<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> Or between +July and November of that year, when the "base +fellow" Kirkham was bringing against Burbadge and +Heming a suit concerning the profits of the Blackfriars +theatre, in which as a shareholder Shakespeare, +too, must have been interested; and when Christopher<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> +Brooke of the pastoral poets in Beaumont's Inns of +Court was of the "councell" for Shakespeare's company.<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> +Or in March 1613, when Shakespeare was +negotiating for the house in Blackfriars which he +bought that month from Henry Walker. In the latter +year the King's Players performed two plays in the +writing of which there is reason to believe that Shakespeare +and Fletcher participated: <i>The Two Noble +Kinsmen</i>, first published as "by the memorable +worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. +William Shakespeare, gentlemen," in a quarto of 1634; +and a lost play licensed for publication as the "<i>History +of Cardenio</i> by Fletcher and Shakespeare," in +1653. Of the former, critics are generally agreed that +Fletcher wrote about a dozen scenes and that Shakespeare +in all probability wrote others. Maybe, however, +Fletcher, and perhaps later Massinger, merely +revised and completed Shakespeare's original draft of +the play left in the company's hands. That <i>The Two +Noble Kinsmen</i> borrows its antimasque from our +friend Beaumont's <i>Maske of the Inner Temple</i>, which +was presented in February 1613, may be construed +as indicating that he, too, still had some connection +with Shakespeare's company. But it is more likely +that he was now happily married and settled in Kent, +and didn't care what they did with his plays. Probably +the Shakespeare-Fletcher play was acted soon after +Beaumont's, and in the same year. With regard to the +authorship of the <i>Cardenio</i> we have nothing but the +publisher's statement; but we know that the play was +written after the appearance, in 1612, of the story<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> +upon which it is based, in Shelton's English translation +of the first part of <i>Don Quixote</i>; and that it was +acted at Court by Shakespeare's and Fletcher's company +in May and June 1613.</p> + +<p>The partnership of Fletcher and Shakespeare in +the writing of these two plays has been questioned, +but as to their collaboration in a third, <i>Henry VIII</i>, +there is not much possibility of doubt. In the conception +of the leading characters Shakespeare is present, +and in many of their finest lines, and specifically +in at least five scenes; while Fletcher appears in practically +all the rest. The play was acted by the King's +Men at the Globe on June 29, 1613, and was included +as Shakespeare's by his judicious editors and intimate +friends, Heming and Condell, in the folio of 1623.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"><a name="image120" id="image120"></a> +<div class="bbox"> +<div class="figcenter2" style="width: 341px;"> +<img src="images/image07.jpg" width="341" height="400" alt="BEN JONSON +From the miniature belonging to Mr. Evelyn Shirley" title="BEN JONSON +From the miniature belonging to Mr. Evelyn Shirley" /> +<div class="bbox2"> +<p class="imtitle">BEN JONSON<br /> +<span class="smtext">From the miniature belonging to Mr. Evelyn Shirley</span></p> +</div></div></div></div> + +<p>During these years of fruition the friendship with +Jonson, who was writing at the time for both the +companies to which our young dramatists gave their +plays, continued apparently without interruption. It +is attested by commendatory verses written by Beaumont +for <i>The Silent Woman</i>, which was acted early +in 1610, and by verses of both Fletcher and Beaumont +prefixed to Jonson's tragedy of <i>Catiline</i>, published in +1611. On the latter occasion Beaumont commends +Jonson's contempt for "the wild applause of common +people," and declares that he is "three ages yet from +understood;" while Fletcher even more enthusiastically +avers,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Thy labours shall outlive thee; and, like gold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stampt for continuance, shall be current where<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There is a sun, a people, or a year.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The generous and graceful response of Ben to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> +reverence of the younger of the twain appears in a +tribute the date of which is uncertain, but which was +included by the author among his <i>Epigrams</i>, entered +in the Stationers' Registers, 1612.</p> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4"><i>To Francis Beaumont.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0">How I doe love thee, Beaumont and thy Muse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That unto me dost such religion use!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How I doe feare my selfe, that am not worth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At once thou mak'st me happie, and unmak'st;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And giving largely to me, more thou tak'st.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What fate is mine, that so it selfe bereaves?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What art is thine, that so thy friend deceives?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When even there, where most thou praisest mee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For writing better, I must envie thee.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Since Jonson was not given to indiscriminate laudation +of his contemporaries in dramatic production, we +may surmise that this tribute to the art of Beaumont +follows rather than precedes the appearance of <i>Philaster</i>, +and of perhaps both <i>The Maides Tragedy</i> and <i>A +King and No King</i>. And whether there is any basis +or not for the tradition handed down by Dryden<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> +that Beaumont was "so accurate a judge of plays that +Ben Jonson, while he lived, submitted all his writings +to his censure, and, 'tis thought, used his judgment in +correcting, if not contriving, all his plots,"—there is +here evidence, sufficiently convincing, of the high esteem +in which "the least indulgent thought" and the +large "giving" of the brilliant and independent gentleman-dramatist +were held by the acknowledged +classicist and dictator of the stage.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p> +<p>From the various sources already indicated and +from contemporary testimony, later to be cited, it is +easy to derive a definite conception of the world of +dramatists and actors in which Beaumont and Fletcher +moved. They knew, and were properly appraised +by, Drayton, Jonson, Chapman, Shakespeare, Webster, +Dekker, Heywood, Massinger, Field, Daborne, Marston, +Day, and Middleton,—with all of whom they were +associated either in combats of poetry and wit or in +the presentation of plays at Blackfriars, Whitefriars, +or the Globe. Among actors their acquaintance included +Field, Taylor, Carey, and others of the Queen's +Revels' Children, and Richard Burbadge, Heming, +Condell, Ostler, Cook, and Lowin of the King's Company. +In what esteem they were held during these +years we have evidence in the verses already quoted +from Drayton, Jonson, Chapman, and Field. In +the generous dedication of <i>The White Devil</i> by John +Webster, in 1612, we find them ranked with the best: +"Detraction," says he, "is the sworne friend to ignorance. +For mine owne part I have ever truly cherisht +my good opinion of other mens worthy Labours, +especially of that full and haightened stile of Maister +<i>Chapman</i>: The labour'd and understanding workes of +maister <i>Jonson</i>: The no lesse worthy composures of +the both worthily excellent Maister <i>Beamont</i> and +Maister <i>Fletcher</i>: And lastly (without wrong last to +be named), the right happy and copious industry of +M. <i>Shake-speare</i>, M. <i>Decker</i>, and M. <i>Heywood</i>, wishing +what I write may be read by their light: Protesting +that, in the strength of mine owne judgement, I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> +know them so worthy, that though I rest silent in my +owne worke, yet to most of theirs I dare (without +flattery) fix that of <i>Martiall—non norunt, Haec +monumenta mori</i>."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> Wallace, <i>New Shakespeare Discoveries, Harper's Maga.</i>, +March, 1910.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> For these and other reminiscences of Shakespeare, see +Alden's edition of Beaumont (<i>Belles Lettres Series</i>), XVI; Macaulay's +<i>Beaumont</i>; Leonhardt in <i>Anglia</i>, VIII, 424; Oliphant in +<i>Engl. Studien</i>, XIV, 53-94, Koeppel's <i>Quellen-studien</i> in <i>Münchener +Beiträge</i>, XI.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> Wallace, <i>New Shakespeare Discoveries</i> (<i>Harper's Maga.</i>, +March, 1910).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> See the <i>Greenstreet Papers</i>, in Fleay, <i>Hist. Stage</i>, 239, 250.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> <i>An Essay of Dramatick Poesie.</i></p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER IX</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">THE "MASQUE OF THE INNER TEMPLE": THE PASTORALISTS, +AND OTHER CONTEMPORARIES AT +THE INNS OF COURT</p> + + +<p class="cap">Of royal patronage we have had evidence in the +fact that during the festivities of October 16, +1612 to March 1, 1613, no fewer than five of the +Beaumont-Fletcher plays were presented at Court, by +the King's Servants and the Queen's Revels' Children,—some +of them two and even three times. Our +poets are accordingly regarded by the great as dramatists +of like distinction with Shakespeare, Jonson, +and Chapman, the authors of most of the other plays +then performed.</p> + +<p>Of the esteem in which Beaumont individually was +held, not only at Court but by his fellows of the +Inner Temple, evidence is afforded by the fact that +when they were called upon, in company with the +gentlemen of Gray's Inn, to celebrate the marriage, +February 14, 1613, of the Princess Elizabeth to the +Elector Palatine, with a masque, they did not, like +the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn, go out of their +own group of poets for a dramatist, but chose him. +The selection was but natural: he had already contributed +to <i>The Maides Tragedy</i> a masque of the +very essence of dreams, executed with singular grace +and melody.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p> + +<p>The subject decided upon for the present gorgeous +spectacle was the "marrying of the Thames to the +Rhine." The structure and stage machinery were +invented by Inigo Jones, who was, also, stage architect +for Chapman's rival masque of <i>Plutus</i>, presented +on February 15, by the gentlemen of the Middle +Temple and Lincoln's Inn. To the success of Beaumont's +production, that patron of masques, Sir Francis +Bacon, then his majesty's Solicitor-General, contributed +in large measure: "You, Sir Francis Bacon, +especially," says the author in his Dedication +of the published copy, "as you did then by your countenance +and loving affection advance it, so let your +good word grace it and defend it, which is able to +add value to the greatest and least matters." In a +contemporary letter of John Chamberlain to Mistris +Carleton, Bacon is called "the chief contriver" of the +spectacle; an attribution which leads us to infer that +he "advanced" it not solely by "loving affection" +but by funds for the tremendous expense. For, as +we have already observed, in other cases, as of the +Masque of Flowers, presented for a noble marriage +in 1614 by Gray's Inn, Bacon is not only patron but +purse, permitting no one to share expenses with him: +"Sir Francis Bacon," writes Chamberlain, "prepares +a masque to honour this marriage, which will stand +him in above £2,000."</p> + +<p>Beaumont's masque, which was to have been performed +at Whitehall on Tuesday evening, the 16th, +had ill fortune on the first attempt. The gentlemen-masquers, +desiring to vary their pomp from that of +Lincoln's Inn and the Middle Temple, which had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> +on horse-back and in chariots, made a progress by +water from Winchester-House to Whitehall, seated +in the King's royal barge, "attended with a multitude +of barges and galleys, with all variety of loud music, +and several peals of ordnance; and led by two admirals." +The royal family witnessed their approach; +and, as Chamberlain in the letter mentioned above +says, "they were receved at the privie stayres: and +great expectation theyre was that they shold every +way exceed theyre competitors that went before them +both in devise daintines of apparell and above all in +dauncing (wherein they are held excellent) and esteemed +far the properer men: but by what yll planet +yt fell out I know not, they came home as they went +with out doing anything, the reason whereof I cannot +yet learne thoroughly, so but only was that the hall +was so full that yt was not possible to avoyde yt or +make roome for them; besides that most of the Ladies +were in the galleries to see them land, and could not +get in, but the worst of all was that the king was +so wearied and sleepie with sitting up almost two +whole nights before that he had no edge to yt. Whereupon +S<sup>r</sup> Fra: Bacon adventured to interest his +maiestie that by this disgrace he wold not as yt +were burie them quicke; and I heare the king shold +aunswer that then they must burie him quicke for he +could last no longer, but with all gave them very +goode wordes and appointed them to come again on +saterday: but the grace of theyre maske is quite gon +when theyre apparell hath ben already shewed and +theyre devises vented, so that how yt will fall out, +God knows, for they are much discouraged, and out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> +of countenance; and the world sayes yt comes to +passe after the old proverb—the properer men the +worse lucke."<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a></p> + +<p>On that day, accordingly, the masque was presented, +"in the new Banketting-House which for a kind of +amends was granted to them"; and with marked success. +"At the entrance of their Majesties and their +Highnesses," writes the Venetian ambassador to the +Doge and Senate, May 10, 1613, "one saw the scene, +with forests; on a sudden half of it changed to a +great mountain with four springs at its feet. The +subject of the Masque was that Jove and Juno desiring +to honour the wedding and the conjunction +of two such noble rivers, the Thames and the Rhine, +sent separately Mercury and Iris, who appeared; and +Mercury then praised the couple and the Royal house, +and wishing to make a ballet suitable to the conjunction +of two such streames, he summoned from the +four fountains, whence they spring and which are fed +by rain, four nymphs who hid among the clouds and +the stars that ought to bring rain. They then danced, +but Iris said that a dance of one sex only was not a +live dance. Then appeared four cupids, while from +the Temple of Jove, came five idols and they danced +with the stars and the nymphs. Then Iris, after delivering +her speech, summoned Flora, caused a light +rain to fall, and then came a dance of shepherds. +Then in a moment the other half of the scene changed, +and one saw a great plateau with two pavilions, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> +in them one hundred and fifty Knights of Olympus,—then +more tents, like a host encamped. On the higher +ground was the Temple of Olympian Jove all adorned +with statues of gold and silver, and served by a number +of priests with music and lights in golden Candelabra. +The knights were in long robes of silk and +gold, the priests in gold and silver. The knights +danced, their robes being looped up with silver, and +their dance represented the introduction of the Olympian +games into this kingdom. After the ballet was +over their Majesties and their Highnesses passed into +a great Hall especially built for the purpose, where +were long tables laden with comfits and thousands of +mottoes. After the King had made the round of the +tables everything was in a moment rapaciously swept +away."<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a></p> + +<p>Beaumont had introduced innovations—two antimasques, +or "subtle, capricious dances" accompanied +by spectacular or comic dumb-show, instead of one, +and new and varied characters in each, instead of the +stereotyped Witches, Satyrs, Follies, etc. His +Nymphs, Hyades, blind Cupids, and half vivified +Statuas from Jove's altar, of the first antimasque occasioned +great amusement, so that the King called +for them again at the end—"but one of the Statuas +by that time was undressed." And the May-dance +of the second, with its rural characters—Pedant, +Lord and Lady of the May, country clown and wench, +host and hostess, he-baboon and she-baboon, he-fool +and she-fool—stirred laughter and applause that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> +drowned the music. The main masque was stately, +and fitly symbolic of the occasion. And one at least +of the songs, that sung by the twelve white-robed +priests, each playing upon his lute, before Jupiter's +altar, has the rare lyrical quality of Beaumont's best +manner,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Shake off your heavy trance,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And leap into a dance,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such as no mortals use to tread,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Fit only for Apollo<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To play to, for the Moon to lead,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And all the Stars to follow!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We may be sure that the poet received his meed of +praise from King, Princess, and Elector, and from +officials of the Court—the Earl of Nottingham, +Lord Privy Seal, and Bacon, "the chief contriver"; +and that he sat high at the "solemn supper in the +new Marriage-room" which the King made them on +the Sunday,—maybe "at the same board" with the +King who doubtless jested much at the expense of +Prince Charles and his followers. For they had to +pay for the feast, "having laid a wager for the charges, +and lost it in running at the ring."<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a></p> + +<p>If it had not been customary for members of the +Inns of Court to retain connection with the Society +to which they belonged, even after they had ceased to +be in residence, especially if still living in the City, +we might infer from his authorship of this masque +that Beaumont had kept in touch with the Inner Temple.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> +Though he had not professed the law, the quiddities +of its parlance enliven various passages of his +<i>Woman-Hater</i> and of the plays which he later wrote +with Fletcher. Whether he kept his name on the +books or not, the Inner Temple was in a social sense +his club for life; and it was to "those Gentlemen that +were his acquaintance there" that the publisher Mosely +turned for help when searching for his portrait in +1647. The students of his generation were by 1612, +many of them, utter barristers, ancients, and benchers: +he would affiliate with them; and that he should be +acquainted with the "Gentlemen who were actors" +in his masque goes without saying. This was an occasion +of tremendous moment to the members of the +allied Houses. They were conferring the highest +honour upon their poet, and every man on the books +of each Inn knew him by name and face. One of the +Fellows, John, afterwards Sir John, Fenner provides +a messenger "to fetch M<sup>r</sup> Beaumont," and advances +10<i>li.</i> "toward the mask business." Another, Lewis +Hele is twice paid 70<i>li.</i> toward the same business. +From Chamberlain's letter, we learn that the passage +by water to Whitehall "cost them better than three +hundred pound,"—from two thousand to twenty-four +hundred pounds, in the money of to-day. From the +records of the Societies for "the 10th of King James," +we find that "the charge in apparell of the Actors in +that great Mask at White-hall was supported" by +each Society; "the Readers at Gray's Inn being each +man assessed at 4<i>l.</i>, the Ancients, and such as at that +time were to be called Ancients, at 2<i>l.</i> 10<i>s.</i> apiece, +the Barristers at 2<i>l.</i> a man, and the Students<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> +at 20<i>s.</i>"; and that on May 4, 1613, the Inner +Temple is still indebted over and besides the contribution +of the House "for the late show and sports ... +not so little as 1200<i>li.</i>,"—that is to say, from seven to +nine thousand pounds according our present valuation.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> +Beaumont in his Dedication of the quarto (published +soon afterwards) to the worthy Sir Francis Bacon +and the grave and learned Bench of the anciently-allied +Houses of Gray's Inn and the Inner Temple, is +addressing friends when he says "Yee that spared +no time nor travell in the setting forth, ordering, and +furnishing of this Masque ... will not thinke much +now to looke backe upon the effects of your owne care +and worke: for that whereof the successe was then +doubtfull, is now happily performed and gratiously +accepted. And that which you were then to thinke +of in straites of time, you may now peruse at leysure."</p> + +<p>Of the gentlemen-masquers, and "the towardly +yoong, active, gallant Gentlemen of the same houses," +who, as their convoy "set forth from Winchester-House +which was the <i>Rende vous</i> towards the Court, +about seven of the clock at night," on that occasion, +the most directly interested in the event would be a +group of literary friends of which the central figure +was William Browne of Tavistock. He had been +at Clifford's Inn, one of the preparatory schools for +the Inner Temple, on the other side of Fleet Street, +since about 1608, had migrated to the Inner Temple +in November 1611, and had been admitted a member<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> +in March 1612. He was some five years younger than +Beaumont, and, like Beaumont, was at just that time +on intimate terms of friendship with the last of the +Elizabethan pastoralists, Michael Drayton,—on terms +of reciprocal admiration and friendship also with +Beaumont's dramatic associates, Jonson and Chapman; +and he had himself, in 1613, been engaged for three +years upon the composition of the charming <i>First +Book</i> of his <i>Britannia's Pastorals</i>. In a letter written +some years later to a lover of the Pastoral,—the translator +of Tasso's Aminta, <i>Henery Reynolds, Esq.,—Of +Poets and Poesy</i>, and published in 1627, Drayton +couples William Browne so closely with Sir John +and Francis Beaumont that even if the trio were not, +in various ways, affiliated with the same legal Society +we could not escape the conclusion that the brothers +were near and dear to Browne. "Then," writes Drayton, +after mentioning other literary acquaintances,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Then the two Beaumonts and my Browne arose,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My deare companions whom I freely chose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My bosome friends; and in their severall wayes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rightly borne Poets, and in these last dayes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Men of much note, and no lesse nobler parts,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such as have freely tould to me their hearts,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As I have mine to them.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We may proceed upon the assumption that it would +have been impossible for these bosom friends of Drayton, +members of the same club, not to have known +each other. Especially, if we recall that Browne was +a literary disciple of Fletcher in pastoral poetry, between +1610 and 1616, and that he had Beaumont's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> +masque and poetic fame in mind when, in the Dedication +of his own <i>Masque of Ulysses and Circe</i>, presented +by the same Society of the Inner Temple not +quite two years later, January 13, 1615, he said, "If +it degenerate in kind from those other our Society +hath produced, blame yourselves for not seeking to +a happier Muse."</p> + +<p>I am at pains thus to emphasize the acquaintance of +Browne and Beaumont, because our acquaintance with +the latter is enriched if we may regard him as familiarly +associated with the literary coterie of the Inns of +Court. Browne and Beaumont had friends in common +beside Drayton, Chapman, and Jonson. To, and +of, Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Philip Sidney, Beaumont +writes, as we shall presently notice, in terms of +admiration and intimacy. And it is for Mary, the +sister of Sir Philip, that William Browne composes, +in or after 1621, the immemorial epitaph,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Underneath this sable hearse<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lies the subject of all verse:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Death, ere thou hast slain another,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fair, and learn'd, and good as shee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Time shall throw his dart at thee.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To this Pembroke, William Herbert, third Earl, +Browne dedicates the <i>Second Book</i> of the <i>Pastorals</i>, +1616, which contains the beautiful tribute to Sidney +and his <i>Arcadia</i>; and Pembroke shows his regard for +the young poet by appointing him tutor to a wealthy +ward, and later taking him into the service of his +own family at Wilton. In 1614 John Davies of Hereford<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> +wrote the third eclogue appended to Browne's +<i>Shepherd's Pipe</i>, in which he figures as old Wernock, +and Browne as Willy; and, in 1616, commendatory +verses to the <i>Second Book</i> of Browne's <i>Pastorals</i>,—beginning +"Pipe on, sweet swaine." He had already +in 1610, addressed "the most ingenious Mr. Francis +Beaumont" in an epigram of like familiarity and +devotion:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Some that thy name abbreviate, call thee Franck:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">So may they well, if they respect thy witt;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For like rich corne (that some fools call too ranck)<br /></span> +<span class="i1">All cleane Wit-reapers still are griping it;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And could I sow for thee to reape and use,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I should esteeme it manna for the Muse.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Another of this little group of late Spenserian pastoralists +was, as we shall later see, an admirer of +Beaumont. This is William Basse, probably the composer +of the lines <i>In Laudem Authoris</i>, signed W. B., +and prefixed to the 1602 edition of <i>Salmacis and Hermaphroditus</i>. +With the commendatory verses of Davies, +George Wither, Thomas Wenman, and others +in Browne's <i>Second Book</i> of the <i>Pastorals</i>, appear +some again signed W. B. "It is just possible," according +to the most recent editor of Browne's poems,<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> +"that Basse and Browne were kinsmen." It is certain +that Basse was a retainer in the family of the +poetic Thomas Wenman who was Browne's contemporary +at the Inner Temple. Basse, himself, had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> +published three pastoral elegies in 1602, and he was +still writing pastorals half a century later. Another +of this group, George Wither, had since 1606 been of +one of the adjoining Inns of Chancery. He is the +Roget, Thyrsis, Philarete of this pastoral field. In +1614, he wrote the third eclogue supplementary to +Browne's <i>Shepherd's Pipe</i>; and in 1615 he was a neighbor +of the Inner Temple poets, at Lincoln's Inn. In +that eclogue he speaks of a Valentine on "the Wedding +of fair Thame and Rhine" which he had composed +on the occasion of the royal marriage; and in +the first <i>Epithalamium</i> of the Valentine, he refers explicitly +to the masques of Chapman and Beaumont. +He must have known both those "Heliconian wits." +"I'm none," he says with self-depreciation,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I'm none of those that have the means or place<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With shows of cost to do your nuptials grace;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But only master of mine own desire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Am hither come with others to admire.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I am not of those Heliconian wits,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose pleasing strains the court's known humour fits,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But a poor rural shepherd, that for need<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can make sheep music on an oaten reed.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This "faithful though an humble swain" was of distinctive +repute among Beaumont's associates by 1615: +no less for the lyric ease of his <i>Shepherd's Hunting</i>, or +of his</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Shall I wasting in despair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Die because a woman's fair?—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>than for the "plain, moral speaking" of the <i>Abuses +Stript and Whipt</i> that in 1613-14 had brought him a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> +year's imprisonment in the Marshalsea. Jonson later +"personates" him as Chronomastix, or whipper of +the times, in a masque at Court; and Beaumont's, and +Fletcher's friend, Massinger, introduces him by allusion, +in his <i>Duke of Milan</i>, about 1620, "I have had +a fellow," says the Officer in Act III, ii, of that play—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">That could endite forsooth and make fine metres<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To tinkle in the ears of ignorant madams,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That for defaming of great men, was sent me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Threadbare and lousy.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Still another member of this circle of poets associated +with the Inns of Court is the Cuddy of the +pastoral poems, the intimate friend of Wither and +Browne,—Christopher Brooke, who, though he does +not cut much of a figure in his <i>Elegies</i>, or in his <i>Ghost +of Richard III</i>, was a lovable and hearty friend, and +a distinguished Bencher of Lincoln's Inn. That +Brooke was intimate with Shakespeare's company of +the King's Servants, at just the period that Beaumont +and Fletcher were most closely associated with that +company, we have already noticed. As one of the +barristers who, in 1612, defended Burbadge and Heming +against the bill of complaint brought by Kirkham +for recovery of profits in the Blackfriars theatre, he +had much to do with having the "plaintiff's bill cleerly +and absolutely dismissed out of this courte."<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a></p> + +<p>This community of friendship with Browne and +Browne's circle gives us, by inference, a clue to an +extended list of the gentlemen of London with whom +Beaumont cannot have altogether failed to be acquainted.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> +Browne succeeded Beaumont as poet of +the Inner Temple, and the friends of the former in +that Society would be known to the latter.</p> + +<p>Among those who wrote verses laudatory of +Browne's <i>Pastorals</i> between 1613 and 1616, was his +"learned friend," John Selden, the jurist and antiquary, +whose "chamber was in the paper buildings +which looke towards the garden." He kept, says Aubrey, +"a plentifull table, and was never without +learned company": frequently that of Jonson, Drayton, +and Camden; and, we may be certain, of John +Fletcher, too; for on his mother's side, Selden as his +coat of arms and epitaph prove, and as Hasted tells us +in his <i>History of Kent</i>, was of the "equestrian" family +of Bakers to which Fletcher's stepsisters belonged. +Selden was of Beaumont's age to a year, and had been +of the Society since 1604. For Browne's book Edward +Heyward, also, wrote verses,—Selden's most +"devoted friend and chamber-fellow,"—to whom +(Aubrey again) "he dedicated his <i>Titles of Honour</i>," +1614. Heyward came from Norfolk and was admitted +to the Inner Temple in 1604. And with Selden +must be also bracketed, Thomas Wenman, of Oxfordshire; +for so Suckling brackets him in the <i>Session of +the Poets</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The poets met the other day,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Apollo was at the meeting, they say....<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Twas strange to see how they flocked together:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There was Selden, and he stood next to the chaire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Wenman not far off, which was very faire.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Wenman came to the Inner Temple in 1613; he expresses<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> +in his complimentary verses to Browne his +wonder that the pastoralist can frame such worthy +poetry while as yet "scarce a hair grows up thy chin +to grace." Wenman was the son of that Sir Richard +whose wife was implicated in the Gunpowder Plot by +Mrs. [Elizabeth] Vaux. He succeeded to an Irish +peerage in 1640. There was, also, Thomas Gardiner, +the son of a rector in Essex. He came to the Inner +Temple in 1609, and in 1641 was knighted for his +loyalty to King Charles. There was, though not of +the Inner Temple, Browne's favourite companion, William +Ferrar, the Alexis of the pastoral circle. Ferrar +was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1610, and died +young. He must have been a graceful and lovable +youth, if we may judge from Wither's and Browne's +tributes to him. Through his father, "an eminent +London merchant, who was interested in the adventures +of Hawkins, Drake, and Raleigh," Browne and +Beaumont might, if in no other way, have met with Sir +Richard and Sir Walter. There were, also, writing +praises to Browne, the brothers Croke, sons of Sir John +Croke of the King's Bench. They were both of +Christ's Church, Oxford, Charles and Unton; and they +became students of the Inner Temple in 1609. Charles +was something of a poet. In 1613 he was Professor +of Rhetoric at Gresham College; he took orders, and +became a Fellow of Eton College; and during the +Civil War fled to Ireland. Unton rose at the Bar, +became a member of Parliament, "aided the Parliamentarians +during the Civil War and enjoyed the favour +of Cromwell." And there was Browne's dear +friend, Thomas Manwood, who had entered the Inner<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> +Temple in 1611, and whose early death by drowning +Browne bewails in the fourth eclogue of the <i>Shepherd's +Pipe</i>,—an elegy somewhat fantastic but beautifully +sincere, and, in one or two of its fundamental +concepts, decidedly reminiscent of Beaumont's elegy +written the year before on the death of the Countess +of Rutland.</p> + +<p>These are a few of the members of this Society +whom Beaumont met whenever he visited the Inner +Temple. It was such as they and their companions, +many more of whom are mentioned in the <i>Inner Temple +Records</i>, and described by Mr. Gordon Goodwin +in his edition of Browne's <i>Poems</i>, who set forth, ordered, +and furnished Beaumont's <i>Masque of the Inner +Temple</i>; and who, as gentlemen-masquers, sailed with +him in the royal barge to Whitehall, and happily performed +the masque before the King and Queen, the +Princess Elizabeth, and the Count Palatine, on Saturday, +the twentieth day of February 1613.</p> + +<p>Beaumont's friends were Fletcher's; and Fletcher +must have known Browne. It has always seemed +strange to me that, when enumerating in his <i>Britannia's +Pastorals</i> the pastoral poets of England,—half +a dozen of them, his personal acquaintances,—Browne +should have omitted Fletcher to whom he was +deeply indebted for literary inspiration. Between +1610 and 1613 he had, in his <i>First Book of Britannia's +Pastorals</i> (Song 1, end; Song 2, beginning), borrowed +the story of Marina and the River-God, as regards +not only the main incident but also much of the poetic +phrase, from the <i>Faithfull Shepheardesse</i>—the scene +in which Fletcher's God of the River rescues Amoret<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> +and offers her his love. The borrowing is not at all +a plagiarism, but an elaboration of the Amoret episode; +and, as such, the imitation is indirect homage to +the quondam pastoralist living close by in Southwark. +I hesitate to enter upon quest of literary surmise. But +some young lion of research might be pardoned if he +should undertake to prove that the description of the +shepherd Remond which Browne introduces into his +first Song just before this borrowing from Fletcher's +pastoral drama is homage to Fletcher, pure and direct:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Remond, young Remond, that full well could sing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And tune his pipe at Pan's birth carolling:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who for his nimble leaping, sweetest layes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A lawrell garland wore on holidayes;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In framing of whose hand dame Nature swore<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That never was his like nor could be more.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Conjectural reconstruction of literary relationships +is perilously seductive. But it is only fair to apprise +the young lion of the delightful certainty that though +the trail may run up a tree, it abounds in alluring +scents. He will find that no sooner has Browne's +Marina concluded the adventure borrowed from +Fletcher than she falls in with Remond's younger +companion, "blithe Doridon," who, in the <i>Second +Book</i> of the <i>Pastorals</i>, written in 1614-15, swears +fidelity to Remond—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i9">Entreats him then<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That he might be his partner, since no men<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had cases liker; he with him would goe—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Weepe when he wept and sigh when he did so;<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a><br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>and that, in the second Song of the <i>First Book</i>,<a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> +Doridon, who also is a poet, is described at +a length not at all necessary to the narrative, and in +terms that more than echo the description of the +beauty of Hermaphroditus in the poem of that name +which has been traditionally attributed to Beaumont. +This Doridon is a genius:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Upon this hill there sate a lovely swaine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As if that Nature thought it great disdaine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That he should (so through her his genius told him)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Take equall place with swaines, since she did hold him<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her chiefest worke, and therefore thought it fit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That with inferiours he should never sit....<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He is "fairest of men"; when he pipes "the wood's +sweet quiresters" join in consort—"A musicke that +would ravish choisest eares." He is, as I have said, +a poet,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And as when Plato did i' th' cradle thrive,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bees to his lips brought honey from their hive;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So to this boy they came; I know not whether<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They brought, or from his lips did honey gather....<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He is also a master in the revels,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">His buskins (edg'd with silver) were of silke ...<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those buskins he had got and brought away<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For dancing best upon the revell day.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Browne, by the way, wrote the <i>Prefatory Address</i> to +this Book of <i>Britannia's Pastorals</i>, June 18, 1613, only +three months after Beaumont's Masque upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> +"revel day" was acted; and the book was licensed for +printing, the same year, November 15.</p> + +<p>Returning to our young lion, he will, I fear me, +exult (with lust of chase or laughter?) when in the +third song of this book, he notes that Doridon, overhearing +the love-colloquy of Remond and Fida, can +find no other trope to describe their felicity than one +drawn from Ovid, and from the so-called Beaumont +poem of 1602, <i>Salmacis and Hermaphroditus</i>,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sweet death they needs must have, who so unite<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That two distinct make one Hermaphrodite.<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Lured by such scents as these, our beast of prey may +pounce—upon a shadow, or not?—when, having +tracked the meandering Browne to the second song +of the Second Book, he there hears him rehearse the +names of</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What shepheards on the sea were seene<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To entertaine the Ocean's queene,—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>the poets of England: Astrophel (Sidney), "the +learned Shepheard of faire Hitching hill" (Chapman), +all loved Draiton, Jonson, well-languag'd Daniel, +Christopher Brooke, Davies of Hereford, and Wither,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">Many a skilfull swaine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose equals Earth cannot produce againe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But leave the times and men that shall succeed them<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Enough to praise that age which so did breed them,—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and then, <i>without interim</i>, proceed:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Two of the quaintest swains that yet have beene<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Failed their attendance on the Ocean's queene,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Remond and Doridon, whose haplesse fates<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Late sever'd them from their more happy mates.<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Browne, who had dropped these companion shepherds +of the "pastoral and the rural song" three songs back, +now needs them to scour the forests for the vanished +Fida of his fiction. If he had not needed them for +the narrative here resumed, might they not have attended +the Ocean's queen with the other poets of England,—all, +but Sidney, his personal friends,—as +Fletcher and Beaumont? This is precisely the way in +which Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, and Rafael introduced +into their frescoes the Tornabuoni and Medici of their +time. We may leave the inquisitive to follow them +to that realm where, forsaking mythical and pastoral +romance,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">Many weary dayes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They now had spent in unfrequented wayes.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">About the rivers, vallies, holts, and crags,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Among the ozyers and the waving flags,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They merely pry, if any dens there be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where from the Sun might harbour crueltie:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or if they could the bones of any spy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or torne by beasts, or humane tyranny.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They close inquiry made in caverns blind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet what they look for would be death to find.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Right as a curious man that would descry,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Led by the trembling hand of Jealousy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If his fair wife have wrong'd his bed or no,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Meeteth his torment if he find her so.<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p> +<p>I cannot, however, refrain from pointing the venturesome +researcher,—with irony—may be not +Mephistophelian, but merely pyrrhonic,—to the dramatic +misfortunes of Bellario, Aspasia, and Evadne, +and other heroines of the dramatized romances in +which Beaumont and Fletcher's theatre of the Globe +was indulging at the time. And I would ask him +after he has read the sage advice of Remond to the +disconsolate shepherd, some two hundred lines further +down, to turn to Fletcher's poem of 1613 <i>Upon an +Honest Man's Fortune</i>, and decide whether the poet-philosopher +of the one is not very much of the same +opinion as the shepherd-philosopher of the other.<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> John Chamberlain to Mris. Carleton, 18 February, 1612-3, +in <i>State Papers (Domestic) James I</i>, LXXII, No. 30. Quoted by +Miss Sullivan, <i>Court Masques of James I</i>, p. 76 (1913).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> Foscarini in <i>Calendar of State Papers, Venetian</i>, XII, No. +832. Quoted by Miss Sullivan, <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 77.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> <i>Calendar State Papers (Domestic)</i>, 1611-1618, pp. 171, 172, +175.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Dugdale's <i>Origines Juridicales</i>, as cited by Dyce, <i>B. and F.</i>, +II, 453. Inderwick, <i>op. cit.</i>, II, xxxix-xlii, 72, 77, etc. Douthwaite, +<i>op. cit.</i>, 231. Nichols's <i>Progresses of King James</i>, II, 566, +591.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> <i>To Worthy Persons</i>, in the volume entitled <i>The Scourge of +Folly</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> Gordon Goodwin, in <i>The Muses' Library</i>, 1894, p. 132.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> See <i>Greenstreet Papers</i>, VIII, Fleay, <i>Hist. Stage</i>, 250.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> <i>Brit. Past.</i>, I, 1, 476.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, II, 2, 469.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> Li. 405-470.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, I, 3, 297-8.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, II, 2, 247-352.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, II, 2, 510-512.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Cf. especially <i>Brit. Past.</i>, II, 2, 706-732, with Fletcher's defiance +of poverty and independence of criticism in his poem, +<i>Upon an Honest Man's Fortune</i>.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER X</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">AN INTERSECTING CIRCLE OF JOVIAL SORT</p> + + +<p class="cap">Christopher Brooke of Lincoln's Inn enters +the circle of Beaumont's associates not only +as the advocate to whom Beaumont's friends in Shakespeare's +company of actors turn for counsel in an important +suit at law, and as the encomiast of Shakespeare +himself a year or two later:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He that from Helicon sends many a rill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose nectared veines are drunk by thirsty men,<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but as one of the pastoralists of the Inns of Court. +He was also a friend of Beaumont's older associates, +Jonson, Drayton, and Davies of Hereford. From an +unexpected quarter comes information of Brooke's intimacy +with still others who at various points impinged +upon Beaumont's career,—with Inigo Jones, +for instance, who designed the machinery for Beaumont's +<i>Masque</i>, and with Sir Henry Nevill, the father +of the Sir Henry who, a few years later, supplied the +publisher Walkley with the manuscript of Beaumont +and Fletcher's <i>A King and No King</i>. When we let +ourselves in upon the elder Sir Henry carousing at +the Mitre with Brooke and Jones, and others known +to Beaumont as members of the Mermaid, in a famous +symposium held some time between 1608 and September +1611, we begin to feel that it was not by mere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> +accident that the manuscript <i>of A King and No King</i> +fell into the hands of the Nevill family. Sir Henry +the elder, of Billingbear, Berkshire, was a relative of +Sir Francis Bacon, and a friend of Davies of Hereford, +and of Ben Jonson, who dedicated to Nevill about +1611 one of his most graceful epigrams; probably, +also, of Francis Beaumont's brother John, who wrote +a graceful tribute to the memory of one of the gentlewomen +of the family, Mistress Elizabeth Nevill. +This Sir Henry was an influential member of Parliament, +a statesman, a courtier, and a diplomat, as well +as a patron of poets. He came near being Secretary +of the realm. It is his name that we find scribbled +with those of Bacon and Shakespeare, about 1597, +possibly by Davies of Hereford, the admirer of all +three, over the cover of the <i>Northumbrian Manuscript</i> +of "Mr. Ffrauncis Bacon's" essays and speeches. +Sir Henry did not die till 1615, and it is more than +likely that the play, <i>A King and No King</i>, which +was acted about 1611, and of which his family held +the manuscript, had his "approbation and patronage" +as well as that of Sir Henry the younger "to the +commendation of the authors"; and that both father +and son knew Beaumont and Fletcher well.</p> + +<p>The Mitre Inn, a common resort of hilarious Templars, +still stands at the top of Mitre Court, a few yards +back from the thoroughfare of Fleet Street.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 313px;"><a name="image146" id="image146"></a> +<img src="images/image08.jpg" width="313" height="500" alt="FRANCIS BACON +From the portrait by Paul Van Somer in the National Portrait Gallery, London" title="FRANCIS BACON +From the portrait by Paul Van Somer in the National Portrait Gallery, London" /> +<span class="caption">FRANCIS BACON<br /> +<span class="smtext">From the portrait by Paul Van Somer in the National Portrait Gallery, London</span></span> +</div> + +<p>The symposium to which I have referred is celebrated +in a copy of macaronic Latin verses, entitled +<i>Mr. Hoskins, his Convivium Philosophicum</i>;<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> and I +may be pardoned if I quote from the contemporary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> +translation by John Reynolds of New College, the +opening stanzas, since one is set to wondering how +many other of the jolly souls "convented," beside +Brooke and Jones and Nevill, our Beaumont knew.—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Whosoever is contented<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That a number be convented,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Enough but not too many;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The <i>Miter</i> is the place decreed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For witty jests and cleanly feed,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The betterest of any.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"><br class="noshow" /> +<span class="i0">There will come, though scarcely current,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Christopherus surnamèd <i>Torrent</i><br /></span> +<span class="i1">And John yclepèd <i>Made</i>;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Arthur <i>Meadow-pigmies'-foe</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0">To sup, his dinner will forgoe—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Will come as soon as bade.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"><br class="noshow" /> +<span class="i0">Sir Robert <i>Horse-lover</i> the while,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Ne let</i> Sir Henry <i>count it vile</i><br /></span> +<span class="i1">Will come with gentle speed;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And <i>Rabbit-tree-where-acorn-grows</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And John surnamèd <i>Little-hose</i><br /></span> +<span class="i1">Will come if there be need.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"><br class="noshow" /> +<span class="i0">And Richard <i>Pewter-Waster</i> best<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Henry <i>Twelve-month-good</i> at least<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And John <i>Hesperian</i> true.<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> +<span class="i0">If any be desiderated<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He shall be amerciated<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Forty-pence in issue.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"><br class="noshow" /> +<span class="i0">Hugh the <i>Inferior-Germayne</i>,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor yet unlearnèd nor prophane<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Inego <i>Ionicke-pillar</i>.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But yet the number is not righted:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If Coriate bee not invited,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The jeast will want a tiller.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In his edition of Aubrey's <i>Brief Lives</i>, Dr. Clark +supplies the glossary to these punning names. <i>Torrent</i> +is, of course, Brooke. Johannes <i>Factus</i>, or +<i>Made</i>, is Brooke's chamber-fellow of Lincoln's Inn, +John Donne; and Donne is the great friend and correspondent +in well known epistles of Henry <i>Twelve-month-good</i>, +the Sir Henry Goodere, or Goodeere, +who married Frances (Drayton's Panape), one of the +daughters of "the first cherisher of Drayton's muse." +<i>Ne-let</i> Sir Henry <i>count it vile</i> is the elder Nevill under +cover of his family motto, <i>Ne vile velis</i>. Inigo Jones, +<i>Ionicke-pillar</i> is even more thinly disguised in the +Latin original as Ignatius <i>architectus</i>, Hugh Holland +(the <i>Inferior-Germayne</i>) was of Beaumont's +Mermaid Club, the writer—beside other poems—of +commendatory verses for Jonson's <i>Sejanus</i> in 1605, +and of the sonnet <i>Upon the Lines and Life</i> of that other +frequenter of the Mermaid, "sweet Master Shakespeare." +Holland's "great patronesse," by the way, +was the wife of Sir Edward Coke of Beaumont's +Inner Temple, whose daughter married Beaumont's +kinsman, Sir John Villiers; and it was by the great +Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, that Holland was introduced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> +to King James. Also, of the Mermaid in +Beaumont's time was Tom Coryate, the "legge-stretcher +of Odcombe" without whose presence this +Convivium Philosophicum would "want its tiller." +Of the Mermaid, too, was Richard Martin (the +<i>Pewter-waster</i>). He was fond of the drama; had +organized a masque at the Middle Temple at the +time of the Princess Elizabeth's marriage; and it is +to him that Ben Jonson dedicates the folio of <i>The +Poetaster</i> (1616). In 1618, as Recorder of London, +he was the bosom friend of Brooke, Holland, and +Hoskins: he died of just such a "symposiaque" as +this, a few years later, and he lies in the Middle Temple. +Last, comes the reputed author of these macaronic +Latin verses of the Mitre, John Hoskins himself +(surnamed <i>Little-hose</i>). He had been a freshman of +the Middle Temple in the year when Beaumont was +beginning at the Inner. He was an incomparable +writer of drolleries, over which we may be sure that +Beaumont many a time held his sides,—a wag whose +"excellent witt gave him letters of commendacion to all +ingeniose persons," a great friend of Beaumont's Jonson, +and of Raleigh, Donne, Selden, Camden, and Daniel.</p> + +<p>Of the participants in Serjeant Hoskins's <i>Convivium +Philosophicum</i>, we find, then, that several were of +those who came into personal contact with Beaumont, +and that of the rest, nearly all moved in the field of +his acquaintance. Concerning a few, Arthur <i>Meadow-pigmies'-foe</i> +(Cranefield), Sir Robert <i>Horse-lover</i> +(Phillips), <i>Rabbit-tree-where-acorn-grows</i> (Conyoke +or Connock), and John <i>Hesperian</i> (West), I have no +information pertinent to the subject.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> <i>The Ghost of Richard III</i>, I, viii (1614).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> In <i>Cal. State Papers (Dom.)</i>, under Sept. 2, 1611, I find +"Description by Ralph Colphab [Thomas Cariat] of Brasenose +College, Oxford, of a philosophical feast the guests at which +were Chris Brook, John Donne," and others in exactly the order +given below, save for one error. "In Latin Rhymes." Dr. A. +Clark in his Aubrey's <i>Brief Lives</i>, II, 50-51, gives the Latin +verses from an old commonplace book in Lincoln College +Library, "authore Rodolpho Calsabro, Aeneacense"; but prefers +the attribution of another old copy, owned by Mr. Madan of +Brasenose, "per Johannem Hoskyns, London." The translation +by Reynolds, who died in 1614, is also given by Dr. Clark.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XI</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">BEAUMONT AND SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S DAUGHTER; RELATIONS +WITH OTHER PERSONS OF NOTE</p> + + +<p class="cap">Glimpses of the more personal relations of +Beaumont with the world of rank and fashion, +and to some extent of his character, are vouchsafed +us in the few non-dramatic verses that may with certainty +be ascribed to him. Unfortunately for our purpose, +most of those included in the <i>Poems</i>, "by Francis +Beaumont, Gent.," issued by Blaiklock in 1640 +and printed again in 1653, and among <i>The Golden +Remains</i> "of those so much admired Dramatick Poets, +Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gents.," in +1660, are, as I have already said, by other hands than +his: some of them by his brother, Sir John, and by +Donne, Jonson, Randolph, Shirley, and Waller. Of +the juvenile amatory lyrics, addresses, and so-called +sonnets in these collections, it is not likely that a single +one is by him; for in an epistle to Sidney's daughter, +the Countess of Rutland, written when he was evidently +of mature years and reputation,—let us suppose, +about 1611, Beaumont says:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I would avoid the common beaten ways<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To women usèd, which are love or praise.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As for the first, the little wit I have<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is not yet grown so near unto the grave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But that I can, by that dim fading light,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Perceive of what or unto whom I write.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>Let others, "well resolved to end their days With a +loud laughter blown beyond the seas,"—let such</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Write love to you: I would not willingly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be pointed at in every company,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As was that little tailor, who till death<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was hot in love with Queen Elizabeth.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And for the last, in all my idle days<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I never yet did living woman praise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In prose or verse.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A sufficient disavowal, this, of the foolish love songs +attributed to him by an uncritical posterity.</p> + +<p>As for this "strange letter," as he denominates it, +from which I have quoted, the sincere, as well as +brusque, humour attests more than ordinary acquaintance +with, and genuine admiration of, Elizabeth, the +poetic and only child of Sir Philip Sidney. The Countess +lived but twenty-five miles north-west of Charnwood, +and in the same country of Leicestershire. One +can see the towers from the heights above Grace-Dieu. +The Beaumonts undoubtedly had been at Belvoir, +time and again. "If I should sing your praises in +my rhyme," says he to her of the "white soul" and +"beautiful face,"</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I lose my ink, my paper and my time<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And nothing add to your o'erflowing store,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And tell you nought, but what you knew before.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor do the virtuous-minded (which I swear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Madam, I think you are) endure to hear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their own perfections into question brought,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But stop their ears at them; for, if I thought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You took a pride to have your virtues known,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(Pardon me, madam) I should think them none.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>Many a writer of the day agreed with Beaumont +concerning Elizabeth Sidney,—"every word you speak +is sweet and mild." She, said Jonson to Drummond +of Hawthornden, "was nothing inferior to her father +in poesie"; she encouraged it in others. But her husband, +Roger, fifth Earl of Rutland, though a lover of +plays himself, does not appear to have favoured his +Countess's patronage of literary men. He burst in +upon her, one day when Ben Jonson was dining with +her, and "accused her that she kept table to poets." +Of her excellence Jonson bears witness in four poems. +Most pleasantly in that Epistle included in his <i>The +Forrest</i>, where speaking of his tribute of verse, he +says:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">With you, I know my off'ring will find grace:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For what a sinne 'gainst your great father's spirit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Were it to think, that you should not inherit<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His love unto the Muses, when his skill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Almost you have, or may have, when you will?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wherein wise Nature you a dowrie gave,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Worth an estate treble to that you have.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beauty, I know is good, and blood is more;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Riches thought most: but, Madame, think what store<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The world hath scene, which all these had in trust,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And now lye lost in their forgotten dust.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And in an Epigram<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> <i>To the Honour'd —— Countesse +of ——</i>, evidently sent to her during the absence +of her husband on the continent, he compliments her +conduct,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Not only shunning by your act, to doe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ought that is ill, but the suspition too,—<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>at a time when others are following vices and false +pleasures. But "you," he says,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7">admit no company but good,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And when you want those friends, or neare in blood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or your allies, you make your bookes your friends,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And studie them unto the noblest ends,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Searching for knowledge, and to keepe your mind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The same it was inspired, rich, and refin'd.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Among other admirers of the Countess of Rutland +was Sir Thomas Overbury, who, according to Ben +Jonson, was "in love with her." Beaumont would +have known the brilliant and ill-starred Overbury, of +Compton Scorpion, who was not only an intimate of +Jonson's, but a devoted admirer of their mutual +friend, Sir Henry Nevill of Billingbear.</p> + +<p>And if Beaumont was on terms of affectionate +familiarity with Sidney's daughter, he could not but +have known Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pembroke, +as well, the idol of William Browne's epitaph, +and of his old friend Drayton's eulogy, on the "Fair +Shepherdess,"</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To whom all shepherds dedicate their lays,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And on her altars offer up their bays.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"In her time Wilton house," says Aubrey, "was +like a College; there were so many learned and +ingeniose persons. She was the greatest patronesse of +witt and learning of any lady in her time." And if +Beaumont knew the mother, then, also, William +Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, the son, to whom his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> +master, Jonson, dedicates in 1611, the tragedy of +<i>Catiline</i>, prefaced, as we have already observed, by +verses of Beaumont himself.</p> + +<p>Whatever Rutland's objection may have been to his +Countess's patronage of poets, we may be sure that +that lady's attitude toward Beaumont and his literary +friends was seconded by her husband's old friend the +Earl of Southampton, with whom in earlier days Rutland +used to pass away the time "in London merely in +going to plaies every day." Southampton had remained +a patron of Burbadge, Shakespeare, and the +like. And when he died in 1624, we find not only +Beaumont's acquaintance, Chapman, but Beaumont's +brother, joining in the chorus of panegyric to his memory. +"I keep that glory last which is the best," writes +Sir John,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The love of learning which he oft express'd<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In conversation, and respect to those<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who had a name in arts, in verse, in prose.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Since Southampton was "a dear lover and cherisher +as well of the lovers of poets as of the poets themselves"<a name="FNanchor_98_98" id="FNanchor_98_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> +we may figure not only the two Beaumonts +but their beloved Countess participating in such discussion +of noble themes,—if not in London, then at +Belvoir Castle or Titchfield House or Grace-Dieu +Priory. If at Belvoir, Leland, the traveler, helps us +to the scene. The castle, he says "standyth on the +very knape of an highe hille, stepe up eche way, partely +by nature, partely by working of mennes handes, as it +may evidently be perceived. Of the late dayes [1540],<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> +the Erle of Rutland hath made it fairer than ever it +was. It is straunge sighte to se be how many steppes +of stone the way goith up from the village to the +castel. In the castel be 2 faire gates, And its dungeon +is a fair rounde tour now turnid to pleasure, as a +place to walk yn, to se at the countery aboute, and +raylid about the round [waull, and] a garden [plot] in +the middle."<a name="FNanchor_99_99" id="FNanchor_99_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a> One sees Francis toiling up the "many +steps," received by his Countess and the rest, and rejoicing +with them in the view of the twenty odd family +estates from the garden on the high tower.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Returning to Francis Beaumont's epistle to the +Countess of Rutland, we observe that it concludes with +a promise:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But, if your brave thoughts, which I must respect<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Above your glorious titles, shall accept<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These harsh disorder'd lines, I shall ere long<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dress up your virtues new, in a new song;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet far from all base praise and flattery,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Although I know what'er my verses be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They will like the most servile flattery shew,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If I write truth, and make the subject you.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The opportunity for "the new song" came in a manner +unexpected, and, alas, too soon. In August 1612, +but a brief month or so after she had been freed by +her husband's death from the misery of an unhappy +marriage, she was herself suddenly carried off by +some mysterious malady. According to a letter of +Chamberlain to Sir R. Winwood, "Sir Walter Raleigh<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> +is slandered to have given her certaine Pills that +despatch'd her." That, Sir Walter, even with the +best intent in the world, could not have done in person, +for he was in the Tower at the time. Perhaps the +medicine referred to was one of those "excellent receipts" +for which Raleigh and his half-brother, Adrian +Gilbert, were famous. The chemist Gilbert was living +in those days with the Countess of Rutland's aunt, at +Wilton.</p> + +<p>Three days after the death of the lady whom he +so revered, Beaumont poured out his grief in verses +justly praised as</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A Monument that will then lasting be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When all her Marble is more dust than she.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That is what John Earle, writing after Beaumont's +own death, some four years later, says of the <i>Elegy +on the Death of the Virtuous Lady, Elizabeth, Countess +of Rutland</i>. And so far as the elegy proper is +concerned,—that is to say, the first half of the poem, +ere it blazes into scathing indictment of the physicians +who helped the Countess to her grave,—I fully agree +with Earle. Here is poetry of the heart, pregnant +with pathos, not only of the untimely event—she was +but twenty-seven years old,—but of the unmerited +misfortune that had darkened the brief chapter of her +existence: her father's death while she was yet in infancy,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ere thou knewest the use of tears<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sorrow laid up against thou cam'st to years;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>sorrow in her wedded life,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">As soon as thou couldst apprehend a grief,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There were enough to meet thee; and the chief<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blessing of women, marriage, was to thee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nought but a sacrament of misery.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And then,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Why didst thou die so soon? Oh, pardon me!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I know it was the longest life to thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That e'er with modesty was call'd a span,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since the Almighty left to strive with man.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In this threnody of wasted loveliness and innocence, +we have our most definite revelation of Beaumont's +personality as a man among men: his tenderness, his +fervid friendship, his passionate reverence for spotless +womanhood and the sacrament of holy marriage +(Jonson has given us the facts about her loathsome +husband); his admiration of the chivalric great—as +of the hero whose life was ventured and generously +lost at Zutphen "to save a land," his contempt for +pedantic stupidity and professional ineptitude, his faith +in the "everlasting" worth of poetic ideals, his realization +of the vanity of human wishes and of the counter-balancing +dignity, the cleasing poignancy, of human +sorrow; his reluctant but profound submission to the +decree of "the wise God of Nature"; his acceptance +of the inexplicable irony of life and of the crowning +mercy:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I will not hurt the peace which she should have<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By looking longer in her quiet grave,—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>the consummation that all his heroines of tortured<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> +chastity, the Bellarios, Arethusas, Aspasias, Pantheas, +Uranias, of his mimic world, devoutly desired. And as +a revelation of his poetic temper, perhaps all the more +for its accessory bitterness and rhetorical conceits, this +elegy is as valuable a piece of documentary evidence +as exists outside of Beaumont's dramatic productions. +It displays not a few of the characteristics which distinguish +him as a dramatist from Fletcher: his preference +in the best of their joint-plays for serious poetic +theme, his realist humour and bold satiric force, his +quiverful of words and rhythmical sequence, his creative +imagery, his lines of vivid, final spontaneity,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sorrow can make a verse without a Muse;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and "Thou art gone,"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Gone like the day thou diedst upon, and we<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May call that back again as soon as thee.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In still another way the lines on the death of Sidney's +daughter are instructive. Its noble tribute to +Sidney's <i>Arcadia</i> is payment of a debt manifest in +more than one of the dramas to which Beaumont had +contributed. Of Sir Philip, Beaumont here writes:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He left two children, who for virtue, wit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beauty, were lov'd of all,—thee and his writ:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Two was too few; yet death hath from us took<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thee, a more faultless issue than his book,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which, now the only living thing we have<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From him, we'll see, shall never find a grave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As thou hast done. Alas, would it might be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That books their sexes had, as well as we,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That we might see this married to the worth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And many poems like itself bring forth.<br /></span> +</div></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p> +<p>The <i>Arcadia</i> had already brought forth offspring: in +prose, Greene's <i>Menaphon</i> and <i>Pandosto</i>, and Lodge's +<i>Rosalynde</i>; in verse, Day's <i>Ile of Guls</i>. It had +fathered, immediately, the subplot of Shakespeare's +<i>King Lear</i>,—and, indirectly, portions of the <i>Winter's +Tale</i>, and <i>As You Like It</i>, and of other Elizabethan +plays.<a name="FNanchor_100_100" id="FNanchor_100_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> Within the twelve months immediately preceding +August 1612, it had inspired also, as we have +already observed, Beaumont and Fletcher's <i>Cupid's +Revenge</i>, the finest scenes in which are Beaumont's +dramatic adaptation of romantic characters and motives +furnished by Sir Philip. And from that same +"faultless issue," the <i>Arcadia</i>, virtue, art, and beauty, +loved of all, had earlier still been drawn by Beaumont, +certainly for <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, and, perhaps, for +<i>Philaster</i> as well.</p> + +<p>The acquaintance with the Rutland family was continued +after the death of Francis by his brother +John, and his sister Elizabeth. The Nymph "of +beauty most divine ... whose admirèd vertues draw +All harts to love her" in John's poem, <i>The Shepherdess</i>, +is Lady Katharine Manners, daughter of Francis, +sixth Earl of Rutland, and now the wife of George +Villiers, Marquis of Buckingham; and the Shepherdess +herself "who long had kept her flocks On stony Charnwood's +dry and barren rocks," the country dame "For +singing crowned, whence grew a world of fame +Among the sheep cotes," is Elizabeth Beaumont of +Grace-Dieu, back on a visit from her Seyliard home<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> +in Kent. She had wandered into the summer place +of the Rutlands and Buckinghams near the Grace-Dieu +priory—"watered with our silver brookes," and +had been welcomed and had sung for them. And now +John repays the courtesy with indirect and graceful +compliment.</p> + +<p>With the Villiers family, as I have earlier intimated, +the Beaumonts were connected not only by acquaintance +as county gentry but by ties of blood. Sir George +Villiers, a Leicestershire squire, had married for his +second wife, about 1589, Maria Beaumont, a relative +of theirs, who had been brought up by their kinsmen +of Coleorton Hall to the west of them on the other side +of the ridge. It will be remembered that one of those +Coleorton Beaumonts, Henry, was an executor of +Judge Beaumont's will in 1598. The father of the +Maria, or Mary, Beaumont whom Henry Beaumont +nurtured as a waiting gentlewoman in his household, +was his second cousin, Anthony Beaumont of Glenfield +in Leicestershire. While Maria was living at the Hall, +the old Knight, Sir George Villiers of Brooksby, recently +widowed, visited his kinswoman, Eleanor Lewis, +Henry's wife, at Coleorton, "found there," writes a +contemporary, Arthur Wilson, "this young gentlewoman, +allied, and yet a servant of the family," was +fascinated by her graces and made her Lady Villiers. +This Sir George Villiers was of an old and distinguished +family. Leland mentions it first among the +ten families of Leicestershire, "that be there most of +reputation."<a name="FNanchor_101_101" id="FNanchor_101_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> And he says "The chiefest house of +the Villars at this time is at Brokesby in Leicestershire,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> +lower by four miles than Melton, on the higher ripe +[bank] of Wreke river. There lie buried in the +church divers of the Villars. This Villars [of 1540] +is lord of Hoby hard-by, and of Coneham in Lincolnshire.... +He is a man of but two hundred marks of +land by the year." This "Villars" was the father of +the Sir George who married Maria Beaumont. +Brooksby, near Melton Mowbray, is only two or three +hours' drive from Coleorton.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"><a name="image160" id="image160"></a> +<img src="images/image09.jpg" width="500" height="351" alt="GEORGE VILLIERS, FIRST DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, AND FAMILY +From the painting by Honthorst in the National Portrait Gallery" title="GEORGE VILLIERS, FIRST DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, AND FAMILY +From the painting by Honthorst in the National Portrait Gallery" /> +<span class="caption">GEORGE VILLIERS, FIRST DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, AND FAMILY<br /> +<span class="smtext">From the painting by Honthorst in the National Portrait Gallery</span></span> +</div> + +<p>The children of this marriage, John, George, and +Christopher, were but a few years younger than the +young Beaumonts of Grace-Dieu; and there would +naturally be some coming and going between the Villiers +children of Brooksby and their Beaumont kin +of Coleorton and Grace-Dieu. George, the second son, +born in 1592, through whom the fortunes of the family +were achieved, was introduced to King James in August +1614. This youth of twenty-two had all the +graces of the Beaumont as well as the Villiers blood. +"He was of singularly prepossessing appearance," says +Gardiner, "and was endowed not only with personal +vigour, but with that readiness of speech which James +delighted in." It was his mother, Maria, now the +widowed Lady Villiers, who manœuvred the meeting. +Her husband's estates had gone to the children of the +first marriage: George was her favourite son and she +staked everything upon his success. James took to +him from the first; the same year he made him cup-bearer; +the next, Gentleman of the Bed-chamber, and +knighted him and gave him a pension. We may imagine +that Francis Beaumont and his brother John +watched the promotion of their kinsman with keen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> +interest. But his phenomenal career was only then +beginning. In 1616, a few months after Francis had +died, Sir George Villiers was elevated to the peerage +as Viscount Villiers. By 1617 this devoted "Steenie" +of his "dear Dad and Gossop," King James, is Earl +of Buckingham, and now,—that Somerset has fallen,—the +most potent force in the kingdom; in 1618 he +is Marquis, and in 1623, Duke,—and for some years +past he has been enjoying an income of £15,000 a +year from the lands and perquisites bestowed upon +him. Meanwhile his brother, John, has, in 1617, married +a great heiress, the daughter of Sir Edward Coke +of Beaumont's Inner Temple, and in 1619 has become +Viscount Purbeck; his mother, the intriguing Maria, +has been created Countess of Buckingham, in her own +right; in due time his younger brother, the stupid +Christopher, is made Earl of Anglesey. And Buckingham +takes thought not for his immediate family +alone: In 1617 "Villiers' kinsman [Hen] Beaumont +was to have the Bishopric of Worcester, but failed";<a name="FNanchor_102_102" id="FNanchor_102_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> +in 1622 his cousin, Sir Thomas Beaumont of Coleorton, +the son of the Sir Henry<a name="FNanchor_103_103" id="FNanchor_103_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> who cared for Villiers' +mother in her indigence, is created Viscount Beaumont +of Swords; and in 1626, John Beaumont of Grace-Dieu +is dubbed knight-baronet.</p> + +<p>In 1620, the Marquis of Buckingham had married +Katharine Manners, the daughter and sole heiress of +Francis, Earl of Rutland. It was a love match; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> +John Beaumont celebrated it with a glowing epithalamium, +praying for the speedy birth of a son</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Who may be worthy of his father's stile,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May answere to our hopes, and strictly may combine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The happy height of Villiers race with noble Rutland's line.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Soon afterwards and before 1623, John Beaumont's +<i>Shepherdesse</i>, spoken of above, was written. Beside +the Nymph, the Marchioness of Buckingham, those +whom the poem describes as living in "our dales,"—and +welcoming Elizabeth Beaumont,—are the father +of the Marchioness, the Earl of Rutland, "his lady," +Cicely (Tufton), the stepmother of Katharine Manners,—and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Another lady, in whose brest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">True wisdom hath with bounty equal place,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As modesty with beauty in her face:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She found me singing Flora's native dowres<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And made me sing before the heavenly pow'rs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For which great favour, till my voice be done,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I sing of her, and her thrice noble son.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This other lady, so wise, and bounteous to John Beaumont, +is the Countess of Buckingham, who when +John and our Francis were boys, was poor cousin +Maria of the Coleorton Beaumonts. To the Marquis +of Buckingham, "her thrice-noble sonne," John writes +many poetic addresses in later years: of the birth of a +daughter, Mall, "this sweete armefull"; of the birth +and death of his first son; of how in his "greatnesse," +George Villiers did not forget him:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">You, onely you, have pow'r to make me dwell<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In sight of men, drawne from my silent cell;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and of how Villiers had won him the recognition of +the King:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Your favour first th' anointed head inclines<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To heare my rurall songs, and read my lines.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>George Villiers, is "his patron and his friend." In +writing to the great Marquis and Duke, John Beaumont +never recalls the kinship; but in writing to the +less distinguished brother, the Viscount Purbeck, he +delicately alludes to it.</p> + +<p>In the fortunes of the Vauxes of Harrowden, the +Beaumonts would naturally have continued their interest. +Anne, imprisoned after the Gunpowder Plot, +was released at the end of six months. The family +persisted in its adherence to the Catholic faith and politics. +As late as Feb. 26, 1612, "Mrs. Vaux, Lord +(Edward) Vaux's mother, is condemned to perpetual +imprisonment, for refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance"; +and we observe that on March 21, of the same +year, "Lord Vaux is committed to the Fleet" for a +like refusal.<a name="FNanchor_104_104" id="FNanchor_104_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a> Young Lord Vaux got out of the Fleet, +in time married, and lived till 1661.</p> + +<p>Others of kin or family connection,—and of his own +age,—with whom Francis would be on terms of social +intercourse or even intimacy during his prime, were +his cousin, Robert Pierrepoint, who by 1601 was in +Parliament as member for Nottingham, and in 1615 +was High Sheriff of the shire; Henry Hastings, born<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> +in 1586, who since 1604 had been fifth Earl of Huntingdon, +and in May 1616 was to be of those appointed +for the trial of the Earl and Countess of Somerset; +Huntingdon's sister, Catherine (who was wife of +Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield), and his brother, +Edward, a captain in the navy, who the year after +Beaumont's death made the voyage to Guiana under +Sir Walter Raleigh; Huntingdon's cousin, and also +Beaumont's kinsman, Sir Henry Hastings, of whom +we have already heard as one of Father Gerard's converts +(a first cousin of Mrs. Elizabeth Vaux, and husband +of an Elizabeth Beaumont of Coleorton); Sir +William Cavendish, of the Pierrepoint connection, a +pupil of Hobbes, an intimate friend of James I, and a +leader in the society of Court, who was knighted in +1609, and in 1612 strengthened his position greatly by +marrying Christiana, daughter of Lord Bruce of Kinloss; +and that other young Cavendish, Sir William of +Welbeck, county Notts., who in 1611 was on his travels +on the continent under the care of Sir Henry +Wotton. With at least three of these scions of families +allied to the Beaumonts, Francis had been associated, +as I have already pointed out, by contemporaneity +at the Inns of Court.</p> + +<p>Neither the epistle to Elizabeth Sidney nor the elegy +on her death was included by Blaiklock in his foolish +book of so-called Beaumont poems. From the elegy +on Lady Markham's death, in 1609, there included, +we learn little of the poet's self—he had never seen +the lady's face, and is merely rhetoricizing. From the +elegy, also included by Blaiklock, "On the Death of +the Lady Penelope Clifton," on October 26, 1613, almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> +as artificial, we learn no more of Beaumont's +personality,—but we are led to conjecture some social +acquaintance with the distinguished family of her +father, Lord Rich, afterwards Earl of Warwick, and +of her husband, Sir Gervase Clifton, who had been specially +admitted to the Inner Temple in 1607; and the +conjecture is confirmed by the perusal of lines "to the +immortal memory of this fairest and most vertuous +lady" included in the works of Sir John Beaumont. +He writes as knowing Lady Penelope intimately,—the +sound of her voice, the fairness of her face, her high +perfections,—and as regretting that he had neglected +to utter his affection in verse "while she had lived":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">We let our friends pass idly like our time<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till they be gone, and then we see our crime.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>These poems on Lady Penelope Clifton forge still +another link between the Beaumonts and the Sidneys, +for Penelope's mother, the Lady Penelope Devereux, +daughter of Walter, first Earl of Essex, was Sidney's +<i>innamorata</i>, the Stella to his Astrophel.</p> + +<p>One may with safety extend the list of Beaumont's +acquaintances among the gentry and nobility by crediting +him with some of Fletcher's during the years in +which the poets were living in close association; not +only with Fletcher's family connections, the Bakers, +Lennards, and Sackvilles of Kent, but with those to +whom Fletcher dedicates, about 1609, the first quarto +of his <i>Faithfull Shepheardesse</i>: Sir William Skipwith, +for instance, Sir Walter Aston, and Sir Robert +Townshend. Of these the first, esteemed for his +"witty conceits," his "epigrams and poesies," was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> +admired and loved not only by Fletcher but by Beaumont's +brother as well—to whom we owe an encomium +evidently sincere:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">... A comely body, and a beauteous mind;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A heart to love, a hand to give inclin'd;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A house as free and open as the ayre;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A tongue which joyes in language sweet and faire, ...<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and more of the kind. Sir William was a not distant +neighbour of the Beaumonts, and was knighted, as we +have seen, at the same time and place as Henry of +Grace-Dieu; one may reasonably infer that his "house +as free and open as the ayre" at Cotes in Leicestershire +harboured Fletcher and the two Beaumonts on +more than one occasion. Sir Walter Aston of Tixall +in Staffordshire, the diplomat, of the Inner Temple +since 1600, had been, since 1603,<a name="FNanchor_105_105" id="FNanchor_105_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> the patron also of +Francis Beaumont's life-long friend, Drayton. And +that poet keeps up the intimacy for many years. +Writing, after 1627 when Sir Walter, now Baron +Aston of Forfar, was sent on embassy to Spain, he +says of Lady Aston that "till here again I may her +see, It will be winter all the year with me". In +1609 Sir Walter is a "true lover of learning," in +whom "as in a centre" Fletcher "takes rest," and +whose "goodness to the Muses" is "able to make a +work heroical." Of Sir Robert Townshend's relation +to our dramatists we know nothing save that +Fletcher says: "You love above my means to thank +ye." He came of a family that is still illustrious, and +for a quarter of a century he sat in Parliament.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p> +<p>Fletcher's closest friend, if we except Beaumont, +seems to have been Charles Cotton of Beresford, Staffordshire, +"a man of considerable fortune and high +accomplishments," the son of Sir George Cotton of +Hampshire. He owed his estates in Staffordshire, and +in Derbyshire as well, to his marriage with the daughter +of Sir John Stanhope. To him in 1639, as "the +noble honourer of the dead author's works and memory," +Richard Brome dedicates the quarto of Fletcher's +<i>Monsieur Thomas</i>. "Yours," he says, "is the worthy +opinion you have of the author and his poems; neither +can it easily be determined, whether your affection +to them hath made you, by observing, more able to +judge of them, than your ability to judge of them +hath made you to affect them deservedly, not partially.... +Your noble self (has) built him a more +honourable monument in that fair opinion you have +of him than any inscription subject to the wearing +of time can be." To this Charles Cotton, his cousin, +Sir Aston Cockayne, writes a letter in verse after +the appearance of the first folio of Beaumont and +Fletcher's plays, 1647, speaking of Fletcher as "your +friend and old companion" and reproaching him +for not having taken the pains to set the printers +right about what in that folio was Fletcher's, what +Beaumont's, what Massinger's,—"I wish as free you +had told the printers this as you did me." And it is +apparently to Cotton that Cockayne is alluding when, +upbraiding the publishers for not giving each of the +authors his due, he says, "But how came I (you +ask) so much to know? Fletcher's chief bosome-friend +informed me so." Elsewhere Cockayne describes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> +Fletcher and Massinger as "great friends"; +but the "bosome-friend" mentioned above cannot be +Massinger, for Massinger is one of those concerning +whose authorship "the bosome-friend" gives information.</p> + +<p>Cotton was a friend of Ben Jonson, Donne, and +Selden, also. To him it is, as a critic, and not to his +son, who was a poet, that Robert Herrick, born seven +years after Beaumont, writes:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For brave comportment, wit without offence,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Words fully flowing, yet of influence,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou art that man of men, the man alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Worthy the publique admiration:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who with thine owne eyes read'st what we doe write,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And giv'st our numbers euphonie and weight;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tell'st when a verse springs high, how understood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To be, or not, borne of the royall-blood.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What state above, what symmetrie below,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lives have, or sho'd have, thou the best can show.—<a name="FNanchor_106_106" id="FNanchor_106_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And it is likely that Cotton did the same for Fletcher +and Beaumont.</p> + +<p>Of Cotton, Fletcher's and, therefore, Beaumont's +friend, Lord Clarendon gives us explicit information: +"He had all those qualities which in youth raise men +to the reputation of being fine gentlemen: such a +pleasantness and gaiety of humour, such a sweetness +and gentleness of nature, and such a civility and delightfulness +in conversation, that no man in the Court +or out of it appeared a more accomplished person; all +these extraordinary qualifications being supported by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> +as extraordinary a clearness of courage, and fearlessness +of spirit, of which he gave too often manifestation." +In later life he was less happy in fortune and +in disposition, "and gave his best friends cause to +have wished that he had not lived so long." He passed +through the Civil War and died at the end of Cromwell's +protectorate, 1658.</p> + +<p>And of Robert Herrick, we may say that he, too, +was surely an acquaintance of our poets. He writes +many poems to Ben Jonson. To their other friend, +Selden, Fletcher's connection by the Baker alliance, +and Beaumont's associate in the Inner Temple, he +writes appreciatively:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Whose smile can make a poet, and your glance<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dash all bad poems out of countenance.<a name="FNanchor_107_107" id="FNanchor_107_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And of our dramatists themselves, he writes about +the same time that he is writing to Selden, in his +verses <i>To the Apparition of his Mistresse, calling him +to Elizium</i>,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Amongst which glories, crown'd with sacred bayes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And flatt'ring ivie, two recite their plaies—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beaumont and Fletcher, swans to whom all eares<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Listen while they, like syrens in their spheres,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sing their Evadne.<a name="FNanchor_108_108" id="FNanchor_108_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 414px;"><a name="image170" id="image170"></a> +<img src="images/image10.jpg" width="414" height="500" alt="JOHN SELDEN +From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London" title="JOHN SELDEN +From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London" /> +<span class="caption">JOHN SELDEN<br /> +<span class="smtext">From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London</span></span> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p> +<p>The Bohemian life on the Bankside, such as it was, +must have been brought to an end by Beaumont's marriage, +about 1613. By that time Beaumont had written +<i>The Woman-Hater</i>, <i>The Knight of the Burning +Pestle</i>, <i>The Maske</i>, and several poems; Fletcher, <i>The +Faithfull Shepheardesse</i> and three or four plays more; +the two in partnership, at least five plays; and Fletcher +had meanwhile collaborated with other dramatists in +from eight to eleven plays which do not now concern +us. As to the remaining dramas assigned to this period +and attributed by various critics to Beaumont and +Fletcher in joint-authorship, we shall later inquire. +Suffice it for the present to say that I do not believe +that the former had a hand in any of them, except +<i>The Scornful Ladie</i>.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> <i>Underwoods</i>, XLVIII.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98_98" id="Footnote_98_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a> Thomas Nashe, <i>Dedication of The Life of Jack Wilton</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99_99" id="Footnote_99_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a> <i>Itinerary</i>, Ed. L. T. Smith, Vol. I, 97.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100_100" id="Footnote_100_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a> See Greg's <i>Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Drama</i>, and my +former pupil, H. W. Hill's, <i>Sidney's Arcadia and the Elizabethan +Drama</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101_101" id="Footnote_101_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a> <i>Itinerary</i>, Vol. I, 21. See also, below, Appendix, Table A.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102_102" id="Footnote_102_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a> <i>Cal. State Papers, Domestic</i>, Chamberlain to Carleton, Jan. +4, 1617. The Villiers descent is given in Collins, <i>Peerage</i>, III, 762.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103_103" id="Footnote_103_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a> Sir Henry had petitioned ineffectually for the revival of the +viscounty at an earlier date. <i>Cal. St. Pa., Dom.</i>, Nov. 23, 1606; +see, also, reference in 1614. See also, below, Appendix, Table A.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104_104" id="Footnote_104_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a> <i>Calendar of State Papers</i> (Domestic), 1611-1617, under dates.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105_105" id="Footnote_105_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a> Elton, <i>Drayton</i>, p. 28.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106_106" id="Footnote_106_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a> <i>Hesperides</i>, Aldine edition of <i>Herrick</i>, II, 136.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107_107" id="Footnote_107_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a> <i>Hesperides</i>, Aldine edition, <i>Herrick</i>, I, 301.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108_108" id="Footnote_108_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a> <i>Op. cit.</i>, I, 329.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XII</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">BEAUMONT'S MARRIAGE AND DEATH; THE SURVIVING +FAMILY</p> + + +<p class="cap">In the 1653 edition of the "Poems; By Francis +Beaumont, Gent." there is one, ordinarily regarded +as of doubtful authorship, which, in default of +information to the contrary, I am tempted to accept +as his and to attach to it importance, as of biographical +interest. It purports to bear his signature "Fran. +Beaumont"; it bears for me the impress of his literary +style. Writing before August 1612, to the Countess +of Rutland, Beaumont had, as we have remarked, +disclaimed ever having praised "living woman in +prose or verse." In <i>The Examination of his Mistris' +Perfections</i>, the poem of which I speak, the writer +praises with all sincerity the woman of his love:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Stand still, my happinesse; and, swelling heart,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No more! till I consider what thou art.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Like our first parents in Paradise who "thought it +nothing if not understood," so the poet of his happiness—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Though by thy bountious favour I be in<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A paradice, where I may freely taste<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of all the vertuous pleasures which thou hast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">[I] wanting that knowledge, must, in all my blisse,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Erre with my parents, and aske what it is.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">My faith saith 'tis not Heaven; and I dare swear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If it be Hell, no pain of sence, is there;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sure, 't is some pleasant place, where I may stay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As I to Heaven go in the middle way.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wert thou but faire, and no whit vertuous,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou wert no more to me but a faire house<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hanted with spirits, from which men do them blesse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And no man will halfe furnishe to possesse:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or, hadst thou worth wrapt in a rivell'd skin,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'T were inaccessible. Who durst go in<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To find it out? for sooner would I go<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To find a pearle cover'd with hills of snow;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'T were buried vertue, and thou mightst me move<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To reverence the tombe, but not to love,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No more than dotingly to cast mine eye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon the urne where Lucrece' ashes lye.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">But thou art faire and sweet, and every good<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That ever yet durst mixe with flesh and blood:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Devill ne're saw in his fallen state<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An object whereupon to ground his hate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So fit as thee; all living things but he<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love thee; how happy, then, must that man be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whom from amongst all creatures thou dost take!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is there a hope beyond it? can he make<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A wish to change thee for? This is my blisse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let it run on now; I know what it is.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The poet of this tribute is not wooing, but worshiping +the woman won; reverently striving to comprehend +an ineffable joy. The poem is not of praises +such as Beaumont in his epistle <i>Ad Comitissam Rutlundiae</i> +contemns, praises "bestow'd at most need on +a thirsty soul." The writer, here, purports to examine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> +into his Mistress's perfections, but, like the +author of the epistle to the Countess, he examines not +at all,—he observes the reticence for which Beaumont +there had given the reason,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Nor do the virtuous-minded (which I swear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Madam, I think you are) endure to hear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their own perfections into question brought,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But stop their ears at them.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When the lines of the <i>Examination</i> are set beside the +undoubted poems of Beaumont, they appear, in rhetoric, +metaphor, and sentiment, to be of a type with +the two tributes to Lady Rutland; in vocabulary, +rhyme, and run-on lines, also, to be of one font with +them, and with the letter to Ben Jonson and the elegy +to Lady Clifton. When the lines are set beside those +of Beaumont's own phrasing in the dramas, one finds +that in their brief compass they echo the metaphor of +his Amintor, "my soul grows weary of her house,"—the +hyperbole of his Philaster, "I will sooner trust +the wind With feathers, or the troubled sea with +pearl,"—the passionate ecstasy of his Arbaces, "Here +I acknowledge thee, my hope ... a happinesse as +high as I could thinke ... Paradice is there!" The +tribute is a variant of those closing lines in <i>A King +and No King</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I have a thousand joyes to tell you of,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which yet I dare not utter, till I pay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My thankes to Heaven for um.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I date this poem, then 1612 or 1613, a year or two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> +after the play just mentioned and the epistle to Lady +Rutland; and I imagine with some confidence that it +was written by Beaumont for Ursula Isley, whom he +married about this time.</p> + +<p>Ursula's father, Henry Isley, belonged to a family +of landed gentry which had been seated since the reign +of Edward II in the parish of Sundridge, Kent. The +manor came to them from the de Freminghams in +1412. In 1554 Sir Harry Isley and his son, William, +who were prominent upholders of the reformed religion, +had joined hands with the gallant young Sir +Thomas Wyatt of Allington Castle—about seventeen +miles from Sundridge—in the rebellion which he +raised in protest against the proposed marriage of +Queen Mary with Philip of Spain. At Blacksole +Field, near Wrotham, half-way between Sundridge +and Allington, the Isley contingent was met and routed +by Sir Robert Southwell and Lord Abergavenny; and +the vast Isley estates were confiscated. A considerable +part was restored to William within a year or two. +But he falling into debt had to sell the larger portion; +and for the manor of Sundridge itself, he appears to +have paid fee farm rent to the Crown.</p> + +<p>By will, probably September 3, 1599, William's son, +Henry, left all his "manners, lands, tenements, and +hereditaments, in the countie of Kent or else where +within the realme of England, unto Jane my lovinge +wief in fee simple, viz<sup>t</sup> to her and her heires for ever, +to the end and purpose that she maye doe sell or +otherwise dispose at her discretion the same, or such +parte or soe much thereof as to her shall seeme fitt, +for the payement of all my just and true debts ...<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> +and also for the bringing up and preferment in marriage +of Ursula and Una, the two daughters or children +of her the said Jane, my lovinge wief." That the +children were not, however, stepdaughters of Henry, +is pointed out by Dyce, who quotes the manuscript of +Vincent's <i>Leicester</i>, 1619: "Ursula, the daughter +and coheir [evidently with Una] of Henry Isley."<a name="FNanchor_109_109" id="FNanchor_109_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> +In fact, Henry had named Ursula after his mother, the +daughter of Nicholas Clifford.</p> + +<p>It will be remembered that Beaumont's sister Elizabeth +became the wife of a Thomas Seyliard of Kent. +The Seyliards were one of the oldest families in the +vicinity of Sundridge; and Thomas would be of +Brasted, which adjoins Sundridge westward, a quarter +of a mile from Sundridge Place and near the river +Darenth; or of Delaware at the south of the parish; or +of Gabriels about a mile from there and seven miles +south of Sundridge; or of Chidingstone close by; or +Boxley.<a name="FNanchor_110_110" id="FNanchor_110_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> If Elizabeth was married before 1613, it +is easy to surmise that during some visit to her, Beaumont +was brought acquainted with Ursula Isley of +Sundridge Place. If not, we may refer the acquaintance +to sojournings with his friend, Fletcher, at Cranbrook +or at the Kentish homes of Fletcher's stepsisters, +or with their cousins, the Sackvilles.</p> + +<p>We have no proof that Francis Beaumont wrote +more than one drama after the Whitehall festivities +of February 1613. Two plays in which he is supposed +by some to have had a hand with Fletcher, <i>The +Captaine</i> and <i>The Honest Man's Fortune</i>, were acted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> +during that year; but I find no trace of Francis in the +latter and but slight possibility of it in the former. +We must conclude that from 1613 he lived as a country +gentleman. He would be much more likely to +take up his abode at Sundridge, which, as we have seen, +belonged to his wife and her sister, than at Grace-Dieu +Manor; for that was occupied by John Beaumont +who had four sons to provide for. It is, of +course, barely possible that one of his father's properties +in Leicestershire or Derby may have fallen to +him,—Cottons, for instance, in the latter county, or +that "Manner House of Normanton, and a close ther +called the Parke" mentioned in the Judge's will and +in which house-room was given by him to a "servaunte ... for +the tearme of eleaven yeares" beginning +1598. But the probabilities all point to the +manor house in Kent as the scene of Beaumont's closing +years.<a name="FNanchor_111_111" id="FNanchor_111_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a></p> + +<p>Sundridge Place lies, as we know, just south of +Chevening and west of Sevenoaks. The old manor +house in which, we may presume, Beaumont and Ursula +lived, and where his children were born, has long +since disappeared. But the old church, just north +of the Place, with its Early English and Perpendicular +architecture still stands much as in their day. The +old brass tablets to the Isleys of two centuries are +there, and the altar-tomb of the John Isley and his +wife who died a century before Beaumont was born. +Near this memorial we may imagine that Beaumont<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> +and Ursula sat of a Sunday; and through this same +picturesque graveyard, breathing peace, they would +pass home again. Some days they would take the +half-hour stroll across the forks of the Darenth, by +Combebank in the chalk hills and through the woods, +to Chevening House, and drink a cup with old Sampson +Lennard and his son, Sir Henry, and Fletcher's +stepsister Chrysogona (Grisogone), now Lord and +Lady Dacre, and make merry with their seven youngsters; +and, coming back by the Pilgrim's road that +makes for the shrine of the "holy blissful martir," +Beaumont would quote, from Speght's edition of +Chaucer which had appeared but thirteen years before, +something merry of the</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Well nyne and twenty in a companye,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In felawshipe, and pilgrims were they alle,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Or sometimes they would tramp across to Squerries +and fish in the Darenth for the bream of which Spenser +had written; perhaps, visit their sister Seyliard that +same evening.</p> + +<p>Another summer day, Francis would ride the ten +miles north toward Chislehurst (ashes of Napoleon +<i>le petit</i>!), and turn aside to pay his compliments to the +proprietor of Camden Place, Ben Jonson's friend the +antiquary. But we may suppose that more gladly and +frequently than to any other spot, this dramatist-turned-squire, +and settled down for health and leisure, +would head his horse for Knole; and, galloping the +hills through Chipstead and Sevenoaks up to the old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> +church that crowns the height, would steady to a trot +along the stately avenue of the Park amid its beeches +and sycamores,—resting his eye on broad sweeps of +pasture-land and distant groves, and thinking poetry,—to +be greeted within one short half-hour from the +time he left the Place, by that most hospitable nobleman +of the day, the noblest patron of poetry and art, +Richard Sackville, third Earl of Dorset. They would +pace—these two lovers of Ben Jonson, and worshippers +of the first dramatist-earl—the Great Hall, +together, talking of plays, of the burning of the Globe +while <i>Henry VIII</i> was on the boards, or of the opening +of the new Blackfriars, or of Overbury's poisoning, +and the scandalous marriage of Rochester and Lady +Essex, or of Sir Henry Nevill's chances in the matter +of the Secretaryship, or of Winwood's appointment, or +of Raleigh's grievances, or of the new favourite, young +Villiers of Brooksby, or of the long existing grievance +of Beaumont's Catholic cousins, in and after 1614 all +the more acute because of the hopes and fears thronging +that other subject of discussion which doubtless +would occupy a place in any conversation, the negotiations +of Don Diego Sarmiento for a Spanish Marriage. +Perhaps they would stretch their legs out to the fire +before the old andirons that had once been Henry +VIII's, and talk of the tragic romance of young William +Seymour and Lady Arabella Stuart, the cousin +alike of Robert Pierrepoint and his majesty, James I; +or of the indictment and fall of Somerset. Or they +would stroll to the chapel, and decipher the carvings +of the Crucifixion which Mary, Queen of Scots, had +given to the Earl's brother, now dead. Or the Earl<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> +would point out some new portrait of that wonderful +collection, then forming, of literary men in the dining-room, +and Beaumont would pass judgment upon +the presentment of some of his own contemporaries.</p> + +<p>Then down the drive by which the sheep are browsing +and the deer, like Agag delicately picking their +way, and back to Sundridge of the Isleys, and to +Ursula; maybe to an afternoon of lazy writing on +scenes that Fletcher has called for—perhaps the +posset-night of Sir Roger and Abigail for the beginning +of <i>The Scornful Ladie</i>.</p> + +<p>In 1614 or 1615, the poet's first child, a +daughter, was born and was appropriately named +after the two Elizabeths who had touched most closely +upon his life. But the days of wedded happiness—"This +is my blisse, Let it run on now!"—were brief. +On March 6, 1616, he died,—only thirty-one years +of age.<a name="FNanchor_112_112" id="FNanchor_112_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a></p> + +<p>The lines written to Lady Rutland, some five years +before,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">What little wit I have<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is not yet grown so near unto the grave,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But that I can, by that dim fading light,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Perceive of what, or unto whom I write,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>may have been conceived merely in humorous self-depreciation. +But when we couple them with the +epitaph written by John of Grace-Dieu "upon my +deare brother, Francis Beaumont,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">On Death, thy murd'rer, this revenge I take:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I slight his terrour, and just question make,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which of us two the best precedence have—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mine to this wretched world, thine to the grave.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou shouldst have followed me, but Death to blame<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Miscounted yeeres, and measur'd age by fame:<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>So dearely hast thou bought thy precious lines;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Their praise grew swiftly, so thy life declines.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy Muse, the hearer's queene, the reader's love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All eares, all hearts (but Death's), could please and move;—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>when we couple the dramatist's own words of his +"wit not yet grown so near unto the grave" with +these of his brother which I have italicized, and reflect +that for the last three years Francis seems to +have written almost nothing, we are moved to conjecture +that his early death was not unconnected with +an excessive devotion to his art, and that his health +had been for some time failing. As Darley long ago +pointed out,<a name="FNanchor_113_113" id="FNanchor_113_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> the lines of Bishop Corbet "on Mr. +Francis Beaumont (then newly dead)" may intend +more than a poetical conceit; and they would confirm +the probability suggested above.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He that hath such acuteness and such wit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As would ask ten good heads to husband it;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He that can write so well, that no man dare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Refuse it for the best, let him beware:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beaumont is dead; <i>by whose sole death appears,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Wit's a disease consumes men in few years</i>.—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And this conjecture is borne out by the portrait of +the weary Beaumont that now hangs in Nuneham.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></p> +<p>Three days after his death the dramatist was buried +in that part of Westminster Abbey which, since Spenser +was laid there to the left of Chaucer's empty +grave, had come to be regarded as the Poets' Corner. +Beaumont lies to the right of Chaucer's gray marble +on the east side of the South Transept in front of +St. Benedict's chapel. In what honour he was held +we gather from the consideration that, of poets, only +Chaucer and Spenser had preceded him to a resting +place in the Abbey; and that of his contemporaries, +only four writers of verse followed him: his brother, +Sir John, who died some eleven years later, and lies +beside him; his old friend, Michael Drayton, in 1631; +Hugh Holland, in 1633; and that friend of all four, +Ben Jonson, in 1637. On the "learned" or "historical" +side of the transept, across the way from the +poets, lie also only three of Beaumont's generation: +Casaubon the philologist, Hakluyt the voyager, +and Ben Jonson's master and benefactor—"most +reverend head, to whom I owe All that I am in acts, +all that I know,"—Camden the antiquary. "In the +poetical quarter," writes Addison, a hundred years +later, "I found there were poets who had no monuments, +and monuments which had no poets." Of +the former category is Beaumont; of the latter, the +alabaster bust of Drayton whose body lies under the +north wall of the nave, and the monument to Jonson, +who, having no one rich enough to "lay out funeral +charges upon him," stands, in accordance with his +own desire, on his "eighteen inches of square ground" +under a paving-stone in the north aisle of the nave,—and +the figure of their associate, Shakespeare, who,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> +though there was much talk of transporting his body +from Stratford in the year of his death and Beaumont's, +did not, even in "preposterous" effigy, join +his compeers of the Poets' Corner till more than a +century had elapsed. Upon Beaumont's grave Dryden's +lofty pile encroaches. Above the grave rises +the bust of Longfellow; and not far from Beaumont, +Tennyson and Browning were lately laid to rest.</p> + +<p>The verses, <i>On the Tombs in Westminster</i>, attributed +to our poet-dramatist, are of doubtful authorship, +but in diction and turn of thought they are +paralleled by more than one of the poems which we +have found to be his:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Mortality, behold, and feare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What a change of flesh is here!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thinke how many royall bones<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sleep within these heap of stones:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here they lye, had realmes and lands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who now want strength to stir their hands;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where from their pulpits, seal'd with dust,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They preach "In greatnesse is not trust."<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here's an acre sown, indeed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the richest, royall'st seed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That the earth did e're suck in<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since the first man dy'd for sin:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here the bones of birth have cry'd,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Though gods they were, as men they dy'd";<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here are sands, ignoble things,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here's a world of pomp and state<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Buried in dust, once dead by fate.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>If the lines are not by Francis, they still preach the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> +calm, deterministic spirit of his poems and his tragedies; +and they are worthy of him.</p> + +<p>Beaumont's surviving brother of Grace-Dieu continued +for many years to write epistolary, panegyric, +and religious poems, which won increasing favour +among scholars and at Court. They were collected +and published by his son, in 1629. Of his <i>Battle of +Bosworth Field</i>, which contains some genuinely poetic +passages, I have already spoken. In his lines to +James I <i>Concerning the True Forme of English Poetry</i>, +composed probably the year of Francis' death, +or the year after, he desiderates regularity of rhyme,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Pure phrase, fit epithets, a sober care<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of metaphors, descriptions cleare, yet rare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Similitudes contracted, smooth and round,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not vex't by learning, but with nature crown'd,—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>strong and unaffected language, and noble subject. +They made an impression upon his contemporaries in +verse; and, though he was but a minor poet, he has +come to be recognized as one of the "first refiners" +of the rhyming couplet,—a forerunner, in the limpid +style, of Waller, Denham, and Cowley. His translations +from Horace, Juvenal, Persius, and Prudentius +are done with spirit. His later poems set him before +us an eminently pious soul, kindly, courtly, and cultivated. +His greatest work, the <i>Crowne of Thornes</i>, +in eight books, is lost. It was evidently dedicated to +Shakespeare's Earl of Southampton, for in his elegy +on the Earl, 1624, he says:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Shall ever I forget with what delight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He on my simple lines would cast his sight?<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> +<span class="i0">His onely mem'ry my poore worke adornes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He is a father to my crowne of thornes:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now since his death how can I ever looke<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Without some tears, upon that orphan booke?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That this poem was printed we gather also from the +elegy of Thomas Hawkins upon Sir John.</p> + +<p>I have already said that John was raised by Charles +I, undoubtedly through the influence of the Duke of +Buckingham, to the baronetcy in 1626. He died only +a year or two later,<a name="FNanchor_114_114" id="FNanchor_114_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> and was lamented in verse by his +sons, and by poets and scholars of the day. On the +appearance of his poetical remains, Jonson wrote +"This booke will live; it hath a genius," and "I confesse +a Beaumont's booke to be The bound and frontire +of our poetrie." And Drayton—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There is no splendour, which our pens can give<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By our most labour'd lines, can make thee live<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like to thine owne.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In the commendatory poems, his friend, Thomas +Nevill,<a name="FNanchor_115_115" id="FNanchor_115_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> praises his goodness, his knowledge and his +art. Sir Thomas Hawkins of Nash Court, Kent,—connected +through Hugh Holland and Edmund Bolton +with the circle of Sir John's acquaintances,—emphasizes +the modesty, regularity, moral and religious +devotion no less of his life than of his poetry. +His sons rejoice that "His draughts no sensuall<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> +waters ever stain'd." His brother-in-law, George +Fortescue of Leicestershire, and others swell the +chorus of affection. He was, says the historian of +Leicestershire who knew him well,—William Burton, +the brother of that rector of Segrave, near by, who +wrote the <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i>,—he was "a gentleman +of great learning, gravity, and worthiness."</p> + +<p>Sir John was succeeded at Grace-Dieu by John, his +oldest son, who fought during the Civil War for King +Charles, and fell at the siege of Gloucester, in 1644. +Other sons were Gervase, who died in childhood, +Francis, who became a Jesuit, and Thomas, who succeeded +in 1644 to the family title and estates. The +Manor of Grace-Dieu passed finally to the Philips family +of Garendon Park, about four miles from Grace-Dieu +and half a mile from old Judge Beaumont's +property of Sheepshead. The founder of this family +at Garendon in 1682 was Sir Ambrose Philips,<a name="FNanchor_116_116" id="FNanchor_116_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> the +father of the Ambrose who wrote the <i>Pastorals</i> and +<i>The Distrest Mother</i>. From the Philipses the present +owners of Garendon and Grace-Dieu, the Phillipps de +Lisles, inherited. The old house is no longer standing. +But below the new Manor may be seen the ruins +of the Nunnery from which the Master of the Rolls +almost four centuries ago evicted Catherine Ekesildena +and her sister-nuns. It is interesting to note +that the name de Lisle, or Lisle, is but a variant of that +of Francis Beaumont's wife Isley (de Insula); and +that the present family came from the Isle of Wight +and Kent, Ursula Isley's native county. I have not, +however, yet been able to establish any direct connection<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> +between the Sundridge Isleys and the Phillipps +de Lisles who came into the Grace-Dieu estates +in 1777.</p> + +<p>The sister of the Beaumonts, Elizabeth, was about +twenty-four years old at the time of Francis' marriage +to Ursula Isley of Kent. The date of her wedding +to Thomas Seyliard does not appear; but before 1619 +she was settled in the same county, and within a few +miles of Chevening, Sundridge, and Knole. Of the +events of her subsequent life we know nothing. That +she cultivated poetry and the poets, however, may be +inferred, from various passages in Drayton's <i>Muses +Elizium</i>. In the third, fourth, and eighth <i>Nimphalls</i>, +written as late as 1630, the old poet introduces among +his nymphs,—singing in the "Poets Paradice," which, +I surmise, was terrestrially Knole Park,—the same +"Mirtilla" who in his eighth Eglog of 1606 was "sister +to those hopeful boys, ... Thyrsis and sweet +Palmeo." Only a year before the appearance of these +<i>Nimphalls</i> Drayton composed for the publication of +her elder brother's poems, a lament "To the deare +Remembrance of his Noble Friend, Sir John Beaumont, +Baronet." Mirtilla had outlived both Thyrsis +and Palmeo, but not the affection of their life-long admirer +and boon companion.</p> + +<p>The widow of the dramatist bore a child a few +months after the father's death, and named her +Frances. In 1619 Ursula administered her husband's +estate;<a name="FNanchor_117_117" id="FNanchor_117_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> and she probably continued to live with her +children at the family seat in Sundridge. The elder +daughter, Elizabeth, was married to "a Scotch colonel"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> +and was living in Scotland as late as 1682. +Frances was never married. She seems to have cherished +her father's fame as her richest possession. It +was, indeed, probably her only possession, save a +packet of his poems in manuscript which, we are told, +she carried with her to Ireland, but unfortunately +"they were lost at sea"<a name="FNanchor_118_118" id="FNanchor_118_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> on her return. In 1682 +she was "resident in the family of the Duke of +Ormonde," then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.<a name="FNanchor_119_119" id="FNanchor_119_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> She +appears to have attended the high-spirited and capable +Duchess, or other ladies of the Butler family, at the +Castle in Dublin, or the family seat in Kilkenny, as +companion. Under the protection of that loyal cavalier +and Christian statesman, James, Duke of Ormonde, +whose prayer was ever "for the relieving and +delivering the poor, the innocent, and the oppressed,"<a name="FNanchor_120_120" id="FNanchor_120_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> +she must have known happiness, for at any rate a +few years. She was retired by the Duke, apparently +after the death of the Duchess, in 1684, on a pension +of one hundred pounds a year; and this competence we +learn that she still enjoyed in 1700, when at the age of +eighty-four she was living in Leicestershire,—let us +hope in her father's old home of Grace-Dieu. She +may have survived to see the accession of Queen Anne. +We know merely that she died before 1711. Her life +bridges the space from the day of her father, Shakespeare's +younger contemporary, to that of her father's +encomiast, Dryden, and further still to that of Congreve, +Vanbrugh, Farquhar, and Addison; and we are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> +thus helped to realize that in the arithmetic of generations +Beaumont's times and thought are after all not +so far removed from our own. Two more such spans +of human existence would link his day with that of +Tennyson, Browning, and Swinburne.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109_109" id="Footnote_109_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a> <i>Works of B. and F.</i>, I, ii-iii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110_110" id="Footnote_110_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a> Hasted's <i>History of Kent</i> (1797), II, 433; III, 146, 154, 186.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111_111" id="Footnote_111_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a> For Sundridge and the Isleys, see Hasted's <i>Kent</i>, II, 513-521; +III, 128-132, 143-145; and <i>Cal, S. P.</i> (<i>Dom.</i>) Jan. 23, Feb. 24, +1554.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112_112" id="Footnote_112_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a> Jonson's statement to Drummond "ere he was thirty years of +age" is incorrect, or was misreported.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113_113" id="Footnote_113_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a> <i>Introduction to The Works of B. and F.</i>, ed. 1866, I, xviii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114_114" id="Footnote_114_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a> According to the Register of burials in Westminster Abbey, +1627; but some authorities say 1628. See Dyce, I, xxi; Chalmer's +<i>English Poets</i>, VI, 3, and Grosart's edition of his poems.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115_115" id="Footnote_115_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a> This is certainly not the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, +as Grosart opines,—for the simple reason that the Master +died thirteen years before Sir John.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116_116" id="Footnote_116_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a> Nichols, <i>Coll. Hist., Leic.,-Bibl. Top. Britt.</i>, VIII, 1329, 1341.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117_117" id="Footnote_117_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a> A. B. Grosart, in <i>D. N. B.</i>, art. <i>Francis Beaumont</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118_118" id="Footnote_118_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a> Preface to <i>B. and F.'s Works</i>, ed. 1711, p. 1.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119_119" id="Footnote_119_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a> Dyce, Vol. I, p. 211, from <i>MS., Vincent's Leicester</i>, 1683.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120_120" id="Footnote_120_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a> James Wills, <i>Lives of Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen</i>, +1841, Vol. III, Pt. ii, p. 244.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XIII</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">THE PERSONALITY, AND THE CONTEMPORARY REPUTATION +OF BEAUMONT</p> + + +<p class="cap">Our poet's contemporaries saw him, not as one of +my scholarly friends, Professor Herford, judging +apparently from the crude engraving of 1711,<a name="FNanchor_121_121" id="FNanchor_121_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a> +or from that of 1812, sees him, "of heavy and uninteresting +features," but as Swinburne saw him, probably +in Robinson's engraving of 1840, "handsome +and significant in feature and expression alike ... with +clear thoughtful eyes, full arched brows, and +strong aquiline nose with a little cleft at the tip; a +grave and beautiful mouth, with full and finely-curved +lips; the form of face a long pure oval, and +the imperial head, with its 'fair large front' and +clustering hair, set firm and carried high with an +aspect at once of quiet command and kingly observation";<a name="FNanchor_122_122" id="FNanchor_122_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> +as we see him to-day in the soft and speaking +photogravure<a name="FNanchor_123_123" id="FNanchor_123_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> recently made from the portrait at +Knole Park or in the reproduction of 1911<a name="FNanchor_124_124" id="FNanchor_124_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> of the +portrait which belongs to the Rt. Hon. Lewis Harcourt +at Nuneham,—a courtly gentleman of noble<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> +mien, of countenance dignified, beautiful, and mobile, +and of dreamy eyes somewhat saddened as by physical +suffering, or by sympathetic pondering on the mystery +of life. The original at Knole was already there, +in the time of Lionel, seventh Earl of Dorset, 1711, +and in default of information to the contrary we may +conclude that it has always been in the possession of +the Sackville family, and was painted for Beaumont's +contemporary, and I have ventured to surmise friend +as well as neighbour, Richard, third Earl of Dorset,—who +had succeeded to the earldom in 1609—about the +year of <i>Philaster</i>. I have already shown that the Sackvilles +were connected with the Fletchers by marriage. +They were also patrons of Beaumont's friends, Jonson +and Drayton. While the third Earl was still living, +poor old Ben writes to son, Edward Sackville, a +grateful epistle for succouring his necessities. And to +the same Edward, as fourth Earl,<a name="FNanchor_125_125" id="FNanchor_125_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> Drayton dedicated, +1630, the <i>Nimphalls</i> of his <i>Muses Elizium</i>, and to his +Countess, Mary, the <i>Divine Poems</i>, published therewith. +If, as others have conjectured, the Earl is himself +the Dorilus of the <i>Nimphalls</i>, the exquisite <i>Description +of Elizium</i> which precedes, may be, after +the fashion of the poets and painters of the Renaissance, +an idealized picture of Knole Park, where +Drayton probably had been received:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A Paradice on earth is found,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Though farre from vulgar sight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which, with those pleasures doth abound,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That it Elizium hight,—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span></p> +<p>of its groves of stately trees, its merle and mavis, its +daisies damasking the green, its spreading vines upon +the "cleeves," its ripening fruits:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The Poets Paradice this is,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To which but few can come;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Muses onely bower of blisse,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Their Deare Elizium.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It was the widow of the third Earl, Anne (Clifford), +Countess of Dorset and, afterwards, of Pembroke and +Montgomery,<a name="FNanchor_126_126" id="FNanchor_126_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a> who erected the monument to Drayton +in the Poets' Corner. That Beaumont was acquainted +with this family of poets and patrons of art is, therefore, +in every way more than probable; and there +is a poetic pleasure in the reflection that the family +still retains, in the house which Beaumont probably +often visited, this noble presentment of the dramatist.</p> + +<p>The portrait at Nuneham, which I have mentioned +above, is not so life-like as that at Knole: it lacks the +shading. But it is for us most expressive: it is that +of an older man, spade-bearded, of broader brow, +higher cheek-bones, and face falling away toward the +chin; of the same magnanimity and grace, but with +eyes more almond-shaped and sensitive, and eloquent +of illness. It is the likeness of Beaumont approaching +the portals of death.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 415px;"><a name="image192" id="image192"></a> +<img src="images/image11.jpg" width="415" height="500" alt="By permission of Mr. Lewis Harcourt. +THE BEAUMONT OF THE NUNEHAM PORTRAIT" title="By permission of Mr. Lewis Harcourt. +THE BEAUMONT OF THE NUNEHAM PORTRAIT" /> +<p class="artistl">By permission of Mr. Lewis Harcourt.</p> +<div class="bbox"> +<p class="imtitle">THE BEAUMONT<br /> +<span class="tinytext">OF THE</span><br /> +NUNEHAM PORTRAIT</p> +</div></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span></p> +<p>Of the personality of Beaumont we have already +had glimpses through the window of his non-dramatic +poems. His letter to Ben Jonson has revealed him +chafing in enforced exile from London, amusedly tolerant +of the "standing family-jests" of country gentlemen, +tired of "water mixed with claret-lees," "with +one draught" of which "man's invention fades," and +yearning for the Mermaid wine of poetic converse, +"nimble, and full of subtle flame." Other verses to +Jonson and to Fletcher express his scorn of "the +wild applause of common people," his confidence in +sympathetic genius and Time as the only arbiters of +literary worth. In still other poems, lyric, epistolary, +and elegiac, we have savoured the tang of his humour,—unsophisticated, +somewhat ammoniac; and from +them have caught his habit of emotional utterance, +frank and sincere, whether in admiration, love, or indignation. +We have grown acquainted with his reverence +for womanly purity; with his religion of suffering, +his recognition of mortal pathos, irony, futility, and +yet of inscrutable purpose and control, and of the +countervailing serenity that awaits us in the grave. +An amusing side-light is thrown upon his character +by Jonson who told Drummond of Hawthornden, that +"Francis Beaumont loved too much himself and his +own verses." We are glad to know that a man of +Jonson's well-attested self-esteem encountered in +Beaumont an arrogance and a consciousness of poetic +superiority; that even this "great lover and praiser +of himself, contemner and scorner of others," for +whom Spenser's stanzas were not pleasing, nor his +matter, and "Shakespeare wanted art,"—that even +this great brow-beater of his contemporaries in literature, +recognized in our poet a self-esteem which even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> +he could not bully out of him. But we must not be +harsh in our judgment of Drummond's Ben Jonson, +for though he "was given rather to lose a friend +than a jest and was jealous of every word and action +of those about him," this is not the Ben who some +seven years earlier had written "How I do love thee, +Beaumont, and thy Muse"; this is Ben as Drummond +saw him in 1619—Ben talking "especially after +drink which is one of the elements in which he liveth." +That Beaumont's affection and geniality of +intercourse were reciprocated not only by Jonson, but +by others, we learn from lines written to, or of, him +by men of worth.</p> + +<p>His judgment as a critic was recognized by his +contemporaries, as well as the poetic brilliance of the +dramas which he was creating under their eyes. His +language, too, was praised for its distinction while +he was yet living. In the manuscript outline of the +<i>Hypercritica</i>, which appears to have been filled in at +various times between 1602 and 1616, Bolton says: +"the books out of which wee gather the most warrantable +English are not many to my remembrance.... But +among the cheife, or rather the cheife, are +in my opinion these: Sir Thomas Moore's works; ... George +Chapman's first seaven books of Iliades; Samuell +Danyell; Michael Drayton his Heroicall Epistles +of England; Marlowe his excellent fragment of Hero +and Leander; Shakespeare, Mr. Francis Beamont, +and innumerable other writers for the stage,—and +[they] presse tenderly to be used in this Argument; +Southwell, Parsons, and some few other of that sort." +In the final version of the <i>Hypercritica</i>, prepared between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> +1616 and 1618,<a name="FNanchor_127_127" id="FNanchor_127_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> Bolton omits the later dramatists +altogether;<a name="FNanchor_128_128" id="FNanchor_128_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> but that is not to be construed by +way of discrimination against Shakespeare and Beaumont. +There is no doubt that Bolton knew the Beaumonts +personally, and appreciated their worth, and +as early as 1610;—for to his <i>Elements of Armories</i> +of that year, he prefixes a "Letter to the Author, +from the learned young gentleman, I. B., of Grace-Dieu +in the County of Leicestershire, Esquier,"<a name="FNanchor_129_129" id="FNanchor_129_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> +who highly compliments the invention, judicial method, +and taste displayed in the <i>Elements</i>, and returns the +manuscript with promise of his patronage.</p> + +<p>Further information of the esteem in which Francis +was held, is afforded by the eulogies, direct or indirect, +written soon after his death by those who were near +enough to him in years to have known him, or to +assess his worth untrammeled by the critical consensus +of a generation that knew him not. The tender +tributes of his brother and of his contemporary, Dr. +Corbet, successively Bishop of Oxford, and of Norwich, +have already been quoted. A so-called "sonnet," +signed I. F., included in an Harleian manuscript +between two poems undoubtedly by Fletcher, may +not have been intended for the dead poet; but I agree +with Dyce, who first printed it,<a name="FNanchor_130_130" id="FNanchor_130_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a> that it seems "very +like Fletcher's epicede on his beloved associate":—</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Come, sorrow, come! bring all thy cries,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All thy laments, and all thy weeping eyes!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Burn out, you living monuments of woe!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sad sullen griefs, now rise and overflow!<br /></span> +<span class="i5">Virtue is dead;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">O cruel fate!<br /></span> +<span class="i5">All youth is fled;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">All our laments too late.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"><br class="nowhow" /> +<span class="i0">Oh, noble youth, to thy ne'er-dying name,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, happy youth, to thy still-growing fame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To thy long peace in earth, this sacred knell<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our last loves ring—farewell, farewell, farewell!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Go, happy soul, to thy eternal birth!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And press his body lightly, gentle Earth!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>What the young readers of contemporary poetry +at the universities thought of him is nowhere better +expressed than in the lines written immediately after +the poet's death by the fifteen- or sixteen-year-old +John Earle;—he who was later Fellow of Merton; +and in turn Bishop of Worcester, and of Salisbury. +The ardent lad is gazing in person or imagination +on the new-filled tomb in the Poets' Corner, when he +writes:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Beaumont lyes here; and where now shall we have<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A Muse like his, to sigh upon his grave?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah, none to weepe this with a worthy teare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But he that cannot, Beaumont that lies here.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who now shall pay thy Tombe with such a Verse<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As thou that Ladies didst, faire Rutlands Herse?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A Monument that will then lasting be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When all her Marble is more dust than she.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In thee all's lost: a sudden dearth and want<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Hath seiz'd on Wit, good Epitaphs are scant;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We dare not write thy Elegie, whilst each feares<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He nere shall match that coppy of thy teares.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Scarce in an Age a Poet,—and yet he<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Scarce lives the third part of his age to see,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But quickly taken off, and only known,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is in a minute shut as soone as showne....<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Why should Nature take such pains to perfect that +which ere perfected she shall destroy?—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Beaumont dies young, so Sidney died before;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There was not Poetry he could live to, more:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He could not grow up higher; I scarce know<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If th' art it self unto that pitch could grow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Were 't not in thee that hadst arriv'd the hight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of all that wit could reach, or Nature might....<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The elegist likens Beaumont to Menander,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Whose few sententious fragments show more worth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than all the Poets Athens ere brought forth;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I am sorry I have lost those houres<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On them, whose quicknesse comes far short of ours,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And dwelt not more on thee, whose every Page<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May be a patterne to their Scene and Stage.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I will not yeeld thy Workes so mean a Prayse—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More pure, more chaste, more sainted than are Playes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor with that dull supinenesse to be read,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To passe a fire, or laugh an houre in bed....<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why should not Beaumont in the Morning please,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As well as Plautus, Aristophanes?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who, if my Pen may as my thoughts be free,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Were scurrill Wits and Buffons both to Thee....<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet these are Wits, because they'r old, and now<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Being Greeke and Latine, they are Learning too:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But those their owne Times were content t' allow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A thriftier fame, and thine is lowest now.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But thou shall live, and, when thy Name is growne<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Six Ages older, shall be better knowne;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When thou'rt of Chaucers standing in the Tombe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou shall not share, but take up all his roome.<a name="FNanchor_131_131" id="FNanchor_131_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A panegyric liberal in the superlatives of youth but, +in view of passages to be quoted elsewhere, one of +the sanest as well as earliest appreciations of Beaumont's +distinctive quality as a dramatist; an appreciation +such as the historian might expect from a +collegian who, a dozen years later, was not only one +of the most genial and refined scholars of his generation +but, perhaps, the most accurate observer and +epitomist of the familiar types and minor morals of +his day,—a writer who in 1628 is still championing +the cause of contemporary poetry. In his characterization +of the Vulgar-Spirited Man "that is taken +only with broad and obscene wit, and hisses anything +too deep for him; that cries, Chaucer for his money +above all our English poets, because the voice has +gone so, and he has read none," the Earle of the +<i>Microcosmographie</i> is but repeating the censure of his +elegy on Beaumont in 1616.</p> + +<p>About 1620, we find a contemporary of altogether +different class from that of the university student acknowledging +the fame of Beaumont, the Thames waterman, +John Taylor. This self-advertising tramp and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> +rollicking scribbler mentions him in <i>The Praise of +Hemp-seed</i> with Chaucer, Spencer, Shakespeare, and +others, as of those who, "in paper-immortality, Doe +live in spight of death, and cannot die." And not far +separated from Taylor's testimonial in point of time is +William Basse's prediction of a prouder immortality. +Basse who was but two years older than Beaumont, +and, as we have seen, was one of the pastoral group +with which Beaumont's career was associated, is writing +of "Mr. William Shakespeare" who had died +six weeks after Beaumont,—and he thus apostrophizes +the Westminster poets of the Corner:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Renownèd Spencer, lye a thought more nye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To learnèd Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A little neerer Spencer, to make roome<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For Shakespeare in your threefold, fowerfold Tombe.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To lodge all foure in one bed make a shift<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Untill Doomesdaye, for hardly will a fift,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Betwixt this day and that, by Fate be slayne<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For whom your Curtaines may be drawn againe.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The date of the sonnet of which these are the opening +lines can be only approximately determined. It must +be earlier, however, than 1623; for in that year Jonson +alludes to it in verses presently to be quoted. And +it must be later than the erection of the monument +to Shakespeare's memory in Trinity Church, Stratford, +in or soon after 1618, for in the lines which +follow those given above the writer apostrophizes +Shakespeare as sleeping "Under this carvèd marble +of thine owne." The sonnet contemplates the removal +of Shakespeare's remains to Westminster, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> +arranges the poets already lying there not in actual +but chronological order.<a name="FNanchor_132_132" id="FNanchor_132_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a></p> + +<p>To these verses Jonson, as I have said, alludes in +the series of stanzas prefixed to the Shakespeare folio +of 1623,—<i>To the memory of my beloved, the Author, +Mr. William Shakespeare and what he hath left us.</i> +Ben Jonson intends, however, no slight to Beaumont +and the other poets mentioned by Basse, when, in +his rapturous eulogy, he declines to regard them as the +peers of Shakespeare. On the contrary this lover at +heart, and in his best moments, of Beaumont, bestows +a meed of praise: they are "great Muses,"—Chaucer, +Spenser, Beaumont,—but merely "disproportioned," +if one judge critically, in the present comparison, as +are, indeed, Lyly, Kyd, and Marlowe. Not these, but +"thundering Æschylus," Euripides, and Sophocles, +Pacuvius, Accius, "him of Cordova dead," must be +summoned</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To life againe to heare thy Buskin tread<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And shake a Stage.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Therefore it is, that Jonson calls—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">My Shakespeare rise; I will not lodge thee by<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A little further to make thee a roome:<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thou art a Moniment without a toombe,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> +<span class="i0">And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And we have wits to read, and praise to give.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I not mixe thee so, my braine excuses;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I meane with great, but disproportion'd Muses.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That Beaumont was regarded by his immediate contemporaries +not as a professional, but literary, dramatist,—a +poet, and a person of social eminence,—appears +from Drayton's <i>Epistle to Henery Reynolds, +Esq., Of Poets and Poesy</i>, published 1627, from which +I have earlier quoted. Here the writer, appraising +the poets "who have enrich'd our language with their +rhymes" informs his "dearly loved friend" that he +does not</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i11">meane to run<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In quest of these that them applause have wonne<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon our Stages in these latter dayes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That are so many; let them have their bayes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That doe deserve it; let those wits that haunt<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those publique circuits, let them freely chaunt<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their fine Composures, and their praise pursue;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and thus, we may conjecture, he excuses the omission +of such men as Middleton, Fletcher, and Massinger. +Beginning with Chaucer, "the first of ours that ever +brake Into the Muses' treasure, and first spake In +weighty numbers," Drayton pays especial honour to +"grave, morall Spencer," "noble Sidney ... heroe +for numbers and for prose," Marlowe with his "brave +translunary things," Shakespeare of "as smooth a +comicke vaine ... as strong conception, and as cleere +a rage, As any one that trafiqu'd with the Stage," +"learn'd Johnson.... Who had drunke deepe of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> +the Pierian spring," and "reverend Chapman" for +his translations: then he passes to men of letters whom +he had loved, Alexander and Drummond, and concludes +the roll-call with his two Beaumonts and his +Browne, his bosom friends, rightly born poets and +"Men of much note, and no lesse nobler parts." +This letter not only speaks the opinion of Drayton +concerning the standing of the two Beaumonts in +poetry, but incidentally asserts the popularity of their +work, for the author informs his correspondents that +he "ties himself here only to those few men"</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Whose works oft printed, set on every post,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To publique censure subject have bin most.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>By 1627 all of the dramas in which Francis had an +undoubted share, except <i>The Coxcombe</i> had been +printed; and some of his poems had appeared as early +as 1618 in a little volume that included also Drayton's +elegies on Lady Penelope Clifton and the three sons +of Lord Sheffield, and Verses by 'N. H.'</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 377px;"><a name="image202" id="image202"></a> +<img src="images/image12.jpg" width="377" height="500" alt="MICHAEL DRAYTON +From the portrait in the Dulwich Gallery" title="MICHAEL DRAYTON +From the portrait in the Dulwich Gallery" /> +<div class="bbox"> +<p class="imtitle">MICHAEL DRAYTON<br /> +<span class="smtext">From the portrait in the Dulwich Gallery</span></p> +</div></div> + +<p>This volume is Henry Fitzgeffrey's <i>Certayn elegies +done by sundrie excellent wits</i> (Fr. Beau., M. Dr., +N. H.), with <i>Satyres and Epigrames</i>. Fitzgeffrey, +by the way, was of Lincoln's Inn in Beaumont's time; +and so were others connected with this volume, by +dedications or commendatory verses: Fitzgeffrey's +"chamber-fellow and nearest friend, Nat. Gurlin"; +Thomas Fletcher, and John Stephens, the satirist, who +had been entered member of the Inn in 1611. They +must all have been known by Beaumont when he was +writing his elegies. The 'N. H.' thus posthumously +associated with our dramatist was, I think, the mathematician,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> +philosopher, and poet, Nicholas Hill<a name="FNanchor_133_133" id="FNanchor_133_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> +Beaumont could not have failed to know him. He +was of St. John's College, Oxford; he wrote and +published a <i>Philosophia Epicurea Democritiana</i> to +which, mentioning him by name, Ben Jonson alludes +in his epigram (CXXXIV) <i>Of The Famous Voyage</i> +of the two wights who "At Bread-streets <i>Mermaid</i> +having dined and merry, Propos'd to goe to Holborne +in a wherry." He was the secretary and favourite of +Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was a good deal +of a wag, and well acquainted with our old friend +Serjeant Hoskyns of the <i>Convivium Philosophicum</i>. +He died in 1610.</p> + +<p>Whether the anonymous writer on <i>The Time Poets</i><a name="FNanchor_134_134" id="FNanchor_134_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> +was a personal acquaintance of Beaumont we cannot +tell. The definite qualities of the poet which he emphasizes +are, however, as likely to be drawn from life +and conversation as from the perusal of his dramas. +The lines, apparently composed between 1620 and +1636, begin,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">One night, the great Apollo, pleas'd with Ben,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Made the odde number of the Muses ten;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The fluent Fletcher, Beaumont rich in sense,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In complement and courtship's quintessence;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ingenious Shakespeare, Massinger that knows<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The strength of plot to write in verse or prose,—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and continue with "cloud-grappling Chapman" and +others, as of the ten Muses.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span></p><p>That Thomas Heywood, the dramatist, was a personal +friend,—we may be sure,—the kind of friend +who having a sense of humour did not resent Beaumont's +genial satire in <i>The Knight of the Burning +Pestle</i> upon his bourgeois drama of <i>The Foure Prentises</i> +of London. Writing as late as 1635, he remembers +Francis as a wit:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Excellent Bewmont, in the formost ranke<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the rarest Wits, was never more than Franck.—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The touch of familiarity with which Heywood<a name="FNanchor_135_135" id="FNanchor_135_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> causes +that whole row of poets, many of them then dead, +Robin Green, Kit Marlowe, the Toms (Kyd, Watson +and Nashe), mellifluous Will, Ben, and the rest, to +live for posterity as human, and lovable, gracefully +heightens the compliment for one and all.</p> + +<p>We may surmise that one more eulogist of Beaumont, +his kinsman,<a name="FNanchor_136_136" id="FNanchor_136_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a> Sir George Lisle, a marvellously +gallant cavalier, who distinguished himself at Newberry, +and was shot by order of Fairfax about the +end of the Civil War, was old enough in 1616 to have +known our poet. Though Sir George, in his verses +for the Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647, lays +special stress upon the close-woven fancy of the two +playwrights, he seems to have a first-hand information, +not common to the younger writers of these commendatory +poems, concerning Beaumont's share in at +least one of the tragedies. He ascribes to him, not +to Fletcher,—as we know by modern textual tests,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> +correctly,—the nobler scenes of "brave Mardonius" +in <i>A King and No King</i>. One attaches, therefore, +more than mere literary, or hearsay, significance to +his selection for special praise of Beaumont's force, +when he says,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i5">Thou strik'st our sense so deep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At once thou mak'st us Blush, Rejoyce, and Weep.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Great father Johnson bow'd himselfe when hee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(Thou writ'st so nobly) vow'd he envy'd thee.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121_121" id="Footnote_121_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a> From the portrait at Knole Park.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122_122" id="Footnote_122_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a> <i>Encyc. Brit., sub nomine.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123_123" id="Footnote_123_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a> By Cockerell, in the <i>Variorum Edition of B. and F.'s Works</i>, +Vol. I, 1904. See Frontispiece to this volume.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124_124" id="Footnote_124_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a> <i>Historical Portraits</i>, Vol. II, 1600-1700, Oxford, 1911.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125_125" id="Footnote_125_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a> Not to the third Earl, Richard, as Cyril Brett, <i>Drayton's +Minor Poems</i>, p. xix, has it.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126_126" id="Footnote_126_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a> Clark's <i>Aubrey's Brief Lives</i>, II, 175, 239. Not Mary (Curzon), +the wife of the fourth Earl, as Professor Elton, <i>Drayton</i> +(1895), p. 45, has it.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127_127" id="Footnote_127_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a> After the appearance of Montague's edition of King James's +<i>Works</i>, and before the execution of Raleigh.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128_128" id="Footnote_128_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a> Save for non-dramatic productions such as Ben Jonson's +<i>Epigrams</i>, etc.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129_129" id="Footnote_129_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a> Grosart, <i>D. N. B.</i>, art, <i>Sir John Beaumont</i>, and <i>Sir J. B.'s +Poems</i>, xxxvi.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130_130" id="Footnote_130_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a> <i>B. and F.</i>, Vol. I, lii.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131_131" id="Footnote_131_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a> Revised by Earle for the <i>Commendatory Verses</i>, Folio 1647; +but I have retained some of the readings of the 1640 copy included +in Beaumont's <i>Poems</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132_132" id="Footnote_132_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a> The version given above is that of Brit. Mus. <i>MS. Lansdowne</i> +777. Of other versions one is attributed to Donne; but +the Lansdowne is the most authentic, and the evidence of authorship +is all for Basse, whose name follows in the Lansdowne +manuscript. So, Miss L. T. Smith in <i>Centurie of Praise</i>, p. 139.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133_133" id="Footnote_133_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a> Mr. Bullen, <i>D. N. B.</i>, under <i>Fitzgeffrey</i>, queries "Nathaniel +Hooke." I have not been able to identify Hooke.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134_134" id="Footnote_134_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a> <i>Choice Drollery, Songs, and Sonnets, 1656, in Sh. Soc. Pap.</i>, +III, 172.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135_135" id="Footnote_135_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a> <i>The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136_136" id="Footnote_136_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a> Through the Villierses and therefore probably through the +Coleorton Beaumonts.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XIV</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">TRADITION, AND TRADITIONAL CRITICISM</p> + + +<p class="cap">What we learn from tradition, and from the +criticism of the century following Beaumont's +death, adds little to what we already have observed +concerning his life and personality. Concerning his +share in the joint-plays, it adds much, mostly wrong; +but of that, later. Mosely, in his address of <i>The +Stationer to the Readers</i> prefixed to the folio of 1647, +announces that knowing persons had generally assured +him "that these Authors were the most unquestionable +Wits this Kingdome hath afforded. Mr. Beaumont +was ever acknowledged a man of a most strong and +searching braine; and (his yeares considered) the +most Judicious Wit these later Ages have produced. +He dyed young, for (which was an invaluable losse +to this Nation) he left the world when hee was not +full thirty yeares old. Mr. Fletcher survived, and +lived till almost fifty; whereof the World now enjoyes +the benefit." The dramatist, Shirley, in his address +<i>To the Reader</i> of the folio, says "It is not so remote +in Time, but very many Gentlemen may remember +these Authors; and some familiar in their conversation +deliver them upon every pleasant occasion so +fluent, to talke a Comedy. He must be a bold man," +continues he, with a prophetic commonsense, "that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span> +dares undertake to write their Lives. What I have +to say is, we have the precious Remaines; and as the +wisest contemporaries acknowledge they Lived a Miracle, +I am very confident this volume cannot die without +one." Shirley also reminds the Reader that but +to mention Beaumont and Fletcher "is to throw a +cloude upon all former names and benight Posterity." +"This Book being, without flattery, the greatest Monument +of the Scene that Time and Humanity have +produced, and must Live, not only the Crowne and sole +Reputation of our owne, but the stayne of all other +Nations and Languages." To such a pitch had the +vogue of our dramatists risen in the thirty years after +Beaumont's death! Not only Shakespeare and learnèd +Ben, but Sophocles and Euripides may vail to them. +"This being,"—and here we catch a vision from life +itself,—"this being the Authentick witt that made +Blackfriars an Academy, where the three howers spectacle +while Beaumont and Fletcher were presented, +were usually of more advantage to the hopefull young +Heire, than a costly, dangerous, forraigne Travell, +with the assistance of a governing Mounsieur, or +Signior, to boote. And it cannot be denied but that +the spirits of the Time, whose Birth and Qualitie made +them impatient of the sowrer ways of education, have +from the attentive hearing these pieces, got ground +in point of wit and carriage of the most severely employed +Students, while these Recreations were digested +into Rules, and the very pleasure did edifie."</p> + +<p>So far as the plays printed in this folio are concerned, +not much of this praise belongs to Beaumont; +for, as we now know, not more than two of them,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> +<i>The Coxcombe</i> and the <i>Masque of the Inner Temple</i>, +bear his impress. But Shirley is thinking of the reputation +of the authors in general; and he writes with +an eye to the sale of the book.</p> + +<p>Since we shall presently find opportunity to consider +the trend of opinion during the seventeenth century +regarding the respective shares of the dramatists +in composition, but a word need be said here upon the +subject,—and that as to the origin of a tradition +speedily exaggerated into error: namely, that Beaumont's +function in the partnership was purely +of gravity and critical acumen. From the verses of +John Berkenhead, an Oxford man, born in 1615, a +writer of some lampooning ability and, in 1647 reader +in moral philosophy at the University, we learn that, +he, at least, thought it impossible to separate the +faculties of the two dramatists, which "as two Voices +in one Song embrace (Fletcher's keen Trebble, and +deep Beaumont's Base"); that, however, there were +some in his day who held "That One [Fletcher] the +Sock, th' Other [Beaumont] the Buskin claim'd,"</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">That should the Stage embattaile all its Force,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fletcher would lead the Foot, Beaumont the Horse;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and that Beaumont's was "the understanding," Fletcher's +"the quick free will." Such discrimination, as I +have said, Berkenhead disavows; but he is of the +opinion, nevertheless, that the rules by which their art +was governed came from Beaumont:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">So Beaumont dy'd; yet left in Legacy<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His Rules and Standard-wit (Fletcher) to Thee.<br /></span> +</div></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p> +<p>And still another Oxford man, born four years before +Beaumont's death, the Reverend Josias Howe, +reasserting the essential unity of their compositions, +concedes with regard to Fletcher,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Perhaps his quill flew stronger, when<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'T was weavèd with his Beaumont's pen;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And might with deeper wonder hit.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>These and similar statements of 1647, essentially correct, +concerning the force, depth, and critical acumen +of Beaumont had been anticipated in the testimonials +printed during his lifetime and down to 1640, especially +in those of Jonson, Davies, Drayton, and Earle.</p> + +<p>A verdict, much more dogmatic, and responsible for +the erroneous tradition which long survived, proceeded +from one of the "sons of Ben," William Cartwright, +himself an author of dramas, junior proctor of the +University of Oxford in 1643, and "the most florid +and seraphical preacher in the university." He may +have derived the germ of his information from Jonson +himself, but he had developed it in a one-sided +manner when, writing in 1643 "upon the report of +the printing of the dramaticall poems of Master John +Fletcher," he implied that the genius of "knowing +Beaumont" was purely restrictive and critical,—telling +us that Beaumont was fain to bid Fletcher "be +more dull," to "write again," to "bate some of his +fire"; and that even when Fletcher had "blunted and +allayed" his genius according to the critic's command, +the critic Beaumont, not yet satisfied,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Added his sober spunge, and did contract<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy plenty to lesse wit to make 't exact.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>This distorted image of Beaumont's artistic quality +as merely critical lived, as we shall see, for many a +year. We shall, also, see that it is not from any +such secondary sources that supplementary information +regarding the poet himself is to be derived, but +from a scientific determination of his share in the +dramas ordinarily and vaguely assigned to an undifferentiated +Beaumont and Fletcher.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XV</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">A FEW WORDS OF FLETCHER'S LATER YEARS</p> + + +<p class="cap">Beside the dramas which there is any meritorious +reason for assigning to the joint-authorship +of the two friends, some dozen plays were produced +by Fletcher alone, or in collaboration with others, +before the practical cessation, in 1613, or thereabout, +of Beaumont's dramatic activity. After that time +Fletcher's name was attached, either as sole author +or as the associate of Massinger, Field, William Rowley, +and perhaps others, to about thirty more. From +1614 on, he was the successor of Shakespeare as dramatic +poet of the King's Players. Jonson's masques +delighted the Court, but no writer of tragedy or comedy,—not +Jonson, nor Philip Massinger, who was +now Fletcher's closest associate, nor Middleton or +Rowley, Dekker, Ford, or Webster,—compared with +him in popularity at Court and in the City. He is +not merely an illustrious personality, the principal author +of harrowing tragedies such as <i>Valentinian</i>, the +sole author of tragicomedies such as <i>The Loyall Subject</i>, +and long-lived comedies—<i>The Chances</i>, <i>Rule a +Wife and Have a Wife</i>, and several more,—he is a +syndicate: he stands sponsor for plays like <i>The Queene +of Corinth</i> and <i>The Knight of Malta</i> in which others +collaborated largely with him; and his name is occasionally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> +stamped upon plays of associates, in which he +had no hand whatever. "Thou grew'st," says his +contemporary and admirer, John Harris,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Thou grew'st to govern the whole Stage alone:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In which orbe thy throng'd light did make the star,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou wert th' Intelligence did move that Sphear."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Dr. Harris, Professor of Greek at Oxford in the heyday +of Fletcher's glory, and a most distinguished divine, +writes, in 1647, as one who had known Fletcher, +personally,—observes his careless ease in composing, +his manner of conversation,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The Stage grew narrow while thou grew'st to be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In thy whole life an Exc'llent Comedie,—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and admires his behaviour:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To these a Virgin-modesty which first met<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Applause with blush and fear, as if he yet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had not deserv'd; till bold with constant praise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His browes admitted the unsought-for Bayes.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So, addressing the public, concludes this panegyrist,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Hee came to be sole Monarch, and did raign<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In Wits great Empire, abs'lute Soveraign.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is of these years of triumph that another of "the +large train of Fletcher's friends," Richard Brome, Ben +Jonson's faithful servant and loving friend, and his +disciple in the drama, tells us:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">His Works (says Momus) nay, his Plays you'd say:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou hast said right, for that to him was Play<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which was to others braines a toyle: with ease<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He playd on Waves which were Their troubled Seas....<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But to the Man againe, of whom we write,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Writer that made Writing his Delight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rather then Worke. He did not pumpe, nor drudge,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To beget Wit, or manage it; nor trudge<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To Wit-conventions with Note-booke, to gleane<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or steale some Jests to foist into a Scene:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He scorn'd those shifts. You that have known him, know<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The common talke that from his Lips did flow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And run at waste, did savour more of Wit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then any of his time, or since have writ,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(But few excepted) in the Stages way:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His Scenes were Acts, and every Act a Play.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I knew him in his strength; even then when He—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That was the Master of his Art and Me—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Most knowing Johnson (proud to call him Sonne)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In friendly Envy swore, He had out-done<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His very Selfe. I knew him till he dyed;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And at his dissolution, what a Tide<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of sorrow overwhelm'd the Stage; which gave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Volleys of sighes to send him to his grave;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And grew distracted in most violent Fits<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(For She had lost the best part of her Wits) ...<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Others," concludes this old admirer unpretentiously,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Others may more in lofty Verses move;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I onely, thus, expresse my Truth and Love.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>No better testimony to the character of the man +who, even though Jonson was still writing, became<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> +absolute sovereign of the stage after Shakespeare +and Beaumont had ceased, can be found than such +as the preceding. To Fletcher's innate modesty, other +contemporaries, Lowin and Taylor, who acted in many +of his plays, bear testimony in the <i>Dedication</i> of <i>The +Wild-Goose Chase</i>: "The Play was of so Generall +a receiv'd Acceptance, that (he Himself a Spectator) +we have known him unconcern'd, and to have wisht +it had been none of His; He, as well as the throng'd +Theatre (in despite of his innate Modesty) Applauding +this rare issue of his Braine." He was the idol +of his actors: "And now, Farewell, our Glory!" +continue, in 1652, these victims of "a cruell Destinie"—the +closing of the theatres at the outbreak of the +Civil War,—"Farewell, your Choice Delight, most +noble Gentlemen! Farewell, the grand Wheel that +set Us Smaller Motions in Action!"—The wheel of +Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger.—"Farewell, +the Pride and Life o' the Stage! Nor +can we (though in our Ruin) much repine that we +are so little, since He that gave us being is no more."</p> + +<p>Fletcher was beloved of great men, as they themselves +have left their love on record, of Jonson, Beaumont, +Chapman, Massinger. If Shakespeare collaborated +with him, that speaks for itself. He was an +inspiration to young pastoralists like Browne, and to +aspiring dramatists like Field. He was a writer of +sparkling genius and phenomenal facility. He was +careless of myopic criticism, conscious of his dignity,—but +unaffectedly simple,—averse to flattering his +public or his patron for bread, or for acquaintance, or +for the admiration of the indolent, or for "itch of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> +greater fame."<a name="FNanchor_137_137" id="FNanchor_137_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a> If we may take him at his word, +and estimate him by the noblest lines he ever wrote,—the +verses affixed to <i>The Honest Man's Fortune</i> +(acted, 1613),—the keynote of his character as a man +among men, was independence. To those "that can +look through Heaven, and tell the stars," he says:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Man is his own Star, and the soul that can<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Render an honest and a perfect man,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Commands all light, all influence, all fate;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nothing to him falls early, or too late.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our Acts our Angels are, or good or ill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our fatal shadows that walk by us still;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And when the Stars are labouring, we believe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is not that they govern, but they grieve<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For stubborn ignorance.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That star is in "the Image of thy Maker's good":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He is my Star, in him all truth I find,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All influence, all fate;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and as for poverty, it is "the light to Heaven ... +Nor want, the cause of man, shall make me groan"; +for experience teaches us "all we can: To work ourselves +into a glorious man." His mistress is not +some star of Love, with the increase to wealth or +honour she may bring, but of Knowledge and fair +Truth:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">So I enjoy all beauty and all youth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And though to time her Lights and Laws she lends,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She knows no Age, that to corruption bends....<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Perhaps through all this, there echoes the voice of that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> +<i>præsul splendidus</i>, his father, the Bishop, the friend +of Sir Francis Drake, of Burghley, and of the forceful +Bishop Bancroft,—a father solicitous, at any rate before +he fell into the hands of his fashionable second +wife and lost favour with the Queen, for the "Chrystian +and godlie education" of his children. However +that may be,—whether the noble idea of this confession +of faith is a projection from the discipline of +youth or an induction from the experience of life, +the utterance of Fletcher's inmost personality is here:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Man is his own Star, and that soul that can<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be honest, is the only perfect man.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Though, in the plays where Beaumont does not control, +Fletcher so freely reflects the loose morals of his +age, the gross conventional misapprehension of woman's +worth, even the cynicism regarding her essential +purity,—though Fletcher reflects these conditions in his +later plays as well as in his early <i>Faithfull Shepheardesse</i>,<a name="FNanchor_138_138" id="FNanchor_138_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> +and though he, for dramatic ends, accepts +the material vulgarity of the lower classes and the +perverted and decadent heroics of the upper, there +still are "passages in his works where he recurs to a +conception which undoubtedly had a very vital significance +for him—that of a gentleman,"—to the +"merit, manners, and inborn virtue" of the gentleman +not conventional but genuine.<a name="FNanchor_139_139" id="FNanchor_139_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> In Beaumont, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> +"man of a most strong and searching braine" whose +writings and whose record speak the gentleman, he +had had the example beside him in the flesh. What +that meant is manifest in the encomium of Francis +Palmer, written in 1647 from Christ Church, Oxford,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7">All commendations end<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In saying only: Thou wert Beaumont's friend.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The engraving of Fletcher in the 1647 folio was +"cut by severall Originall Pieces," says Mosely +"which his friends lent me, but withall they tell me +that his unimitable Soule did shine through his countenance +in such <i>Ayre</i> and <i>Spirit</i>, that the Painters +confessed it was not easie to expresse him: As much +as could be, you have here, and the Graver hath done +his part." The edition of 1711 is the first to publish +"effigies" of both poets, "the Head of Mr. Beaumont, +and that of Mr. Fletcher, through the favour of the +present Earl of Dorset [the seventh Earl], being taken +from Originals in the noble Collection his Lordship +has at Knowles." The engravings in the Theobald, +Seward and Sympson edition of 1742-1750 are by G. +Vertue. The engravings in Colman's edition of 1778, +are the same, debased. Those in Weber's edition of +1812, are done afresh,—of Beaumont by Evans, of +Fletcher by Blood—apparently from the Knole originals. +They are an improvement upon those of earlier +editions. In Dyce's edition of 1843-1846, H. Robinson's +engraving of Beaumont has nobility; his attempt +at Fletcher does not improve upon Blood's. All these +are in the reverse. The Variorum edition of 1904-1905<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span> +gives the beautiful photogravure of Beaumont +of which I have already spoken, by Walker and Cockerell, +from the original at Knole Park; and an equally +soft and expressive photogravure of Fletcher, by Emery +Walker, from the painting in the National Portrait +Gallery. For the first time the dramatists face as in +the originals: Beaumont, toward your left, Fletcher, +toward your right.</p> + +<p>Fletcher's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery +reveals a highbred, thoughtful countenance, large eyes +unafraid, wide-awake and keen, the nose aquiline and +sensitive, wavily curling hair, hastily combed back, +or through which he has run his fingers, a careless, +half-buttoned jerkin from which the shirt peeps forth,—all +in all a man of more vivacious temper, ready and +practical quality than Beaumont.</p> + +<p>The authorities of the Gallery, especially through +the kindness of Mr. J. D. Milner, who has been good +enough to look up various particulars for me, inform +me that this portrait of John Fletcher, No. 420, was +purchased by the Trustees in March 1876, its previous +history being unknown. The painting is by a contemporary +but unknown artist, and is similar to the +portrait at Knole Park. It was engraved in the reverse +by G. Vertue in 1729. They also inform me +that another portrait of a different type belongs to +the Earl of Clarendon. This, I conjecture, must be +that which John Evelyn, in a letter to Samuel Pepys, +12 August, 1689, says he has seen in the first Earl of +Clarendon's collection—"most of which [portraits], +if not all, are at the present at Cornebery in Oxfordshire." +But Evelyn adds that "Beaumont and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> +Fletcher were both in one piece." Yet another portrait +said to be of Fletcher, painted in 1625 by C. +Janssen, belongs to the Duke of Portland. This +Janssen is the Cornelius to whom the alleged portrait +of Shakespeare, now at Bulstrode, is attributed. Cornelius +did not come to England before Shakespeare's +death; and, consequently, not before Beaumont's.</p> + +<p>Fletcher died in August 1625. According to Aubrey, +"In the great plague, 1625, a Knight of Norfolke +(or Suffolke) invited him into the Countrey. He +stayed but to make himselfe a suite of cloathes, and +while it was makeing, fell sick of the plague and +dyed. This I had [1668] from his tayler, who is +now [1670] a very old man, and clarke of St. Mary +Overy's." The dramatist was buried in St. Saviour's, +Southwark, the twenty-ninth of that month. Sir +Aston Cockayne's statement, in an epitaph on Fletcher +and Massinger, that they lie in the same grave, is +probably figurative. Aubrey tells us that Massinger, +who died in March 1640, and whose burial is recorded +in the register of St. Saviour's, was buried +not in the church, but about the middle of one of its +churchyards, the Bullhead, next the Bullhead tavern. +There are memorials now to both poets in the +church, as also to Shakespeare, and Beaumont, and +to Edward Alleyn, the actor of the old Admiral's company.</p> + +<p>It is generally supposed that Fletcher was never +married. The name, John Fletcher, was not unusual +in the parish of St. Saviour's, and the records of +"John Fletcher" marriages may, therefore, not involve +the dramatist. But two items communicated to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> +Dyce<a name="FNanchor_140_140" id="FNanchor_140_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> by Collier, "more in jest than in earnest," +from the Parish-registers, are suggestive, if we reflect +that, about 1612 or 1613, the <i>ménage à trois</i>, provided +it continued so long, would have lapsed at the time +of Beaumont's marriage; and if we can swallow the +stage-fiction of Fletcher's "maid Joan" in <i>Bury-Fair</i> +(see page 96 above), whole and as something digestible.</p> + +<p>These are Collier's cullings from the Registers:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>1612. Nov. 3. John Fletcher and Jone Herring +[were married]. <i>Reg. of St. Saviour's, Southwark.</i></p> + +<p>John, the son of John Fletcher and of Joan his wife +was baptized 25 Feb., 1619. <i>Reg. of St. Bartholomew +the Great.</i></p></div> + +<p>If this is our John Fletcher, his marriage would have +been about the same time as Beaumont's, and he may +have later taken up his residence in the parish of St. +Bartholomew the Great, on the north side of the river, +not far from Southwark. If Fletcher was married +in 1612, we may be very sure that his wife was +not a person of distinction. His verses <i>Upon an +Honest Man's Fortune</i>, written the next year, give us +the impression either that he is not married and not +likely to be, or that he has married one of low estate +and breeding, has concluded that the matrimonial +game is not worth the candle, and rather defiantly has +turned to a better mistress than mortal, who can compensate +him for that which through love he has not +attained, "Were I in love," he declares,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Were I in love, and could that bright Star bring<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Increase to Wealth, Honour, and everything:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Were she as perfect good, as we can aim,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The first was so, and yet she lost the Game.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My Mistriss then be Knowledge and fair Truth;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So I enjoy all beauty and all youth.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We may be sure that when Fletcher wrote this poem +he had known poverty, sickness, and affliction, but not +a consolation in wedded happiness:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Love's but an exhalation to best eyes;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The matter spent, and then the fool's fire dies.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Since many of Collier's "earnests" turn out to be +"jests," why not the other way round? That is my +apology for according this "jest" a moment's whimsical +consideration.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Such is an outline in broad sweep of the activities +and common relations of our Castor and Pollux, and +a preliminary sketch of the personality of each. With +regard to the latter, who is our main concern, the +vital record is yet more definitely to be discovered +in the dramatic output distinctively his during the +years of literary partnership; and to the consideration +of his share in the joint-plays we may now turn.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137_137" id="Footnote_137_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a> See his <i>Ode to Sir William Skipwith</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138_138" id="Footnote_138_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a> "Thou wert not meant, Sure, for a woman, thou art so innocent," +philosophizes the Sullen Shepherd concerning Amoret;—and +not only wanton nymphs but modest swains are of the same +philosophy.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139_139" id="Footnote_139_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a> Ward, <i>E. Dr. Lit.</i>, II, 649,—quoting, in the footnote, from +<i>The Nice Valour</i>, V, 3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140_140" id="Footnote_140_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a> Dyce, <i>B. and F.</i>, I, lxxiii.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span></p> + +<h3 class="tall">PART TWO</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">THE COLLABORATION OF BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XVI</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM; CRITICAL APPARATUS</p> + + +<p class="cap">Much of the confusion which existed in the minds +of readers and critics during the period following +the Restoration concerning the respective productivity +of Beaumont and Fletcher is due to accident. +The quartos (generally unauthorized) of individual +plays in circulation were, as often as not, wrong in +their ascriptions of authorship to one, or the other, +or both of the dramatists; and the folio of 1647, +which, long after both were dead, first presented what +purported to be their collected works, lacked title-pages +to the individual plays, and, save in one instance, +prefixed no name of author to any play. The exception +is <i>The Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes-Inne +and the Inner Temple</i> "written by Francis Beaumont, +Gentleman," which had been performed, Feb. +20, 1612-13, and had appeared in quarto without date +(but probably 1613) as "by Francis Beaumont, Gent." +In seven instances, Fletcher is indicated in the 1647 +folio by Prologue or Epilogue as author, or author +revised, and in general correctly; but otherwise the +thirty-four plays included (not counting the <i>Maske</i>) +are introduced to the public merely by a general title-page +as "written by Francis Beaumont and John +Fletcher, Gentlemen. Never printed before, And now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> +published by the Authours Originall Copies." That +the public should have been deceived into accepting +most of them as the joint-product of the authors is +not surprising. Though it is not the purpose of this +discussion to consider plays in which Beaumont was +not concerned, it may be said incidentally that of +eleven of these productions Fletcher was sole author; +Massinger of perhaps one, and with Fletcher of eight, +and with Fletcher and others of five more; that in +several plays four or five other authors had a hand, and +that in at least five Fletcher had no share.<a name="FNanchor_141_141" id="FNanchor_141_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a></p> + +<p>Sir Aston Cockayne was, therefore, fully justified, +when, some time between 1647 and 1658, he thus upbraided +the publishers of the folio:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">In the large book of Playes you late did print<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In Beaumont's and in Fletcher's name, why in't<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Did you not justice? Give to each his due?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For Beaumont of those many writ in few,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Massinger in other few; the Main<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Being sole Issues of sweet Fletcher's brain.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But how came I (you ask) so much to know?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fletcher's chief bosome-friend informed me so.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I' the next impression therefore justice do,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And print their old ones in one volume too;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For Beaumont's works and Fletcher's should come forth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With all the right belonging to their worth.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 399px;"><a name="image226" id="image226"></a> +<img src="images/image13.jpg" width="399" height="500" alt="JOHN FLETCHER +From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery +Painter unknown but contemporary" title="" /> +<div class="bbox"> +<p class="imtitle">JOHN FLETCHER<br /> +<span class="smtext">From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery<br /> +Painter unknown but contemporary</span></p> +</div></div> + +<p>In still another poem, printed in 1662, but written not +long after 1647, and addressed to his cousin, Charles +Cotton, Sir Aston returns to the charge:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> +<span class="i0">I wonder, Cousin, that you would permit<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So great an Injury to Fletcher's wit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Your friend and old Companion, that his fame<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Should be divided to another's name.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If Beaumont had writ those Plays, it had been<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Against his merits a detracting Sin,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had they been attributed also to<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fletcher. They were two wits and friends, and who<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Robs from the one to glorify the other,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of these great memories is a partial Lover.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had Beaumont liv'd when this Edition came<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forth, and beheld his ever living name<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Before Plays that he never writ, how he<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had frown'd and blush'd at such Impiety!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His own Renown no such Addition needs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To have a Fame sprung from another's deedes:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And my good friend Old Philip Massinger<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With Fletcher writ in some that we see there.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But you may blame the Printers: yet you might<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Perhaps have won them to do Fletcher right,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would you have took the pains; for what a foul<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And unexcusable fault it is (that whole<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Volume of plays being almost every one<br /></span> +<span class="i0">After the death of Beaumont writ) that none<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would certifie them so much! I wish as free<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Y' had told the Printers this, as you did me.<br /></span> +<span class="i2"><span class="dots">......</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">... While they liv'd and writ together, we<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had Plays exceeded what we hop'd to see.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But they writ few; for youthful Beaumont soon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By death eclipsèd was at his high noon.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The statements especially to be noted in these poems +are, first, that Fletcher is present in most of the work +published in the earliest folio, that of 1647, Beaumont<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> +in but a few plays, Massinger in other few. This +information Cockayne, who was but eight years of +age when Beaumont died, and seventeen at Fletcher's +death, had from Fletcher's chief bosom-friend, and +it was probably corroborated by Massinger himself, +with whom Cockayne and his family (as we know +from other evidence) had long been acquainted. Second, +that <i>almost every play</i> in the folio was written +after Beaumont's death (1616). This information, +also, Cockayne had from his own cousin who was a +friend and old companion of Fletcher. This cousin, +the chief bosom-friend, as I have shown elsewhere, was +Charles Cotton, the elder, who died in 1658, not the +younger Charles Cotton (the translator of Montaigne),—for +he was not born till five years after Fletcher +died. And, third, that not only is the title of the folio +"Comedies and Tragedies written by Francis Beaumont +and John Fletcher, Gentlemen" a misnomer, but +that the bulk of their joint-plays, "the old ones" (not +here included) calls for a volume to itself. A very +just verdict, indeed,—this of Cockayne,—for (if I +may again anticipate conclusions later to be reached) +the only indubitable contributions from Beaumont's +hand to this folio are his <i>Maske of the Gentleman of +Grayes Inne</i> and a portion of <i>The Coxcombe</i>.</p> + +<p>The confusion concerning authorship was redoubled +by the second folio, which appeared as "<i>Fifty Comedies +and Tragedies</i>. Written by Francis Beaumont +and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. Published by the Authors +Original Copies (<i>etc.</i>)" in 1679. There are +fifty-three plays in this volume; the thirty-five of the +first folio, and eighteen previously printed but not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span> +before gathered together. Beside those in which +Beaumont had, or could have had, a hand, the eighteen +include five of Fletcher's authorship, five in which he +collaborated with others than Beaumont; and one, +<i>The Coronation</i>, principally, if not entirely, by Shirley.<a name="FNanchor_142_142" id="FNanchor_142_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a> +As in the 1647 folio, the only indication of +respective authorship is to be found in occasional dedications, +prefaces, prologues and epilogues. But, +while in some half-dozen instances these name Fletcher +correctly as author, and, in two or three, by implication +correctly designate him or Beaumont, in other +cases the indication is wrong or misleading. Where +"our poets" are vaguely mentioned, or no hint whatever +is given, the uncritical reader is led to ascribe the +play to the joint composition of Beaumont and +Fletcher. The lists of actors prefixed to several of +the dramas afford valuable information concerning +date and, sometimes, authorship to the student of +stage-history; but the credulous would carry away the +impression that Beaumont and Fletcher had collaborated +equally in about forty of the fifty-three plays +contained in the folio of 1679.</p> + +<p>The uncertainty regarding the respective shares of +the two authors in the production of this large number +of dramas and, consequently, regarding the quality +of the genius of each, commenced even during the +life of Fletcher who survived his friend by nine years, +and it has continued in some fashion down to the +present time. Writing an elegy "on Master Beaumont, +presently after his death,"<a name="FNanchor_143_143" id="FNanchor_143_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> that is to say, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> +1616-17, John Earle, a precocious youth of sixteen, +at Christ Church, Oxford, is so occupied with lament +and praise for "the poet so quickly taken off" that +he not only ascribes to him the whole of <i>Philaster</i> and +<i>The Maides Tragedy</i> (in both of which it was always +known that Fletcher had a share) but omits mention +of Fletcher altogether. So far, however, as the estimate +of the peculiar genius of Beaumont goes, the +judgment of young Earle has rarely been surpassed.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Oh, when I read those excellent things of thine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such Strength, such sweetnesse, coucht in every line,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such life of Fancy, such high choise of braine,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nought of the Vulgar mint or borrow'd straine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such Passion, such expressions meet my eye,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such Wit untainted with obscenity,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And these so unaffectedly exprest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But all in a pure flowing language drest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all so borne within thyself, thine owne,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I grieve not now that old Menanders veine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is ruin'd, to survive in thee againe.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The succeeding exaltation of his idol above Plautus +and Aristophanes, nay even Chaucer, is of a generous +extravagance, but the lad lays his finger on the real +Beaumont when he calls attention to "those excellent +things;" and to the histrionic quality, the high seriousness, +the "humours" and the perennial vitality +of Beaumont's contribution to dramatic poetry.</p> + +<p>A year or so later, and still during Fletcher's lifetime, +we find Drummond of Hawthornden confusing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> +in his turn the facts of authorship; for he "reports +Jonson as saying that 'Flesher and Beaumont, ten +years since, hath written <i>The Faithfull Shipheardesse</i>, +a tragicomedie well done,'—whereas both Jonson +and Beaumont had already addressed lines to +Fletcher in commendation of his pastoral."<a name="FNanchor_144_144" id="FNanchor_144_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a> By +1647, as Miss Hatcher has shown, the confusion had +crystallized itself into three distinct opinions, equally +false, concerning the respective contribution of the +authors to the plays loosely accredited to their partnership. +These opinions are represented in the commendatory +verses prefixed to the first folio. One was +that "they were equal geniuses fused into one by the +force of perfect congeniality and not to be distinguished +from each other in their work,"—thus put +into epigram by Sir George Lisle:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For still your fancies are so wov'n and knit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'T was Francis Fletcher or John Beaumont writ;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and repeated by Sir John Pettus:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">How Angels (cloyster'd in our humane Cells)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Maintaine their parley, Beaumont-Fletcher tels:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose strange, unimitable Intercourse<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Transcends all Rules.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A second, the dominant view in 1647, was that "the +plays were to be accredited to Fletcher alone, since +Beaumont was not to be taken into serious account +in explaining their production." This opinion is expressed +by Waller, who, referring not only to the +plays of that folio (in only two of which Beaumont<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> +appears) but to others like <i>The Maides Tragedy</i> and +<i>The Scornful Ladie</i> in which, undoubtedly, Beaumont +coöperated, says:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Fletcher, to thee wee do not only owe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All these good Playes, but those of others, too; ...<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No Worthies form'd by any Muse but thine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Could purchase Robes to make themselves so fine;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and by Hills, who writes,—"upon the Ever-to-be-admired +Mr. John Fletcher and his Playes,"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Fletcher, the King of Poets! such was he,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That earn'd all tribute, claim'd all soveraignty."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The third view was—still to follow Miss Hatcher—that +"Fletcher was the genius and creator in the work, +and Beaumont merely the judicial and regulative +force." Cartwright in his two poems of 1647, as I +have already pointed out, emphasizes this view:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Though when all Fletcher writ, and the entire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Man was indulged unto that sacred fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His thoughts and his thoughts dresse appeared both such<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That 't was his happy fault to do too much;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who therefore wisely did submit each birth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To knowing Beaumont ere it did come forth;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Working againe, until he said 't was fit<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And made him the sobriety of his wit;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though thus he call'd his Judge into his fame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And for that aid allow'd him halfe the name,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'T is knowne that sometimes he did stand alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That both the Spunge and Pencill were his owne;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That himselfe judged himselfe, could singly do,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And was at last Beaumont and Fletcher too.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>A similar view is implied by Dryden, when, in his +<i>Essay of Dramatick Poesie</i>, 1668, he attributes the +regularity of their joint-plots to Beaumont's influence; +and reports that even "Ben Jonson while he lived +submitted all his writings to his censure, and 'tis +thought used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, +all his plots."</p> + +<p>This tradition of Fletcher as creator and Beaumont +as critic continued for generations, only occasionally +disturbed,<a name="FNanchor_145_145" id="FNanchor_145_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a> in spite of the testimony of Cockayne to +Fletcher's sole authorship of most of the plays in +the first folio, to the coöperation of Massinger with +Fletcher in some, and to the fact that there were +enough plays not here included, written conjointly +by Beaumont and Fletcher, to warrant the publication +of a separate volume, properly ascribed to both. To +the mistaken attributions of authorship by Dryden, +Rymer, and others, I make reference in my forthcoming +Essay on <i>The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare</i>, +Part Two.<a name="FNanchor_146_146" id="FNanchor_146_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a> The succeeding history of opinion +through Langbaine, Collier, Theobald, Sympson +and Seward, Chalmers, Brydges, <i>The Biographia Dramatica</i>, +Cibber, Malone, Darley, Dyce, and the purely +literary critics from Lamb to Swinburne, has been +admirably outlined by Miss Hatcher in the first chapter +of her dissertation on the <i>Dramatic Method of John +Fletcher</i>.</p> + +<p>With Fleay, in 1874, began the scientific analysis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> +of the problem, based upon metrical tests as derived +from the investigation of the individual verse of +Fletcher, Massinger, and Beaumont. His method has +been elaborated, corrected, and supplemented by additional +rhetorical and literary tests, on the part of +various critics, some of whom are mentioned below.<a name="FNanchor_147_147" id="FNanchor_147_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> +The more detailed studies in metre and style are by +R. Boyle, G. C. Macaulay, and E. H. Oliphant; and the +best brief comparative view of their conclusions as regards +Beaumont's contribution is to be found in R. M. Alden's +edition of <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i> +and <i>A King and No King</i>. To the chronology of the +plays serviceable introductions are afforded by Macaulay +in the list appended to his chapter in the sixth +volume of the <i>Cambridge History of English Literature</i>, +and by A. H. Thorndike in his <i>Influence of Beaumont +and Fletcher upon Shakespeare</i>.</p> + +<p>Concerning the authorship of the successive scenes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> +in a few of the plays undoubtedly written in partnership +by Beaumont and Fletcher a consensus of opinion +has practically been reached. Concerning others, +especially those in which a third or fourth hand may +be traced, the difference of opinion is still bewildering. +This divergence is due, perhaps, to the proneness of +the critic to emphasize one or more tests out of relation +to the rest, or to forget that though individual scenes +were undertaken now by one, now by the other of the +colleagues, the play as a whole would be usually +planned by both, but any individual scene or passage +revised by either. The tests of external evidence have +of course been applied by all critics, but as to events +and dates there is still variety of opinion. Of the +internal criteria, those based upon the peculiarities of +each partner in respect of versification have been so +carefully studied and applied that to repeat the operation +seems like threshing very ancient straw; but to +accept the winnowings of others, however careful, is +unsatisfactory. Tests of rhetorical habit and tectonic +preference have also been, in general, attempted; but +not, I think, exhaustively. And, though much has +been established, and availed of, in analysis, there remains +yet something to desire in the application of the +more subtle differentiæ yielded by such preliminary +methods of investigation,—what these differentiæ +teach us concerning the temperamental idiosyncrasies +of each of the partners in scope and method of observation, +in poetic imagery, in moral and emotional insight +and elevation, intellectual outlook, philosophical +and religious conviction.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141_141" id="Footnote_141_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a> See G. C. Macaulay (<i>Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit.</i>, VI), and other +authorities as in footnote toward end of this chapter.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142_142" id="Footnote_142_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a> See authorities as in footnote, below.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143_143" id="Footnote_143_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a> Included "thirty years" after, among the commendatory +poems in the folio of 1647; but published earlier with <i>Beaumont's +Poems</i>, 1640.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144_144" id="Footnote_144_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a> Miss O. L. Hatcher, <i>John Fletcher</i>, Chicago, 1905.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145_145" id="Footnote_145_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a> As by Langbaine, <i>An Account of the English Dramatick +Poets</i> (1691), who acknowledges Cockayne as the only conclusive +authority upon the subject.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146_146" id="Footnote_146_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a> <i>R. E. C.</i>, Vol. III.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147_147" id="Footnote_147_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a> F. G. Fleay, in <i>New Shakespeare Society Transactions</i>, 1874; +<i>Shakespeare Manual</i>, 1876; <i>Englische Studien</i>, IX (1866); +<i>Chronicle of the English Drama</i>, 1891. R. Boyle, in <i>Engl. Stud.</i>, +V, VII, VIII, IX, X, XVII, XVIII, XXVI, XXXI (1881-1902), +and in <i>N. Shaksp. Soc. Trans.</i>, 1886. G. C. Macaulay, <i>Francis +Beaumont</i>, 1883; and in <i>Cambridge History of English Literature</i>, +VI (1910). A. H. Bullen, article <i>John Fletcher</i> in <i>Dictionary +of National Biography</i>, XIX (1889). E. H. Oliphant, in +<i>Engl. Stud.</i>, XIV, XV, XVI (1890-92). A. H. Thorndike, <i>The +Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare</i>, 1901; Beaumont +and Fletcher's <i>Maid's Tragedy</i>, etc. (Belles Lettres Series), +1910. R. M. Alden, Beaumont's <i>Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>, +etc. (Belles Lettres Series), 1910. The introductions in the +<i>Variorum Edition</i>, 1904, 1905. For a general treatment of the +subject see, also, A. W. Ward's <i>History of English Dramatic +Literature</i>, II, 155-248 (1875), II, 642-764 (1809), and F. E. Schelling's +<i>Elizabethan Drama</i>, II, 184-204, and for bibliography, +526. For general bibliography, Thorndike and Alden in Belles +Lettres Series, as above; and <i>Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit.</i>, VI, 488-496.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XVII</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">THE DELIMITATION OF THE FIELD</p> + + +<p class="cap">The plays contained in the first folio of Beaumont +and Fletcher's <i>Comedies and Tragedies</i>, 1647, +are <i>The Mad Lover</i>, <i>The Spanish Curate</i>, <i>The Little +French Lawyer</i>, <i>The Custome of the Countrey</i>, <i>The +Noble Gentleman</i>, <i>The Captaine</i>, <i>The Beggers Bush</i>, +<i>The Coxcombe</i>, <i>The False One</i>, <i>The Chances</i>, <i>The +Loyall Subject</i>, <i>The Lawes of Candy</i>, <i>The Lovers +Progresse</i>, <i>The Island Princesse</i>, <i>The Humorous Lieutenant</i>, +<i>The Nice Valour</i>, <i>The Maide in the Mill</i>, <i>The +Prophetesse</i>, <i>The Tragedy of Bonduca</i>, <i>The Sea Voyage</i>, +<i>The Double Marriage</i>, <i>The Pilgrim</i>, <i>The Knight +of Malta</i>, <i>The Womans Prize</i> or <i>The Tamer Tamed</i>, +<i>Loves Cure</i>, <i>The Honest Mans Fortune</i>, <i>The Queene +of Corinth</i>, <i>Women Pleas'd</i>, <i>A Wife for a Moneth</i>, +<i>Wit at Severall Weapons</i>, <i>The Tragedy of Valentinian</i>, +<i>The Faire Maide of the Inne</i>, <i>Loves Pilgrimage</i>, <i>The +Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne, and the +Inner Temple, at the Marriage of the Prince and +Princesse Palatine of Rhene</i> written by Francis Beaumont, +Gentleman, <i>Foure Playes</i> (or <i>Moralle Representations</i>) +<i>in One</i>.</p> + +<p>Of these thirty-five, which purport to be printed +from "the authours originall copies," only one, as I +have already said, <i>The Maske</i>, had been published before.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span></p> + +<p>The second folio, entitled <i>Fifty Comedies and Tragedies</i>, +1679, contains, beside those above mentioned, +eighteen others, one of which, <i>The Wild-Goose Chase</i>, +had been published separately and in folio, 1652. The +remaining seventeen said to be "published from the +Authors' Original Copies," are printed from the quartos. +They are <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, <i>Philaster</i>, <i>A King +and No King</i>, <i>The Scornful Ladie</i>, <i>The Elder Brother</i>, +<i>Wit Without Money</i>, <i>The Faithfull Shepheardesse</i>, +<i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i>, <i>Monsieur Thomas</i>, +<i>Rollo</i>, <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>, <i>The Night-Walker</i>, +<i>The Coronation</i>, <i>Cupids Revenge</i>, <i>The Two +Noble Kinsmen</i>, <i>Thierry and Theodoret</i>, and <i>The +Woman-Hater</i>.</p> + +<p>In addition to these fifty-three plays, one, <i>The Faithful +Friends</i>, entered on the Stationers' Registers in +1660, as by Beaumont and Fletcher, was held in manuscript +until 1812, when it was purchased by Weber +from "Mr. John Smith of Furnival's Inn into whose +possession it came from Mr. Theobald, nephew to the +editor of Shakespeare," and published.</p> + +<p>According to the broadest possible sweep of modern +opinion, the presence of Beaumont cannot by any <i>tour +de force</i> be conjectured in more than twenty-three of +the fifty-four productions listed above. The twenty-three +are (exclusive of <i>The Maske</i>) <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, +<i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>, <i>Cupids +Revenge</i>, <i>The Scornful Ladie</i>, <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, +<i>A King and No King</i>, <i>Philaster</i>, <i>Foure Playes in One</i>, +<i>Loves Cure</i>, <i>The Coxcombe</i>, <i>The Captaine</i>, <i>Thierry +and Theodoret</i>, <i>The Faithful Friends</i>, <i>Wit at Severall +Weapons</i>, <i>Beggers Bush</i>, <i>Loves Pilgrimage</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> <i>The +Knight of Malta</i>, <i>The Lawes of Candy</i>, <i>The Nice Valour</i>, +<i>The Noble Gentleman</i>, <i>The Faire Maide of the +Inne</i>, <i>Bonduca</i>, and <i>The Honest Mans Fortune</i>. With +regard to the last twelve of these plays beginning with +<i>Thierry and Theodoret</i> there is no convincing proof +that more than the first four were written before +February 1613, when after preparing the <i>Maske</i> for +the Lady Elizabeth's marriage to the Elector Palatine, +Beaumont seems (except for his share of <i>The Scornful +Ladie</i> which I date about 1614) to have withdrawn +from dramatic activity,—perhaps because of his own +marriage about that time and withdrawal to the country, +or because of failing health; and there is no generally +accepted historical or textual evidence that +Beaumont had any hand even in these four. Of the +eight remaining at the end of the list, four may be +dated before Beaumont's death in 1616: <i>The Honest +Mans Fortune</i>, which is said on manuscript evidence +to have been played in the year 1613, but probably +later than August 5;<a name="FNanchor_148_148" id="FNanchor_148_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a> <i>Bonduca</i>, which Oliphant asserts +is an alteration by Fletcher of an old drama of +Beaumont's, but which other authorities assign to +Fletcher alone; and, on slighter evidence, <i>Loves Pilgrimage</i>, +and <i>The Nice Valour</i>. The balance of proof +with regard to the other four, <i>The Knight of Malta</i>, +<i>The Lawes of Candy</i>, <i>The Noble Gentleman</i>, and <i>The +Faire Maide of the Inne</i>, is altogether in favour of +their composition after Beaumont's death.</p> + +<p>In each of these twelve plays, however, beginning +with <i>Thierry</i> and ending with <i>The Honest Mans Fortune</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span> +an occasional expert thinks that he finds a speech +or a scene in Beaumont's style, and concludes that the +play in its present form is a revision of some early +effort in which that dramatist had a hand. But where +one critic surmises Beaumont, another detects Beaumont's +imitators; and where one conjectures Fletcher +and Beaumont conjoined, half a dozen assert Fletcher, +assisted, or revised by anywhere from one to four +contemporaries,—Field or Daborne or Massinger, +Middleton or Rowley, or First and Second Unknown. +I have examined these plays and the evidence, as +carefully as I have those which have more claim to +consideration among the Beaumont possibilities, and +have applied to them all the tests which I shall presently +describe; and have come to the conclusion that +Beaumont had nothing to do with any of the twelve.</p> + +<p>There remain, then, of the twenty-three plays enumerated +above as Beaumont-Fletcher possibilities, only +eleven of which I can, on the basis of external or +internal evidence, or both, safely say that they were +composed before Beaumont ceased writing for the +stage, and that he had, or may have had, a hand in +writing some of them. These are, in the order of their +first appearance in print: <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, published +without name of author in 1607; <i>The Knight +of the Burning Pestle</i>, also anonymous, published in +1613; <i>Cupids Revenge</i>, published as Fletcher's in 1615; +<i>The Scornful Ladie</i>, published in 1616, as Beaumont +and Fletcher's, just after the death of the former; <i>The +Maides Tragedy</i>, published, without names of authors, +in 1619; <i>A King and No King</i>, published as Beaumont +and Fletcher's in 1619; <i>Philaster</i>, published as Beaumont<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> +and Fletcher's in 1620; and <i>Foure Playes in +One</i>, <i>Loves Cure</i>, <i>The Coxcombe</i>, and <i>The Captaine</i>, +first published in the 1647 folio, without ascription of +authorship on the title-page, but as of the "Comedies +and Tragedies written by Beaumont and Fletcher," in +general. In the case of <i>Loves Cure</i> the Epilogue mentions +"our Author"; the Prologue, spoken "at the +reviving of this play," attributes it to Beaumont and +Fletcher. As for <i>The Coxcombe</i>, the Prologue for a +revival speaks of "the makers that confest it for +their own."</p> + +<p>It is worthy of notice that three only of these eleven +possible "Beaumont-Fletcher" plays were printed +during Beaumont's lifetime,—<i>The Woman-Hater</i>, +<i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i> and <i>Cupids Revenge</i>, +and that on none of them does Beaumont's +name appear as author. The last indeed was ascribed, +wrongly, as I shall later show, to Fletcher alone. It +should also be noted that four other of the plays, beginning +with <i>The Scornful Ladie</i> and ending with +<i>Philaster</i>, were published before the death of Fletcher +in 1625; and that while three of them have title-page +ascriptions to both authors, one, <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, +is anonymous.</p> + +<p>To these eleven plays as a residuum I have given +the preference in the application of tests deemed most +likely to reveal the relative contribution and genius +of the authors in partnership. Beside the seven published +as stated above during Fletcher's life, two others +appeared which I do not include in this residuum,—<i>The +Faithfull Shepheardesse</i> and <i>Thierry and +Theodoret</i>. The former, printed between December<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> +22, 1608 and July 20, 1609, is of Fletcher's sole authorship, +and will be employed as one of the clues to +his early characteristics. The latter, attributed by +some critics to both authors was published without ascription +of authorship in a quarto of 1621. It does +not appear in the folio of 1647, but was printed in second +quarto as "by John Fletcher" in 1648, and again +as "by F. Beaumont and J. Fletcher" in 1649; and +was finally gathered up with the <i>Comedies and Tragedies</i> +which compose the folio of 1679. Oliphant and +Thorndike are of opinion that the play is a revision by +Massinger of an original by Beaumont and Fletcher, +but I cannot discover in the text evidence sufficient to +warrant its inclusion in the list of plays worthy to be investigated +as the possible product of the partnership.</p> + +<p>The eleven Beaumont-Fletcher plays to which the +criteria of internal evidence may be applied with some +assurance of success, comprise in their number, fortunately +for us, three of which we are informed by +external evidence,—the contemporary testimony of +John Earle, dated 1616-1617,—that Beaumont was +concerned in their composition. These three, <i>Philaster</i>, +<i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, and <i>A King and No King</i>, +are a positive residuum to which as a model of the +joint-work of our authors we may first, in the effort +to discriminate their respective functions when working +in partnership, apply the tests of style derived from a +study of the plays and poems which each wrote alone.</p> + +<p>With this delimitation of the field of inquiry, we +are now ready for the consideration of the criteria +by which the presence of either author may be detected. +The criteria are primarily of versification; then, successively<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> +and cumulatively, of diction and mental +habit. Ultimately, and by induction, they are of dramatic +technique and creative genius.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148_148" id="Footnote_148_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a> See Fleay, <i>Chron. Eng. Dram.</i>, I, 195; and W. W. Greg, +<i>Henslowe Papers</i>, 90.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XVIII</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">THE VERSIFICATION OF FLETCHER AND OF BEAUMONT</p> + + +<p class="section">I. In Plays Individually Composed.</p> + +<p class="cap">The studies of the most experienced critics into the +peculiarities of Fletcher's blank verse as displayed +in productions of the popular dramatic kind, +indubitably written by him alone,<a name="FNanchor_149_149" id="FNanchor_149_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> such as <i>Monsieur +Thomas</i> of the earlier period, ending 1613, <i>The +Chances</i>, <i>The Loyall Subject</i>, and <i>The Humorous +Lieutenant</i> of the middle period, ending 1619, and +<i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i> of his latest period, indicate +that he indulges in an excessive use of double +endings, sometimes as many as seventy in every hundred +lines, even in triple and quadruple endings; in an +abundance of trisyllabic feet; and in a peculiar retention +of the old end-stopped line, or final pause,—occasionally +in as many as ninety out of a hundred lines. +Attention has been directed also to the emphasis +which he deliberately places upon the extra syllable +of the blank verse, making it a substantive rather +than a negligible factor: as in the "brains" and "too" +of the following:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Or wander after that they know not where<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To find? or, if found how to enjoy? Are men's brains<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Made nowadays of malt, that their affections<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are never sober, but, like drunken people<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Founder at every new fame? I do believe, too,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That men in love are ever drunk, as drunken men<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are ever loving,—<a name="FNanchor_150_150" id="FNanchor_150_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and to his fondness for appending words such as +"first," "then," "there," "still," "sir," and even +"lady" and "gentlemen" to lines which already possess +their five feet. It has also been remarked that +he makes but infrequent employment of rhyme.</p> + +<p>Of this metrical style examples will be found on +pages in Chapter XIX, Section 2, below; or on any +page of Fletcher's <i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i>, as +for instance the following from Act III, Scene 1, +14-23:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Altea.</i> My life|, an in|nocent|!<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Marg.</i> <span class="hemi9">That's it | I aim | at,<br /></span></span> +<span class="i1">That's it | I hope | too; ¦ then ¦ I am sure | I rule | him;<span class="linenum">15</span><br /></span> +<span class="i1">For in|nocents | are like | obe|dient chil|dren<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Brought up | under a hard | <span class="stress">^</span> moth|er-in-law|, a cru|el,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Who be|ing not us'd | to break|fasts and | colla|tions,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> When | they have coarse | bread of|fer'd 'em | are thank|full,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And take | it for | a fa|vour too|. Are the rooms |<span class="linenum">20</span><br /></span> +<span class="i1">Made read|y to en|tertain | my friends|? I long | to dance now,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> And | to be wan|ton. ¦ Let | me have | a song.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Is the great | couch up | the Duke | of Medi|na sent?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span></p> +<p>Here the first half of v. 14 is also the last of the preceding +line; seven out of ten verses have double endings; +one has a triple ending. One, v. 21, has a quadruple +ending; unless we rearrange by adding "made +ready" to v. 20, so as to scan:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And take 't | for a fa|vour too|. Are the rooms | made read|y<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To en|tertain | my friends|? I long | to dance | now.—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Trisyllabic feet occur in nine; final pauses in nine; +stress-syllable openings and compensating anapæsts in +two; the feminine cæsura (phrasal pause within the +foot) in two. The pause in v. 15, after two strong +monosyllables of which the first is stressed, produces +a jolt, typically Fletcherian.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 406px;"><a name="image244" id="image244"></a> +<img src="images/image14.jpg" width="406" height="500" alt="JOHN EARLE, BISHOP OF WORCESTER AND SALISBURY +From the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery" title="JOHN EARLE, BISHOP OF WORCESTER AND SALISBURY +From the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery" /> +<div class="bbox"> +<p class="imtitle">JOHN EARLE, BISHOP OF WORCESTER AND SALISBURY<br /> +<span class="smtext">From the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery</span></p> +</div></div> + +<p>Now, these peculiarities of versification are not a +habit acquired by Fletcher after Beaumont ceased to +write with him. They are rife not only in the plays +of his middle and later periods, but in those of the +earlier period while Beaumont was still at his side. +As for instance in <i>Monsieur Thomas</i>, entirely Fletcher's +of 1607, or at the latest 1611. The reader may +be interested to verify for himself by scanning the +following passage from Act IV, 2 at which I open +at random: Launcelot is speaking:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But to the silent streets we turn'd our furies:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A sleeping watchman here we stole the shooes from,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There made a noise, at which he wakes, and follows:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The streets are durty, takes a Queen-hithe cold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hard cheese, and that choaks him o' Munday next:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Windows and signs we sent to Erebus;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A crew of bawling curs we entertain'd last,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span> +<span class="i0">When having let the pigs loose in out parishes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O, the brave cry we made as high as Algate!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Down comes a Constable, and the Sow his Sister<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Most traiterously tramples upon Authority:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There a whole stand of rug gowns rowted mainly,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the King's peace put to flight, a purblind pig here<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Runs me his head into the Admirable Lanthorn,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Out goes the light and all turns to confusion.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>No one, once acquainted with this style of blank verse, +with its end-stopped lines, double endings, stress-syllable +openings, feminine cæsuræ, trisyllabic feet, jolts, +and heavy extra syllables, can ever turn it to confusion +with the verse of any poet before Browning—certainly +not with that of Beaumont.</p> + +<p>Our materials for a study of Beaumont's individual +characteristics in the composition of dramatic blank +verse appear at the first sight to be very scanty; for +the only example of which we have positive external +evidence that it was written by Beaumont alone, is +<i>The Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne and the +Inner Temple</i>, and unfortunately some critics have excluded +it from consideration because of its exceptionally +formal and spectacular character and slight dramatic +purpose. Written, however, at the beginning +of 1613, when the author's metrical manner was a +definitely confirmed habit, it affords, in my opinion, +the best as well as the most natural approach to the +investigation of Beaumont's versification. The following +lines may be regarded as typical:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">Is great Jove jealous that I am imploy'd<br /></span> +<span class="i1">On her Love-errands? ¦ She did never yet<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span> +<span class="i1">Claspe weak mortality in her white arms,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">As he hath often done: I only come<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To celebrate the long-wish'd Nuptials<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Here | in Olym|pia, ¦ which | are now | perform'd.<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Betwixt two goodly rivers, ¦ that have mixt<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Their gentle, rising waves, and are to grow<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> In | to a thou|sand streams | <span class="stress">^</span> great | as themselves.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In these nine verses there are no Fletcherian jolts, no +double endings. In only two lines trisyllabic feet +occur; in only two, final pauses. There are stress-syllable +openings in two, with the compensating anapæsts; +feminine cæsuræ, in three (dotted); and a stress-syllable +opening for the verse-section after the cæsura occurs +in but one, whereas there are at least three such in +the passage from <i>Monsieur Thomas</i>, quoted above.</p> + +<p>Nothing could be more pronounced than the difference +between the metrical style of Fletcher's <i>Monsieur +Thomas</i> and <i>Rule a Wife</i> and that of Beaumont's +<i>Maske</i>, as illustrated here. Fletcher abounds in +double endings, trisyllabic feet, and end-stopped lines, +and such conversational or lyrical cadences; Beaumont +uses them much more sparingly. But while the +difference between the genuinely dramatic blank verse +of Fletcher and that of Beaumont is sometimes as pronounced +as this, it would be unscientific to base the +criterion upon comparison of a mature, conversationally +dramatic, composition of the former with a +stiffly rhetorical declamatory composition of the latter. +For a more suitable comparison we must set Beaumont's +<i>Maske</i> side by side with something of Fletcher's +written in similar formal and declamatory style,—<i>The +Faithfull Shepheardesse</i>, for instance, a youthful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span> +production in the pastoral spirit and form. Of this +a small part, but sufficient for our purpose, is composed +in blank verse; and I have cited in the next chapter +with another end in view, the opening soliloquy,—to +which the reader may turn. But as exemplifying +certain of Fletcher's metrical peculiarities, in a style of +verse suitable to be compared with Beaumont's in <i>The +Maske</i>, the following lines from Act I, 1, are perhaps +even more distinctive. "What greatness," says +the Shepherdesse,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i1">What greatness, ¦ or what private hidden power,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Is | there in me, | to draw submission<br /></span> +<span class="i1">From this rude man and beast? Sure I am mortal,<span class="linenum">105</span><br /></span> +<span class="i1">The Daughter of a Shepherd; ¦ he was mortal,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And she that bore me mortal: ¦ prick my hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And it will bleed; a Feaver shakes me, and<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The self-same wind that makes the young Lambs shrink<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"><br class="noshow" /> +<span class="i1">Makes me | a-cold; | my fear says I am mortal.<span class="linenum">110</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Yet have I heard | (my Mother told it me,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And now I do believe it), ¦ if I keep<br /></span> +<span class="i1">My Virgin Flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">No Goblin, ¦ Wood-god, Fairy, Elf, or Fiend,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Sa|tyr, or oth|er power that haunts the Groves,<span class="linenum">115</span><br /></span> +<span class="i1">Shall hurt my body, ¦ or by vain illusion<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Draw | me to wan|der ¦ after idle fires.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We have here, in fifteen lines, four double endings, +nine final pauses (end-stopped verses), four stress-syllable +openings with compensating anapæsts, and +seven feminine cæsuræ. In every way this sample +even of Fletcher's more formal style displays, in its +salient characteristics, a much closer resemblance in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span> +kind to the sample of his later blank verse quoted +from <i>Rule a Wife</i>, above, than to that quoted from +Beaumont's <i>Maske</i>.</p> + +<p>When we pass from samples to larger sections, and +compare percentages in the one hundred and thirty-one +blank verses of <i>The Maske</i> and the first one hundred +and sixty-three of <i>The Shepheardesse</i>, we find +that in respect of final pauses there is no great difference. +There are, in the former, more than is usual +with Beaumont—sixty per cent; in the latter, less +than is usual with Fletcher—fifty per cent. But in +other respects Beaumont's <i>Maske</i> reveals peculiarities +of verse altogether different from those of Fletcher, +even when he is writing in the declamatory pastoral +vein. In the one hundred and thirty-one lines of the +<i>Maske</i> we find but one double ending; whereas in +the first one hundred and sixty-three blank verses of +<i>The Shepheardesse</i> we count as many as fourteen. In +these productions the proportion of feminine cæsuræ +is practically uniform—about forty per cent. But +when we come to examine the more subtle movement +of the rhythm, we find that in <i>The Maske</i> not more +than ten per cent of the lines open with the stress-syllable, +while in the blank verse of the <i>Shepheardesse</i> +fully thirty-five out of every hundred lines have that +opening and, consequently, impart the lyrical cadence +which pervades much of Fletcher's metrical composition. +In the matter of anapæstic substitutions, and +of stress-syllable openings for the verse-section after +the cæsura, Beaumont is similarly inelastic; while +the Fletcher of the <i>Shepheardesse</i> displays a marvellous +freedom. It follows that in the <i>Maske</i> we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span> +encounter but rarely the rhetorical pause, within the +verse, compensating for an absent thesis or arsis; while +in the pastoral verse of Fletcher we find frequent instances +of this delicate dramatic as well as metrical +device, and an occasional jolting cæsura.</p> + +<p>We are not limited, however, to the material afforded +by the <i>Maske</i> in our attempt to discover Beaumont's +metrical characteristics when writing alone. +<i>The Woman-Hater</i>, included among the plays of +Beaumont and Fletcher in the folio of 1679, and +ascribed to both on the title-page of a quarto of 1649, +is assigned by the Prologue of the first quarto, 1607, +to a single author—"he that made this play." And, +though there is no attribution of authorship on the +title-page of the 1607 quarto, we know from the application +of verse-tests and tests of diction that, in all +but three scenes which have evidently been revised,<a name="FNanchor_151_151" id="FNanchor_151_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a> +the author was certainly not Fletcher. An examination +of the inner structure of the verse of <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, +reveals, except in those scenes, precisely the +peculiarities that distinguish Beaumont's <i>Maske</i>: the +same infrequency of stress-syllable openings, and of +anapæstic substitutions and of suppressed syllables +in metrical scheme. In respect of the more evident +device of the run-on line <i>The Woman-Hater</i> reaches +a percentage twice as high as that employed in +Fletcher's unassisted popular dramas; and in respect +of the double ending it has a percentage only one-quarter +as high. We notice also in this play a much +more frequent employment of rhyme than in any of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span> +Fletcher's stage plays, and a much larger proportion +of prose both for dialogue and soliloquy.</p> + +<p>We should have further basis for conclusion concerning +Beaumont's metrical style in independent composition, +if we could accept the general assumption +that he was the author of the <i>Induction</i> to the <i>Foure +Playes in One</i>, and of the first two plays, <i>The Triumph +of Honour</i> and <i>The Triumph of Love</i>. But for reasons, +later to be stated, I agree with Oliphant that the +<i>Induction</i> and <i>Honour</i> are not by Beaumont; and I +hold that he can not be traced with certainty even in +the two or three scenes of <i>Love</i> that seem to be +marked by some of his characteristics. The hand of +a third writer, Field, is manifest in the non-Fletcherian +plays of the series.</p> + +<p>But though we can not draw for our purpose upon +other plays as his unassisted work, we may derive help +from the consideration of two at least of Beaumont's +poems,—poems that have something of a dramatic +flavour. Though they are in rhyming couplets, they +display many of the characteristics of the author's +blank verse. In the <i>Letter to Ben Jonson</i>, which is +conversational, I count of run-on lines, thirty-eight in +eighty, almost fifty per cent, as compared with Fletcher's +sometimes ten or twenty per cent, in spite of the +superior elasticity of blank verse; and of stress-syllable +openings in the same letter twenty-four per cent +as compared with the thirty-five per cent of Fletcher's +more highly cadenced rhythm in the <i>Shepheardesse</i>. +In Beaumont's <i>Elegy on the Countess of Rutland</i>, +the last forty-four lines afford a fine example of dramatic +fervour—the indictment of the physicians.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span> +Here the run-on lines again abound, almost fifty per +cent; while the stress-syllable openings are but sixteen +per cent—much lower than one may find in +many rhymed portions of the <i>Shepheardesse</i>. With +regard to all other tests except that of double ending +(which does not apply in this kind of heroic +couplet), we find that these poems of Beaumont are +of a metrical style distinguished by the same characteristics +as his blank verse.<a name="FNanchor_152_152" id="FNanchor_152_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a></p> + + +<p class="section">2. In Certain Joint-Plays.</p> + +<p>If we turn now to a second class of material available,—the +three plays indubitably produced in partnership,—and +eliminate the portions written in the +metrical style of Fletcher, as already ascertained, we +may safely attribute the remainder to the junior member +of the firm; and so arrive at a final determination +of his manner in verse composition.</p> + +<p>The three plays, as I have said before, are <i>Philaster</i>, +<i>The Maides Tragedy</i> and <i>A King and No King</i>. A +passage, which in the opinion of nearly all critics<a name="FNanchor_153_153" id="FNanchor_153_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a> is +by all tests distinctively Fletcherian, may be cited +from the first of these as an example of that which +we eliminate when we look for Beaumont. It is from +the beginning of Act V, 4, where the Captain enters:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0h">"Philaster, brave Philaster!" Let Philas|ter<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Be deeper in request, my ding [a] dongs,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span> +<span class="i1">My paires of deere Indentures, ¦ Kings of Clubs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Than | your cold wa|ter-cham|blets ¦ or | your paint|ings<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Spit|ted with cop|per, ¦ Let | not your has|ty Silkes,<span class="linenum">10</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Or | your branch'd cloth | of bod|kin, ¦ or | your ti|shues,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Deare|ly belov'd | of spi|cèd cake | and cus|tards,—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Your Rob|in-hoods, |<span class="stress">^</span> Scar|lets and Johns, |<span class="stress">^</span> tye | your affec|tions<br /></span> +<span class="i1">In darknesse to your Shops. No, dainty duc|kers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Up | with your three|-piled spi|rits, ¦ your | wrought va|lors.<span class="linenum">15</span><br /></span> +<span class="i1">And let | your un|cut col|lers ¦ make | the King feele<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The measure of your mightinesse, Philas|ter!<a name="FNanchor_154_154" id="FNanchor_154_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Note the double endings, the end-stopped lines, the +stress-syllable openings, the anapæsts, the feminine +cæsuræ (dotted), the two omissions of the light syllable +after the cæsural pause and the following accent at +the beginning of the verse section, and the six feet of +line 13.</p> + +<p>Of the non-Fletcherian part of <i>Philaster</i>, a typical +example is the following from Act I, Scene 2, where +Philaster replies to Arethusa's request that he look +away from her:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I can indure it: Turne away my face?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I never yet saw enemy that lookt<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So dreadfully but that I thought my selfe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As great a Basiliske as he; or spake<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So horrible but that I thought my tongue<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Bore thunder underneath, as much as his,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor beast that I could turne from: shall I then<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beginne to feare sweete sounds? a ladies voyce,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whom I doe love? Say, you would have my life;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why, I will give it you; for it is of me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A thing so loath'd, and unto you that aske<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of so poore use, that I shall make no price.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If you intreate, I will unmov'dly heare.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Or the famous description of Bellario, beginning:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i9">I have a boy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sent by the gods, I hope to this intent,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not yet seen in the court—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>from the same scene.</p> + +<p>Or the King's soliloquy in Act II, Scene 4, containing +the lines:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">You gods, I see that who unrighteously<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Holds wealth or state from others shall be curst<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In that which meaner men are blest withall:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ages to come shall know no male of him<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Left to inherit, and his name shall be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blotted from earth.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The reader will at once be impressed with the regularity +of the masculine ending. Beaumont does not, +of course, eschew the double ending; but, as Boyle +has computed, the percentage in this play is but fifteen +in the non-Fletcherian passages, whereas the percentage +in Fletcher's contribution is thirty-five. The prevalence +of run-on lines is also noteworthy; and the +infrequency of the stress-syllable openings, anapæsts, +and feminine cæsuræ by which Fletcher achieves now +conversational abruptness, now lyrical lilt.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span></p> + +<p>In <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, such soliloquies as that of +Aspatia in Act V, Scene 4, with its mixture of blank +verse and rhyme:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">This is my fatal hour; heaven may forgive<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My rash attempt, that causelessly hath laid<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Griefs on me that will never let me rest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And put a Woman's heart into my brest.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is more honour for you that I die;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For she that can endure the misery<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I have on me, and be patient too,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May live, and laugh at all that you can do—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>are marked by characteristics utterly unlike those of +Fletcher's dramatic verse. Also unlike Fletcher are +the scenes which abound in lines of weak and light +ending, and lines where the lighter syllables of every +word must be counted to make full measure. Fletcher +did not write:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Alas, Amintor, thinkst thou I forbear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To sleep with thee because I have put on<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A maidens strictness;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>or</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">As mine own conscience too sensible;—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I must live scorned, or be a murderer;—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">That trust out all our reputation.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Nor did Fletcher write, with any frequency, improper +run-on lines, such as III, 2, 135 (one of his +collaborator's scenes):<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Speak yet again, before mine anger grow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Up beyond throwing down.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In this play the percentage of run-on lines in +Fletcher's scenes is about nineteen; in the scenes not +written by him, almost twenty-seven. Fletcher's +double endings are over forty per cent; his collaborator's +barely ten.</p> + +<p>In <i>A King and No King</i> similar Beaumontesque +characteristics distinguish the major portion of the +play from the few scenes generally acknowledged to +be written by Fletcher. In Fletcher's scenes<a name="FNanchor_155_155" id="FNanchor_155_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> one +notes the high proportion of stress-syllable openings, +and, consequently, of anapæstic substitutions, +the subtle omission occasionally of the arsis, and not +infrequently of the thesis (or light syllable) after +the pause, and the use of the accented syllable at the +beginning of the verse-section. While sometimes +these characteristics appear in the other parts of the +play, their relative infrequency is a distinctive feature +of the non-Fletcherian rhythm. A comparison of the +verse of Fletcher's Act IV, Scene 2, with that of his +collaborator in Act I, Scene 1, well illustrates this +difference. The recurrence of the feminine cæsura +measures fairly the relative elasticity of the versifiers. +It regulates two-thirds of Fletcher's lines; but of his +collaborator's not quite one half. Fletcher, for instance, +wrote the speech of Tigranes, beginning the +second scene of Act IV:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Fool | that I am, | I have | undone | myself,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> And | with mine own | hand ¦ turn'd | my for|tune round,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span> +<span class="i1">That was | a fair | one: ¦ I have child|ishly<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Plaid | with my hope | so long, till I have broke | it,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And now too late I mourn for 't, ¦ O | Spaco|nia,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thou hast found | an e|ven way | to thy | revenge | now!<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Why | didst thou fol|low me, |<span class="stress">^</span> like | a faint shad|ow,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To wither my desires? But, wretched fool,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> Why | did I plant | thee ¦ 'twixt | the sun | and me,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To make | me freeze | thus? ¦ Why | did I | prefer | her<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="stress">^</span> To | the fair Prin|cess? ¦ O | thou fool, | thou fool,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thou family of fools, |<span class="stress">^</span> live | like a slave | still<br /></span> +<span class="i1">And in | thee bear | thine own |<span class="stress">^</span> hell | and thy tor|ment,—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>where, beside the frequent double endings and end-stopped +lines, already emphasized in preceding examples, +we observe in the run of thirteen lines, six stress-syllable +openings with their anapæstic sequences, three +omissions of the light syllable after the cæsural pause +with the consequent accent at the beginning of the +verse-section, and no fewer than six feminine cæsuræ +(or pauses after an unaccented syllable) of which three +at least (vv. 2, 5, 10) are exaggerated jolts.</p> + +<p>Beaumont is capable in occasional passages, as, for +instance, Arbaces' speech beginning Act I, 1, 105, of +lines rippling with as many feminine cæsuræ. But, +utterly unlike Fletcher, he employs in the first thirteen +of those lines no double endings, no jolts, only +two stress-syllable openings, only four anapæsts, one +omitted thesis after the cæsural pause, four end-stopped +lines. He is more frequently capable, as in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span> +the passage beginning l. 129, of a sequence without a +single feminine cæsura, but with several feminine (or +double) endings:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Tigranes.</i> <span class="hemi7">Is it the course of<br /></span></span> +<span class="i1">Iberia, to use their prisoners thus?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Had Fortune throwne my name above Arbaces,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">I should not thus have talkt; for in Armenia<br /></span> +<span class="i1">We hold it base. You should have kept your temper,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Till you saw home agen, where 't is the fashion<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Perhaps to brag.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"><br class="noshow" /> +<span class="i0"><i>Arbaces.</i> <span class="hemi5">Bee you my witness, Earth,<br /></span></span> +<span class="i1">Need I to brag? Doth not this captive prince<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Speake me sufficiently, and all the acts<br /></span> +<span class="i1">That I have wrought upon his suffering land?<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Should I then boast? Where lies that foot of ground<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Within | his whole | realme ¦ that | I have | not past<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Fighting and conquering?<a name="FNanchor_156_156" id="FNanchor_156_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Up to the twelfth verse with its exceptional jolting +pause the cæsuræ are masculine, and fall uncompromisingly +at the end of the second and third feet.</p> + +<p>In respect of the internal structure of the verse the +tests for Beaumont are, then, as I have stated them +above; in respect of double endings, Boyle and Oliphant +have set the percentage in his verse at about +twenty, and of run-on lines at thirty. Since the metrical +characteristics of those parts of <i>Philaster</i>, <i>The +Maides Tragedy</i> and <i>A King and No King</i> which do +not bear the impress of Fletcher's versification, are +well defined and practically uniform; since they are of +a piece with the metrical manner of <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, +which is originally, and in general, the work<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span> +of one author—Beaumont; and since they are also +of a piece with the versification of the <i>Maske</i>, which +is certainly by Beaumont alone, and with that of his +best poems,—at least one criterion has been established +by means of which we may ascertain what other plays, +ascribed to the two writers in common, but on less +definite evidence, were written in partnership; and +in these we may have a basis for determining the +parts contributed by each of the authors.</p> + +<p>Fleay and other scholars have grounded an additional +criterion upon the fact that the unaided plays of +Fletcher contain but an insignificant quantity of prose. +They consequently have ascribed to Beaumont most of +the prose passages in the joint-plays. But, because in +his later development Fletcher found that conversational +blank verse would answer all the purposes of +prose, it does not follow that in his youthful collaboration +with Beaumont he never wrote prose. We find, +on the contrary, in the joint-plays that the prose passages +in scenes otherwise marked by Fletcher's characteristics +of verse, display precisely the rhetorical +qualities of that verse. The prose of Mardonius in +Act IV, Scene 2 of <i>A King and No King</i>, and the +prose of Act V, Scenes 1 and 3, which by metrical +tests are Fletcher's, are precisely the prose of Fletcher's +Dion in Act II, Scene 4 and Act V, Scene 3 of +<i>Philaster</i>, and the tricks of alliteration, triplet, and +iteration, are those of Fletcher's verse in the same +scenes.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149_149" id="Footnote_149_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a> Some sixteen plays in all.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150_150" id="Footnote_150_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a> <i>The Chances</i>, I, 1, p. 222 (Dyce); but as a rule I use in +this chapter the text of the <i>Cambridge English Classics</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151_151" id="Footnote_151_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a> For these scenes, and the reasons for asserting that Fletcher +revised them, see Chapter XXIV below.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152_152" id="Footnote_152_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a> The reader may judge for himself by referring to the citation +from the <i>Letter</i> and the poems to the Countess in Chapters +VII and XI, above.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153_153" id="Footnote_153_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a> Fleay, Boyle, Oliphant, Alden. And even G. C. Macaulay, +who once claimed the whole play for Beaumont, says now "perhaps +Fletcher's."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154_154" id="Footnote_154_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a> Q 1622, slightly modernized.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155_155" id="Footnote_155_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a> IV, 1, 2, 3; V, 1, 3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156_156" id="Footnote_156_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a> Quarto of 1619 as given by Alden.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XIX</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">FLETCHER'S DICTION</p> + + +<p class="cap">The verse criterion is, however, not of itself a reagent +sufficient to precipitate fully the Beaumont +of the joint-plays. For there still exists the certainty +that in plotting plays together, each of the collaborators +was influenced by the opinion of the other; and +the probability that, though one may have undertaken +sundry scenes or divers characters in a play, the other +would, in the course of general correction, insert +lines in the parts written by his collaborator, and +would convey to his own scenes the distinguishing +rhythm, "humour," or diction of a definite character, +created, or elaborated, by his colleague. It, therefore, +follows that the assignment of a whole scene to +either author on the basis alone of some recurring +metrical peculiarity is not convincing. In the same +section, even in the same speech, we may encounter +insertions which bear the stamp of the revising colleague. +For instance, the opening of <i>Philaster</i> is +generally assigned to Beaumont: it has the characteristics +of his prose. But with the entry of the +King (line 89) we are launched upon a subscene in +verse which, on the one hand, has a higher percentage +of double endings (<i>viz.</i> 38) than Beaumont ever +used, but does not fully come up to Fletcher's usage;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span> +while on the other hand, it has a higher percentage of +run-on lines<a name="FNanchor_157_157" id="FNanchor_157_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> (<i>viz.</i> 44) than Fletcher ever used. +The other verse tests leave us similarly in doubt. To +any one, however, familiar with the diction and characterization +of the two authors the suspicion occurs +that the scene was written by Beaumont in the first +instance; and then worked over and considerably +enlarged by his associate. In the first hundred lines +of Act II, Scene 4, similar insertions by Fletcher +occur, and in Act III, 2.<a name="FNanchor_158_158" id="FNanchor_158_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a></p> + +<p>Such being the case we may expect that an inquiry +into the rhetorical peculiarities and mental habit, first +of Fletcher, then of Beaumont, will furnish tests corrective +of the criterion based upon versification.</p> + + +<p class="section">1. Fletcher's Diction in <i>The Faithfull Shepheardesse</i>.</p> + +<p>Though rather poetic than dramatic, and composed +only partly in blank verse, <i>The Faithfull Shepheardesse</i> +affords the best approach to a study of Fletcher's +rhetoric; for, written about 1608 and by Fletcher +alone, it illustrates his youthful style in the period +probably shortly before he collaborated with Beaumont +in the composition of <i>Philaster</i>.</p> + +<p>The soliloquy of Clorin, with which <i>The Faithfull +Shepheardesse</i> opens, runs as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Hail, holy Earth, whose cold Arms do imbrace<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The truest man that ever fed his flocks<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By the fat plains of fruitful Thessaly!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thus I salute thy Grave; thus do I pay<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span> +<span class="i0">My early vows and tribute of mine eyes<span class="linenum">5</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">To thy still-loved ashes; thus I free<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Myself from all insuing heats and fires<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of love; all sports, delights, and [jolly] games,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That shepherds hold full dear, thus put I off:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now no more shall these smooth brows be [be] girt<span class="linenum">10</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">With youthful Coronals, and lead the Dance;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No more the company of fresh fair Maids<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And wanton Shepherds be to me delightful,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor the shrill pleasing sound of merry pipes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Under some shady dell, when the cool wind<span class="linenum">15</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Plays on the leaves; all be far away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since thou art far away, by whose dear side<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How often have I sat Crowned with fresh flowers<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For summers Queen, whilst every Shepherds boy<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Puts on his lusty green, with gaudy hook<span class="linenum">20</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hanging scrip of finest Cordovan.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But thou art gone, and these are gone with thee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all are dead but thy dear memorie;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That shall out-live thee, and shall ever spring,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whilst there are pipes or jolly Shepherds sing.<span class="linenum">25</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">And here will I, in honour of thy love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dwell by thy Grave, forgetting all those joys,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That former times made precious to mine eyes;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only remembring what my youth did gain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the dark, hidden vertuous use of Herbs:<span class="linenum">30</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">That will I practise, and as freely give<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All my endeavours as I gained them free.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of all green wounds I know the remedies<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In Men or Cattel, be they stung with Snakes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or charmed with powerful words of wicked Art,<span class="linenum">35</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or be they Love-sick, or through too much heat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Grown wild or Lunatic, their eyes or ears<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thickened with misty filme of dulling Rheum;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These I can Cure, such secret vertue lies<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span> +<span class="i0">In herbs applyèd by a Virgins hand.<span class="linenum">40</span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">My meat shall be what these wild woods afford,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Berries and Chestnuts, Plantanes, on whose Cheeks<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Sun sits smiling.<a name="FNanchor_159_159" id="FNanchor_159_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This passage, as we have observed in the preceding +section, does not display in full proportion or untrammeled +variety the metrical peculiarities of Fletcher's +popular dramatic blank verse. The verse is lyric +and declamatory: his purely dramatic verse whether +in the <i>Monsieur Thomas</i> of his earlier period, <i>The +Chances</i> of the middle period, or <i>A Wife for a Month</i> +and <i>Rule a Wife</i> of his later years, has the feminine +endings, redundant syllables, anapæstic substitutions, +the end-stopped and sometimes fragmentary lines, the +hurried and spasmodic utterance of conversational +speech. But, from the rhetorical point of view, this +soliloquy—in fact, the whole <i>Faithfull Shepheardesse</i>—affords +a basis for further discrimination between +Fletcher and Beaumont in the joint-plays; for +it displays idiosyncrasies of tone-quality and diction +which persist, after Beaumont's death, in Fletcher's +dramas of 1616 to 1625 as they were in 1607-1609: +sometimes slightly modified, more often exaggerated, +but in essence the same.</p> + +<p>In Clorin's soliloquy, the reader cannot but notice, +first, a tendency toward alliteration, the <i>fed</i> and +<i>flocks</i>, <i>fat</i> and <i>fruitful</i>, <i>fresh</i> and <i>fair</i>, <i>pleasing</i> and +<i>pipes</i>,—alliteration palpable and somewhat crude, but +not yet excessive; second, a balanced iteration of +words,—"be far away, Since thou art far away" +(ll. 16-17), and, five lines further down, "But thou<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span> +art gone and these are gone with thee," and in lines +31 and 32 "as freely give ... as I gained them +free"; and an iteration of phrases, rhetorical asseverations, +negatives, alternatives, questions,—"Thus I +salute thy grave; thus do I pay," "thus I free," "thus +put I off" (lines 4, 6, 9); third, a preference for +iteration in triplets,—"No more shall these smooth +brows," "No more the company," "Nor the shrill +... sound" (lines 10-14), "Or charmed," "or +love-sick," "or through too much heat" (lines 35 +and 36); fourth, a fondness for certain sonorous +words,—"all ensuing heats ... all sports" (lines +7-8), "all my endeavours ... all green wounds" +(lines 32-33), and the "alls" of lines 16 and 23; fifth, +a plethora of adjectives,—"holy earth," "cold arms," +"truest man," "fat plains"—many of them pleonastic—"misty +film," "dulling rheum"—some forty +nouns buttressed by epithets to twenty standing in their +own strength; and a plethora of nouns in apposition +(preferably triplets),—"all sports, delights, and jolly +games" (line 8), "Berries and Chestnuts, Plantanes" +(line 42); sixth, an indulgence in conversational tautology: +for Fletcher is rarely content with a simple +statement,—he must be forever spinning out the categories +of a concept; expounding his idea by what the +rhetoricians call division; enumerating the attributes +and species painstakingly lest any escape, or verbosely +as a padding for verse or speech. Of this mannerism +The <i>Faithfull Shepheardesse</i> affords many instances +more typical than those contained in these forty-three +lines; but even here Clorin salutes the grave of her +lover in a dozen different periphrastic ways. To say<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span> +that "all are dead but thy dear memorie" is not +enough; she must specify "<i>that</i> shall outlive thee." +To assert that she knows the remedies of "all green +wounds" does not suffice: she must proceed to the +enumeration of the wounds; nor to tell us that her +meat shall be found in the woods: she must rehearse +the varieties of meat. Her soliloquy in the last +thirty lines of the scene, not here quoted, is of the +same quality: it reminds one of a Henslowe list of +stage properties, or of the auctioneer's catalogue that +sprawls down Walt Whitman's pages.</p> + +<p>And, last, we notice what has been emphasized by G. C. +Macaulay and others, that much of this enumeration +by division is by way of "parentheses hastily thrown +in, or afterthoughts as they occur to the mind."<a name="FNanchor_160_160" id="FNanchor_160_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a> +Even in the formal <i>Shepheardesse</i> this characteristic +lends a quality of naturalness and conversational +spontaneity to the speech.</p> + + +<p class="section">2. In the Later Plays.</p> + +<p>If now we turn to one of Fletcher's plays written +after Beaumont's death, and without the assistance +of Massinger or any other,—say, <i>The Humorous +Lieutenant</i> of about the year 1619,—we find on every +page and passages like the following.<a name="FNanchor_161_161" id="FNanchor_161_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a>—The King Antigonus +upon the entry of his son, Demetrius, addresses +the ambassadors of threatening powers:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">Do you see this Gent(leman),<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You that bring Thunders in your mouths, and Earthquakes,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span> +<span class="i0">To shake and totter my designs? Can you imagine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(You men of poor and common apprehensions)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While I admit this man, my Son, this nature<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That in one look carries more fire, and fierceness,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than all your Masters lives<a name="FNanchor_162_162" id="FNanchor_162_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a>; dare I admit him,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Admit him thus, even to my side, my bosom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When he is fit to rule, when all men cry him,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all hopes hang about his head; thus place him,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His weapon hatched in bloud; all these attending<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When he shall make their fortunes, all as sudden,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In any expedition he shall point 'em,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As arrows from a Tartar's bow, and speeding,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dare I do this, and fear an enemy?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fear your great master? yours? or yours?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here we have blank verse, distinctively Fletcherian +with its feminine endings and its end-stopped lines. +But, widely as this differs from the earlier rhythm of +<i>The Faithfull Shepheardesse</i> and its more lyric precipitancy, +the qualities of tone and diction are in the +later play as in the earlier. The alliterations may +not be so numerous, and are in general more cunningly +concealed and interwoven, as in lines 2 to 4; +but the cruder kind still appears as a mannerism, the +"fire and fierceness," "hopes," "hang," and "head." +The iterations of word, phrase, and rhetorical question, +and of the resonant "all," the redundant nouns +in apposition, the tautological enumeration of categories, +proclaim the unaltered Fletcher. The adjectives +are in this spot pruned, but they are luxuriant +elsewhere in the play. The triplets,—"this man, my +son, this nature,"—"admit," "admit," "admit," find +compeers on nearly every page:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span></p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Shew where to lead, to lodge, to charge with safetie,—<a name="FNanchor_163_163" id="FNanchor_163_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Here's a strange fellow now, and a brave fellow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If we may say so of a pocky fellow.—<a name="FNanchor_164_164" id="FNanchor_164_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And now, 't is ev'n too true, I feel a pricking,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A pricking, a strange pricking.—<a name="FNanchor_165_165" id="FNanchor_165_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">With such a sadness on his face, as sorrow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sorrow herself, but poorly imitates.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sorrow of sorrows on that heart that caus'd it!<a name="FNanchor_166_166" id="FNanchor_166_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In the passages cited above there happen to be, also, +a few examples of the elocutionary afterthought:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">You come with thunders in your mouth <i>and earthquakes</i>,—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">As arrows from a Tartar's bow, <i>and speeding</i>.—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To this device, and to the intensive use of the pronominal +"one" Fletcher is as closely wedded as to +the repetition of "all,"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">They have a hand upon us,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A heavy and a hard one.<a name="FNanchor_167_167" id="FNanchor_167_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To wear this jewel near thee; he is a tried one<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And one that ... will yet stand by thee.<a name="FNanchor_168_168" id="FNanchor_168_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Other plays conceded by the critics to Fletcher +alone, and written in his distinctive blank verse, display +the same characteristics of style: <i>The Chances</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span> +of about 1615, <i>The Loyall Subject</i> of 1618 (like <i>The +Humorous Lieutenant</i> of the middle period), and +<i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i> of the last period, 1624. +I quote at random for him who would apply the tests,—first +from <i>The Chances</i>,<a name="FNanchor_169_169" id="FNanchor_169_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> the following of the repeating +revolver style:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">Art thou not an Ass?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And modest as her blushes! what a blockhead<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would e're have popt out such a dry Apologie<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For this dear friend? and to a Gentlewoman,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A woman of her youth and delicacy?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They are arguments to draw them to abhor us.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An honest moral man? 't is for a Constable:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A handsome man, a wholesome man, a tough man,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A liberal man, a likely man, a man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Made up by Hercules, unslaked with service:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The same to night, to morrow night, the next night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And so to perpetuity of pleasures.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Now, from <i>The Loyall Subject</i><a name="FNanchor_170_170" id="FNanchor_170_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a>—the farewell of +<i>Archas</i> to his arms and colours. I wish I could quote +it all as an example of noble noise, enumerative and +penny-a-line rhetoric:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Farewell, my Eagle! when thou flew'st, whole Armies<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have stoopt below thee: at Passage I have seen thee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ruffle the Tartars, as they fled thy furie,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And bang 'em up together, as a Tassel,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon the streach, a flock of fearfull Pigeons.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I yet remember when the Volga curl'd,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The agèd Volga, when he heav'd his head up,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And rais'd his waters high, to see the ruins,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span> +<span class="i0">The ruines our swords made, the bloudy ruins;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then flew this Bird of honour bravely, Gentlemen;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But these must be forgotten: so must these too,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all that tend to Arms, by me for ever.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And from Act II, Scene 1, pages 101-102, for +triplets:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Fight hard, lye hard, feed hard, when they come home, sir....<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To be respected, reckon'd well, and honour'd....<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Where be the shouts, the Bells rung out, the people?...<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And, for "alls," and triplets:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And whose are all these glories? why their Princes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their Countries and their Friends. Alas, of all these,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all the happy ends they bring, the blessings,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They only share the labours!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Finally, from <i>Rule a Wife</i>, a few instances of the +iterations, three-fold or multiple, and redundant expositions. +In the first scene<a name="FNanchor_171_171" id="FNanchor_171_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a> Juan describes Leon:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">Ask him a question,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He blushes like a Girl, and answers little,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To the point less; he wears a Sword, a good one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And good cloaths too; he is whole-skin'd, has no hurt yet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Good promising hopes;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and Perez describes the rest of the regiment,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">That swear as valiantly as heart can wish,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their mouths charg'd with six oaths at once, and whole ones,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span> +<span class="i0">That make the drunken Dutch creep into Mole-hills; ...<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and he proceeds to Donna Margarita:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">She is fair, and young, and wealthy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Infinite wealthy, <i>etc.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And then to Estefania who has tautologized of her +chastity, he tautologizes of his harmlessness:<a name="FNanchor_172_172" id="FNanchor_172_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I am no blaster of a lady's beauty,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor bold intruder on her special favours;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I know how tender reputation is,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And with what guards it ought to be preserv'd, lady.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As a fair example of this method of filling a page, +I recommend the first scene of the third act; and of +eloquence by rhetorical 'division,' Perez's description +of his room in the next scene: all in terms of three +times three.</p> + +<p>If now the reader will turn, by way of confirmation, +to <i>The Triumph of Time</i> and <i>The Triumph of +Death</i> of which the metrical characteristics are admittedly +Fletcher's, he will find that there, Fletcher, +before Beaumont's retirement from the partnership, +is already using in purely dramatic composition the +rhetorical mannerisms which mark both the lyrically +designed <i>Shepheardesse</i> of his early years and the +genuine dramas of the later.</p> + + +<p class="section">3. Stock Words, Phrases, and Figures.</p> + +<p>Beside the rhetorical mannerisms classified in the +preceding paragraphs I might rehearse a long list +of Fletcher's favourite expressions and figures of +speech. Of the former Mr. Oliphant<a name="FNanchor_173_173" id="FNanchor_173_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a> has mentioned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span> +'plaguily,' 'claw'd,' 'slubber'd,' 'too,' +'shrewdly,' 'stuck with,' 'it shews,' 'dwell round +about ye,' 'for ever,' 'no way,' (for 'not at all'). +In addition I have noted the reiterated 'thus,' 'miracle,' +'prodigious' (in the sense of 'ominous')—'prodigious +star,' 'prodigious meteor'—'bugs,' +'monsters,' and 'scorpions'; 'torments,' 'diseases,' +'imposthumes,' 'canker,' 'mischiefs,' 'ruins,' +'blasted,' 'rotten'; 'myrmidons'; 'monuments' (for +'tombs'), 'marble'; 'lustre,' 'crystal,' 'jewels,' 'picture,' +'painting,' 'counterfeit in arras'; 'blushes,' +'palates,' 'illusion,' 'abused' (for 'deceived'), +'blessed,' 'flung off,' 'cloister'd up,' 'fat earth,' 'turtle,' +'passion,' 'Paradise.' Oliphant assigns to +Fletcher 'pulled on,' but I find that almost as frequently +in Beaumont. 'Poison,' 'contagious' and +'loaden,' also abound in Fletcher, but are sometimes +used by Beaumont. Fletcher affects alliterative epithets: +'prince of popinjays,' 'pernicious petticoat +prince,' 'pretty prince of puppets,'—and antitheses +such as 'prince of wax,' 'pelting prattling peace.' His +characters talk much of 'silks' and 'satins,' 'branched +velvets' and 'scarlet' clothes. They are said to +speak in 'riddles'; they are threatened with 'ribald +rhymes'; they shall be 'bawled in ballads,' or 'chronicled,' +'cut and chronicled.'</p> + +<p>Another characteristic of Fletcher's diction is his +preference for the pronoun <i>ye</i> instead of <i>you</i>. This +was pointed out by Mr. R. B. McKerrow, who in +his edition of <i>The Spanish Curate</i><a name="FNanchor_174_174" id="FNanchor_174_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a> notes that in +the scenes generally attributed, in accordance with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span> +other tests, to Fletcher, <i>ye</i> occurs 271 times, while +in the scenes attributed to Massinger it occurs but +four. That is to say, for every <i>ye</i> in Fletcher's part +there are but 0.65 <i>you's</i>; for every <i>ye</i> in Massinger's +part, 50 <i>you's</i>. Mr. W. W. Greg, applying the test +in his edition of <i>The Elder Brother</i>,<a name="FNanchor_175_175" id="FNanchor_175_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> and counting +the <i>y'are's</i> as instances of <i>ye</i>, finds that the percentage +of <i>ye's</i> to <i>you's</i> in Fletcher's part is almost three times +as high as in Massinger's. In a recent article in <i>The +Nation</i><a name="FNanchor_176_176" id="FNanchor_176_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a> Mr. Paul Elmer More communicates his independent +observation of the same mannerism in +Fletcher. Though he has been anticipated in part, his +study adds to McKerrow's the valuable information +that Fletcher uses the <i>ye</i> for <i>you</i> in "both numbers and +cases, and in both serious and comic scenes." Mr. +More's statistics favour the conclusion that the test +distinguishes Fletcher not only from Massinger, but +from other collaborators: Middleton, Rowley, Field, +Jonson, Tourneur. They do not carry conviction regarding +Shakespeare, whose habit as Greg and others +had already announced varies in a perplexing manner. +Nor does Mr. More arrive at any definite result +concerning the test "when applied to the mixed work +of Beaumont and Fletcher." For though the high +percentage of <i>ye's</i> in the third and fourth of the +<i>Foure Playes</i> confirms the general attribution of those +'Triumphs' to Fletcher, the low percentage in the +first two 'Triumphs' does not justify "the common +opinion which attributes them to Beaumont." Their +author, as I have elsewhere stated, was probably Field.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span> +"In the plays which are units," continues Mr. More, +"such as <i>The Maid's Tragedy</i>, <i>Philaster</i>, <i>A King and +No King</i>, <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>, and <i>The +Coxcomb</i>, this mark of Fletcher does not occur at all. +It should seem that the writing here, at least in its +final form, was almost entirely Beaumont's." I have +gone through all the plays which have been ordinarily +regarded as joint-productions of Beaumont and +Fletcher, and find that in this surmise Mr. More is +right. <i>The Knight</i>, to be sure, is Beaumont's alone; +but with regard to the other four plays mentioned +above, in which they undoubtedly coöperated, the suggestion +that the writing, at least in its final form, was +almost entirely Beaumont's, because of the practically +complete absence of <i>ye's</i>, is justified by the facts. It +is, also, helpful in the examination of plays not mentioned +in this list. It has, in connection with other +considerations, assisted me to the conclusion that +Fletcher went over two or three scenes of <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, +stamping them with his <i>ye's</i> after Beaumont +had finished it as a whole; and it has confirmed +me in the belief that <i>The Scornful Ladie</i> was one of +the latest joint-plays, only partly revised by Beaumont,—and +that, not long before his death. Fletcher's +preference for <i>ye</i> is a distinctive mannerism. His +usage varies from the employment of one-third as +many <i>ye's</i> to that of twice as many <i>ye's</i> as <i>you's</i>; +whereas Beaumont rarely uses a <i>ye</i>. Even more +distinctive is Fletcher's use of <i>y'are</i>, and of <i>ye</i> in the +objective case. The latter, Beaumont does not tolerate.</p> + +<p>For figurative purposes Fletcher finds material<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span> +most frequently in the phenomena of winter and +storm: 'frosts,' 'nipping frosts,' 'nipping winds,' +'hail,' 'cakes of ice,' 'icicles,' 'thaw,' 'tempests,' +'thunders,' 'billows,' 'mariners' and 'storm-tossed +barks,' 'wild overflows' of waters in stream or torrent; +in the phenomena of heat and light: 'suns,' the +'icy moon,' the 'Dog-star' or the 'Dog,' the 'Sirian +star,' the 'cold Bear' and 'raging Lion,' 'Aetna,' 'fire +and flames'; of trees: root and branch, foliage and +fruit; of the oak and clinging vine; of the rose or +blossom and the 'destroying canker'; of fever and +ague; of youth and desire, and of Death 'beating larums +to the blood,' of our days that are 'marches to +the grave,' and of our lives 'tedious tales soon forgotten.' +I have elsewhere called attention to the +numerous variations which he plays upon the 'story +of a woman.' His 'monuments' are in frequent +requisition and, by preference, they 'sweat'; men pursued +by widows fear to be 'buried alive in another +man's cold monument.' Other common images are +'rock him to another world,' 'bestride a billow,' +'plough up the sea.' He indulges in extended mythological +tropes as of the 'Carthage queen' and +Ariadne; is especially attracted by Adonis, Hylas +(whom he may have got either from Theocritus or +the Marquis D'Urfé's Astræan character), and Hercules; +and, in general, he levies more freely than Beaumont +on commonplace classical material. In his unassisted +dramas his fondness for personification seems +to grow: many pages are thick with capitalized abstractions; +and the poetry, then, is usually limited to +the capitalization. The curious reader will find most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span> +of Fletcher's predilections in image-making clustered +in three or four typical passages of the later and unassisted +plays, such as Alphonso's raving in <i>A Wife +for a Month</i>, IV, 4; and in passages, undoubtedly of +his verse and diction, in plays written conjointly with +Beaumont, such as that of Spaconia's outburst in +<i>King and No King</i>, IV, 2, 45-62.</p> + +<p>Fletcher abounds in optatives: 'Would Gods thou +hadst been so blest!' 'Would there were any safety +in thy sex!' and the like. He is also given to rhetorical +interrogations and elaborate exclamations; more +so than Beaumont. He affects the lighter kind of +oath, the appeal to something sacred, in attestation—'Witness +Heaven!' In entreaty—'High Heaven, defend +us!' Or in mere ejaculation—'Equal Heavens!' +He varies his asseverations so that they appear less +bluntly profane: 'By my life!' 'By those lights, I +vow!'—or more appropriate to the emergency: 'By +all holy in Heaven and Earth!' He swears occasionally +'By the Gods,' but not so frequently as Beaumont, +for there was a puritanical reaction after +Beaumont's death. In the early joint-plays he affects +particularly 'all the gods,' 'By <i>all</i> those gods, you +swore by!' 'By more than all the gods!' In his imprecations +he is even more sulphurous than Beaumont: +'Hell bless you for it!' 'Hell take me then!' 'Thou +all-sin, all-hell, and last all-devils!'</p> + +<p>In summary let us say of Fletcher's diction, that its +vocabulary is repetitious; its sentence-structure, loose, +cumulative, trailing: that its larger movement is, in +general, dramatic, conversational, abrupt, rather than +lyrical, declamatory, reflective. He writes for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span> +plot—forward: not from the character—outward. +When he bestows a lyrical or descriptive touch upon +the narrative it is always incidental to conversation or +stage business. When he indulges in a classical reminiscence +he permits himself to embroider and bedizen; +but usually his ribbons (from a scantly furnished, +much-rummaged wardrobe) are carelessly pinned on. +While capable, especially in tragedy, of occasional +long speeches, he prefers the brief interchange of utterance, +the rapid fire and spasm of dialogue.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157_157" id="Footnote_157_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a> In the King's speech, 89-121.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158_158" id="Footnote_158_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a> For particulars, see Chapter XXV, § 7, below.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159_159" id="Footnote_159_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a> As given in the <i>Camb. Engl. Classics</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160_160" id="Footnote_160_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a> G. C. Macaulay, <i>Francis Beaumont</i>, p. 45.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161_161" id="Footnote_161_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a> Act I, Sc. 1, <i>Camb. Engl. Classics</i>, II, p. 286.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162_162" id="Footnote_162_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a> Crane <i>MS.</i> (1625).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163_163" id="Footnote_163_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a> <i>Cambridge</i>, II, p. 290.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164_164" id="Footnote_164_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 292.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165_165" id="Footnote_165_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 323.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166_166" id="Footnote_166_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 346.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167_167" id="Footnote_167_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a> <i>Loyall Subject</i>, III, 1, end.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168_168" id="Footnote_168_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a> <i>Hum. Lieut., Cambridge</i>, II, p. 290.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169_169" id="Footnote_169_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a> John in II, 3, <i>Camb.</i>, IV, p. 202.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170_170" id="Footnote_170_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a> I, 3, <i>Camb.</i>, III, p. 84.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171_171" id="Footnote_171_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a> <i>Camb.</i>, III, p. 170.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172_172" id="Footnote_172_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i>, p. 172.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173_173" id="Footnote_173_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a> <i>Engl. Studien</i>, XIV, 65.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174_174" id="Footnote_174_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a> <i>Variorum, B. and F.</i>, Vol. II, 1905.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175_175" id="Footnote_175_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a> <i>Variorum, B. and F.</i>, Vol. II, 1905.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176_176" id="Footnote_176_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a> New York, Nov. 14, 1912.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XX</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">FLETCHER'S MENTAL HABIT</p> + + +<p class="cap">From the study of Fletcher's unaided plays we +arrive at a still further criterion for the determination +of his share in the joint-plays,—his stock +of ideas concerning life, his view of the spectacle, +and his emotional attitude. His early pastoral comedy +<i>The Faithfull Shepheardesse</i> might be dismissed +from consideration as a conventionalized literary +treatment of conditions remote from actual experience, +were it not that other dramatic exponents of shepherds +and shepherdesses—Jonson, for instance, and +Milton—have succeeded in imbuing the pastoral +species with qualities distinctly vital; the former, with +rustic reality and genuine tenderness; the latter, with +profound moral significance. <i>The Faithfull Shepheardesse</i>, +on the other hand, with all its beauty of +artistic form is devoid of reality, pathos, and sublimity. +The author has no ideas worthy of the name +and, in spite of his singing praises of chastity, he has +his hand to his mouth where between fyttes there blossoms +a superb smile. He has in art no depth of conviction; +consequently, no philosophy of life to offer. <i>The +Faithfull Shepheardesse</i> strikes the intellectual keynote +of all Fletcher's unaided work. He is a playwright +of marvellous skill, a lyrist of facile verse and fancy, +but a poet of indifference—of no ethical insight or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span> +outlook when he is purveying for the public. His +tragedies, for instance <i>Valentinian</i> and <i>Bonduca</i> (the +two scenes of the latter that may not be his are +negligible), abound in sudden fatal passions and noble +diction. They involve moral conduct, to be sure, patriotism, +loyalty, chivalry, military prowess, insane lust +and vengeance, but they lack deep-seated and deliberate +motive of action, and they fail of that inevitability +of spiritual conflict which is requisite to a tragic +effect. The heroes of these, and of his tragicomedies +and romantic dramas, such as <i>A Wife for a Month</i>, +<i>The Loyall Subject</i>, <i>The Humorous Lieutenant</i>, <i>The +Pilgrim</i>, <i>The Island Princesse</i>, may be fearless and +blameless, but their courage and virtue are of habit +rather than of moral exigency. Their loyalty is frequently +unreasonable and absurdly exaggerated. One +or two of his virtuous heroines are at once charming +and real; but as a rule with Fletcher—the more +virtuous, the more nebulous. His villains have no +redeeming touch of humanity: their doom moves us +not; nor does their sleight-of-hand repentance convince +us. The atmosphere is histrionic. There is +scorn of Fate and Fortune, much talk of death and +the grave: and we "go out like tedious tales forgotten"; +or we don't,—just as may suit the stage +hangings, the brilliance of the footlights, and the +sentimental uptake. There is, in short, in his unassisted +serious dramas little real pathos; little of +the grandeur and sudden imaginative splendour which, +we shall see, characterized Beaumont; none of Beaumont's +earnestness and philosophical spontaneity and +profundity.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span></p> + +<p>Like the tragicomic plays, Fletcher's lighter comedies +<i>The Chances</i>, <i>The Mad Lover</i>, <i>The Wild-Goose +Chase</i>, <i>Women Pleased</i>, escape a moral catastrophe by +walking round the issue. The heroes are amorous +gallants, irresponsible adventurers, adroit scapegraces, +devil-may-care rapier-tongued egoists and opportunists. +The heroines are "not made for cloisters"; +when they are not already as conscienceless as the +heroes in performance or desire, they are airy lasses, +resourceful in love, seeming-virtuous but suspiciously +well-informed of the tarnished side of the shield,—always +witty. Fletcher <i>can</i> portray the innocence and +constancy of woman; but he rarely takes the pains. +"To be as many creatures as a woman" is for him a +comfortable jibe. The charm of romantic character +and subtly thickening complication did not much attract +him.</p> + +<p>He sets over in contrast the violent, insane, tragic, +or pathetic with the ludicrous or grotesque; he indulges +a careless, loose-jointed, adventitious humour. +That he could, on occasion, avail himself of the laughter +of burlesque is abundantly proved by the utterances +of his Valentine in <i>Wit Without Money</i>, the devices of +the inimitable Maria in <i>The Tamer Tamed</i>, and of the +<i>Humorous Lieutenant</i>. But for that comic irony of +issues by which the wilful or pretentious or deluded,—foes +or fools of convention and born prey of ridicule,—are +satisfactorily readjusted to society, he prefers to +substitute hilarity, ribaldry, the clash of wits, the +battledore and shuttlecock of trick, intrigue, of shifting +group and kaleidoscopic situation. The idiosyncrasies +of the crowd delight him; but the more actual,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span> +the more boisterous and bestial. His populace feeds +upon "opinions, errors, dreams."</p> + +<p>His facile verse and limpid dialogue flash with +fancy. The gaiety of gilded youth ripples down the +page; but the more clever, the more irrelevant the swirling +jest,—and, to say the least, the more indelicate. +Life is a bagatelle; its most strenuous interest—love; +and love is volatile as it is sudden. The attitude of +sex toward sex is as obvious to the level-headed animal, +who is cynic in brain and hedonist in blood, as its +significance is supreme: it is that of the man-or-woman +hunt; the outcome, a jocosity, more or less,—whether +of fornication or cuckoldry, or of tame, +old-fashioned, matrimonial monochrome.</p> + +<p>These characteristics of the Fletcherian habit mark +all the author's independent plays from <i>The Faithfull +Shepheardesse</i> of 1607 or 1608 to <i>Rule a Wife</i> of +1624. The man himself, I think, was better than the +dramaturgic artist catering to the public market. For +his personal, nay noble, ideals, let the reader turn to the +poem appended to <i>The Honest Mans Fortune</i>, and +judge. The characteristics sketched above are of the +maker of a mimic world. Since I have elsewhere +discussed them in full,<a name="FNanchor_177_177" id="FNanchor_177_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a> and the marvellous success that +the dramaturge achieved in Shakespeare's Globe, this +brief enumeration must suffice. Fletcher's mental +habit affords an additional criterion for the determination +of authorship in the unquestioned Beaumont-Fletcher +plays, and in the analysis of plays in which +the collaboration of the poets has been conjectured +but not so fully attested.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177_177" id="Footnote_177_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a> <i>The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare</i> (Part Two) in +<i>Representative English Comedies</i>, Vol. III.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XXI</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">BEAUMONT'S DICTION</p> + + +<p class="cap">From a consideration of Beaumont's work in his +poems, in his <i>Maske</i> and <i>Woman-Hater</i>, and such +portions of the three unquestioned Beaumont-Fletcher +plays as are marked by his idiosyncrasies of versification, +we may arrive at conclusions concerning his +diction, rhetorical and poetic.</p> + + +<p class="section">1. Rhetorical Peculiarities in General.</p> + +<p>Beaumont's frequent use in prose of the enclitics +'do' and 'did' has been observed by students of his +style. The same peculiarity marks his verse, and occasionally +enables the reader to determine the authorship +of passages where the metrical tests are inconclusive. +His rhetoric is sometimes of the repetitive +order, but, as Oliphant has indicated, rather for ends +of word-play and irony than for mere expansion as +with Fletcher. Such, for instance, is the ironical repetition +of a speaker's words by his interlocutor. I note +also a tendency to purely dramatic quotation, not common +in Fletcher's writing,—<i>e. g.</i>, in <i>The Woman-Hater</i>: +"Lisping cry 'Good Sir!' and he's thine +own"; or "Every one that does not know, cries 'What +nobleman is that?'"—and in <i>A King and No King</i> +"That hand was never wont to draw a sword, But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span> +it cried 'Dead' to something." This test alone, if +we had not others of rhetoric and metre, would go +far to deciding the respective contributions of our authors +to the personality of Captain Bessus in the latter +play. The Bessus of the first three acts, undoubtedly +Beaumont's, is resonant with such cries and conversational +citations; the Bessus of the last two, in a rôle +almost as extensive, uses the device but once. Beaumont +sometimes indulges in enumerative sentences; +but the enumerations are generally in prose and (it +will be recalled that he was a member of the Inner +Temple) of a mock-legal character, not mere redundancies +of detail such as we find in Fletcher. Among +other peculiarities of expression is his frequent employment +of 'ha' as an interrogative interjection.</p> + + +<p class="section">2. Stock Words, Phrases, and Figures.</p> + +<p>Beaumont is especially fond of the following words +and phrasal variations:—The 'basilisk' with his +'deaddoing eye,' 'venom,' 'infect,' 'infection' and +'infectious,' 'corrupt,' 'leprosy,' 'vild,' 'crosses' (for +'misfortunes'), 'crossed' and 'crossly matched,' +'perplex,' 'distracted,' 'starts' (for 'surprises' and +'fitful changes'), 'miseries,' 'griefs,' 'garlands,' 'cut,' +'shoot,' 'dissemble,' 'loathed,' 'salve' (as noun and +verb), 'acquaint' and 'acquaintance,' to 'article,' +'pull,' 'piece,' 'frail' and 'frailty,' 'mortal' and +'mortality,' 'fate' and 'destiny,' to 'blot' from +earth or memory, 'after-ages,' 'instruments' (for +'servants'). Of his repeated use of 'hills,' 'caves,' +'mines,' 'seas,' 'thunder,' 'beast,' 'bull,' we shall<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span> +have further exemplification when we consider his +figures of speech.</p> + +<p>He is forever playing phrasal variations upon the +words 'piece,' and 'little.' The former is a mannerism +of the day, already availed of by Shakespeare in +<i>Lear</i>, 'O ruined piece of nature,' and frequently in +<i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, and later repeated in the +<i>Tempest</i> and <i>Winter's Tale</i>. So with Beaumont, Arethusa +is a 'poor piece of earth'; 'every maid in love +will have a piece' of Philaster; Oriana is a 'precious +piece of sly damnation,' 'that pleasing piece of frailty +we call woman.' Or the word is used literally for +'limb':—'I'll love those pieces you have cut away.'—Beaumont, +I may say in passing, delights in cutting +bodies 'into motes,' and sending 'limbs through the +land.'—'Little' he affects, making it pathetic and even +more diminutive in conjunction with 'that': Euphrasia +would 'keep that little piece I hold of life.' 'It +is my fate,' proclaims Amintor,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">To bear and bow beneath a thousand griefs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To keep that little credit with the world;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and so, 'that little passion,' 'that little training,' 'these +little wounds,' <i>ad libitum</i>. Somewhat akin is the +poet's use of 'kind': 'a kind of love in her to me'; +'a kind of healthful joy.' His heroines good and +bad are given to introspection: they have 'acquaintance' +with themselves. 'After you were gone,' says +Bellario, 'I grew acquainted with my heart'; and +Bacha in <i>Cupid's Revenge</i> in a scene undoubtedly of +Beaumont's verse 'loathes' herself and is 'become<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span> +another woman; one, methinks, with whom I want +acquaintance.'</p> + +<p>While Beaumont makes occasional use of simile, his +figures of poetry, or tropes, are generally of the more +creative kind,—metaphor, personification, metonymy,—and +these are very often heightened into that figure +of logical artifice known as hyperbole. His comparisons +deal in a striking degree with elemental phenomena: +hills, caves, stones, rocks, seas, winds, flames, +thunder, cold, ice, snow; or they are reminiscential of +country life. In each play some hero declaims of +'the only difference betwixt man and beast, my reason'; +and inevitably enlarges upon the 'nature unconfined' +of beasts, and illustrates by custom and +passion of ram, goat, heifer, or bull—especially bull. +When the bull of the pasture does not suffice, the bull +of Phalaris charges in. But Beaumont prefers nature: +his images are sweet with April and violets and +dew and morning-light, or fields of standing corn +'moved with a stiff gale'—their heads bowing 'all +one way.' From the manufacture of books he borrows +two metaphors, 'printing' and 'blotting,' and +plies them with effective variety: Philaster 'prints' +wounds upon Bellario; Bellario 'printed' her +'thoughts in lawn'; Amintor will 'print a thousand +wounds' upon Evadne's flesh; and Nature wronged +Panthea 'To print continual conquest on her cheeks +And make no man worthy for her to take.' With +similar frequency recur 'blotted from earth,' 'blotted +from memory,' 'this third kiss blots it out.'</p> + +<p>The younger poet personifies abstractions as frequently +as Fletcher, but in a more poetic way. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> +vitalizes grief and guilt and memory with figurative +verbs—'shoot,' 'grow,' 'cut.' 'I feel a grief shoot +suddenly through all my veins' cries Amintor; +and again 'Thine eyes shoot guilt into me.' +'I feel a sin growing upon my blood' shudders +Arbaces. Philaster will 'cut off falsehood while it +springs'; Amintor welcomes the hand that should +'cut' him from his sorrows; and Evadne confesses +that her sin is 'tougher than the hand of Time can +cut from man's remembrance.' Similar metaphorical +constructions abound, such as 'pluck me back from +my entrance into mirth,' in one of Leucippus' +speeches in Beaumont's part of <i>Cupid's Revenge</i>; and +in a speech of Melantius 'I did a deed that plucked +five years from time' in <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>. Personified +grief and sorrow are frequently in the plural +with Beaumont:—'Nothing but a multitude of walking +griefs.' It is a mistake to suppose, as some do, +that passages written in Beaumont's metrical style are +not by him if they abound in personification. Hunger, +black Despair, Pride, Wantonness, figure in his verse +in <i>The Woman-Hater</i>; Chance, Death, and Fortune in +<i>The Knight</i>; Death, Victory, and Friendship, in <i>The +Maides Tragedy</i>; Destiny, Falsehood, Mortality, Nature +in <i>Philaster</i>; and so on.</p> + +<p>No dramatist since the day of Kyd and Marlowe +has more frequent or violent resort to hyperbole. His +heroes call on 'seas to quench the fires' they 'feel,' +and 'snows to quench their rising flames'; they will +'drink off seas' and 'yet have unquenched fires left' +in their breasts; they 'wade through seas of sins'; +they 'set hills on hills' and 'scale them all, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> +from the utmost top fall' on the necks of foes, 'like +thunder from a cloud'; or they 'discourse to all the +underworld the worth' of those they love. 'From his +iron den' they'll 'waken Death, and hurl him' on +lascivious kings. Arethusa's heart is 'mines of adamant +to all the world beside,' but to her lover 'a lasting +mine of joy'; her breath 'sweet as Arabian winds +when fruits are ripe'; her breasts 'two liquid ivory +balls.' Evadne will sooner 'find out the beds of +snakes,' and 'with her youthful blood warm their +cold flesh 'than accede to Amintor's desires. 'The +least word' that Panthea speaks 'is worth a life.' +'The child, this present hour brought forth to see +the world, has not a soul more pure' than Oriana's. +In one of Beaumont's verse-scenes of <i>The Coxcombe</i>, +Ricardo, reinstated in his Viola's esteem, would have +some woman 'take an everlasting pen' into her hand, +'and grave in paper more lasting than the marble +monuments' the matchless virtues of women to posterities. +And as for Bellario's worth to Philaster,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'T is not the treasure of all Kings in one,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wealth of Tagus, nor the rocks of pearl<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That pave the court of Neptune, can weigh down<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That virtue.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Echoes not of Kyd and Marlowe only, but of +Shakespeare from <i>Romeo</i> to <i>Hamlet</i> and <i>Macbeth</i>, +reverberate in the magniloquent hyperbole of Beaumont.</p> + +<p>Beaumont has more ejaculations than Fletcher, but +fewer optatives. He is chary of rhetorical questions, +and his exclamations run by preference into some figured<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> +hyperbole. He appeals less frequently than +Fletcher to 'all the gods,' but very often to 'the gods,' +'good gods,' 'ye gods,' 'some god.' He refers, in +conformity with his deterministic view of life, with +particular preference to the 'just gods,' the 'powers +that must be just,' the 'powers above,' 'ye better +powers,' 'Heaven and the powers divine,' 'you heavenly +powers,' the 'powers that rule us'; and all these +he uses in attestation. An oath distinctive of him +is 'By my vexed soul!' In his hyperboles, Hell and +devils play their part; but not in oath so frequently +as with Fletcher.</p> + + +<p class="section">3. Lines of Inevitable Poetry.</p> + +<p>Similarly noticeable is Beaumont's faculty for 'simple +poetic phrasing.' The elevated passion, the sudden +glory,—and the large utterance of brief sentence and +single verse, have been remarked by critics from his +contemporary, John Earle, who wrote in commendation:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Such strength, such sweetness couched in every line,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such life of fancy, such high choice of brain,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>down to G. C. Macaulay, Herford, and Alden of the +present day. No reader, even the most cursory, can +fail to be impressed by the completeness of that one +line (in his lament for Elizabeth Sidney),</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sorrow can make a verse without a Muse,—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>by the 'unassuming beauty' of Viola's loneliness (in +his subplot of <i>The Coxcombe</i>),<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">All things have cast me from 'em but the earth.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The evening comes, and every little flower<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Droops now as well as I;—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>by the sublimity of those few words to the repentant +lover,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">All the forgiveness I can make you is to love you;—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>by the superb simplicity of Bellario's scorn of life, in +<i>Philaster</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'T is but a piece of childhood thrown away,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and the finality of her definition of death (which, as +if in premonition of his too sudden fate, is characteristic +of Beaumont),—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'T is less than to be born; a lasting sleep;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A quiet resting from all jealousy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A thing we all pursue; I know, besides,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is but giving over of a game<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That must be lost;—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>by the pathetic irony of Aspatia's farewell to love in +<i>The Maides Tragedy</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">So with my prayers I leave you, and must try<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some yet-unpractis'd way to grieve and die;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and the heroism (in <i>Cupid's Revenge</i>, the final scene, +undoubtedly of Beaumont's verse) of Urania's confession +to Leucippus,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I would not let you know till I was dying;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For you could not love me, my mother was so naught;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>by Panthea's cry of horror, in <i>A King and No King</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I feel a sin growing upon my blood;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and by those flashes of incomparable verity that intensify +the gloom of <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>: Amintor's</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Those have most power to hurt us, that we love;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We lay our sleeping lives within their arms;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and after Evadne's death,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">My soul grows weary of her house, and I<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All over am a trouble to myself;—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>by the wounded Aspatia's</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I shall sure live, Amintor, I am well;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A kind of healthful joy wanders within me;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and her parting whisper,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Give me thy hand; mine eyes grope up and down,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And cannot find thee.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This is Nature sobbing into verse: the unadorned +poetry of the human heartbreak. Where other than +in Shakespeare do we find among the Jacobean poets +such verse?</p> + +<p>That a style of this kind should be rich in apothegm +is not surprising. Instances rare in wisdom and +phrasal conciseness are to be encountered on every +other page of Beaumont.</p> + +<p>It may, in short, be said of this dramatist's rhetorical +and poetic diction, that, while the vocabulary may +not be more varied, it is more intimate, musical, and +reverberant than Fletcher's; that the periods, though<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span> +sometimes appropriately syncopated and parenthetically +broken, as in dramatic conversation, are, in rhapsodical +and descriptive passages, both complex and +balanced of structure,—pregnant of ideas labouring +for expression rather than enumerative; that they echo +Shakespeare's grandeur of phrase, with its involution, +crowding of illustration and fresh insistent thought, +in a degree utterly foreign to the rhetoric of Fletcher; +and that his brief sentences are marked by a direct +and final resplendence and simplicity.</p> + +<p>In the larger movements of composition the purely +poetic quality predominates over the narrative, dramatic +or conversational. This characteristic is especially +noticeable in declamatory speeches and soliloquies; +sometimes idyllic as in Philaster's description +of Bellario,—"I found him sitting by a fountain's +side,"—or in the well-known "Oh that I had been +nourished in these woods with milk of goats and +acorns"; often operatic, as in Aspatia's farewells to +Amintor and to love; always lyrical, imaginatively +surcharged. Beaumont's figures of rhetoric when not +hyperbolic, are picturesquely natural; his poetic tropes +are creative, vitalizing. His speakers are self-revelatory: +expressive of temperament, emotion, reflection. +Their utterances are frequently descriptive, picturesquely +loitering, rather than, by way of dialogue, +framed to further the action alone. And yet, when +they will, their conversation is spontaneous, fragmentary, +and abrupt, intensifying the dramatic situation; +not simply, as with Fletcher, by giving opportunity +for stage-business, but by differencing the +motive that underlies the action.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XXII</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">BEAUMONT'S MENTAL HABIT</p> + + +<p class="cap">From passages in the indubitable metrical manner +and rhetorical style of Beaumont we pass to a +still further test by which to determine his share in +doubtful passages—I mean his stock of ideas. Critics +have long been familiar with the determinism of his +philosophy of life. His Arethusa in <i>Philaster</i> expresses +it in a nutshell:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">If destiny (to whom we dare not say,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why didst thou this?) have not decreed it so,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In lasting leaves (whose smallest characters<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was never altered yet), this match shall break.—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We are ignorant of the 'crosses of our births.' Nature +'loves not to be questioned, why she did this or +that, but has her ends, and knows she does well.' +"But thou," cries the poet,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But thou hadst, ere thou knew'st the use of tears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sorrow laid up against thou cam'st to years.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>'Tis the gods, 'the gods, that make us so.' They +would not have their 'dooms withstood, whose holy +wisdoms make our passions the way unto their justice.' +And 'out of justice we must challenge nothing.' The +gods reward, the gods punish: 'I am a man and dare<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span> +not quarrel with divinity ... and you shall see me +bear my crosses like a man.' It is the 'will of +Heaven'; 'a decreed instant cuts off every life, for +which to mourn is to repine.'<a name="FNanchor_178_178" id="FNanchor_178_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a></p> + +<p>Similarly familiar is Beaumont's recurrent doctrine +of the divinity of kings. "In that sacred word," +says his Amintor of <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">In that sacred word<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'The King,' there lies a terror: what frail man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dares lift his hand against it? Let the gods<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Speak to him when they please; till when let us<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Suffer and wait.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And again, to the monarch who has wronged him,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i12">There is<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Divinity about you, that strikes dead<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My rising passions; as you are my King<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I fall before you, and present my sword<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To cut mine own flesh, if it be your will.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Of 'the breath of kings' Beaumont's fancy constructs +ever new terrors: it is 'like the breath of +gods'; it may blow men 'about the world.' But when +a king is guilty, though he may boast that his breath +'can still the winds, uncloud the sun, charm down the +swelling floods, and stop the floods of heaven,' some +honest man is always to be found to say 'No; nor' +can thy 'breath smell sweet itself if once the lungs +be but corrupted.' Though the gods place kings +'above the rest, to be served, flattered, and adored,' +kings may not 'article with the gods'<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7">On lustful kings<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unlooked-for sudden deaths from Heaven are sent;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But curs'd is he that is their instrument.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Of 'this most perfect creature, this image of his +Maker, well-squared man' Beaumont philosophizes +much. Again and again he reminds us that 'the only +difference betwixt man and beast is reason.' In the +moment of guilty passion his Arbaces of <i>A King and +No King</i> cries:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i5">"Accursèd man!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou bought'st thy reason at too dear a rate,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For thou hast all thy actions bounded in<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With curious rules, when every beast is free."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And, in the moment of jealousy, Philaster laments,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Oh, that, like beasts, we could not grieve ourselves<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With that we see not!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Beaumont knows of no natural felicity or liberty more +to be envied than that of the beast; and of no opprobrium +more vile than that which likens man to lustful +beast, or 'worse than savage beast.'</p> + +<p>He is impressed with the frailty of mankind and the +brevity of life: 'Frail man' and 'transitory man' +fell readily from his lips who was to die so young. +He emphasizes the objective quality of evil: "Good +gods, tempt not a frail man!" prays Philaster; and +Arbaces struggling against temptation: "What art +thou, that dost creep into my breast; And dar'st not +see my face?" Once temptation has taken root, it +grows insidiously: Panthea "feels a sin growing +upon her blood"; and Arbaces moralizes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There is a method in man's wickedness<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It grows up by degrees.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is natural, therefore, that Beaumont should frequently +fall back upon 'conscience' and its 'sensibility.' +And upon the efficacy of repentance. So Leucippus +in Beaumont's portion of <i>Cupid's Revenge</i>, +prays the gods to hold him back,—"Lest I add sins to +sins, till no repentance will cure me." Arbaces finds +repentance. Evadne knows that it is 'the best sacrifice.'</p> + +<p>From this consciousness of uneasy greatness and +frail mortality the poet seeks refuge in descriptions of +pastoral life. His pictures of idyllic beauty and simplicity +are too well-known to warrant repetition here: +Bellario weaving garlands by the fountain's side; Philaster's +rhapsody in the woods; Valerio's "Come, +pretty soul, we now are near our home" to Viola in the +<i>Coxcombe</i>, and Viola's "what true contented happiness +dwells here, More than in cities!" The same conception +marks as Beaumont's the shrewdly humorous +conversation in prose between the citizens' wives in +<i>A King and No King</i>, beginning—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Lord, how fine the fields be! What sweet living 'tis in the country!—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ay, poor souls, God help 'em, they live as contentedly as one of us.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Through the fourth act of <i>Philaster</i>, and wherever else +Beaumont portrays the countryside or country men +and women, there blows the fresh breeze of the Charnwood +forest in his native Leicestershire.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span></p> + +<p>But his most poetic themes are of the friendship of +man for man, and of the 'whiteness' of women's innocence, +the unselfishness of their love, their forgivingness, +and the reverence due from men who so little understand +them. "And were you not my King," protests +the blunt Mardonius to his hasty lord, "I should +have chose you out to love above the rest." "I have +not one friend in the court but thou," says Prince Leucippus; +and his devoted follower can only stammer +"You know I love you but too well." In that fine +summing up of Melantius to Amintor, one seems to +hear Beaumont himself:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The name of friend is more than family<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or all the world besides.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>With woman's purity his darkest pages are starred. +She is 'innocent as morning light,' 'more innocent +than sleep,' 'as white as Innocence herself.' 'Armed +with innocence' a tender spotless maid 'may walk safe +among beasts.' Her 'prayers are pure,' and she is +'fair and virtuous still to ages.'<a name="FNanchor_179_179" id="FNanchor_179_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a> His fairest heroines +are philosophers of 'the truth of maids and perjuries +of men.' "All the men I meet are harsh and +rude," says Aspatia,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And have a subtilty in everything<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which love could never know; but we fond women<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Harbour the easiest and the smoothest thoughts,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And think all shall go so. It is unjust<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span> +<span class="i0">That men and women should be match'd together.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His Viola of the <i>Coxcombe</i> continues the contention:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Woman, they say, was only made of man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Methinks 'tis strange they should be so unlike;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It may be, all the best was cut away<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To make the woman, and the naught was left<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Behind with him.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And the philosophy of Beaumont's love-lorn maidens +she sums up in her conclusion:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Scholars affirm the world's upheld by love;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But I believe women maintain all this,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For there's no love in men.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Deserted by her lover, she finds 'how valiant and +how 'fraid at once, Love makes a virgin'; and, sought +again by him repentant, she epitomizes the hearts of +all Bellarios, Arethusas, Pantheas, Uranias:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">I will set no penance<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To gain the great forgiveness you desire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But to come hither, and take me and it ...<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For God's sake, urge your faults no more, but mend!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All the forgiveness I can make you, is<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To love you: which I will do, and desire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nothing but love again; which if I have not,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet I will love you still.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>All man can do in return for such long-suffering mercy +is to revere: "How rude are all men that take the +name of civil to ourselves" murmurs the reformed +Ricardo; and then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i5">I do kneel because it is<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An action very fit and reverent,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In presence of so pure a creature.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So kneels Arbaces; and so, in spirit, Philaster and +Amintor.</p> + +<p>Prayer is for Beaumont a very present aid. Of +his women especially the 'vows' and 'oblations' are +a poetic incense continually ascending. And closely +akin to the prayerful innocence of tender maids is +the pathos of their 'childhood thrown away.' Even +his whimsical Oriana of <i>The Woman-Hater</i> can aver:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The child this present hour brought forth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To see the world has not a soul more pure,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More white, more virgin that I have.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The bitterest experiences of humanity are sprung +from misapprehension,—"They have most power to +hurt us that we love,"—or from jealousy, slander, unwarranted +violence, unmerited pain. And for these +the only solace is in death. About this truth Beaumont +weaves a shroud of unsullied beauty, a poetry +that has rarely been surpassed. In nearly all that he +has left us the thought recurs; but nowhere better +expressed than in those lines, already quoted in full +from <i>Philaster</i>, where Bellario "knows what 'tis to +die ... a lasting sleep; a quiet resting from all jealousy." +His Arethusa repeats the theme; but with a +wistful incertitude:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">I shall have peace in death<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet tell me this: there will be no slanders,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No jealousy in the other world; no ill there?<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>"No," replies her unjustly suspicious lover.—And +she:—"Show me, then, the way!" No kinder mercy +to the tempted, misconceived heir of mortality has +been vouchsafed than to 'suffer him to find his quiet +grave in peace.' So think Panthea and Arbaces; and +so his Urania and Leucippus find. And so the poet +closes that rare elegy to his belovèd Countess of Rutland:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I will not hurt the peace which she should have,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By longer looking in her quiet grave.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But still more powerful in its blessing than 'sleep' +and the 'peace' of the 'quiet grave,' and more fearful +in its bane than the penalties of hell,—one reality +persists—the award of 'after-ages.' Bellario would +not reveal what she has learned, to make her life 'last +ages.' Philaster's highest praise for Arethusa is +"Thou art fair and virtuous still to ages." "Kill +me," says Amintor to Evadne,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Kill me; all true lovers, that shall live<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In after-ages crossed in their desires,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall bless thy memory.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Ricardo of the <i>Coxcombe</i> would have some woman +'grave in paper' their 'matchless virtues to posterities.' +Even the mock-romantic Jasper in the <i>Knight</i> +(which I am sure is all Beaumont) will try his sweetheart's +love 'that the world and memory may sing +to after-times her constancy.' As to evil, it meets +its punishment both in heredity and in the verdict +of generations yet to come. "I see," soliloquizes the +usurping King in a passage already quoted from <i>Philaster</i>:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">You gods, I see that who unrighteously<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Holds wealth or state from others shall be cursed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In that which meaner men are blest withal:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ages to come shall know no male of him<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Left to inherit, and his name shall be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blotted from earth; if he have any child<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It shall be crossly matched.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Show me the way," cries Arbaces to his supposed +mother, and thinking of heredity, "to the inheritance +I have by thee, which is a spacious world Of impious +acts." And Amintor warns Evadne: "Let it not +rise up for thy shame and mine To after-ages.... +We will adopt us sons; The virtue shall inherit and +not blood." "May all ages," prays the lascivious +Bacha in <i>Cupid's Revenge</i>, "May all ages,"—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">That shall succeed curse you as I do! and<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If it be possible, I ask it, Heaven,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That your base issues may be ever monstrous,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That must for shame of nature and succession,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be drowned like dogs!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So, <i>passim</i>, in Beaumont—'lasting to ages in the +memory of this damnèd act'; 'a great example of +their justice to all ensuing ages.'</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178_178" id="Footnote_178_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a> Elegy on the Countess of Rutland.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179_179" id="Footnote_179_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a> I cannot understand how so careful a scholar as Professor +Schelling (<i>Engl. Lit. during Lifetime of Shakesp.</i>, 207) can attribute +to him, from the hopelessly uncritical collection of Blaiklock, +the poem entitled <i>The Indifferent</i>, and argue therefrom his +"cynicism" concerning the constancy of woman.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XXIII</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">THE AUTHORSHIP OF THREE DISPUTED PLAYS</p> + + +<p class="cap">With the tests which have thus been described +we are equipped for an examination of the plays +written before 1616, which have, in these latter days, +been with some show of evidence regarded as the +joint-production of the "two wits and friends."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span><a name="FNanchor_180_180" id="FNanchor_180_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a> +While attempting to separate the composition of one +author from that of the other, we may determine +the dramatic peculiarities of each during the course +of the partnership, and obtain a fairly definite basis +for an historical and literary appreciation of the plays, +individually considered.</p> + + +<p class="sectionl">1.—Of the <i>Foure Playes, or Morall Representations, +in One</i> (first published as by Beaumont and Fletcher +in the folio of 1647, but without indication of first +performance or of acting company), the last two, +<i>The Triumph of Death</i> and <i>The Triumph of Time</i>, +are, according to the verse tests, undoubtedly Fletcher's +and have been assigned to him by all critics. <i>The +Triumph of Death</i> is studded with alliterations and +with repetitions of the effective word:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i9">Oh I could curse<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And crucify myself for childish doting<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon a face that feeds not with fresh figures<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Every fresh hour;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and with triplets:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i11">What new body<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And new face must I make me, with new manners;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and with the resonant "all":</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Make her all thy heaven,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all thy joy, for she is all thy happiness;<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and with Fletcher's favourite words and his nouns in +apposition, rhetorical questions, afterthoughts, verbal +enumerations, and turgid exposition. The same may +be said of <i>The Triumph of Time</i>. As there is less<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span> +of the redundant epithet than in <i>The Faithfull Shepheardesse</i> +(1609), but more than in <i>Philaster</i> (before +July 12, 1610), I am of the opinion that Fletcher's +contribution to the <i>Triumphs</i> falls chronologically between +those plays. As Fletcher matures he prunes +his adjectives.</p> + +<p>The rest of these <i>Morall Representations</i> display +neither the verse nor the rhetoric of Fletcher. On +the basis of verse-tests Boyle assigns them to Beaumont. +Macaulay says, "probably,"—and adds the +<i>Induction</i>. But Oliphant, taking into consideration +also the rhetorical and dramatic qualities, gives the +<i>Induction</i> and <i>The Triumph of Honour</i> to a third +author, Nathaniel Field, and only <i>The Triumph of +Love</i> to Beaumont. As to the <i>Induction</i> and <i>The +Triumph of Honour</i> I agree with Oliphant. They +are full of polysyllabic Latinisms such as Field uses +in his <i>Woman is a Weather-cocke</i> (entered for publication +November 23, 1611) and Beaumont never +uses: 'to participate affairs,' 'torturous engine,' etc.; +and they are marked by simpler Fieldian expressions +'wale,' 'gyv'd,' 'blown man,' 'miskill,' 'vane,' 'lubbers,' +'urned,' and a score of others not found anywhere +in Beaumont's undoubted writings. A few +words, like 'basilisk' and 'loathed' suggest Beaumont, +as does the verse; but this may be explained by +vogue or imitation. Field was two or three years +younger than Beaumont, and had played as a boy +actor in one or more of the early Beaumont and +Fletcher productions. His <i>Woman is a Weather-cocke</i> +and his <i>Amends for Ladies</i> indicate the influence +of Beaumont in matters of comic invention,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span> +poetic hyperbole, burlesque and pathos, as well as in +metrical style. The <i>Honour</i> is a somewhat bombastic, +puerile, magic-show written in manifest imitation of +Beaumont's verse and rhetoric.</p> + +<p>As to <i>The Triumph of Love</i>, I go further than Oliphant. +I assign at least half of it, viz., scenes 1, 2, +and 6, on the basis of diction, to Field. In scenes +3, 4, and 5, I find some trace of Beaumont's favourite +expressions, of his thoughts of destiny and death and +woman's tenderness, his poetic spontaneity, his sensational +dramatic surprises; but I think these are an +echo. The rural scene lacks his exquisite simplicity; +and some of the words are not of his vocabulary. +One is sorry to strike from the list of Beaumont's +creations the pathetic and almost impressive figure of +Violante. If it was originally Beaumont's, it is of +his earlier work revamped by Field; if it is Field's, it +is an echo simulating the voice, but missing the reality, +of Beaumont's Aspatia, Bellario, Urania. This criticism +holds true of both the Triumphs, <i>Love</i> and +<i>Honour</i>.</p> + +<p>The commonly accepted date, 1608, for the composition +of the <i>Foure Playes in One</i> is derived from +Fleay, who mistakenly quotes a reference in the 1619 +quarto of <i>The Yorkshire Tragedy</i> to the <i>Foure Playes</i> +as if it were of the 1608 quarto where the reference +does not appear.<a name="FNanchor_181_181" id="FNanchor_181_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a> While Fletcher may have written +the first draft of his contribution before the middle of +1610, it is evident from Field's Address <i>To the Reader</i> +in the first quarto of the <i>Woman is a Weather-cocke</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span> +(entered S. R., November 23, 1611), that Field's contribution +was made after November 23, 1611. In +that Address he makes it plain that this is his first +dramatic effort: "I have been vexed with vile plays +myself a great while, hearing many; now I thought +to be even with some, and they should hear mine too." +We have already noticed<a name="FNanchor_182_182" id="FNanchor_182_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a> that Field had not written +even his <i>Weather-cocke</i>, still less anything in collaboration +with Fletcher, at the time of the publication of +<i>The Faithfull Shepheardesse</i> (between January and +July, 1609); for in his complimentary poem for the +quarto of that "Pastorall," Field acknowledges his unknown +name and his Muse in swaddling clouts, and +timidly confesses his ambition to write something like +<i>The Shepheardesse</i>, "including a Morallitie, Sweete +and profitable." That Field's contribution to the +<i>Foure Playes</i> was not made before the date of the first +performance of <i>The Weather-cocke</i> by the Revels' +Children at Whitefriars, <i>i. e.</i>, January 4, 1610 to +Christmas 1610-11 (when its presentation before the +King at Whitehall probably took place), further appears +from his dedication <i>To Any Woman that hath +been no Weather-cocke</i> (quarto, 1611) in which he +alludes not to <i>The Triumph of Honour</i>, or of <i>Love</i>, +but to <i>Amends for Ladies</i>, as his "next play," then +on the stocks, and, he thought, soon to be printed.<a name="FNanchor_183_183" id="FNanchor_183_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a> +The evidence, external and internal, amply presented +by Oliphant, Thorndike, and others, but with a view +to conclusions different from mine as to date and +authorship, confirms me in the belief that Fletcher's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span> +<i>Time</i> and <i>Death</i>, though written at least two years +earlier, were not gathered up with Field's <i>Induction</i>, +<i>Honour</i>, and <i>Love</i>, into the <i>Foure Playes in One</i> until +about 1612; and that the series was performed at +Whitefriars by Field's company of the Queen's Revels' +Children, shortly after they had first acted <i>Cupid's +Revenge</i> at the same theatre.</p> + + +<p class="sectionl">2.—Of the remaining ten plays in which, according +to the historical evidence adduced by various critics, +Beaumont could have collaborated, at least two furnish +no material that can be of service for the estimation +of his qualities. If <i>Love's Cure</i> was written as early +as the date of certain references in the story, viz., +1605-1609, it is so overlaid by later alteration that +whether, as the textual experts guess, it be Beaumont's +revised by Massinger, or Fletcher's revised by Massinger +and others, or Massinger and Middleton's, or +Beaumont's with the assistance of Fletcher and revised +by Massinger, Beaumont for us is indeterminate. +Fleay, Oliphant, and others trace him in a few prose +scenes, and in two or three of verse.<a name="FNanchor_184_184" id="FNanchor_184_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> But where the +rhetorical and dramatic manner occasionally suggest +him, or the metre has somewhat of his stamp, words +abound that I find in no work of his undisputed composition. +The servant, Lazarillo, like him of Beaumont's +<i>Woman-Hater</i>, is a glutton, but he does not speak +Beaumont's language. The scenes ascribed to Beaumont +reek with an excremental and sexual vulgarity +to which Beaumont never condescended, unless for +brief space, and when absolutely necessary for characterization.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span> +And there is little, indeed, that bespeaks +Fletcher. <i>Love's Cure</i> was first attributed to Beaumont +and Fletcher at a "reviving of the play" after +they were both dead; and it was not printed till 1647. +It is not unlikely, as G. C. Macaulay holds, that the +play was written by Massinger, in or after 1622.</p> + + +<p class="sectionl">3.—As to that comedy of prostitution, with occasional +essays on the special charms of cuckoldry, <i>The +Captaine</i> (acted in 1613, maybe as early as 1611, +and by the King's Company) there is no convincing +external proof of Beaumont's authorship. It is, on +the contrary, assigned to Fletcher by one of his +younger contemporaries, Hills, whose attributions of +such authorship are frequently correct; and its accent +throughout is more clearly that of Fletcher than of +any other dramatist. The critics are agreed that it is +not wholly his, however; and G. C. Macaulay in especial +conjectures the presence of Massinger. The +verse and prose of a few scenes<a name="FNanchor_185_185" id="FNanchor_185_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a> do not preclude the +possibility of Beaumont's coöperation; but I find in +them no vestige of his faith in sweet innocence; and +in only one,—the awful episode (IV, 5), in which +the Father seeks his wanton daughter in a house of +shame and would kill her,—his imaginative elevation +or his dramatic creativity.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180_180" id="Footnote_180_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a> To employ in this process of separation the characteristics +of Fletcher's later dramatic technique as a criterion does not +appear to me permissible. For these, however, the reader may +consult Miss Hatcher's <i>John Fletcher, A Study on Dramatic +Method</i>, and sections 15 and 16 of my essay on <i>The Fellows and +Followers of Shakespeare</i>, Part Two, <i>Rep. Eng. Com.</i>, Vol. III, +now in press. The technique is more likely to change than the +versification, the style, the mental habit. Its later characteristics +may, some of them, have been derived from the association with +Beaumont; or they may be of Fletcher's maturer development +under different influences and conditions. It is fair to cite them +as corroborative evidence in the process of separation, only when +they are in continuance of Fletcher's earlier idiosyncrasy. I +have, also, refrained from complicating the present discussion by +analysis of the style of Massinger, for which see Fleay, <i>N. S. S. +Trans.</i>, 1874, <i>Shakesp. Manual</i>, 1876, <i>Engl. Studien</i>, 1885-1886, +and <i>Chron. Eng. Dram.</i>, 1891; Boyle, <i>Engl. Studien</i>, 1881-1887, +and <i>N. S. S. Trans.</i>, 1886; Macaulay, <i>Francis Beaumont</i>, 1883; +Oliphant, <i>Engl. Studien</i>, 1890-1892; Thorndike, <i>Infl. of B. and F.</i>, +1901; and section 16 of my essay mentioned above. There is +no proof of Massinger's dramatic activity before July 1613, +nor of his coöperation with Fletcher until after that date, <i>i. e.</i>, +after Beaumont's virtual cessation. He may have revised some +of Beaumont's lines and scenes; but Beaumont's style is too well +defined to be confused with that of Massinger or of any other +reviser; or of an imitator, such as Field.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181_181" id="Footnote_181_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a> See Thorndike, <i>Infl. of B. and F.</i>, p. 85, for discussion and +authorities.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182_182" id="Footnote_182_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a> Chapter VI.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183_183" id="Footnote_183_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a> It was not printed till 1618; but had been acted long before.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184_184" id="Footnote_184_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a> II, 1, 2; III, 1, 3, 5; V, 3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185_185" id="Footnote_185_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_185_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a> IV, 5; V, 2, 4, 5.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XXIV</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">"THE WOMAN-HATER," AND "THE KNIGHT"</p> + + +<p class="cap">Four.—<i>The Woman-Hater</i> was entered in the +Stationers' Registers, May 20, 1607, and published +in quarto (twice, with but slight variation) the +same year "as lately acted by the Children of Paules." +Of the date of composition, probably the spring of +1607, I have written in Chapter VI, above. There is +no indication of authorship in either quarto; but the +Prologue assigns it to a single author—"he that made +this play." The quarto of 1648 prints it as "by J. +Fletcher Gent."; that of 1649, as by Beaumont and +Fletcher. The Prologue of 1649, however, written +by D'Avenant for an undated revival of the play and +addressed to the Ladies, definitely ascribes the authorship +to one "poet," who "to the stars your sex did +raise; for which, full twenty years he wore the bays." +The "twenty years" can apply only to Fletcher.</p> + +<p>In the lines which follow, D'Avenant has been supposed +to credit the same author with the whole of +<i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, <i>Philaster</i>, and <i>A King and No +King</i> as well:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'T was he reduc'd Evadne from her scorn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And taught the sad Aspatia how to mourn;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gave Arethusa's love a glad relief;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And made Panthea elegant in grief.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>We now know, from the application of metrical and +rhetorical tests, that but a small part of each of the +plays here alluded to was written by Fletcher. If +D'Avenant has attributed to Fletcher in these cases +plays of which the larger part was written by Beaumont, +he was but consistent in error when he ascribed +to Fletcher <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, in which there is very +little that betrays resemblance to Fletcher's style. If, +on the other hand, D'Avenant in the verses quoted +above intended to attribute to Fletcher merely individual +scenes of <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, etc., he must +have had a knowledge of the respective authorship +of the dramatists hardly to be reconciled with the palpable +mistake of assigning <i>The Woman-Hater</i> to +Fletcher. For, by an odd coincidence, he has indicated +in the first and second verses two<a name="FNanchor_186_186" id="FNanchor_186_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a> of the five +scenes of <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, and in the third, two<a name="FNanchor_187_187" id="FNanchor_187_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a> +of the five scenes of <i>Philaster</i> which our modern criticism +has proved to be Fletcher's. The reference in +the fourth line is more vague; but it has the merit of +indicating the only scene of <i>A King and No King</i><a name="FNanchor_188_188" id="FNanchor_188_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a> in +which, according to our critical tests, Fletcher has +contributed to the characterization of Panthea. With +regard to <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, it would appear that +D'Avenant was carelessly following the mistaken +ascription of authorship on the title-page of the quarto +of 1648.</p> + +<p>Fleay, Boyle, Macaulay, and Ward, with but slight +hesitation, pronounce <i>The Woman-Hater</i> to be an independent +production of Beaumont, written while he +was under the influence of Ben Jonson; but as I shall<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span> +presently show, Fletcher has revised a few scenes. +Oliphant feels inclined to join the critics mentioned +above, but cannot blind himself "to the presence of +Fletcher in a couple of scenes." One of these is +III, 1.<a name="FNanchor_189_189" id="FNanchor_189_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a> In the quartos this scene is divided +into two. By the <i>ye</i> test the first half-scene, running +to <i>Enter Duke, Etc.</i>, in which Oriana tempts Gondarino, +would be Fletcher's (15 <i>ye's</i> to 9 <i>you's</i>); but +the percentage of double endings is too low, and that +of run-on lines too high for him. I think that he is +revising Beaumont's original sketch. The second +half-scene and the rest of the act are, by the <i>ye</i> test +and all other criteria, Beaumont's. The metrical style +of the act as a whole is Beaumont's; so also the enclitic +'do's' and 'did's,' the Beaumontesque 'basilisk,' +'dissemble,' the mock-heroic prayers, and mock-legal +nicety of enumeration, the racy ironic prose, and the +burlesque Shakespearian echoes—"That pleasing +piece of frailty that we call woman," etc. The other +passage doubtfully assigned to Fletcher, by Oliphant—forty +lines following <i>Enter Ladies</i> in V, 5 (Dyce)—more +closely resembles his manner of verse, but is +not markedly of his rhetorical stamp. But by the <i>ye</i> +test (24 <i>ye's</i> to 39 <i>you's</i>) the whole of that scene, opening +<i>Enter Arigo and Oriana</i> is Fletcher's, or Fletcher's +revision of Beaumont. So, also, by the <i>ye</i> test is +another scene not before ascribed to Fletcher, IV, 2 +(27 <i>ye's</i> to 25 <i>you's</i>), as far as <i>Enter Oriana and her +Waiting-woman</i>. In this and the other <i>ye</i> scenes, the +<i>ye</i> frequently occurs in the objective,—which is absolute<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span> +Fletcher. The rest of this scene, constituting two +in the quartos, is pure Beaumont.—The play is, so +far as we can determine, Beaumont's earliest attempt +at dramatic production. Fletcher touched it up, and +his revision shows in the scenes mentioned above; that +is to say, in about sixteen out of the seventy pages as +printed in the <i>Cambridge English Classics</i>.</p> + +<p>The manifestly exaggerated torments of Gondarino +"who will be a scourge to all females in his life," +the amorous affectation of Oriana, the "stratagems +and ambuscadoes" of the hungry courtier in his pursuit +of "the chaste virgin-head" of a fish, the zealous +stupidity of the intelligencers are, as we have already +noted, of the humours school; and the work is that of +a beginner. But the "humours" are flavoured with +Beaumont's humanity; the mirth is his, genuine and +rollicking. The satire is concrete; and the play as a +whole, a promising precursor of the purple-flowered +prickly pear, next to be considered,—also undoubtedly +Beaumont's.</p> + + +<p class="sectionl">5.—Evidence, both external and internal, points to +the production of <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i> +between July 10, 1607 and some time in March 1608. +Since the first quarto (1613) is anonymous, our earliest +indication of authorship is that of the title-pages +of the second and third (1635), which ascribe the play +to Beaumont and Fletcher; and our next, the Cockpit +list of 1639 where it is included in a sequence of five +plays in which one or both had a hand.</p> + +<p>The dedication of the first quarto speaks in one +place of the "parents" of the play, and in others<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span> +of its "father"; and the address prefixed to the second +quarto speaks of the "author." Critics when +relying upon verse-tests think that they trace the +hand of Fletcher in several scenes.<a name="FNanchor_190_190" id="FNanchor_190_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_190_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a> But in those +scenes, even when the double-endings might indicate +Fletcher, the frequency of rhymes, masculine and +feminine, is altogether above his usage; the number +of end-stopped lines is ordinarily below it; and the +diction, save in one or two brief passages,<a name="FNanchor_191_191" id="FNanchor_191_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_191_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a> is his +neither in vocabulary nor rhetorical device. The +verse is singularly free from alliteration; and the +prose, in which over a third of the play is written, +displays that characteristic of Fletcher in only one +speech,<a name="FNanchor_192_192" id="FNanchor_192_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a> and, there, with ludicrous intent. Though, +on the other hand, the verse is in many respects different +from that which Beaumont employed in his more +stereotyped drama, it displays in several passages his +acknowledged peculiarity in conjunction with a diction +and manner of thought undoubtedly his. The +prose is generally of a piece with that of his other +comic writing, as in <i>The Woman-Hater</i> more especially; +and the scenes of low life and the conversation +are coloured by his rhetoric as we know them in <i>Philaster</i>, +<i>A King and No King</i>, and <i>The Coxcombe</i>. Of +the portrayal of humours, mock-heroic and burlesque, +the same statements hold true. The verse of Jasper's +soliloquy:<a name="FNanchor_193_193" id="FNanchor_193_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span></p><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Now, Fortune, if thou beest not onely ill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shew me thy better face, and bring about<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My desperate wheele, that I may clime at length<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And stand,—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>is in the usual manner of Beaumont. Luce's lament, +beginning:<a name="FNanchor_194_194" id="FNanchor_194_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">Thou that art<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The end of all, and the sweete rest of all<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Come, come, ô, Death! bring me to thy peace,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And blot out all the memory I nourish<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Both of my father and my cruell friend,—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and ending:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">How happy had I bene, if, being borne,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My grave had bene my cradle!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>has both the diction and the point of view of Beaumont; +and its verse has not more of the double-endings +than he sometimes uses. The subject and the +mock-heroic purpose do not call for his usual dramatic +vocabulary: but we recognize his 'dissemble,' his +'carduus' and 'phlebotomy' (compare <i>Philaster</i>), +his 'eyes shoot me through,' his 'do's.' We recognize +him in the frequent appeals to Chance and Fortune, +in the sensational determination of Jasper to +test Luce's devotion at the point of the sword, and +in the series of sensational complications and dénouements +which conclude the romantic plot. In short, +I agree with the critics<a name="FNanchor_195_195" id="FNanchor_195_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_195_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a> who attribute the play, wholly +or chiefly, to Beaumont. Fletcher may have inserted +a few verses here and there; but there is nothing in +sentiment, phrase, or artifice, to prove that he did.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span></p> +<p>The diversity of metrical forms is but an evidence +of the ingenuity of Beaumont. He has used blank +verse with frequent double-endings to distinguish the +romantic characters and plot: as in the scenes between +Venturewell and Jasper, Jasper and Luce. He has +used the heroic couplet with rhymes, single and double, +to distinguish the mock-romantic of Venturewell and +Humphrey, Humphrey and Luce. For the mock-heroic +of Ralph he has used the swelling ten-syllabled +blank verse of Marlowe and Kyd, or the prose of +<i>Amadis</i> and <i>Palmerin</i>; for his burlesque of the Maylord +he has used the senarii of the antiquated interlude. +For the conversation of the Merrythoughts +and of the citizen-critics he has used plain prose; and +for the tuneful ecstasies of Merrythought senior, a +sheaf of ballads. This consideration alone,—that +the metrical and prose forms are chosen with a view +to the various purposes of the play,—should convince +the reader of the vanity of assigning to Fletcher verse +which evidently had its origin not in any of his proclivities, +but in the temper of Beaumont's Venturewell, +Jasper, and Luce.</p> + +<p><i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i> was written and +first acted between June 29, 1607 and April 1, 1608. +The upper limit is fixed, as Boyle has indicated,<a name="FNanchor_196_196" id="FNanchor_196_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a> by the +mention, in Act IV, 1, 46, of an incident in <i>The Travails +of Three English Brothers</i>, "let the Sophy of +Persia come and christen him a childe," concerning +which the 'Boy' remarks, I, 48-50, "that will not +do so well; 'tis stale; it has been had before at the +Red Bull." The Red Bull, Clerkenwell, had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span> +occupied by Queen Anne's Men (whose plays Beaumont +is especially ridiculing), since 1604.<a name="FNanchor_197_197" id="FNanchor_197_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a> <i>The Travails</i> +was written hurriedly by Day, Rowley, and Wilkins +after the appearance, June 8, 1607, of a tract by +Nixon, on the adventures of the three Shirleys, and +was performed June 29, by the Queen's Men.<a name="FNanchor_198_198" id="FNanchor_198_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_198_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a> <i>The +Travails</i> dealt with a matter of ephemeral interest, +and would not long have held the public. It is, therefore, +likely that the allusion to it in <i>The Knight of +the Burning Pestle</i> was written shortly after June 29. +Since the play, according to its first publisher, took +eight days to write, we cannot assign any date earlier +than, say, July 10, 1607, for its first performance. +The lower limit is determined by the certainty that +<i>The Knight</i> was played by the Queen's Revels' Children +at Blackfriars; and that they ceased to act there +as an independent company some time in March 1608. +The play belonged in 1639 to Beeston's Boys, who had +it with four others of Beaumont and Fletcher from +Queen Henrietta's Men. None of these five plays +had ever been played by the King's Company; it is +likely that they had come to the Queen Henrietta's +from the Lady Elizabeth's Men with whom the +Queen's Revels' Children had been amalgamated in +1613.<a name="FNanchor_199_199" id="FNanchor_199_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a> One of these plays, <i>Cupid's Revenge</i>, had certainly +come down from the Queen's Revels' Boys in +that way.</p> + +<p>That the original performance was by a company +of children appears from numerous passages in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span> +text; and the only other children's company available +for consideration between 1603 and 1611, when the +manuscript fell into the publisher's hands, is that of +the Paul's Boys. That the Paul's Boys were not the +company performing is shown, however, by a passage +in the <i>Induction</i>, where the citizen-critic, interrupting +the Prologue of the "good-man boy," says: +"This seven yeares [that] there hath beene playes at +this house, I have observed it, you have still girds at +citizens." Now, at no date between the summer of +1608 and 1611 could it have been said of the Children +of Paul's that they had been acting seven years continuously +at any one "house." The career of the +Paul's Boys as actors at their cathedral school had +ended in the summer of 1608, when Robert Keysar, +Rossiter, and others interested in the rival company +of the Queen's Revels' Children had subsidized Edward +Pierce, the manager of the Paul's Boys, to cease +plays at St. Paul's.<a name="FNanchor_200_200" id="FNanchor_200_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_200_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a> If between that date and 1611 +they acted, it was elsewhere, at Whitefriars perhaps, +and temporarily (not after 1609), and as the I King's +Revels' Children.<a name="FNanchor_201_201" id="FNanchor_201_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a> The citizen-critic, therefore, if +speaking after the summer of 1608, could not have +referred to Paul's Boys. If speaking of Paul's Boys +between 1603 and 1608, the only "house" that he +can have had in mind would be their school of St. +Paul's Cathedral; and to say that there had been plays +there for <i>seven</i> years would have been utterly pointless,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span> +for the Paul's Boys had been acting in their +school, or in its courtyard, for twenty, one might say +fifty years, more or less continuously. Fleay conjectures +wildly that they had occupied Whitefriars between +1604 and 1607, but that does not explain the +"seven yeares at this house"; to say nothing of the +fact that such occupancy is unproved. An old Whitefriars +inn-yard playhouse had been "pulled down" +in 1582-3. No other Whitefriars Theatre existed +till 1607, when a new Whitefriars "was occupied by +six equal sharers with original title from Lord Buckhurst."<a name="FNanchor_202_202" id="FNanchor_202_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a></p> + +<p>The company was not that of St. Paul's; and the +"house" was not a school-house, but a regularly constituted +theatre. Now, the only theatre, public or +private, that, at any rate between 1603 and 1611, had +been occupied by a boys' company for "this seven +yeares" was Blackfriars; and of Blackfriars the statement +could be made only at a date preceding January +4, 1610, and with reference to the Queen's Revels' +Children. On that date, as reorganized under Rossiter, +Keysar, and others, they received a Patent authorizing +them to open at Whitefriars, "or in any +other convenient place." For about a month before, +they had filled an engagement at Blackfriars, the lease +of which had reverted on August 9, 1608 to Burbadge +and Shakespeare's company of the King's Players. +They had ceased playing at Blackfriars as an independent +company in March 1608; the theatre had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span> +tenantless after that for six months and then had been +closed until December 7, 1609, because of the prevalence +of the plague. The Citizen's complaint that +the boys have been girding at citizens "this seven +yeares there hath been playes at this house" would +lose all cogency if spoken of the Queen's Revels' Children +when they were acting during the month following +December 7, 1609, both because plays had been +then intermitted for the twenty months preceding, +and because in 1609 it was not seven but twelve years +since the boys had begun their occupancy of "this +house." It could not apply to the seven years between +1597, when they first occupied Blackfriars, and +1604, because <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i> was +not written till after the <i>Travails of Three English +Brothers</i> appeared, June 29, 1607. But it does apply, +with all requisite dramatic and chronological accuracy, +to the seven years preceding the last date,—or the date +in March 1608, when, because of their scandalous +representation of the King of France and his mistress +in Chapman's <i>Tragedie of Charles, Duke of Byron</i>, +and because of plays caricaturing and vilifying King +James, the Queen's Revels' Children were prohibited +from playing, their principal actors thrown into prison, +and Blackfriars suppressed. On September 29, 1600, +Richard Burbadge had let Blackfriars on a twenty-one-year +lease to Henry Evans, the manager of the +Queen's Revels' Children, and under the organization +of that date they had by 1607-1608 been giving +plays exactly "this seven yeares at this house." We +are, as I have said, informed by the publisher of <i>The +Knight</i> that the play was written in eight days. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span> +might have been staged in two or three. If the plague +regulations were enforced during 1607-8, as I have +no doubt they were, <i>The Knight</i> was acted between +July 10 and 23, 1607, or between December 26, 1607 +and the Biron day in March 1608.</p> + +<p>The internal evidence is all confirmatory of this +period of composition. The Queen Anne's Men of +the "Red Bull" mentioned in the play obtained their +title to the Red Bull from Aaron Holland about 1604. +The songs in the play were common property between +1604 and 1607; none of the romances ridiculed is of +a later date than 1607; and of the eight plays mentioned +or alluded to, all had been acted before June +1607 but <i>The Travails</i>; and that was played for the +first time June 29 of that year. The allusions to external +history such as that in Act IV, ii, 4, to the +Prince of Moldavia—who left London in November +1607—and the humorous jibe at the pretty +Paul's Boys of Mr. Mulcaster, who ceased teaching +them in 1608, are all for 1607-8.<a name="FNanchor_203_203" id="FNanchor_203_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_203_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a> Fleay marshals +an applausive gallery of conjectures for his conjecture +of 1610, but none of them appears to me to have +any substance; and in view of what has been said, +and of what will follow, I may dispense with their +consideration.</p> + +<p>The history of the manuscript is, as has not been +noted before, also confirmatory of the 1607-8 date. +The Robert Keysar who rescued the play from "perpetuall +oblivion" after its failure upon the stage (as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span> +Burre says in the dedication of the first quarto) and +who "afterwards" (in 1610-11) turned it over, +"yet an infant" (<i>i. e.</i> unpublished) and "somewhat +ragged," to Burre for publication, is the same "Mr. +Keysar" who in February 1606, with "Mr. Kendall," +also of the Blackfriars' management, had been +paid for "Apparrell" furnished for a performance +given by the Children of Westminster School.<a name="FNanchor_204_204" id="FNanchor_204_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a> He +at no period had any connection with the Paul's Boys. +He was, as Professor Wallace informs us, a London +goldsmith who "about this time (1606-7) acquired +an interest in the shifting fortunes of Blackfriars, +and became the financial backer of the Queen's Revels' +Children. He had cause to dislike King James +for oppression in wresting money from the goldsmiths."<a name="FNanchor_205_205" id="FNanchor_205_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a> +Hence probably the attacks of the Queen's +Revels' Children upon the King, which helped to bring +about their suppression at Blackfriars in 1608. Keysar +would inevitably know all about the plays performed +by his Children, <i>The Knight of the Burning +Pestle</i> among the rest, during the last year of +their occupancy of Blackfriars. And since, according +to Burre, he appreciated the merits of <i>The Knight</i> it +was but natural that he, and not some person unconnected +with the company, should have preserved the +manuscript,—perhaps with a view to having the Children +try the play again after they should re-open at +Whitefriars. With Rossiter, soon after March 1608, +he was making preparations for such a reorganization.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span> +When finally they did re-open at their new +theatre, in January 1610, they evidently did not take +up the play. Somewhat later, say 1611, Keysar sent +the manuscript to Burre for publication. Burre "fostred +it privately in his bosome these two yeares" and +brought it out in 1613.</p> + +<p>The conclusion of Burre's dedicatory address to +Keysar in the first quarto, of 1613, has unnecessarily +complicated both the question of the date of composition +and that of the source of <i>The Knight of the +Burning Pestle</i>. "Perhaps," says he, "it [<i>The +Knight</i>] will be thought to bee of the race of Don +Quixote: we both may confidently sweare, it is his +elder above a yeare; and therefore may (by vertue +of his birth-right) challenge the wall of him. I doubt +not but they will meet in their adventures, and I hope +the breaking of one staffe will make them friends; +and perhaps they will combine themselves, and travell +through the world to seeke their adventures." This +denial of indebtedness to Cervantes has been generally +taken to refer to Shelton's English translation of Don +Quixote, entered S. R. January 19, 1611-12, and +printed 1612; and it has, therefore, been supposed by +many that <i>The Knight</i> was written and first acted in +1610 or 1611. But if Burre was dating <i>The Knight</i> +as of 1610 or 1611, he was ignorant of the fact, as +established above, that the play was the elder of Shelton's +printed <i>Don Quixote</i>, not merely "above a +yeare," but above four years. There are only two +other constructions to be placed upon Burre's statement: +either that the play was the elder above a year +of the first part of <i>Don Quixote</i>, issued in the Spanish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span> +by Cervantes in 1605,<a name="FNanchor_206_206" id="FNanchor_206_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a> or that it was the elder +above a year of Shelton's translation as circulated +among his friends in manuscript, at any rate as early +as 1609. If Burre was dating the play, according to +the former interpretation, as of 1604, he was ignorant +of the fact that it could not have been written till +after the appearance of <i>The Travails of Three English +Brothers</i>, June 29, 1607. The latter interpretation +would, if we could adopt it as his understanding +of the matter, not only comport with the date of the +production of <i>The Knight</i> in 1607-8, but also, somewhat +roughly, with his own statement that he had +had the manuscript already in a battered condition in +his "bosome" since 1610 or 1611.</p> + +<p>If Burre, who was not a litterateur, did not know +that Shelton's translation of <i>Don Quixote</i> had been +going the rounds for years before it was printed in +1612, everybody else did. Shelton had announced +as much in his <i>Epistle Dedicatorie</i> to Theophilus, Lord +Howard of Walden, prefixed to the first quarto of +1612. He translated the book, as he says, "some +five or six yeares agoe"—that would be in 1607, for +he used the Brussels Reprint of that year as his text,—"out +of the Spanish Tongue into the English in +the space of forty daies: being thereunto more than +half enforced through the importunitie of a very deere +friende, that was desirous to understand the subject. +After I had given him once a view thereof, I cast it +aside, where it lay long time neglected in a corner, +and so little regarded by me as I never once set hand +to review or correct the same. Since when, at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span> +entreatie of others my friends, I was content to let +it come to light, conditionally that some one or other +would peruse and amend the errours escaped"—because +he had not time to revise it himself. In other +words, Shelton had shown the manuscript translation +of <i>Don Quixote</i> to but one friend in 1607; and +it was not till "long time" had elapsed that he began +to circulate it among his other friends on condition +that they should correct its errors. The date of circulation +was, probably, about 1609, for in that year +we have our earliest mention of the reading of <i>Don +Quixote</i> by an Englishman,—by a dramatic character, +to be sure, but a character created by Ben Jonson. +In his <i>Epicoene</i>, acted in 1610, and written the year +preceding, that dramatist makes Truewit advise the +young Sir Dauphine to cease living in his chamber +"a month together upon <i>Amadis de Gaule</i>, or <i>Don +Quixote</i>, as you are wont." There is no ascription +of Spanish to Dauphine, who is a typical London gallant. +He would read <i>Amadis</i> in the French, or the +English translation; and the only translation of <i>Don +Quixote</i> accessible to him in 1609 would be Shelton's +manuscript of Part One.<a name="FNanchor_207_207" id="FNanchor_207_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a> Jonson may himself +have been one of the friends to whom Shelton submitted +the translation. There is no reason to believe +that Jonson had read Cervantes in the original; +for, as Professor Rudolph Schevill has conclusively +demonstrated,<a name="FNanchor_208_208" id="FNanchor_208_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_208_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a> his knowledge of Spanish was extremely +limited. "The Spanish phrases pronounced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span> +by the improvised 'hidalgo' in the <i>Alchemist</i> (of +1610) prove nothing." They were caught, as Professor +Schevill says, from the London vogue or may +have been supplied by some Spanish acquaintance. +Indeed, one may even doubt whether if he read Shelton's +manuscript Jonson did so with any care, for +not only in <i>The Alchemist</i> but elsewhere he uniformly +couples Don Quixote as if a character of chivalric +romance with Amadis, of whom and his congeners +Don Quixote is a burlesque.</p> + +<p>As to Burre, however, I do not think that he had +been informed by Keysar of the exact provenience +of the manuscript of <i>The Knight</i>, or of the date of +first acting. I incline to believe that he had the <i>Epistle +Dedicatorie</i> of the newly printed Shelton before +him when, in 1613, he wrote his dedication of <i>The +Knight</i> to Robert Keysar; for he runs the figure of +the book as a "child" and of its "father" and "step-father" +through his screed as Shelton had run it in +1612; and he hits upon a similar diction of "bosome" +and "oblivion." But, though he may have been +gratuitously challenging the wall of Shelton's newly +printed <i>Don Quixote</i> in favour of <i>The Knight</i> as in +existence by 1610 or 1611, the only interpretation of +his "elder above a yeare" that would fit the fact is +afforded by the composition of the play, as already +demonstrated, in 1607-8, more than a year before +Shelton began to circulate his manuscript.</p> + +<p>In spite of Burre's assertion of the priority of <i>The +Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>, nearly every editor or +historian who has touched upon <i>The Knight</i> informs +us that it is "undoubtedly derived from <i>Don Quixote</i>."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span> +If (as I am sure was not the case) the play +was written after 1608, Beaumont, or Beaumont and +Fletcher, could have derived suggestions for it from +Shelton's manuscript, first circulated in 1609. That +Beaumont, at any rate, was acquainted with the Spanish +hero by 1610, appears from his familiarity +with the <i>Epicoene</i> in which as we have observed, Don +Quixote is mentioned; for he wrote commendatory +verses for the quarto of that play, entered S. R. +September 20 of that year. If, on the other hand, +<i>The Knight</i>, as I hold, was written in 1607 or 1608, +the author or authors, provided they read Spanish, +could have derived suggestions from Cervantes' original +of 1605; or if they did not read Spanish, from +hearsay. The latter source of information would be +the more likely, for although sixteen of the ignorantly +so-called "Beaumont and Fletcher" plays have been +traced to plots in Spanish originals, there is not one +of those plots which either of the poets might not +have derived from English or French translation; +and in none of the sixteen plays is there any evidence +that either of the dramatists had a reading knowledge +of Spanish.<a name="FNanchor_209_209" id="FNanchor_209_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_209_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a> As to the possibility of information +by hearsay, other dramatists allude to <i>Don Quixote</i> +as early as 1607-8;<a name="FNanchor_210_210" id="FNanchor_210_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_210_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a> and, indeed, it would be virtually<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span> +impossible that any literary Londoner could +have escaped the oral tradition of so popular and +impressive a masterpiece two years after its +publication.</p> + +<p>All this supposition of derivation from <i>Don Quixote</i> +is, however, so far as verbal indebtedness goes, or +indebtedness for <i>motifs</i>, episodes, incidents and their +sequence, characters, machinery, dramatic construction, +manners, sentiments, and methods of satire, a +phantom caught out of the clear sky. So far as the +satire upon the contemporary literature of chivalry +is concerned, when the ridicule is not of English +stuff unknown to Cervantes it is of Spanish material +translated into English and already satirized by Englishmen +before Cervantes wrote his <i>Don Quixote</i>. +An examination of <i>The Knight</i> and of the <i>Don</i> in any +version, and of contemporary English literature, reveals +incontestibly not only that the material satirized, +the phrases and ideas, come from works in English, +but that even the method of the satire is derived from +that of preceding English dramatic burlesque rather +than from that of Cervantes.</p> + +<p>The title of the play was suggested by <i>The Knight +of the Burning Sword</i>, an English translation, current +long before 1607, of the Spanish <i>Amadis of +Greece, Prince and Knight of the Burning Sword</i>. +Ten full years before 1607 Falstaff had dubbed his +red-nosed Bardolph "Knight of the Burning Lamp." +The farcical, but eminently sane, grocer's apprentice, +turned Knight for fun, grows out of Heywood's +<i>Foure Prentises</i>, and Day and Wilkins's <i>Travails</i>, and +the English <i>Palmerins</i>, etc. He has absolutely nothing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span> +in common with the glorious but pathetically +unbalanced <i>Don</i> of Cervantes. Nor is there any resemblance +between Ralph's Palmerin-born Squire +and Dwarf—and that embodiment of commonsense, +Sancho Panza.<a name="FNanchor_211_211" id="FNanchor_211_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_211_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a> The specific conception of <i>The +Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>, a satire upon the craze +of London tradesmen for romances of chivalry, for +"bunches of Ballads and Songs, all ancient," for the +bombast and sensationalism of Kyd's <i>Spanish Tragedy</i>, +Marlowe's <i>True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of +York</i>, even of Shakespeare's Hotspur, and of dramas +of bourgeois knight-errantry,—a burlesque of the civic +domestic virtues and military prowess of prentices +and shop-keepers,—is much more applicable to the +conditions and aspirations of contemporary Bow-Bells +and the affectations of the contemporary stage than +to those which begot and nourished the madness of +the Knight of La Mancha.</p> + +<p>Beaumont may have received from the success of +the <i>Don Quixote</i> of 1605 some impulse provocative +to the writing of <i>The Knight</i>, but a dramatic satire, +such as <i>The Knight</i>, might have occurred to him if +<i>Don Quixote</i> had never been written; just as that +other dramatic satire upon the dramas of folk-lore +romance, <i>The Old Wives Tale</i>, had occurred to Peele +some fifteen years before <i>Don Quixote</i> appeared; and +as it had occurred to the author of <i>Thersites</i> to ridicule, +upon the stage, Greek tales of heroism and British +worthies of knighthood and the greenwood still +fifty-five years earlier. The puritan and the ritualist, +the country justice and the squire, the schoolmaster<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span> +and the scribbling pedant, the purveyor of marvels of +forest and marsh, the knight-adventurer of ancient +lore or of modern creation, the damsel distressed or +enamoured of visionary castles, had, one and all, +awakened laughter upon the Tudor stage. The leisure +wasted, and the emotion misspent, over the <i>Morte +d'Arthur</i> and the histories of Huon of Bordeaux, +Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hamptoun, or of +Robin Hood and Clim of the Clough, had been deplored +by many an anxious educator and essayist +of the day. Why was it not time and the fit occasion, +in a period when city grocers and their +wives would tolerate no kind of play but such as revamped +the more modern tales of chivalry, or tricked +tradesmen out in the factitious glory of quite recent heroes +of romance,—why was it not time for an attack +upon the vogue of Anthony Munday's translations of +the now offending cycles, <i>Amadis of Gaul</i>, <i>Palmerin +de Oliva</i>, <i>Palmerin of England</i>, and upon the vogue +of the English versions of <i>The Mirror of Knighthood</i> +with its culminating bathos of the <i>Knight of the Sunne +and His Brother Rosicleer</i>? These had, in various +instalments, befuddled the popular mind for thirty +years.</p> + +<p>Ben Jonson already, in his <i>Every Man out of +His Humour</i> (1599), had satirized the common +affectation under the similitude of a country knight, +Puntarvolo, who, if not crazed, was at any rate +"wholly consecrated to singularity" by reason of +undue absorption of romances of chivalry, a singularity +of "fashion, phrase, and gesture" of the Anthony +Munday type and the type glassed in the <i>Mirror +of Knighthood</i>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span> Sir Puntarvolo, who "sits a great +horse" and "courts his own lady, as she were a +stranger never encountered before,"—who feigns that +his own house is a castle, who summons with trumpet-blast +the waiting-woman to the window, and, saluting +her "after some little flexure of the knee," asks +for the lord of the edifice, and that the "beauties" +of the "lady" may shine on this side of the building,—who +"planet struck" by the "heavenly pulchritude" of +his long-suffering and much bewildered poor old +wife, conveys to her the information that he is a poor +knight-errant pursuing through the forest a hart "escaped +by enchantment," and that, wearied, he and his +servant make "suit to enter" her fair abode,—Sir +Puntarvolo, who every morning thus performs fantastic +homage, what is he but a predecessor of Don +Quixote and Ralph alike, fashioned out of the materials +of decadent chivalric fiction common to both? +In 1600, Robert Anton had burlesqued in prose and +rhyme the romantic ballads of the day in his ludicrous +<i>Heroical Adventures of the Knight of the Sea</i>, where +"the queen of the fairies transforms a submissive and +apathetic cow into a knight-errant to do her business +in the world."<a name="FNanchor_212_212" id="FNanchor_212_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a> And in 1605, also before the appearance +of Cervantes' burlesque, Chapman, with +the collaboration of Jonson and Marston, had, in +<i>Eastward Hoe</i>, satirized that other kind of knight, +him of the city and by purchase, in the character of +Sir Petronel Flash; and, with him, the aspirations of +romance-fed merchants' daughters who would wed +knights and dwell in country-castles wrested from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span> +giants. Nor had these authors failed to specify the +sources of delusion, the <i>Mirror of Knighthood</i>, the +<i>Palmerin of England</i>, etc. That both Beaumont +and Fletcher were alive, without prompting from Cervantes, +to the mania of chivalric emulation which +obsessed the train-bands of London is attested by +the bombastic talk of "Rosicleer" which Fletcher +puts into the mouth of the city captain in <i>Philaster</i>, +a play that was written about two years later than +<i>The Knight</i>, in 1609 or 1610. There had been musters +of the City companies at Mile End as early as +1532, and again under Elizabeth in 1559, and 1585, +and 1599, when as many as 30,000 citizens were +trained there. But the muster in which Ralph had +been chosen "citty captaine" was evidently that of +1605, a general muster under James I.</p> + +<p>Why, then, should we suppose that it was beyond +the genius of a Beaumont to conceive, as Peele, Jonson, +Chapman, Marston, and others had conceived, +a drama which should burlesque the devotees of such +romances as were the fad of the day? And to conceive +it without the remotest suggestion from <i>Don +Quixote</i>? Whether Beaumont read Spanish or not, +and there is no proof that he did read it; whether he +had heard of <i>Don Quixote</i> or not, and there is little +doubt that he had, there is nothing in <i>The Knight +of the Burning Pestle</i> that in any way presupposes +either verbal acquaintance with, or constructive dependence +upon, the burlesque of Cervantes.<a name="FNanchor_213_213" id="FNanchor_213_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_213_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a> In short,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span> +Professor Schevill, in the article cited above, +and following him Dr. Murch, in an admirable introduction +to his edition of <i>The Knight</i>, have shown that +Beaumont's conception of the hero, Ralph, not only +is not of a piece with, but is fundamentally different +from, Cervantes' conception of Don Quixote; and +they have demonstrated with a minuteness of chapter +and verse that need not be recapitulated here that +the motives, machinery and characters, ideas and +phrases are, in so far as they have relation to romances +of chivalry, drawn out of, or suggested by, the +English translations already enumerated. This demonstration +applies to the adoption of the squire, the +rescue of Mrs. Merrythought, the incident of the casket, +the liberation of the barber's patients, the mock-heroic +love-affair, as well as to the often adduced +barber's basin and the scene of the inn. Of the situations, +there is none that is not a logical issue of +the local conditions or the presuppositions of an original +plot; whereas there are, on the other hand, numerous +situations in <i>Don Quixote</i>, capable of dramatic +treatment, that the Elizabethan playwright of 1607-8 +could hardly have refrained from annexing if he had +used that story as a source. The setting or background +of <i>The Knight</i>, as Professor Schevill has said, +in no way recalls that of the <i>Don</i>, "and it is difficult to +see how any inspiration got from Cervantes should +have failed to include at least a slight shadow of something +which implies an acquaintance with Rocinante<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span> +and Sancho Panza." Beaumont, in addition, not only +satirizes, as I have said, the chivalric and bourgeois +dramas of Heywood, <i>If You Know Not Me, You +Know Nobody</i>, etc., and dramas of romantic marvel +like <i>Mucedorus</i> and the <i>Travails</i>, and parodies with +rare humour the rant of Senecan tragedy; he not only +ridicules the military ardour and pomp of the London +citizens, and pokes fun at their unsophisticated assumption +of dramatic insight and critical instinct,—with +all this satire of the main plot and of the spectator-gods +in the machinery, he has combined a romantic +plot of common life—Jasper, Luce, and Humphrey,—and +a comic plot of humours in which Jasper's father, +mother, and brother live as Merrythoughts should. +He has produced a whole that in drama was an innovation +and in burlesque a triumph. <i>The Knight</i> was +still an acting play in the last quarter of the seventeenth +century. During the past thirteen years it has +been acted by academic amateurs five times in +America.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186_186" id="Footnote_186_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_186_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a> IV, 1; and II, 2.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187_187" id="Footnote_187_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_187_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a> V, 3, 4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188_188" id="Footnote_188_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188_188"><span class="label">[188]</span></a> IV, 1.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_189_189" id="Footnote_189_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_189_189"><span class="label">[189]</span></a> Between <i>Oriana sits down</i> and <i>exit Oriana</i>, as in Dyce, Vol. +I, pp. 43-48.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_190_190" id="Footnote_190_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190_190"><span class="label">[190]</span></a> I, 1; I, 2; II, 2; II, 3; III, 1; IV, 4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_191_191" id="Footnote_191_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191_191"><span class="label">[191]</span></a> <i>E. g.</i>, the "lets" and the "alls" of IV, 4, 36-40, as numbered +in Alden's edition. The play is devoid of Fletcherian jolts.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_192_192" id="Footnote_192_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_192_192"><span class="label">[192]</span></a> V, 2, 63, <i>et seq.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_193_193" id="Footnote_193_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_193_193"><span class="label">[193]</span></a> II, 2, 90.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_194_194" id="Footnote_194_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194_194"><span class="label">[194]</span></a> IV, 4, 5.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_195_195" id="Footnote_195_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_195_195"><span class="label">[195]</span></a> Macaulay, Oliphant, Bullen, and Alden.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_196_196" id="Footnote_196_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196_196"><span class="label">[196]</span></a> <i>Engl. Studien</i>, IX.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_197_197" id="Footnote_197_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_197_197"><span class="label">[197]</span></a> Wallace, <i>Shakspere's Money Interest in the Globe, Cent. +Maga.</i>, Aug., 1910, p. 510.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_198_198" id="Footnote_198_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198_198"><span class="label">[198]</span></a> Fleay, <i>Chr. Eng. Dr.</i>, II, 277.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_199_199" id="Footnote_199_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_199_199"><span class="label">[199]</span></a> Fleay, <i>H. S.</i>, p. 356.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_200_200" id="Footnote_200_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_200_200"><span class="label">[200]</span></a> Wallace, <i>Shakspere and the Blackfriars, Century Maga.</i>, +Sept., 1910, p. 751.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_201_201" id="Footnote_201_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201_201"><span class="label">[201]</span></a> Murray, <i>Eng. Dram. Comp.</i>, I, 353, who cites Nichols, <i>Progresses</i>, +IV, 1074; but Whitefriars had been destined by Keysar +and others for the Queen's Revels' Children since 1608.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_202_202" id="Footnote_202_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202_202"><span class="label">[202]</span></a> Rawlidge, <i>A Monster lately found out</i>, etc., 1622, as quoted +by Fleay, <i>H. S.</i>, 36; Wallace, <i>Cent. Maga.</i>, Aug., 1910; and +Thorndike, <i>Infl. of B. and F.</i>, p. 60.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_203_203" id="Footnote_203_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_203_203"><span class="label">[203]</span></a> See the impressive array of evidence, internal and external, +presented by Thorndike, <i>Infl. of B. and F.</i>, pp. 59-63; and by +Alden, <i>K. B. P.</i>, pp. 166-169 (Belles Lettres Series).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204_204" id="Footnote_204_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204_204"><span class="label">[204]</span></a> Accounts in <i>Athenaeum</i>, 2, 1903, 220.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_205_205" id="Footnote_205_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205_205"><span class="label">[205]</span></a> Wallace, <i>Cent. Maga., Sept.</i> 1910, p. 747. See also Greenstreet +Papers in Fleay, <i>H. St.</i>, 249.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206_206" id="Footnote_206_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206_206"><span class="label">[206]</span></a> For this argument see <i>Engl. Studien</i>, XII, 309.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_207_207" id="Footnote_207_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207_207"><span class="label">[207]</span></a> Baudouin's French version of 1608 is merely of the episodic +narrative of <i>The Curious Impertinent</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_208_208" id="Footnote_208_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_208_208"><span class="label">[208]</span></a> <i>On the Influence of Spanish Literature upon English</i> (<i>Romanische Forschungen</i>, +XX, 613-615, <i>et seq.</i>).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_209_209" id="Footnote_209_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_209_209"><span class="label">[209]</span></a> Of this I am assured by my colleague, Professor Rudolph +Schevill, who has made a special study of the plays and their +sources, and has published some of his conclusions in the article +in <i>Romanische Forschungen</i>, already cited; others, communicated +by him to Dr. H. S. Murch, appear in <i>Yale Studies in English</i>, +XXXIII, <i>The K. B. P.</i>, Introduction. Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach's +unpublished conclusions, as cited by Miss Hatcher, <i>John Fletcher</i>, +etc., 1905, p. 42, are to the same effect.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_210_210" id="Footnote_210_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_210_210"><span class="label">[210]</span></a> Wilkins, <i>Miseries of Enforced Marriage</i>, III; Middleton, +<i>Your Five Gallants</i>, IV, 8; cited by Schevill, <i>ut supra</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211_211" id="Footnote_211_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211_211"><span class="label">[211]</span></a> See Schevill, <i>u. s.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_212_212" id="Footnote_212_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_212_212"><span class="label">[212]</span></a> H. V. Routh, in <i>C. H. L.</i>, IV, 410.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_213_213" id="Footnote_213_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_213_213"><span class="label">[213]</span></a> The lines, +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Who like Don Quixote do advance<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Against a windmill our vaine lance,<br /></span> +</div></div> +<p> +occur in a copy of verses <i>To the Mutable Faire</i> included among +<i>The Poems of Francis Beaumont</i> in the edition of 1640. But the +volume includes numerous poems not written by Beaumont, and +is one of the most uncritical collections that ever was printed. +This poem is by Waller.</p></div></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XXV</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">THE FIVE CENTRAL PLAYS</p> + + +<p class="cap">Six.—<i>The Coxcombe</i> was first printed in the folio +of 1647. Our earliest record of its acting is +of a performance at Court by the Children of the +Queen's Revels in 1612.<a name="FNanchor_214_214" id="FNanchor_214_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a> The day was between +October 16 and 24. A list of the principal actors, +all Queen's Children, preserved in the folio of 1679, +indicates, however, that this was not the first performance; +for three of the actors listed had left that +company by August 29, 1611; one of them (Joseph +Taylor) perhaps before March 30, 1610. The list +was evidently contemporary with the first performance. +The absolute upper limit of the composition +was 1604, for one of the characters speaks of the +taking of Ostend. If the play, as we are dogmatically +informed by a credulous sequence of critics who +take statements at second-hand, principally from German +doctors' theses, were derived from Cervantes' +story, <i>El Curioso Impertinente</i>, which appeared in +the First Part of <i>Don Quixote</i>, printed 1605, or (since +we have no evidence that our dramatists read Spanish), +from Baudouin's French translation which was +licensed April 26, 1608<a name="FNanchor_215_215" id="FNanchor_215_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_215_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a> and may have reached England<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span> +about June,—we might have a definite earlier +limit of later date. But there is no resemblance between +the <i>motif</i> of Cervantes' story, in which a +husband out of curiosity and an impudent desire to +heighten the treasure of his love would try his wife's +fidelity, and that of Beaumont and Fletcher's play, +where there is no question of a trial of honour. In +Beaumont and Fletcher, we have a revelation of lust +at first sight on the part of the husband's friend, +Mercury, of unnatural friendly pandering on the +part of that 'natural fool' the husband, Antonio, and +of easy acquiescence on the part of Maria, the wife, +in the cuckolding of her idiotic coxcomb, who with +the wool pulled over his eyes takes her back believing +that she is innocent. In Cervantes, the husband, +sure of his wife and adoring her, urges his +friend to make trial of her honour; the friend, +outraged at first by the suggestion, refuses, but +finally succumbs to passion and wins the wife, likewise, +at first, above suspicion; and all die tragically. +There is no resemblance in treatment, atmosphere, +incidents, or dialogue. The only community +of conception is that of a husband playing with fire—risking +cuckoldom. But Cervantes' character of the +husband is sentimentally deluded; Beaumont and +Fletcher's is a contemptible and willing wittol. If +Beaumont and Fletcher derived their plot from Cervantes, +all that can be said is that they have mutilated +and vulgarized the original out of all possibility of +recognition.<a name="FNanchor_216_216" id="FNanchor_216_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span></p><p>Other English dramatists dealing with the theme +of <i>The Curious Impertinent</i> between 1611 and 1615 +followed Cervantes more or less closely in the main +<i>motif</i>, in incident, and in dialogue: the author of +<i>The Second Maiden's Tragedy</i>, for instance, who +made use of Baudouin's translation; and Nathaniel +Field, who used either Baudouin or Shelton's publication +of 1612 in his <i>Amends for Ladies</i>. But Beaumont +and Fletcher in their tale of a husband cuckolded +and pommeled were drawing upon another +source, one of the many variants of <i>Le Mari coccu, +battu et content</i>, to be found in Boccaccio and before +him in Old French poems, and French and Italian +<i>Nouvelles</i>. If they derived anything from Cervantes, +whose theme is lifted from the <i>Orlando Furioso</i>, +it was merely the suggestion for a fresh drama of +cuckoldry. That their play was regarded by others +as thus inspired appears, I think, from a passage +in Ben Jonson's <i>Alchemist</i>, IV, vii, 40-41, where, +after Kastril has said to Surly, "You are a Pimpe, +and a Trig, and an Amadis de Gaule, or a Don Quixote," +Drugger adds, "Or a Knight o' the curious +cox-combe, Doe you see?" Field and the rest, writing +in or after 1611, had uniformly referred to Cervantes' +cuckold as the Curious Impertinent. Jonson +wrote his <i>Alchemist</i> between July 12 and October 3, +1610, and up to that time the cuckold had been dramatized +as Coxcomb only by Beaumont and Fletcher. +The prefix 'Curious' indicates that in Jonson's mind +his friend's play is associated with Cervantes' novel;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span> +and the further prefix of 'The Knight' looks very +much like a reminiscence of "The Knight of the +Burning Pestle," which had been played some two +years before. This argument from contemporaneity +of inspiration and allusion inclines me to date the +upper limit of <i>The Coxcombe</i> about 1609, after Baudouin's +translation <i>Le Curieux Impertinent</i> had +reached England, and Shelton's manuscript had been +put in circulation.</p> + +<p>If to this conjecture we could add a precise determination +of the period of Joseph Taylor's connection +with the Queen's Revels' Children, we should have a +definite lower limit for the performance of <i>The Coxcombe</i> +in which he took part. But I find it impossible +to decide whether Taylor had been with the +Queen's Revels up to about March 30, 1610, upon +which day his name appears among the Duke of York's +Players who were recently reorganized and had just +obtained a new patent; or had been up to that time +with the predecessors of the Duke of York's (Prince +Charles's) Company, and had left them shortly after +March 30 for the Queen's Revels' Children. In +favour of the former alternative are (1) that in the +list of the Queen's Revels' actors in <i>The Coxcombe</i> +he appears second to Field only, as if a player of +long standing with them and high in the company's esteem +at the time of the performance; (2) that he +does not appear among the actors in the list for +<i>Epicoene</i> which was presented first by the Queen's +Revels' Children between January 4 and March 25, +1610: Field is still first, Barkstead, who had been +eighth on the <i>Coxcombe</i> list, appears now second, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span> +if promoted to Taylor's place, and Giles Carey is +third in both lists; (3) that in the March 30 patent +to the Duke of York's Players his name ranks only +fifth, as if that of a recent acquisition. On this basis +the lower limit would be March 25, 1610. In favour +of the latter alternative, viz., that Taylor joined the +Queen's Children from the Duke of York's, at a date +later than March 30, 1610, are the considerations: (1) +that when the new Princess Elizabeth's Company, +formed April 11, 1611, gives a bond to Henslowe on +August 29 of that year, Taylor's name appears with +two of the Queen's Revels' Children of March 1610, +as if all three had left the Queen's Revels for the +new company at the same time; and (2) that their +names appear close together after that of the principal +organizer as if not only actors of repute in the company +which they had left but prime movers in the +new organization. On this basis the lower limit for +the performance of <i>The Coxcombe</i>, at a time when +all three were yet Queen's Revels' Children, would +be August 29, 1611. Consulting the restrictions necessitated +by the plague rate, we have, then, an option +for the date of acting: either between December 7, +1609 and July 12, 1610, when Jonson had begun his +<i>Alchemist</i>, or between November 29, 1610 and July +1611. In the latter case Ben Jonson's "Knight o' +the curious coxcombe" would precede the performance +of Beaumont and Fletcher's play and could not +be an allusion. In the former, it would immediately +follow the acting of <i>The Coxcombe</i>, and would manifestly +be suggested by that play. I prefer the former +option; and date the acting,—on the assumption that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span> +Taylor left the Queen's Revels by March 30, 1610,—before +that date.<a name="FNanchor_217_217" id="FNanchor_217_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_217_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a> Since Fletcher's contribution to +the play has been mangled by a reviser it is impossible +to draw conclusions as to the date of composition +from the evidence of his literary style. But the characteristics +of Beaumont in the minor plot are those +of the period in which the <i>Letter to Ben Jonson</i> and +<i>Philaster</i> were written. The play as first performed +was condemned for its length by "the ignorant multitude."<a name="FNanchor_218_218" id="FNanchor_218_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_218_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a> +I believe that it was one of the two or three +unsuccessful comedies which preceded <i>Philaster</i>; and, +as I have said above, that it is the play referred to in +the <i>Letter to Ben Jonson</i>, toward the end of 1609.<a name="FNanchor_219_219" id="FNanchor_219_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a> +If the date of acting was before January 4, 1610, the +theatre was Blackfriars; if after, Whitefriars.</p> + +<p>The Prologue in the first folio speaks of a revision. +But though the hand of one, and perhaps of another, +reviser is unmistakably present, the play is properly +included among Beaumont and Fletcher's works. In +the commendatory verses of 1647, Hills and Gardiner +speak of the play as Fletcher's, but all tests show +that Beaumont wrote a significant division of it,—the +natural, vigorous, tender, and poetic subplot of +Ricardo's desertion of Viola and his ultimate reclamation,—with +the exception of three scenes and parts +of two or three more. The exceptions are the first +thirty-five lines of Act I, which have been supplied +by some reviser; I, 3, in which also the reviser appears; +I, 5, the drinking-bout in the tavern, where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span> +some of the words (<i>e. g.</i> "claw'd") indicate Fletcher,—and +the gratuitous obscenity, Fletcher or his reviser; +and Act II, 2, where Viola is bound by the tinkers and +rescued by Valerio.<a name="FNanchor_220_220" id="FNanchor_220_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_220_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a> Perhaps, also, the last thirty-six +lines of Act III, 3, where Fletcher is discernible +in the afterthoughts "a likely wench, and a good +wench," "a very good woman, and a gentlewoman," +and the hand of a reviser in the mutilation of the +verse; and certainly Act IV, 3, where Fletcher appears +at his best in this play.</p> + +<p>The romantic little comedy of <i>Ricardo and Viola</i> +is so loosely joined with the foul portrayal of the +Coxcomb who succeeds in prostituting his wife to +his friend, that it might be published separately and +profitably as the work of Beaumont.<a name="FNanchor_221_221" id="FNanchor_221_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a> It is well +constructed; and it conveys a noble tribute to the +purity and constancy of woman, her grace of forgiveness, +and her influence over erring man. When +Viola speaks she is a living person, instinct with recklessness, +sweetness, and pathos. Few heroines of +Elizabethan comedy have compressed so much reality +and poetry into so narrow a compass. "Might not," +she whispers when stealing forth at night to meet +Ricardo:—<a name="FNanchor_222_222" id="FNanchor_222_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i7">Might not God have made<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A time for envious prying folk to sleep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whilst lovers met, and yet the sun have shone?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And then:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span></p><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Alas, how valiant and how fraid at once<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love makes a Virgin!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When she comes upon her lover staggering outside +the tavern with his sodden comrades,<a name="FNanchor_223_223" id="FNanchor_223_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a> with what simplicity +she shudders:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I never saw a drunken man before;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But these I think are so....<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My state is such, I know not how to think<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A prayer fit for me; only I could move<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That never Maiden more might be in love!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When, rescued from thieves in the country, she finds +that her rescuer is even more a peril,<a name="FNanchor_224_224" id="FNanchor_224_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a> with what +childlike trust she appeals:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">Pray you, leave me here<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Just as you found me, a poor innocent,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Heaven will bless you for it!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When again deserted, with what pathos she sighs:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i9">"I'll sit me down and weep;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All things have cast me from 'em but the earth.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The evening comes, and every little flower<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Droops now, as well as I!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And, finally, when she has rediscovered Ricardo, and +conquered his self-reproach by her forgiveness, which +is "to love you," with what admirable touch of nature +and delicious humour she gives verisimilitude to her +story and herself:<a name="FNanchor_225_225" id="FNanchor_225_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span></p><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Methinks I would not now, for any thing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But you <i>had</i> mist me: I have made a story<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Will serve to waste many a winter's fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When we are old. I'll tell my daughters then<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The miseries their Mother had in love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And say, "My girls, be wiser"; yet I would not<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have had more wit myself.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Ricardo, too, is a creative study in the development +of personality; and the rural scenes and characters +are convincing.</p> + +<p>In the main plot Beaumont had no hand whatever, +unless it be in the prose of the trial-scene at the end +of the fifth act. The rest is Fletcher's; but in a few +scenes his work has been revamped, and in verse as +well as style degraded by the reviser. Oliphant +thinks that here and there Massinger may be traced;<a name="FNanchor_226_226" id="FNanchor_226_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a> +and here and there, Rowley.<a name="FNanchor_227_227" id="FNanchor_227_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a> I should be sorry to +impute any of the mutilations to the former. I think +that the irregular lines, trailing or curtailed, the weak +endings, the finger-counted syllables, puerile accentuation, +and bad grammar have much nearer kinship +with the earlier output of the latter. But of whatever +sins of supererogation his revisers may have been +guilty, the prime offense is Fletcher's—in dramatizing +that story at all. To make a comedy out of +cuckoldry was not foreign to the genius of the Elizabethans: +for the pruriency of it we can make historical +allowance. But a comedy in which the wittol-hero +successfully conducts the cuckolding of himself is +nauseating. And that the wittol, his adulterous wife,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span> +and the fornicator should conclude the affair in mutual +gratulation is, from the dramatic point of view, worse +even than prurient and nauseating; it is unnatural, and +therefore unsuited to artistic effect. No amount of +technical ingenuity on Fletcher's part could have +made his contribution to this play worthy of literary +criticism.</p> + +<p>Though <i>The Coxcombe</i> was not successful in its first +production before the "ignorant multitude," it was +"in the opinion of men of worth well received and +favoured." We have seen that it was played at Court +in 1612 in the festivities for the Elector Palatine's +approaching marriage with the Princess Elizabeth. +It was revived for Charles I and Queen Henrietta +in 1636; and it was one of the twenty-seven "old +plays" presented in the City theatres after the Restoration, +and before 1682. In the revivals Beaumont's +romantic subplot gradually assumed the dominant +position, and it was finally borrowed outright for a +comedy called <i>The Fugitives</i>, constructed by Richardson +and acted by the Drury Lane company in 1792. +With Palmer in the part of Young Manly (the +Ricardo of the original), and Mrs. Jordan as Julia +(alias Beaumont's Viola), the adaptation ran for a +dozen nights or more.</p> + + +<p class="sectionl">7.—<i>Philaster</i> or <i>Love lies a-Bleeding</i> was "divers +times acted at the Globe, and Blacke-Friers by his +Majesties Servants." Under the second title in the +<i>Scourge of Folly</i>, entered for publication October 8, +1610, Davies of Hereford appears to mention it; and +I have already stated my reasons as based upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span> +history of the theatres<a name="FNanchor_228_228" id="FNanchor_228_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a> for believing that its first +performance took place between December 7, 1609 +and July 12, 1610.</p> + +<p>We might have something like confirmation of this +date from the grouping of epigrams in Davies of +Hereford's <i>Scourge of Folly</i>, if we could affirm that +they were arranged in the order of their composition. +For just before the epigram on <i>Love lies a-Bleeding</i>, +which, I think, without doubt, applies to <i>Philaster</i>, +appears one <i>To the Roscius of these times, Mr. W. +Ostler</i>, saluting him as "sole king of actors." Now +Osteler, Ostler, or Osler, had been one of the Queen's +Revels' Children,—most of them from thirteen to sixteen +years of age at the time,—in 1601 when Jonson's +<i>Poetaster</i> was acted. He could not have been more +than twenty-three years of age while still playing with +the Queen's Children in 1608; and he would certainly +not have been styled "sole king of actors" at that +age. According to the supplication of Cuthbert Burbadge +and others in the well-known suit of 1635 concerning +the shares in the Blackfriars theatre,<a name="FNanchor_229_229" id="FNanchor_229_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a> before +Evans surrendered the lease of that theatre in 1608, +some of the Queen's Revels' Children "growing up +to bee men, which were Underwood, Field, Ostler, +were taken to strengthen the King's service; and the +more to strengthen the service, the boys daily wearing +out, it was considered that house would bee as fitt +for ourselves [the King's Company], and soe [we] +purchased the lease remaining from Evans with our +money, and placed men players, which were Hemings,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span> +Condell, Shakespeare, etc." On the face of it this +deposition places the transference of Underwood, +Field, and Ostler to the King's Company between the +beginning of April 1608 when the Revels' Children +were temporarily suppressed and August of that year +when the Burbadges, Shakespeare, Hemings, and +others took over Evans's unexpired lease of Blackfriars +with a view to occupying it themselves. But +the deposition of Cuthbert Burbadge was not made +till twenty-seven years after the occurrence described; +and is not to be trusted as a statement of the sequence +of events. The Boys may have acted temporarily +with, or under the supervision of, the King's Company +at Blackfriars between December 7, 1609 and +January 4, 1610; but one of them, Field, is at the +head of the new Queen's Revels at Whitefriars by +March 25, 1610, and does not appear in the lists of +the King's Men till 1616; and there is no record of +Underwood and Ostler as members of the latter company +before the end of 1610, when they acted in +Jonson's <i>Alchemist</i> (after October 3). Since Underwood +and Ostler were not with the new Queen's +Revels after January of that year, it is probable that +Davies's epigram to the latter as "the Roscius of +these times" in the <i>Scourge of Folly</i>, entered for +publication on October 8, 1610, was written after +Ostler had attained distinction in Shakespeare's company, +the company of the leading actors of the day, +and that the grouping of the epigram to Ostler +with that of the epigram to Fletcher on <i>Philaster</i> +presented by that company indicates contemporaneity +in the composition of the epigrams,—that is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span> +to say, between January 4 and October, 1610.</p> + +<p>Since, however, the epigrams in <i>The Scourge of +Folly</i>, though frequently arranged by groups, sometimes +of mental association, sometimes of contemporaneous +composition, do not follow a continuous +chronological order, the juxtaposition of these two +epigrams cannot be regarded as more than a feather's +evidence to the direction of the wind. Of much +greater weight as confirming the date of <i>Philaster</i>, +as conjectured above, is its resemblance to Shakespeare's +<i>Cymbeline</i> not only in general features of +background and atmosphere, plot, typical characters, +romantic motive, situations, and style, but also in +specific detail. I shall presently attempt to show at +greater length that there is nothing in the <i>Philaster</i> +or the <i>Cymbeline</i> to indicate the priority of the former. +But I must at the risk of anticipating indicate +in this place though briefly the argument of a later +chapter.<a name="FNanchor_230_230" id="FNanchor_230_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_230_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a> For the <i>Cymbeline</i>, I accept the date assigned +by the majority of critics, 1609. Shakespeare +had had the character of Imogen (or Innogen) in +mind since he first introduced her, years before, as +a silent personage in <i>Much Ado About Nothing</i> (the +quarto of 1600). In execution the play is, with <i>The +Winter's Tale</i> and the <i>Tempest</i>, the dramatic sequel +of that first of his "dramatic romances,"—of which +the leading conception is the loss and recovery of a +wife or child,—the <i>Pericles</i> written in 1607 or 1608. +And since already in <i>Pericles</i>, Shakespeare had blazed +this new path, I cannot for a moment accept the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span> +hypothesis that he is in his <i>Cymbeline</i> borrowing profusely +from <i>Philaster</i>, a work of comparatively unestablished +dramatists who had but recently been +admitted to authorship for the company of which +Shakespeare had been for eighteen years the principal, +almost the only, playwright. It is much more according +to human probability that the younger dramatists, +since about the beginning of 1610 associated with +the King's Company and its enterprises, should have +adapted their technical and poetic style of construction +to the somewhat novel—to them entirely novel—method +of the seasoned playwright of the King's +Servants, as tried and approved in <i>Pericles</i> and <i>Cymbeline</i>. +And still the more so when one reflects that, +in <i>Pericles</i> and <i>Cymbeline</i>, aside from the leading +conception, everything of major or minor detail had +been already anticipated by Shakespeare himself in +earlier romantic comedies from <i>The Two Gentlemen +of Verona</i> to <i>As You Like It</i> and <i>Twelfth Night</i>; +and that there is no salient characteristic of dramatic +construction in <i>Philaster</i>, otherwise original and poetically +impressive as it is, which a study of those +earlier comedies and of the <i>Pericles</i> and <i>Cymbeline</i> +would not suggest. I, therefore, rest with some assurance +upon the conviction that <i>Philaster</i> was first +acted by the King's Company, soon after Beaumont +and Fletcher began to write for it, say between December +1609 and July 1610.</p> + +<p>The play was first published in a quarto of 1620 +which ascribes it, as does the vastly improved quarto +of 1622, to Beaumont and Fletcher. In his epigram, +addressed somewhat before October 8, 1610 to "the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span> +well-deserving Mr. John Fletcher," John Davies appears +to give that author credit for practically the +whole work,—"Thou ... raign'st in Arte, Judgement, +and Invention," and adds a compliment for +"thine as faire as faithfull Sheepheardesse." Herrick, +writing for the folio of 1647, mentions <i>Love Lies +a-Bleeding</i> among Fletcher's "incomparable plays"; +and Thomas Stanley seems to ascribe to him definitely +the scene "when first Bellario bled." John +Earle, however, writing "on Master Beaumont, presently +after his death" comes nearer the truth when +he says:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Alas, what flegme are they [Plautus and Aristophanes], compared to thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In thy <i>Philaster</i> and <i>Maids Tragedy</i>!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where's such an humour as thy Bessus? pray ...<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>for, with the exception of three scenes, two half-scenes +and a few insertions or revisions by Fletcher, +<i>Philaster</i> is Beaumont's (and practically the same +holds true of <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, and the Bessus +play—<i>A King and No King</i>). In <i>Philaster</i> +Fletcher's scenes, as proved by rhetorical tests, and by +metrical when they may be applied, are I, 1<sup><i>b</i></sup> (from +the King's entry, line 89—line 358,<a name="FNanchor_231_231" id="FNanchor_231_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a>—a revision and +enlargement of Beaumont's original sketch), II, 2<sup><i>b</i></sup> +(from <i>Enter Megra</i>), II, 4<sup><i>b</i></sup> (from <i>Megra above</i>), +V, 3 and V, 4. The first part of Act II, 4 was written +by Beaumont; but Fletcher has inserted lines 14 to +29 (from <i>Enter Arethusa and Bellario</i> to "how +brave she keeps him"). Similarly, the first draught<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span> +of Act III, 2 was Beaumont's; certainly lines 1-34 +(exit King), 105-112 (the opening of Philaster's long +tirade) and 129-173 (from Philaster's exit to end). +But beginning with Arethusa's soliloquy, line 35, we +find insertions marked by Fletcher's metrical characteristics, +his alliterations, favourite words and ideas, +tautological expansions, repetitions, interrogations, +triplets, redundant "alls" and "hows." The last +three lines of that soliloquy are his:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Soul-sick with poison, strike the monuments<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where noble names lie sleeping, till they sweat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the cold marble melt;<a name="FNanchor_232_232" id="FNanchor_232_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and he has overlaid (in lines 113-128) with his rhetorical +triplets, his "alls" and "hows" the genuine +poetry of Philaster's accusation of Arethusa. "The +<i>story</i> of a woman's face," her inconstancy, the shadow +quality even of her "goodness" soon past and forgotten,—"these +sad texts"<a name="FNanchor_233_233" id="FNanchor_233_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_233_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a> Fletcher "to his last +hour" is never weary of repeating.</p> + +<p>It will be observed that, in general, Fletcher's scenes +are elaborative, bombastic, verbally witty, conversationally +easy, at times bustling, at times spectacular, +but not vitally contributory to the business of the +play. They comprise the longest speeches of the +King, Pharamond, Philaster, Megra, and Bellario. +Some of these, such as the King's denunciation of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span> +Megra and her reply are wild, whirling, and vulgar +rhetoric. The bawdy half-scene with its maid of +easy honour is his; the discovery of the low intrigue, +the simulated masque and the mob-scene are his. +They may display, but they do not develop, characters. +They are sometimes fanciful; sometimes gracefully +poetic as in V, 3, 83-84, where his "all your better +deeds shall be in water writ, but this in marble" anticipates +Keats's famous epitaph; sometimes realistic; +but they lack the pervading emotion, imagination, elevation +of Beaumont. The play, in fact, is not only +preponderatingly but primarily Beaumont's, from the +excellent exposition in the first act to the series of +sensational surprises which precede the dénouement in +the fifth. The conception of the characters and the +complication are distinctive of that writer's plots: the +impulsive, misjudged, and misguided hero, his violence +toward the love-lorn maiden disguised as a page, and +his unwarranted suspicion of the honour of his mistress. +The subtle revelations of personality are +Beaumont's: the simplicity, self-renunciation, lyric +pathos and beauty of Bellario, the nobler aspects of +Dion, the maidenly audacities, sweet bewilderments +and unmerited tribulations of Arethusa, the combination +of idyllic, pathetic, and romantic, the visualization, +the naturalness of figure and setting, the vigour of +dramatic progress, the passion, the philosophical insights, +and the memorable lines. His, too, the humour +of the rural sketches—the Country Fellow who has +"seen something yet," the occasional frank animality, +as well as the tender beauty of innocence. Not only +are the virtues of the play Beaumont's but some of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span> +its faults of conception and construction; and those +faults are the unmanly suspicious startings of the hero +and his melodramatic violence, the somewhat fortuitous +succession of the crises, and the subordination of +Bellario in the dénouement.</p> + +<p>The popularity of <i>Philaster</i> as an acting play, not +only at Court but in the city, is attested by contemporary +record. It was played after the Restoration +with success; and between 1668 and 1817 it enjoyed +thirteen revivals,—the last at Bath on December 12 +of the latter year, with Ward in the title-rôle and Miss +Jarmin as Bellario.<a name="FNanchor_234_234" id="FNanchor_234_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_234_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a></p> + + +<p class="sectionl">8.—<i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, acted by the King's Men +during the festivities at Court, October 1612 to +March 1613, was known to Sir George Buc when, +October 31, 1611, he licensed an anonymous play as +"this second maiden's tragedy." It was acted by +the King's also at Blackfriars; and since it is in every +way a more mature production than <i>Philaster</i>, I think +that it followed that play, toward the end of 1610 or +in 1611. It was first published in 1619, in quarto +and anonymously. The quarto of 1622 is also anonymous; +that of 1630 gives the names of Beaumont and +Fletcher as authors. In the commendatory verses to +the folio of 1647, Henry Howard ascribes the scene +of Amintor's suicide to Fletcher; Waller assigns to +him "brave Melantius in his gallantry" and "Aspatia<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span> +weeping in her gown"; Stanley, too, gives him the +weeping Aspatia; and Herrick, "Evadne swelling with +brave rage." These descriptions are as misleading +as blind. D'Avenant comes nearer the mark in his +Prologue to <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, already quoted, +where he indicates correctly an Evadne scene and an +Aspatia scene as of Fletcher's composition. Metrical +tests, corrected by the rhetorical, show that Fletcher's +contributions are limited to three scenes and two half-scenes. +The list opens with those to which D'Avenant +alludes: II, 2, in which Fletcher "taught the sad +Aspatia how to mourn," and IV, 1 (as far as line +200, "Prithee, do not mock me"), in which he "reduced +Evadne from her scorn"; and it includes, also, +the ten lines of V, 1, the larger part of V, 2 (to +<i>Exit Evadne</i>), and the perfunctory V, 3. As to +Fletcher's authorship of II, 2 no doubt can be entertained. +It is an admirable example of his double +endings (almost 40 per cent), his end-stopped lines +(80 per cent), anapæstic rhythms and jolts, as well +as of his vocabulary, his favourite figures and his incremental +second thoughts. I fail to see how any +critic can assign it to Beaumont.<a name="FNanchor_235_235" id="FNanchor_235_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a> As frequently with +Fletcher, Aspatia's mourning, though beautiful, is a +falsetto from the classics; more like one of Rossetti's +or Leigh Hunt's poetic descriptions of a picture than a +first-hand reproduction of nature and passion. There +is likewise no doubt concerning the authorship of the +first part of Act IV, 1 (lines 1-189), in which Melantius<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span> +convinces Evadne of sin and drives her to +vengeance upon the King. The latter part of the +scene, also, appears to have been written by Fletcher +in the first instance, and to have consisted of the first +six speeches after the entrance of Amintor (lines +190-200), Evadne's "I have done nothing good to +win belief" (247-254, 260-262), and the conclusion +(263-285). But between Amintor's supplication +"Prithee do not mock me" (line 200) and Evadne's +assertion of sincerity "I have done nothing good to +win belief" (line 247<a name="FNanchor_236_236" id="FNanchor_236_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a>), Beaumont has inserted four +speeches that of themselves convert a colloquy otherwise +histrionic and mechanical into one of the tenderest +passages of the play. In Evadne's "My whole +life is so leprous it infects All my repentance"—"That +slight contrition"—"Give me your griefs; you +are an innocent, A soul as white as Heaven"—"Shoot +your light into me"—"Dissembling with my tears"—"Cut +from man's remembrance," we hear the words, +phrases, and figures of Beaumont; and we trace him +in the repeated use of "do." We find him in Amintor's +"Seed of virtue left to shoot up"—"put a thousand +sorrows off"—"that dull calamity"—"that +strange misbelief"—and in</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Mock not <i>the powers above</i> that can and dare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Give thee a great example of their justice<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To all ensuing ages.<a name="FNanchor_237_237" id="FNanchor_237_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And in five verses of Evadne's succeeding asseveration<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span> +of sincere reform (255-259), we are thrilled by his +sudden magic and his poetic finality:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Those short days I shall number to my rest</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0">(As many must not see me) shall, though too late,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though in my evening, yet perceive a will,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Since I can do no good, because a woman,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Reach constantly at something that is near it</i>.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The ground-work of this latter portion, from Amintor's +entrance, where Evadne cries "Oh, my lord," +"My much abused lord," and he, "I may leap, Like +a hand-wolf, into my natural wildness" (lines 190-200); +and the last three speeches in general with +Amintor's "My frozen soul melts," and "My honour +falls no farther: I am well, then"; and with Evadne's +"tales" that "go to dust forgotten,"—the Niobe +weeping till she is water,—the "wash her stains +away," and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i12">All the creatures<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Made for Heaven's honours, have their ends, <i>and good ones</i>,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All but the cozening crocodiles, false women—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They reign here like those plagues, those killing sores,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Men pray against; ...<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>this remainder belongs, in verse no less than in diction, +to the scene as Fletcher originally wrote it.</p> + +<p>When to these two scenes we add the first and third +of Act V, which are of no particular significance, and +the second (to the death of the King), we have +Fletcher's whole written contribution to this wonderful +tragedy. In the murder of the King he displays<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span> +dramatic mastery of the grisly and shuddering; but +though the scene is characterized by the same rapidity +of conversational thrust and parry as the Fletcherian +dialogue between Melantius and Evadne, it is, like +it, marred in effect by violence physical rather than +spiritual, by brutality of vituperation and stage realism +with but scant relief of subtlety. Fletcher's +tragic scenes excel not in portrayal of personality +but in business; his contribution to Aspatia is not +pathos but the embroidery of grief.</p> + +<p>The volume and essential vitality are Beaumont's: +the cruel desertion of Aspatia, her lyric self-obliteration +and desperate rush on fate; the artful revelation +of Evadne's character, of her duplicity, her effrontery, +her shamelessness; the stirrings of a soul within her, +its gradual recognition of the inevitable,—that unchastity +cannot be atoned even by vengeance, nor +cleansed by blood,—and its true birth through love +desired to love achieved in death; the bewilderment +of the innocent but shuffling hero, blinded by circumstance +and besotted by loyalty to the lustful author +of his wrongs,—yet idealized by virgin and wanton +alike; the spiritual elevation of Melantius, and the +conflict between honour and friendship, pride and +sacrifice, which ennobles the comradeship of that +blunt soldier with the deluded Amintor; the pestilent +King; and Calianax, the poltroon whose braggadocio +is part humorous and part cunning, but all helpless and +hopeless. These are Beaumont's; and his, too, the +wealth of dramatic situation and device: the enthralling +exposition, the silver sound and ecstasy of the +masque in the first act; the shrewd development of motive,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span> +and the psychic revolutions of movement in the +second and third acts; whatever of tenderness or of intricate +complication the fourth displays—in fact, all +that is not palpable violence. His, the breathless suspense +and the swiftly urgent, unexpected sensations +that crowd the last scene of the fifth and crown the +catastrophe; and his, the gleaming epigram and the +poetic finality.</p> + +<p>In his <i>Tragedies of the Last Age</i>, licensed in 1677, +Rymer attacked <i>The Maides Tragedy</i> violently for its +lack of unity, unnaturalness, improbability of plot, +and inconsistency of delineation. Perhaps, as Rymer +insisted, the title is a misnomer: perhaps the play +might better have been called <i>Amintor</i>, or the <i>Lustful +King</i>, or <i>The Concubine</i>. But <i>The Maides Tragedy</i> +is a more attractive name, and it may be justified. +For I do not find that the action is double-centred. +It springs entirely out of Amintor's desertion of the +Maid for a woman whom he speedily discovers to be +'bed-fellow' to the King. The pathetic devotion of +Aspatia is essential to our understanding of Amintor's +tragic weakness, his <i>hamartia</i>. His failure to +act in accordance with the dictates of honour toward +Aspatia is prophetic of the indecision that costs him +the respect of Evadne, nay extinguishes that first +flicker of love which then was but desire. Vile +as she was, she would have kissed the sin off from +his lips if on their wedding-night he had unquestioningly +slain the man to whom she had sold herself. +The Nemesis, too, of Amintor is not Evadne nor the +King, but Aspatia, thrust out of mind though not forgotten:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I did that lady wrong. Methinks I feel<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A griefe shoot suddenly through all my veins,—<a name="FNanchor_238_238" id="FNanchor_238_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a><br /></span> +<span class="i5">... The faithless sin I made<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To faire Aspatia is not yet revenged;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It follows me.—<a name="FNanchor_239_239" id="FNanchor_239_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His Nemesis is Aspatia, constant unto death,—and +in her death, awakening such remorse that he must +die to be with her: "Aspatia!" he cries—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The soule is fled forever, and I wrong<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Myselfe so long to lose her company,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Must I talke now? Heres to be with thee, love!<a name="FNanchor_240_240" id="FNanchor_240_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_240_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Rymer's criticism and that of a recent essayist,<a name="FNanchor_241_241" id="FNanchor_241_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a> of +"the irrelevance of the motives that Beaumont employs" +in the characterization and conduct of Evadne +have logicality of appearance, but are based upon +incorrect premises. The facts, as Beaumont gives +them, are that Evadne was "once fair" and "chastely +sweet,"—before she met the King; that she was already +corrupt when she took Amintor as her husband; +that her "delicacy of feeling" after the marriage, in +presence of her Ladies of the Bedchamber, is an assumed +delicacy; that she loves the King "with ambition +not with her eyes" (III, 1); that she "would +bend to any one that won his throne"; that she has +accepted Amintor as a screen, but speedily lusts for +him, and is willing to give herself to him if he will +forthright kill the King (II, 1, 179):</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span></p><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">Wilt thou kill this man?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweare, my Amintor, and I'le kisse the sin<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Off from thy lips.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But Amintor is cautious and obliquely conscientious, +not the kind of man to satisfy her new desire, and +ambition too. He could never win her by winning +the throne,—too lily-livered:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I wonnot sweare, sweet love," says he, "till I do know the cause";—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Then she, with passion "I wood thou wouldst."—But +she is a woman whose first behest is scorned; and with +sudden revulsion of contempt for this poltroon, as +she now conceives him—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Why, it is <i>thou</i> that wrongst me; I hate thee;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou shouldst have kild thy selfe.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Amintor has lost his evil chance. She despises him +and yet, in her better moments, with a kind of pity. +It follows that her prompt avowal of her liaison, and +her return to the King and insulting treatment of +Amintor are of a piece with the corrupted nature of +the woman,—a nature that she displays up to the +moment of her awakening and imagined repentance. +The facts are, too, that she does not, immediately +after she has sworn to her brother to let the foul soul +of the King out, develop (IV, 1), as Mr. More thinks, +a "mood of sudden and overwhelming love for Amintor." +She merely asks his pardon:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I doe appeare the same, the same Evadne,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drest in the shames I liv'd in, the same monster,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span> +<span class="i0">But these are names of honour to what I <i>am</i> ... I am hell<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till you, my deare lord, shoot your light into me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The beames of your forgivenesse</i>.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The days that she shall number to her rest are short; +but she vainly imagines that, though but "one minute" +remains, she may "reach constantly at something that +is neare" the good. She is awakened to her husband's +whiteness of soul; but she makes no profession +of love, though love, this time not merely lust, be +stirred in her heart. She would not "let her sins +perish his noble youth." At last, in the moment of +mad exaltation after the murder of the King, when +she thinks that she has washed her soul clean in that +blood, the poor, misguided creature struggling toward +the light, but still, and consistently, enveloped in the +murk of her past, comes imploring the love of the +husband whom in the earlier days she had scorned. +She is still the passionate Evadne, who "was too foule +within to looke faire then," and "was not free till +now." Repulsed by Amintor, she dreams the one +sane madness of her career,—to win his love by taking +leave of life,—and kills herself.</p> + +<p>I perceive no irrelevance of motive in the conduct +of Evadne; even in the scenes which are not Beaumont's—namely, +the expostulation of her brother, +and the murder of the King. Nor do I find in the +play as a whole what Mr. More calls an "incomprehensible +tangle of the passions."</p> + +<p>The defect in the construction of the <i>Maides Tragedy</i>, +if there is one, lies in the failure of the Maid +and her deserter to meet between the first scene of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span> +the second act and the third of the fifth. That is +not unmotived, however; it is of Aspatia's own choosing +and of Amintor's <i>hamartia</i>. Aspatia kisses him +farewell, forgiving him, and saying that she "must +trie Some yet unpractis'd way to grieve and die." +He is, forthwith, entangled in the web of his wife's +adultery, his own shame and more shameful delusion +of allegiance. The girl whom he has so deeply +wronged passes from his distracted consciousness, +save for the sense that these troubles are his punishment. +And when, toward the end of the play, the +Maid comes in again, saying "this is my fatall houre," +even we start at the remembrance that she had threatened +to kill herself. And, because the scene in which +she forces a duel upon Amintor is spirited and pathetic, +his contrition poignant, and the joy of their reunion in +the moment of death deeply tragic, we feel that we +have been unduly cheated of the company of this innocent +and resolute and surpassingly pathetic girl.</p> + +<p>The play, with Burbadge in the rôle of Melantius, +was popular during the lives of the authors. It was +acted before the King and Queen in 1636 and it held +the stage until the closing of the theatres. It was +revived in 1660 and 1661. Pepys saw it at least five +times before the middle of May 1668, and found it +"too sad and melancholy" but still "a good play." It +was popular when Dryden in his <i>Essay on Dramatick +Poesy</i>, 1668, praised its "labyrinth of design." For +a time during the reign of Charles II it was proscribed, +possibly because the moral was too readily +applicable to the conduct of the "merry monarch"; +but the play in its original form was on the stage again<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span> +by 1677. Before 1685 Waller made at least two +attempts to change it from tragedy to tragicomedy +by writing a new fifth act in which Evadne was +bloodlessly eliminated. In one of these sentimental +absurdities the King alone survived; in another the +King, preposterously reformed, succeeded in saving +Amintor and Aspatia from suicide and joined them +in marriage: but neither attempt, though made "to +please the Court," was crowned with success. The +play enjoyed several other revivals in the first half of +the eighteenth century with high popularity, notably +at the Haymarket in 1706 when Melantius was played +by Betterton, Evadne by Mrs. Barry, and Aspatia by +Mrs. Bracegirdle; and again in 1710 just before Betterton's +death. In 1742 Theobald writes, that the +famous controversy between Melantius and Amintor +is always "received with vehement applause." In +1837 the play was acted by Macready at the Haymarket, +with alterations by himself and three original +scenes by Sheridan Knowles, under the name of <i>The +Bridal</i>, and, as Dyce tells us, was very favourably received +by the public.<a name="FNanchor_242_242" id="FNanchor_242_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a></p> + + +<p class="sectionl">9.—Though the tragedy of <i>Cupid's Revenge</i> was +printed in 1615 as the work of Fletcher alone, the +publication was unauthorized, and the attribution is +by a printer who acknowledges that he was not acquainted +with the author. The quarto of 1630 assigns +it correctly to Beaumont and Fletcher. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span> +play is known to have been acted at Court by her +Majesty's Children of Whitefriars, the first Sunday +in January 1612; and as usual it must have been +tested by public presentation before that date. The +fact that the authors were, between 1610 and 1612, +writing for the King's Men does not preclude their +composing a play for the Queen's Children. It is +not, therefore, necessary to date the writing earlier +than 1611. Though the critics disagree concerning +the precise division of authorship in nearly every scene, +finding traces of alteration by Field, Massinger, and +others, they discern a definite substratum of both +Fletcher and Beaumont. It is unnecessary to specify +the minor scenes in which Beaumont coöperated. The +five which transfer the action from an atmosphere of +supernatural caprice and sordid irresponsibility to the +realm of character, moral struggle, pathos, or passion +are by him.<a name="FNanchor_243_243" id="FNanchor_243_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a> In these his sententious sunbursts, his +verse, diction, hyperbole, portrayal by passive implication, +are indubitable. The infatuation of the princess +for the dwarf takes on a human interest in the grim +humility and cackling mirth of the latter. The lust of +Leucippus is transfigured to nobility by his loyalty to +oaths "bestowed on lies," by his horror of the discovered +baseness of his paramour, and the piety with +which he implores that she-devil to spare his father's +honour:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i11">I desire you<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To lay what trains you will for my wish'd death,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But suffer him to find his quiet grave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In peace.<br /></span> +</div></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span></p> +<p>The treacherous greed and malice of Bacha are tempered +by half-lights and shifting hues that make her +less a vampire when Beaumont depicts her. And the +final scene of tragedy in the forest is shot with pathos +by the "harmless innocence" of Beaumont's Urania +following Leucippus to save him</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i13">for love:—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I would not let you know till I was dying;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For you could not love me, my mother was so naught.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But the play as a whole lacks logical and natural motive, +moral vigor and vitality; and its history upon +the stage is negligible.</p> + + +<p class="sectionl">10.—Of the dates of <i>A King and No King</i> there +is no doubt. It was licensed in 1611, acted at Court +December 26 of the same year, and first published +in quarto in 1619 as by Beaumont and Fletcher. In +the commendatory verses of 1647, Henry Howard +gives Arbaces to Fletcher; Jasper Mayne gives him +Bessus; Herrick goes further: "that high design Of +<i>King and No King</i>, and the rare plot thine." Earle, +on the other hand, gives Bessus to Beaumont; and +Lisle gives him Mardonius. Of the attributions to +Fletcher, Herrick's alone has plausibility, since, like +<i>Philaster</i> and <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, the play is derived +from no known source.<a name="FNanchor_244_244" id="FNanchor_244_244"></a><a href="#Footnote_244_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a> Still he was probably +wrong. It is not impossible that one of the dramatists +contrived the plot; but, considering that three-quarters +of the play was written by Beaumont, and that Fletcher's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span> +quarter contains but one scene at once of +high design and vital to the story, it is not very likely +that the contriving was by Fletcher unaided.</p> + +<p>Modern critics display singular unanimity in their +discrimination of the respective shares of the composers. +With only one or two dissenting voices they +attribute to Beaumont the first three acts, the fourth +scene of the fourth, and scenes two and four of the +fifth. To Fletcher they assign the first three scenes +of the fourth act, and scenes one and three of the +fifth. The tests which I have already described lead +me to the same conclusion. Beaumont's contribution +is distinguished by a largeness of utterance and a +poetic inevitability, a diversity and mastery of characterization, +a philosophical reach, a realism both humorous +and terrible, and a power of dramatic creativity +and tension, equal to, if not surpassing, any parallel +elements or qualities to be found in the joint-plays. +Arbaces, in apparent design, is of a Marlowan temper, +moody, vainglorious, blinded by self-love, and brooking +no rebuke; but he is not merely a braggart and +a tyrant, he is brave in fact, and in heart deluded by +the assumption that he is also modest. The combination +is Beaumontesque. That dramatist rarely creates +fixed or transparent character. Arbaces assumes that +he is single of nature and aim: an irresistible, passionless, +and patient soldier; but his failure to fathom +himself as his friend Mardonius fathoms him, is part +of his complexity. His headlong love for the woman +whom he believes to be his sister and the resulting +horror of apprehension and conflict of desire reveal +him in many-sided dilatation and in swift-succeeding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span> +revolutions of personality. "What are thou," he +asks of this devilish unexpected lust—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What are thou, that dost creep into my breast;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And dar'st not see my face?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When he will decree that Panthea be regarded as no +more his sister, and she remonstrates,—he thunders +"I will hear no more"; but to himself:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Why should there be such music in a voice,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sin for me to hear it?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When Tigranes, to whom he has offered that sister +in marriage, presumes to address her, with what majestic +inconsistency the king rebukes him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The least word that she speaks<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is worth a life. Rule your disorder'd tongue<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or I will temper it!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And so, now struggling, now wading on in sin, till +that heart-rending crisis is reached in which he confesses +the incestuous love to his friend and faithful +general, Mardonius; nay, even tries to win the friend's +support in his lustful suit, and is gloriously defeated. +Then follow the easy compliance of Bessus with his +wish, and, with equal precipitancy, the revulsion of a +kingly sense of rectitude against the willing pander:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Thou art too wicked for my company,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though I have hell within me, and mayst yet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Corrupt me further,<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The climax in which Arbaces can no longer refrain +is of Beaumont's best:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Nay, you shall hear the cause in short, Panthea;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And when thou hear'st it, thou will blush for me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hang thy head down like a violet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Full of the morning's dew.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And she, recoiling, "Heaven forbid" and "I would +rather ... in a grave sleep with my innocence," still +kisses him; and then in a panic, nobler than self-suppression, +cries:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">If you have any mercy, let me go<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To prison, to my death, to anything:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I feel a sin growing upon my blood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Worse than all these!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>By a series of sensational <i>bouleversements</i>, and in a +dramatic agony of suspense, we are keyed to the scene +in which relief is granted: the princess who now is +Queen is no sister to the King, who is now no King.</p> + +<p>With the exception of a half-scene (Act IV, 2<sup><i>b</i></sup>) +of somewhat bustling mechanism and rant by Fletcher, +the whole of the King's portrayal is Beaumont's; +and with the exception of eighty lines written by +Fletcher (Act IV, 1) of dramatic dialogue containing +information necessary to the minor love-affair, +the story of the birdlike quivering, fond Panthea is, +also, entirely Beaumont's. The Mardonius of Beaumont, +in the first three acts and the fifth, is a +fine, honest, blunt, soldierly companion and adviser +to the King; but when Fletcher takes him in hand +(Act IV, 2<sup><i>b</i></sup>), he declines to a stock character wordy +with alliteration and commonplace. The Bessus of +Beaumont whose "reputation came principally by +thinking to run away" is, in Acts I-III, Falstaffian or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span> +Zagloban; the Bessus of Fletcher, in IV, 3 and V, 1 +and 3, is a figure of low comedy, amusing to be sure, +and reminiscent of Bobadill, but a purveyor of sophomoric +quips and a tool for horse-play. The rural +scene with its graphic humours of the soil is Beaumont's.</p> + +<p>Fletcher's slight contribution to this otherwise masterly +play consists, in brief, of facile dramatic dialogue, +rhetorical ravings, stop-gaps complementary to +the plot, and farce unrelated to it. His scenes display +no spiritual insight; supply no development of character; +administer no dramatic fillip to the action and +no thrill to the spectator; and, exclusive of one +rhetorically-coloured colloquy between the minor lovers, +Tigranes and Spaconia, they are devoid of poetry.</p> + +<p>To Beaumont, then, it may be said that we owe in +the creation of <i>A King and No King</i> one of the most +intensely powerful dramas of the Jacobean period, +one of the most popular in the age of Dryden, and one +of the most influential in the development of the heroic +play of the Restoration. That it did not survive the +eighteenth century is due not so much to the painful +nature of the conflict presented as to the fact that it +is "of that inferior sort of tragedies which" as Dryden +says "end with a prosperous event." The conflict +of motives, the passions aroused, have overpassed +the limits of artistic mediation. The play would better +have ended in a catastrophe of undeserved suffering—that +highest kind of tragedy, inevitable and inexplicable. +But though this be a spoiled tragedy, it is +not, as many assert, an immoral tragicomedy. That +error arises from a careless reading of the text. From<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span> +the first, the spectator is led to divine that the protagonists +are not brother and sister. And as for the +protagonists themselves,—when the King is suddenly +smitten by love (III, 1, 70-115) and rebels +against its power, he does not even know that the +object of his devotion is his supposed sister. When +he is informed that the conquering beauty is Panthea, +he revolts, crying "'t is false as Hell!" And when +the twain are enmeshed in the strands of circumstance +they cease not to recognize the liberating possibility +of self-denial. In his struggle against what seems to +him incestuous love, though the King does not conquer, +he, still, not for a moment loses the consciousness of +what is right. His deepest despair is that he is "not +come so high as killing" himself rather than succumb +to worse temptation; and his last word before the +tragic knot is cut is of loathing for "such a strange +and unbelieved affection as good men cannot think +on." And when Panthea feeling the "sin growing +upon her blood," learns the irony of high resolve throttled +by infirmity, it is still her soul, unstrangled, that +cries to him whom she thinks her brother, "Fly, sir, +for God's sake!"</p> + +<p><i>A King and No King</i> evidently won favour at +Court, for, as we have noticed, it was acted there both +in 1611 and in 1612-1613. It was presented to their +Majesties at Hampton Court in 1636. In 1661 Pepys +saw it twice. Before 1682 Nell Gwynn had made +Panthea one of her principal rôles. In 1683 Betterton +played Arbaces to Mrs. Barry's Panthea. It was +revived again in 1705, 1724, and 1788. Davies in +his <i>Dramatic Miscellany</i> tells us that Garrick intended<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span> +to revive it, taking the part of Arbaces himself and +giving Bessus to Woodward, "but it was observed that +at every reading of it in the green-room Garrick's +pleasure suffered a visible diminution—at length he +fairly gave up his design." Mr. Bond, in the +<i>Variorum</i> edition, mentions a German adaptation of +1785, called <i>Ethelwolf, oder der König Kein König</i>.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_214_214" id="Footnote_214_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_214_214"><span class="label">[214]</span></a> Cited by Oldys (MS. note in Langbaine's <i>Account of Engl. +Dram. Poets</i>, p. 208)—Dyce.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_215_215" id="Footnote_215_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_215_215"><span class="label">[215]</span></a> For this information I am indebted to my colleague, Professor +Schevill.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_216_216" id="Footnote_216_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_216_216"><span class="label">[216]</span></a> I know but two sane accounts of this matter: A. S. W. Rosenbach's +in <i>Mod. Lang. Notes</i>, 101, Column 362 (1898); and Wolfgang +von Wurzbach's, in <i>Romanische Forschungen</i>, XX, pp. 514-536 +(1907).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_217_217" id="Footnote_217_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_217_217"><span class="label">[217]</span></a> Oliphant, <i>Engl. Stud.</i>, XV, 322. Macaulay, 'probably 1610.'</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_218_218" id="Footnote_218_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_218_218"><span class="label">[218]</span></a> <i>Prologue</i> in the first folio.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_219_219" id="Footnote_219_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_219_219"><span class="label">[219]</span></a> Chapter VII.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_220_220" id="Footnote_220_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_220_220"><span class="label">[220]</span></a> Even here, as Oliphant has said, Viola's first speech "is pure +Beaumont."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_221_221" id="Footnote_221_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_221_221"><span class="label">[221]</span></a> His scenes are I, 4, 6; II, 4; III, 3 (to "where I may find +service"); IV, 1, 2, 7; V, 2, and the last twenty-seven lines of V, 3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222_222" id="Footnote_222_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222_222"><span class="label">[222]</span></a> I, 4. Scenes as arranged in Dyce, Vol. III.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_223_223" id="Footnote_223_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_223_223"><span class="label">[223]</span></a> I, 6.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224_224" id="Footnote_224_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224_224"><span class="label">[224]</span></a> III, 3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225_225" id="Footnote_225_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225_225"><span class="label">[225]</span></a> V, 2.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_226_226" id="Footnote_226_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_226_226"><span class="label">[226]</span></a> I, 1, 2<sup><i>a</i></sup> (to Antonio's entry), III, 1<sup><i>a</i></sup> (to servant's entry).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_227_227" id="Footnote_227_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_227_227"><span class="label">[227]</span></a> III, 2; IV, 4; V, 1, 3.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_228_228" id="Footnote_228_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_228_228"><span class="label">[228]</span></a> Chapter VII, above.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_229_229" id="Footnote_229_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_229_229"><span class="label">[229]</span></a> Halliwell-Phillipps, <i>Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare</i>, I, 317.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_230_230" id="Footnote_230_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_230_230"><span class="label">[230]</span></a> Chapter XXVIII, <i>Did the Beaumont 'Romance' Influence +Shakespeare?</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_231_231" id="Footnote_231_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_231_231"><span class="label">[231]</span></a> Lines are numbered as in the <i>Variorum</i> edition.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232_232" id="Footnote_232_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232_232"><span class="label">[232]</span></a> Fletcher affects this figure, <i>cf.</i> <i>A Wife for a Month</i>, Act II, +2, lines 47-48.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_233_233" id="Footnote_233_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_233_233"><span class="label">[233]</span></a> <i>Cf.</i> his lines in <i>Maides Tragedy</i>, IV, 1, 252-254; in <i>King and +No King</i>, IV, 2, 57-62; <i>Philaster</i>, V, 4, 114; <i>Hum. Lieut.</i>, IV, +5, 51; <i>Mad Lover</i>, III, 4, 105; <i>Loyall Subject</i>, III, 6, 141; IV, 3, +70; <i>Wife for a Month</i>, IV, 5, 38, 39.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_234_234" id="Footnote_234_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_234_234"><span class="label">[234]</span></a> The best editions of <i>Philaster</i> since the time of Dyce are +those of F. S. Boas, in the <i>Temple Dramatists</i> (1898), P. A. +Daniel, in the <i>Variorum</i> (1904), Glover and Waller, in the <i>Camb. +Engl. Classics</i> (1905), and A. H. Thorndike in <i>Belles Lettres</i> +(1906).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_235_235" id="Footnote_235_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_235_235"><span class="label">[235]</span></a> Thorndike, for instance,—who selects lines 22-40 as an instance +of Beaumont's skill in imitating natural conversation. +<i>Influence of B. and F. on Shakespeare</i>, p. 129.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236_236" id="Footnote_236_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236_236"><span class="label">[236]</span></a> Numbering of the <i>Variorum</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_237_237" id="Footnote_237_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_237_237"><span class="label">[237]</span></a> Q2 "eies."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238_238" id="Footnote_238_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238_238"><span class="label">[238]</span></a> II, 1, 127.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_239_239" id="Footnote_239_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_239_239"><span class="label">[239]</span></a> III, 1, 221.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_240_240" id="Footnote_240_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_240_240"><span class="label">[240]</span></a> V, 3, 244.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_241_241" id="Footnote_241_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_241_241"><span class="label">[241]</span></a> P. E. More, <i>The Nation</i>, N. Y., April 24, 1913.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_242_242" id="Footnote_242_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_242_242"><span class="label">[242]</span></a> The best editions of <i>M. T.</i>, since the time of Dyce, are those +of P. A. Daniel, in the <i>Variorum</i> (1904), Glover and Waller, in +the <i>Cambridge English Classics</i> (1905), and A. H. Thorndike, in +the <i>Belles Lettres</i> (1906).</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243_243" id="Footnote_243_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243_243"><span class="label">[243]</span></a> I, 3; II, 2; III, 2; IV, 1; V, 4.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_244_244" id="Footnote_244_244"></a><a href="#FNanchor_244_244"><span class="label">[244]</span></a> For conjectural sources see Chapter VII, above. The best +editions to-day are the <i>Variorum</i> and Alden's (<i>Belles Lettres</i>).</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XXVI</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">THE LAST PLAY</p> + + +<p class="cap">Eleven.—The first quarto of <i>The Scornful +Ladie</i>, entered S. R., March 19, 1616, assigns the +play to Beaumont and Fletcher, and says that it "was +acted with great applause by the Children of Her Maiesties +Revels in the Blacke Fryers." The references in +Act V, 3, 4, to the Cleve wars show that it could not +have been written before March 25, 1609. The sentence, +"Marry some cast Cleve captain," is taken by +some to indicate a date as early as the spring of that +year, when James I "promised to send an English force +to aid the Protestant party,"<a name="FNanchor_245_245" id="FNanchor_245_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_245_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a> and when, undoubtedly, +"cast" captains of the English army were clamouring +for foreign service. In that case, the play was acted +before January 4, 1610, for by that date the children +of the Queen's Revels had ceased playing at Blackfriars. +Since the plague regulations closed the theatres +between March 9 and December 7, 1609, save +for a week in July, these arguments would fix the performance +in the Christmas month, December 7 to +January 4, 1610. To this supposition a reference in +Act I, 2 to binding the Apocrypha by itself, lends +plausibility, if, as Fleay thinks, the sentence points<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span> +to the discussion during 1609-1610 concerning the inclusion +of the Apocrypha in the Douay version of the +Bible and its exclusion from the authorized version—both +in progress at the time, and both completed +in 1610.<a name="FNanchor_246_246" id="FNanchor_246_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_246_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a> But the Apocrypha controversy was continued +long after 1610.</p> + +<p>A later date of composition than January 4, 1610, +is, however, indicated if a line, III, 1, 341, to which +attention has not previously been directed, in which +the Elder Loveless says of Abigail, who is acting +the termagant, "tie your she-Otter up, good Lady +folly, she stinks worse than a Bear-baiting," was +suggested by the termagant Mrs. Otter and her husband +of the Bear-garden, in Jonson's <i>Epicoene</i>, acted +between January 4 and March 10, 1610. And the +two sentences in which Cleve is mentioned, "There +will be no more talk of the Cleve wars while this +lasts" (V, 3), and "Marry some <i>cast Cleve</i> captain +[so italicized in the quarto], and sell Bottle-ale" +(V, 4), point to a date later than July 1610, when +actual fighting in Cleves-Juliers had barely begun. The +captains are not English soldiers seeking service in a +foreign army not yet mobilized, but Englishmen who +have been captains in Cleves, have seen service, and +been 'cast,' any time between July 1610 and the beginning +of 1616, when, according to the quarto, the play +had assuredly been performed. These considerations +make it probable that <i>The Scornful Ladie</i> in its original +form was presented first at Whitefriars while the +Queen's Children were acting there, between 1610 and +March 1613, or that it was one of the plays, old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span> +or new, presented by the Queen's Children (reorganized +in 1614) when they opened at Rossiter's +new Blackfriars in 1615-16.</p> + +<p>Since active hostilities in Cleves were temporarily +suspended in 1613-14 during the negotiations which led +to the treaty of Xanten in November of the latter year, +and since there would not only be much "talk" rather +than fighting at the time, but also many captains 'cast' +from their regiments, the conviction grows that the +play was written between 1613 and the end of 1615. +If <i>The Scornful Ladie</i> had been written before March +1613, it would undoubtedly have shared with <i>The +Coxcombe</i> and <i>Cupid's Revenge</i> of the same authors, +then in the flush of popularity at Court, the honour of +presentation by the Queen's Revels' Children during +the festivities attending the marriage of the Princess +Elizabeth; for it was always a good acting play, and +it has far greater merit than <i>Cupid's Revenge</i> which +the Children performed three times before royalty in +the four months preceding the marriage.</p> + +<p>Other evidence, not hitherto noticed, still further +confirms the conclusion that this was one of Beaumont +and Fletcher's later joint-productions, perhaps +the last of them. The conversational style is altogether +more mature than in the remaining output of +their partnership. It is the first work published under +both of their names, and it was licensed for publication +within two weeks after Beaumont's death, as one +might expect of a play with which he was associated +recently in the public mind. It is the only one of the +joint-plays which he did not himself copy out, or +thoroughly revise in manuscript, eliminating all or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span> +nearly all of Fletcher's distinctive <i>ye's</i> and <i>y'are's</i>, +and reducing to uniformity the nomenclature of the +<i>dramatis personae</i>. Of this, later. There is also a +sentence in Act III, 2, which points definitely to a +date of composition, 1613 to 1615. The Captain +speaking to Morecraft, the usurer, says, "I will stile +thee noble, nay Don Diego, I'le woo thy Infanta for +thee" (punctuation of the quarto). 'Diego' had, of +course, been for years a generic nickname for Spaniards; +but Morecraft is neither a Spaniard nor in any +way associated with Spaniards. There had been a +Don Diego of malodorous memory, who had offensively +"perfumed" St. Paul's and on whose achievement +the Elizabethans never wearied ringing the +changes.<a name="FNanchor_247_247" id="FNanchor_247_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_247_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a> But that Don Diego was of the years before +1597 when there was, of course, no talk of wooing +an Infanta; and the Captain here who comes to +borrow money of the usurer had no intention of insulting +him by likening him to the disgusting Spaniard +of St. Paul's.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"><a name="image372" id="image372"></a> +<div class="bbox"> +<div class="figcenter2" style="width: 333px;"> +<img src="images/image15.jpg" width="333" height="400" alt="By permission of Methuen & Co., Ltd. +DON DIEGO SARMIENTO, +COUNT GONDOMAR +From the portrait by G. P. Harding" title="By permission of Methuen & Co., Ltd. +DON DIEGO SARMIENTO, +COUNT GONDOMAR +From the portrait by G. P. Harding" /> +<p class="artistl">By permission of Methuen & Co., Ltd.</p> +<div class="bbox2"> +<p class="imtitle">DON DIEGO SARMIENTO,<br /> +COUNT GONDOMAR<br /> +<span class="smtext">From the portrait by G. P. Harding</span></p> +</div></div></div></div> + +<p>The only provocation for styling Morecraft's +'widow' an Infanta in this scene of <i>The Scornful +Ladie</i> is that there was much interest in London at +the time in a proposed marriage between Charles, +Prince of Wales, and the second daughter of Philip +III of Spain, the Infanta Maria. And the conjunction +of the "Infanta" with a "Don Diego" has +reference to the activities of the astute Don Diego Sarmiento +de Acuña who had arrived as Spanish ambassador,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span> +in 1613, "with the express object of winning +James over from his alliance with France and the +Protestant powers."<a name="FNanchor_248_248" id="FNanchor_248_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_248_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a> During 1613 Queen Anne was +favouring the Spanish marriage. In February 1614, +Don Diego Sarmiento was sedulously cultivating the +acquaintance of the King's powerful minion, the Earl +of Somerset; and in May he was writing home of his +success. In the latter month, the Lord Privy Seal, +Northampton, was urging the marriage upon the +King; and the King soon after had signified to Sarmiento +his willingness to accept the hand of the Infanta +for Charles, provided Philip of Spain should +withdraw his demand for the conversion of the young +prince to Catholicism. In June Sarmiento was advising +Philip to close with James's offer. And a month +or so later the Spanish Council of State had voted in +favour of the match. Negotiations, broken off for a +time, were resumed a few weeks after the treaty of +Xanten was signed; and with varying success Don +Diego was still pursuing his object in December 1615. +The reference in <i>The Scornful Ladie</i> cannot possibly +be to negotiations for the marriage of Prince Charles's +elder brother, Henry, who died in 1612, with one or +the other of King Philip's daughters;<a name="FNanchor_249_249" id="FNanchor_249_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a> as for instance +in 1604 or 1607, for the Cleves wars had not then begun; +or in 1611 and 1612, for no Don Diego had yet +arrived in England. The upper limit of the reference +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span>to Don Diego Sarmiento's negotiations is May 27, +1613. Gardiner tells us, moreover, that "for some +time" before Diego was created Count Gondomar in +1617 "he had been pertinaciously begging for a title +that would satisfy the world that his labours had been +graciously accepted by his master." This desire to be +"stiled noble" was undoubtedly known to many about +the Court. If Beaumont and Fletcher did not hear of +it by common talk, they might readily have derived +their information from Don Diego's acquaintance and +Beaumont's friend, Sir Francis Bacon, Attorney-General +at the time, or from a devoted companion of +John Selden of the Inner Temple, Sir Robert Cotton, +the antiquary, who in April 1615, was King James's +intermediary with Sarmiento. Taking, accordingly, +all these considerations into account in conjunction +with the fact that no Cleves captains had yet been +'cast' from their commands abroad before the +Queen's Revels' Children ceased playing at the old +Blackfriars in January 1610, I have come to the definite +conclusion that the play was written between +May 27, 1613 and the beginning of 1616, and first +acted after the Children reopened at the new Blackfriars +in 1615-1616. The probabilities are that it was +written after May or June, 1614, perhaps, as late as +April 1615, when public attention had been startlingly +awakened to Don Diego's personal and ambitious activity +in furthering the Spanish alliance by a royal +marriage; and that Beaumont's absence from London, +probably at his wife's place in Kent, or the failing +condition of his health, accounts for his subordinate +share in the authorship, as well as for the incomplete<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span> +revision of the text—a task evidently assumed by him +in the preparation of the other plays planned and produced +in partnership with Fletcher.</p> + +<p>The commendatory verses of Stanley and Waller in +the 1647 folio give the play to Fletcher; and the +greater part of it is Fletcher's. Beaumont has contributed +the vivid exposition of Act I, 1; Act I, 2, with +its legal phraseology and racy realism; and the jovial +posset-scene of Act II, 1, where Sir Roger's kindly +pedantry is developed and the minor love-affair of +Welford and Martha is introduced.<a name="FNanchor_250_250" id="FNanchor_250_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a> Act II, 1, has +been given by most critics to Fletcher because of the +feminine endings of its occasional verse; but Beaumont +could use feminine endings for humorous effect, +and the diction and metal habit are distinctly his. He +contributed also Act V, 2,<a name="FNanchor_251_251" id="FNanchor_251_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_251_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a> where the hero finally +tricks his scornful mistress into submission. The <i>ye</i> +test, which I have said does not yield results in the +case of other plays written by the two dramatists in +collaboration, is of positive value here as confirming +Beaumont's authorship of Act I, 1 and 2 and Act II, +1, and V, 2, for but a single <i>ye</i> (II, 1, l. 10) is to be +found in those scenes. The results are negative in Act +II, 2 and 3—no <i>ye's</i>—but the diction and verse are +Fletcher's. It is not unlikely that Beaumont revised +the play up to the end of Act II. With Act III, the +<i>ye's</i> are in evidence and continue to the end of the +play, except in Beaumont's V, 2. In Act III, 1, there +are but four; but two of them are in the objective<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span> +case, a mark of Fletcher, not of Beaumont. On the +other hand though the diction and verse somewhat +resemble Fletcher's, the infrequency of the <i>ye's</i> heightens +the suspicion that unless the scene is Fletcher's, +revised imperfectly by Beaumont, it is the work of +some third author—perhaps, as R. W. Bond,<a name="FNanchor_252_252" id="FNanchor_252_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_252_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a> has +suggested, Massinger. Act III, 2, on the other hand, +not only has several <i>ye's</i> in the objective, but in proportion +to the <i>you's</i> twenty-five per cent of <i>ye's</i> +and <i>y'are's</i>, which approaches the distinctive habit of +Fletcher; and the verse, rhetorical triplets, and afterthoughts +are his. In all scenes of Acts IV and V, +except the second of the latter, Fletcher's <i>ye's</i> occur, +not in great number, but often enough in the objective +case to corroborate the other, metrical and stylistic, +indications of his authorship.</p> + +<p>I have said that no <i>ye's</i> occur in Acts I and II, and +Act V, 2, the parts in which Beaumont's hand as +author or reviser appears. Another very interesting +confirmation of his authorship of Act I, 1, Act II, 1, +and Act V, 2, is afforded by the double nomenclature +of one of the characters, the amorous spinster who +serves as waiting-woman to the Scornful Lady. According +to the first three quartos (1616, 1625, 1630), +and the folio (1679) which follows the text of these, +whenever she appears in stage-direction or text before +the beginning of Act III (viz., in Beaumont's scenes), +she is called Mistress Younglove or Younglove, but +in Acts III, IV, V, she is uniformly called Abigal, +except in Beaumont's V, 2, where in the text and stage-direction +(line 263) she is again Younglove. In the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span> +speech-headings, she is Abig. or Abi., all through the +last three acts, for Fletcher has noticed that the abbreviation +Young, for her, occurring by the side of +Young Lo. for another character, Young Loveless, is +confusing. But Beaumont, who revised the first two +acts, has been less careful than his wont, for he occasionally +retains the Young., which stood for the name +by which he always thought of the waiting-woman.</p> + +<p>Beaumont's Mistress Younglove of the earlier +scenes is vividly vulgar and amorous. Fletcher takes +her up and turns her into a commonplace stage lecher +in petticoats; but Beaumont, in the fifth act, restores +her to womanhood by giving her something of a heart. +The Scornful Lady of Beaumont's scenes is self-possessed +and many-sided, introspective and capable of +affection. In Fletcher's hands she is shrewd and +witty but evidently constructed for the furtherance +of dramatic business. The steward, Savil, of Beaumont's +Act I, appears not only to be honest but to be +designed with a view to a leading part in the complication; +in Act II, 2, Fletcher reduces him to drunkenness +and servility, with slight regard to the possibilities of +character and plot. The brisk but mechanical movement +of the action and the stagey characterization and +more animated scenes are Fletcher's; also the manœuvers +directed against the Lady's attitude of scorn, +except that by which she is overcome. Thorndike +calls this comedy "perhaps the best representation of +the collaboration" of these dramatists in that kind. +If this is the best of which they were capable in that +kind, it is as well that they did not produce more. +This was written after Beaumont had retired to Sundridge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span> +Place, and was giving very little attention to +play-writing. It was, however, a very popular play; +frequently acted before suppression of the theatres, +and in the decade succeeding the Restoration when it +was several times witnessed by Pepys. Later, it was +acted by Mrs. Oldfield; and, as <i>The Capricious Lady</i> +(an alteration by W. Cooke), with Mrs. Abington in +the heroine's part, it held the stage as late as 1788—some +six revivals in all. But, as Sir Adolphus Ward +says, it is "coarse both in design and texture, and +seems hardly entitled to rank high among English +comedies." It undoubtedly suggested ideas for Massinger's +tragicomedy, <i>A Very Woman</i>, licensed 1634, +but in which Fletcher may have had a share; and for +Sir Aston Cockayne's <i>The Obstinate Lady</i> of 1657.<a name="FNanchor_253_253" id="FNanchor_253_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_253_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_245_245" id="Footnote_245_245"></a><a href="#FNanchor_245_245"><span class="label">[245]</span></a> Murray, <i>Eng. Dram. Comp.</i>, I, 153; Warwick Bond, <i>Variorum +Ed. of B. and F.</i>, I, 359.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_246_246" id="Footnote_246_246"></a><a href="#FNanchor_246_246"><span class="label">[246]</span></a> <i>Chr. Eng. Dr.</i>, I, 181.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_247_247" id="Footnote_247_247"></a><a href="#FNanchor_247_247"><span class="label">[247]</span></a> See Bond, <i>Variorum, B. and F.</i>, I, 417; and references as +given there, and by Dyce, to <i>The Famous History of Sir Thomas +Wyatt, The Captain</i>, and other plays.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_248_248" id="Footnote_248_248"></a><a href="#FNanchor_248_248"><span class="label">[248]</span></a> See S. R. Gardiner, <i>History of England</i>, Vol. II (1607-1616), +pp. 165, 218, 225, 247, 255, 316, 321, 324, 327, 368, for this and +the following concerning Sarmiento.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_249_249" id="Footnote_249_249"></a><a href="#FNanchor_249_249"><span class="label">[249]</span></a> Gardiner, <i>Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage</i>, pp. 6, +7, 69.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_250_250" id="Footnote_250_250"></a><a href="#FNanchor_250_250"><span class="label">[250]</span></a> All critics agree in assigning I, 1, to Beaumont. They differ +concerning the rest of I and II.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_251_251" id="Footnote_251_251"></a><a href="#FNanchor_251_251"><span class="label">[251]</span></a> So, also, Fleay, G. C. Macaulay, and Oliphant; Boyle, <i>N. S. S. +Trans.</i>, XXVI (1886), and Bond, <i>u. s.</i>, p. 360.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_252_252" id="Footnote_252_252"></a><a href="#FNanchor_252_252"><span class="label">[252]</span></a> <i>Variorum</i>, I, 360.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_253_253" id="Footnote_253_253"></a><a href="#FNanchor_253_253"><span class="label">[253]</span></a> The best editions of <i>The Scornful Ladie</i> since Dyce's time +are that of R. Warwick Bond, in the <i>Variorum</i>, and of Glover +and Waller in the <i>Camb. Engl. Classics</i>.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XXVII</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">THE DRAMATIC ART, PRINCIPALLY OF BEAUMONT</p> + + +<p class="cap">Of the eleven plays, then, from which one may +try to draw conclusions concerning the respective +dramatic qualities of Beaumont and Fletcher during +the period of their collaboration, we have found that +two, <i>Loves Cure</i> and <i>The Captaine</i>, do not definitely +show the hand of Beaumont, and one, <i>The Foure +Playes</i>, but the suspicion of a finger. Two, <i>The +Woman-Hater</i> and <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>, +are wholly or essentially of his unaided authorship. +The remaining six, <i>The Coxcombe</i>, <i>Philaster</i>, <i>The +Maides Tragedy</i>, <i>Cupids Revenge</i>, <i>A King and No +King</i>, <i>The Scornful Ladie</i>, are the Beaumont-Fletcher +plays. Others in which some critics think that they +have found traces of Beaumont, assuming that in their +present form they are revisions of earlier work, are +<i>Thierry and Theodoret</i>, <i>The Faithful Friends</i>, <i>Wit +at Severall Weapons</i>, <i>Beggers Bush</i>, <i>Loves Pilgrimage</i>, +<i>The Knight of Malta</i>, <i>The Lawes of Candy</i>, <i>The +Honest Man's Fortune</i>, <i>Bonduca</i>, <i>Nice Valour</i>, <i>The +Noble Gentleman</i>, <i>The Faire Maide of the Inne</i>. +These I have carefully examined, and can conscientiously +state that in no instance is there for me satisfactory +evidence of the qualities which mark his +verse and style. When in any of the suspected passages<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span> +the verse recalls Beaumont, the style is not his: +I find none of his favourite words, phrases, figures, +ideas. When in any such passage a Beaumontesque +hyperbole appears, or an occasional word from his +vocabulary, or a line of haunting beauty such as he +might have written, his metre or rhythm is absent. +On the other hand, such passages display traits never +found in him but often found in some other collaborator +with Fletcher, or in some reviser of Fletcher's +plays, sometimes Massinger but more frequently +Field. The latter dramatist modeled himself upon +Beaumont, but though he caught, on occasion, something +of the master's trick, no one steeped in the style +of Beaumont can for a moment mistake for his even +the most dramatic or poetic composition of Field. +As to the scenes in prose supposed by some to have +been written by Beaumont, there is not one that bears +his distinctive impress, nor one that might not have +been written by Daborne, Field, or Massinger, or by +any of the half-dozen experts whose industry swelled +the output of the Fletcherian syndicate. There being +no evidence of Beaumont in any of these plays, it is +unnecessary to investigate, here, the vexed question of +the original date of each. Suffice it to repeat that +concerning none is there definite or generally accepted +information that it was written before Beaumont's +retirement from dramatic activity.</p> + +<p>Passing in review, the qualities of Beaumont as a +dramatist we find that in characterization he is, when +at his best, true to nature, gradual in his processes, +and discriminating in delineation. He is melodramatic +at times in sudden shifts of crisis; but he is uniformly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[380]</a></span> +sensitive to innocence, beauty, and pathos,—contemptuous +of cowardice, braggadocio, and insincerity,—appreciative +of fidelity, friendship, noble affection, +womanly devotion, self-sacrifice, and mercy, +of romantic enterprise, and of the virile defiance of +calumny, evil soliciting, and tyranny. In the delineation +of lust he is frankly Elizabethan rather than +insidiously Jacobean. He portrays with special tenderness +the maiden of pure heart whose love is unfortunately +placed too high, a Bellario, Euphrasia, +or Urania,—or crossed by circumstance, a Viola, +Arethusa, Aspatia, Panthea. He distinctively appropriates +Shakespeare's girl-page; under his touch her +grace suffers but slight diminution, and that by excess +of sentimentality rather than by lack of individual +endowment. His love-lorn lasses are integral personalities. +No one, not maintaining a thesis, could +mistake Viola with her shrewd inventiveness and sense +of humour for Arethusa, or Arethusa with her swift +despairs for Bellario, or Bellario with her fearlessness +and noble mendacity for the countrified Urania, or +any of them for the lachrymose Aspatia, or the full-pulsed +Panthea. I find them as different each from +the other as all from the tormenting Oriana or that +seventeenth century Lydia Languish, Jasper's mock-romantic +Luce.</p> + +<p>His most virile characters are not the tragic or romantic +heroes of the plays, but the blunt soldier-friends. +It has been said, to be sure, that "there is +scarcely an individual peculiarity among them."<a name="FNanchor_254_254" id="FNanchor_254_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_254_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a> But +Mardonius never deserts his King, Melantius does.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[381]</a></span> +And neither the Mardonius nor the Melantius of Beaumont +has the waggish humour of Beaumont's Dion. +His romantic heroes, on the other hand, are not so +distinct in their several characteristics; Amintor, Philaster, +Leucippus are generous, impulsive, poetic, readily +deluded, undecided, and in action indecisive. +The differentiation between them lies in the dramatic +motive. Of Amintor the mainspring is the doctrine +of the divinity of kings; he cannot be disloyal even +to the king who has duped him and made of him a +"fence" for his wife's adultery. Of Leucippus the +mainspring is filial piety—disloyalty would mean +surrendering his father to an incestuous and vengeful +woman. Of Philaster the mainspring is the duty of +revolt for the recovery of his ancestral throne. In +<i>Philaster</i> and <i>Cupid's Revenge</i> Beaumont's tyrants are +sonorific yet shadowy forms; but the king of the <i>Maides +Tragedy</i> is a thoroughly visualized monster, and Arbaces +in <i>A King and No King</i> stands as an epitome of +progressively developed, concrete personality, absolutely +distinct from any other figure on Beaumont's +stage. In the construction of Evadne and Bacha a +similar skill in evolution and individualization is displayed. +The latter is an abnormality grown from lust +to overweening ambition; the former never loses our +sympathy: in her depravity there is the seed of conscience; +through shame and love she wins a soul; the +crime by which at last she would redeem herself +leaves her no longer futile but half-way heroic; and +her pleading for Amintor's love, her self-murder, fix +her in memory among those squandered souls that +have known no happiness—whose misery or whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[382]</a></span> +shame is merged and made beautiful in the pity of +it all.</p> + +<p>Of his braggarts and poltroons Beaumont is profuse: +the best are Bessus and Calianax, so far as they +have not been reduced to horse-play by another hand. +For Pharamond we are indebted as much to Fletcher +as to Beaumont. The Jonsonian humours of Beaumont's +braggarts, excellent as they may be, are not +more clearly marked nor better drawn than those of +many of his other characters, the misogynist, the +retributive Oriana, and the gourmand-parasite, in his +youthful comedy of <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, or the devil-may-care +Merrythought, Luce, the grocer and his +wife, and in fact every convulsing caricature in his +matchless <i>Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>. Of Beaumont's +effectiveness in satire and burlesque, enough +has already been said. His laughter is genial but not +uproarious: he chuckles; he lifts the eyebrow, but seldom +sneers. With the Gascon he vapours; with the +love-lorn languishing, simpers; with the heroic Captain +of Mile End, whiffles and—tongue in cheek—struts +and throws a turkey-step; with the jovial roisterer +he hiccoughs and wipes his mouth. Homely wit, +bathos, and the grotesque he fixes as on a film, and +makes no comment; fustian he parodies; affectation +he feeds with banter. For the inflated he cherishes a +noiseless, most exiguous bodkin.</p> + +<p>As to the matter of technique we have observed +that the clear and comprehensive expositions of the +joint-plays are generally Beaumont's,—for instance, +those of <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, <i>Philaster</i>, <i>King and No +King</i>, and <i>The Scornful Ladie</i>; that in the tragedies<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[383]</a></span> +and tragicomedies the sensational reversals of fortune, +as well as the cumulative suspenses and reliefs of the +closing scenes, are in nearly all cases his; and that in +the tragicomedies the shifting of interest from the +strictly tragic and universal to the more individual—pathetic, +romantic, and comic—emotions, is also +his. The conviction of Evadne by her brother is an +exception: that is the work of Fletcher; but her contrition +in the presence of Amintor is again Beaumont's. +What he was capable of in romantic comedy is shown +by his '<i>Ricardo and Viola</i>' episode. He cared much +more for romance than for intrigue; and he found his +romance in persons of common life as readily as +among those of elevated station. In his share of the +comedies of intrigue he shows, as elsewhere, that he +was capable of Elizabethan bubukles, but ludicrous not +lecherous. Above all, he delighted in interweaving +with the romantic and sentimental that which partook +of the pastoral, the pathetic, and the heroic. And we +have noticed that, through the heroic and melodramatic, +his more serious plays pass into the atmosphere +of court life and spectacular display.</p> + +<p>As for Fletcher's share in the dramas written in +partnership with Beaumont, little need be said by way +of summary. He bulks large in the comedies of intrigue, +<i>The Scornful Ladie</i> and <i>The Coxcombe</i>; and +especially in the sections of plot that are carnal, +trivial, or unnatural. He is in them just what he is +in his own <i>Monsieur Thomas</i> and his pornographic +<i>Captaine</i>—in the latter of which, if Beaumont had +any share at all it is unconvincing to me, save possibly +as regards the one appalling scene of which I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[384]</a></span> +spoken some five chapters back. To the tragedies and +"dramatic romances" or tragicomedies Fletcher did +not contribute one-third as much as his co-worker. +As in the murder-scene of <i>The Maides Tragedy</i> he +displays the dramaturgy of spectacular violence, so +in the scene between Melantius and Evadne, the power +of dramatic invective. But his aim is not the furtherance +of interest by the dynamic unfolding of personality, +or by the propulsion of plot through interplay +of complicated motives or emotions, it is the +immediate captivation of the spectator by rapidity +and variety: by brisk, lucid, and witty dialogue, by +bustle of action and multiplicity of conventional device, +as in <i>Cupids Revenge</i>. Few of his scenes are +vital; most are clever histrionic inlays, subsidiary to +the main action, or complementary and explanatory, +as in <i>Philaster</i> and <i>A King and No King</i>. His characters +move with all the ease of perfect mechanism; +but they are made, not born. It follows that, in the +more serious of the joint-dramas, the principal personages +are much less indebted to his invention than +has ordinarily been supposed. In the comedies of +intrigue, on the other hand, conventional types of the +stage or of the theatre-going London world, especially +the fashionable and the Bohemian provinces thereof, +owe their existence chiefly to him. Blackguards, +wittols, colourless tricksters, roaring captains, gallants, +debauchees, lechers, bawds, libidinous wives, sophisticated +maidens who preen themselves with meticulous +virtue but not with virtuous thoughts, all these people +the scenes which Fletcher contributed to the joint-comedies. +And some of them thrust their faces into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[385]</a></span> +the romantic plays and tragedies as well. Fletcher's +most important contribution to the drama, his masterly +and vital contribution, is to be found in his later work; +and of that I have elsewhere treated,<a name="FNanchor_255_255" id="FNanchor_255_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_255_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a> and shall have +yet a word to say here.</p> + +<p>Of the Beaumont-Fletcher plays the distinctive +dramaturgy as well as the essential poetry are Beaumont's, +and these are worthy of the praise bestowed +by his youthful contemporary, John Earle:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all so born within thyself, thine own.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>The Maske</i>, <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, and <i>The Knight of +the Burning Pestle</i> should appear in a volume bearing +Beaumont's name. And for the partnership of Beaumont +and Fletcher, perhaps, some day,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Some publisher will further justice do<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And print their <i>six</i> plays in one volume too.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_254_254" id="Footnote_254_254"></a><a href="#FNanchor_254_254"><span class="label">[254]</span></a> Thorndike, <i>Influence of B. and F.</i>, p. 123.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_255_255" id="Footnote_255_255"></a><a href="#FNanchor_255_255"><span class="label">[255]</span></a> <i>The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare</i>, Part Two, in +<i>Representative English Comedies</i>, Vol. III, now in press.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[386]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XXVIII</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">DID THE BEAUMONT 'ROMANCE' INFLUENCE SHAKESPEARE?</p> + + +<p class="cap">Richard Flecknoe, in his <i>Discourse of the +English Stage</i>, 1664, thinking rather of the romantic +and ornamented quality of Beaumont and +Fletcher's plays, "full of fine flowers," than of any +anticipation in them of the love and honour of plays +of the Restoration, says that they were the first to +write "in the Heroick way." Symonds calls them +the "inventors of the heroical romance." And lately +Professor Thorndike<a name="FNanchor_256_256" id="FNanchor_256_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a> and others have conjectured +that the Shakespeare of <i>Cymbeline</i>, <i>Winter's Tale</i>, +and <i>The Tempest</i> was following the lead of the two +younger dramatists in what is attributed to them as +a new style of 'dramatic romance' in his dramas. +The argument is that <i>Philaster</i> (acted before October +8, 1610) preceded <i>Cymbeline</i> (acted between April +20, 1610 and May 15, 1611), and suggested to Shakespeare +a radical change of dramatic method, first manifest +in <i>Cymbeline</i>. And that five other "romances +by Beaumont and Fletcher," <i>Foure Playes in One</i>, +<i>Thierry and Theodoret</i>, <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, <i>Cupid's +Revenge</i> and <i>A King and No King</i>, constituting with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[387]</a></span> +<i>Philaster</i> a distinctly new type of drama, were in all +probability acted before the close of 1611, and similarly +influenced the method of <i>The Winter's Tale</i> and +<i>The Tempest</i>, also of 1611.</p> + +<p>Before discussing the theory of Shakespeare's indebtedness +to <i>Philaster</i> and its "Beaumont-Fletcher" +successors, I should like to file a two-fold protest; +first, against the use of the word 'romance' for any +kind of dramatic production, whatever. 'Romance' +applies to narrative of heroic, marvellous, and imaginative +content, not to drama. <i>The Maides Tragedy</i> +and <i>Cupid's Revenge</i> are not romances; they are +romantic tragedies. <i>Philaster</i>, <i>A King and No King</i>, +and <i>Cymbeline</i> are, of course, romantic; but specifically +they are melodramatic tragicomedies of heroic cast. +<i>Pericles</i>, <i>The Winter's Tale</i>, and <i>The Tempest</i> are +romantic comedies of marvel or adventure. Nothing +is gained in criticism by giving them a name which +applies, in English, strictly to narrative, or by regarding +them as of a different dramatic species from the +romantic dramas of Greene and Shakespeare that preceded +them. I object, in the second place, to the +grouping of the six plays said to constitute "a distinctly +new type of drama" under the denomination +"dramatic romances of Beaumont <i>and</i> Fletcher"; for +in some of them Beaumont had no hand, and in others, +the most important, Fletcher's contribution of romantic +novelty is altogether secondary, mostly immaterial. +With <i>Thierry and Theodoret</i>, for instance, thus loosely +called a "Beaumont-Fletcher romance," it is not +proved that Beaumont had anything to do. The +drama displays nothing of his vocabulary, rhetoric<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[388]</a></span> +or poetry. It is a later production by Fletcher, Massinger, +and probably one other; and is the only play of +this tragic-idyllic-romantic type attempted by Fletcher +after Beaumont had ceased writing. In three of the +<i>Foure Playes in One</i>, Beaumont does not appear. He +may possibly be traced in three scenes of <i>The Triumph +of Love</i>; but with no certainty. Fletcher, on the +other hand, had very little to do with the three great +dramas of sensational romance which form the core +of the group in question, <i>Philaster</i>, <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, +and <i>A King and No King</i>. As I have shown, +he contributed not more than four scenes to <i>Philaster</i>, +four to <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, and five to <i>A King and +No King</i>. And, with the exception of two spectacularly +violent scenes in <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, his contribution, +so far as writing goes, is supplementary +dialogue and histrionic by-play. Whatever is essentially +novel, vital, and distinctive is by Beaumont. To +<i>Cupid's Revenge</i> Beaumont's contribution was slighter +in volume, but without it the play would lack its distinctive +quality. If we must cling to the misnomer +'romance' for any group of plays which may have +influenced Shakespeare's later comedies, let us limit +the group to its Beaumont core, and speak of the +'Beaumont romance.'</p> + +<p>The express novelty in technique of the six arbitrarily +selected, so-called 'Beaumont-Fletcher romances' +is supposed to lie in the dramatic adaptation of certain +sensational properties more suitable to narrative fiction; +especially in the attempt to heighten interest by +adding to the legitimate portrayal of character under +stress and strain (as in tragedy), or of character in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[389]</a></span> +amusing maladjustment with social convention (as +in comedy), the portrayal of vicissitudes of fortune; +and in the attempt to enhance the thrills appropriate +to tragic and comic appeal by such an amalgamation +of the two as shall cause the spectator to run up and +down the whole gamut of emotional sensibility. In +the realm of tragedy the accentuation of the possibilities +of suspense, whether by Beaumont or any +other, would be a novelty merely of degree. <i>Cupid's +Revenge</i>, and <i>The Triumph of Death</i> (in the <i>Foure +Playes in One</i>) could hardly have impressed the author +of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> and <i>Hamlet</i> as in this respect +astounding innovations; and <i>The Maides Tragedy</i> +does not, so far as I can determine, sacrifice the unities +of interest and effect for enhancement and variety of +emotional thrill. In any case, it would be necessary +to date <i>Timon</i>, <i>Antony</i>, and <i>Coriolanus</i>, two or three +years later than the fact, if one desired to prove that +any Shakespearian tragedy was influenced by a Beaumont-Fletcher +exaggeration of suspense. Whatever +exaggeration may exist had already been practised by +Shakespeare himself. If a Beaumont-Fletcher novelty +influenced Shakespeare, that novelty must have +lain in the transference of tragic suspense to the realm +of romantic comedy with all its minor aesthetic appeals, +and it would consequently be limited to their +tragicomedies, <i>Philaster</i> and <i>A King and No King</i>. +The tragicomic masques in the <i>Foure Playes in One</i>, +that of <i>Honour</i> and that of <i>Death</i>, are too insignificant +to warrant consideration; and Beaumont had +nothing to do with them.</p> + +<p>In determining the indebtedness, if any, of <i>Cymbeline</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[390]</a></span> +to <i>Philaster</i> we lack the assistance of authentic +dates of composition. The plays were acted about +the same time,—<i>Philaster</i> certainly, <i>Cymbeline</i> perhaps, +before October 8, 1610. Beaumont and Fletcher's +play may have been written as early as 1609; +Shakespeare's also as early as 1609 or 1608: in fact, +there are critics who assign parts of it to 1606. With +regard to the relative priority of <i>Cymbeline</i> and <i>A +King and No King</i>, we are more fortunate in our +knowledge. The former had certainly been acted by +May 15, 1611; the latter was not even licensed until +that year, and was not performed at Court till December +26. The probabilities are altogether in favour +of a date of composition later than that of <i>Cymbeline</i>.</p> + +<p>But that Shakespeare's <i>Cymbeline</i> and his later romantic +dramas betray any consciousness of the existence +of <i>Philaster</i> and its succeeding <i>King and No +King</i> has not been proved. Save for the more emphatic +employment of the masque and its accessories of +dress and scenic display, of the combination of idyllic, +romantic, and sensational elements of material, and +the heightened uncertainty of dénouement, all naturally +suggested by the demands of Jacobean taste, no +variation is discoverable in the course of Shakespeare's +dramatic art. And in these respects I find +no extrinsic novelty, no momentous change—nothing +in <i>Philaster</i> and <i>A King and No King</i> that had not +been anticipated by Shakespeare. <i>Cymbeline</i>, <i>The +Winter's Tale</i>, and <i>The Tempest</i> are but the flowering +of potentialities latent in the <i>Two Gentlemen of +Verona</i> and <i>As You Like It</i>, <i>Much Ado About Nothing</i> +and <i>Twelfth Night</i>, <i>All's Well That Ends Well</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[391]</a></span> +and <i>Measure for Measure</i>—latent in the story of +Apollonius of Tyre, and unavoidable in its dramatization +as <i>Pericles</i>, a play that was certainly not influenced +by the methods of <i>Philaster</i>. If in his later romantic +dramas Shakespeare borrowed any hint of technique +from the Beaumont contribution to the 'romances,' +he was but borrowing back what Beaumont had borrowed +from him or from sources with which Shakespeare +was familiar when Beaumont was still playing +nursery miracles of the Passion with his brothers in +the Gethsemane garden at Grace-Dieu. Shakespeare's +later comedies are a legitimate development of his +peculiar dramatic art. Beaumont's tragicomedies, +with all their poetic and idyllic beauty and dramatic +individuality, are novel, so far as construction goes, +only in their emphasized employment of the sensational +properties and methods mentioned above. +Their characteristic, when compared with that of +Shakespeare's last group of comedies, is melodramatic +rather than romantic. They set, in fine, as did Chapman's +<i>Gentleman Usher</i>, and Shakespeare's <i>Measure +for Measure</i> and <i>All's Well that Ends Well</i>, an example +which, abused, led to the decadence of Elizabethan +romantic comedy.</p> + +<p>The resemblance between <i>Philaster</i> and <i>Cymbeline</i>, +such as it is, is closer than that between <i>Philaster</i> and +the Shakespearian successors of <i>Cymbeline</i>,—<i>The +Winter's Tale</i> and <i>The Tempest</i>. But the common +features of all these plays, the juxtaposition of idyllic +scenes and interest with those of royalty, the combination +of sentimental, tragic, and comic incentives +to emotion, the false accusations of unchastity and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[392]</a></span> +resulting jealousy, intrigue, and crime, the wanderings +of an innocent and distressed woman in boy's +clothing, the romantic localization, did not appear first +in either <i>Philaster</i> or <i>Cymbeline</i>. <i>Philaster</i> and +<i>Cymbeline</i> follow numerous clues in the idyllic-comic +of <i>Love's Labour's Lost</i> and <i>Midsummer-Night's +Dream</i>; in the idyllic-romantic-pathetic of <i>Two Gentlemen +of Verona</i>, <i>As You Like It</i>, and <i>Twelfth +Night</i>; and for that matter in the materials furnished +by Greene, Lodge, Sidney, Sannazzaro, Montemayor, +Bandello, Cinthio and Boccaccio; and in the romantic +and tragicomic fusion already attempted in <i>Much +Ado</i>, <i>All's Well</i>, and <i>Measure for Measure</i>. For the +character and the trials of Imogen, Shakespeare did +not require the inspiration of a Beaumont. He had +been busied with the figure of Innogen (as he then +called her) as early as 1599; for in the 1600 quarto of +<i>Much Ado</i> she appears by sheer accident in a stage +direction as the wife of the Leonato of that play. +He had been using the sources from which <i>Cymbeline</i> +is drawn,—Holinshed and Boccaccio, and that early +romantic drama, <i>Fidele and Fortunio</i>,—before <i>Philaster</i> +was written. And it is much more likely that +the Belarius of Shakespeare and the Bellario of Beaumont +were both suggested by the Bellaria of Greene's +<i>Pandosto</i>, than that Shakespeare borrowed from +Beaumont. Nor is Shakespeare likely to have been +indebted to Beaumont's example for the sensational +manner of the dénouement in <i>Cymbeline</i>—the succession +of fresh complications and false starts by +which suspense is sustained. These are precisely the +features that distinguish those scenes of <i>Pericles</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[393]</a></span> +which by the consensus of critics are assigned to +Shakespeare; and <i>Pericles</i> was written by 1608, at +least as early as <i>Philaster</i>, and in all probability earlier. +In his story of Marina, Shakespeare is merely pursuing +the sensational methods of <i>Measure for Measure</i> +and anticipating those of <i>The Winter's Tale</i>. In +general, the plot lies half-way between the tragicomic +possibilities of the <i>Comedy of Errors</i>, <i>Twelfth Night</i>, +<i>All's Well</i>, and <i>Measure for Measure</i>, and the romantic +manipulation of <i>Cymbeline</i> and the later plays.</p> + +<p>In fine, there is closer resemblance between <i>Cymbeline</i> +and half a dozen of Shakespeare's earlier comedies, +than between <i>Cymbeline</i> and <i>Philaster</i>; and it +might more readily be shown that the author of +<i>Philaster</i> was indebted to those half-dozen plays, than +Shakespeare to <i>Philaster</i>. The differences between +the Beaumont 'romances' and Shakespeare's later +romantic comedies are in fact more vital than the +similarities. In <i>Philaster</i>, <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, and +<i>A King and No King</i> the central idea is of contrast +between sentimental love and unbridled lust, and this +gives rise to misunderstanding, intrigue, and violence. +In Shakespeare's later comedies the central motive +is altogether different: it is of disappearance and discovery. +The disappearance is occasioned by false +accusation or conspiracy. In <i>Pericles</i>, <i>Cymbeline</i>, +and <i>The Winter's Tale</i>, the dramatic interest revolves +about the pursuit of a lost wife or child, the wanderings +and trials of the heroine, and her recovery;<a name="FNanchor_257_257" id="FNanchor_257_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_257_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a> in +<i>The Tempest</i>, about the disappearance and discovery +of the ousted Duke and his daughter. There is no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[394]</a></span> +resemblance between Beaumont's love-lorn maidens +in page's garb pursuing the unconscious objects of +their affection and Shakespeare's joyous girls and +traduced wives. Nor is there in Shakespeare's later +comedies any analogue to the sensual passion of the +'Beaumont and Fletcher romances,' to their Bachas, +Megras, and Evadnes, their ultra-sentimental Philasters, +their blunt soldier-counselors and boastful poltroons. +Pisanio and Cloten have respectively no kinship +with Dion and Pharamond. What appears to +be novel in <i>Pericles</i> and its Shakespearian successors, +the somewhat melodramatic dénouement, is, as I +have said, but the modification of the playwright's +well-known methods in conformity with the contemporary +demand for more highly seasoned fare. But, +in essence, the dramatic careers of Imogen and Hermione, +are no more sensational than those of their +older sisters, Hero, Helena, and Isabella. And what +is most evidently not novel with Shakespeare in his +later romantic comedies,—the consistent dramatic +interaction between crisis and character,—is precisely +what the 'Beaumont-Fletcher romances' do not +always possess. Beaumont's characterization at its +best, with all its naturalness, compelling pathos, poignancy, +and abandon is lyrical or idyllic rather than dramatic; +Fletcher's is expository and histrionic—of +manners rather than the man.</p> + +<p>Beaumont did not influence Shakespeare. And if +not Beaumont, then certainly not Fletcher; for in the +actual composition of the core of the so-called 'Beaumont-Fletcher +romances' Fletcher's share was altogether +subordinate; and since after the dissolution of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[395]</a></span> +the partnership he attempted but one romantic tragic +drama of that particular kind, <i>Thierry and Theodoret</i>,—and +that a clumsy failure,—it must be concluded +that in the designing of those 'romances' his share +was even less significant. But to appreciate the contribution +of Beaumont to Elizabethan drama, and his +place in literary history, it is fortunately not necessary +to assume that he diverted from its natural course the +dramatic technique of a master, twenty years his +senior and for twenty years before Beaumont began +to write, intimately acquainted with the conditions of +the stage,—the acknowledged playwright of the most +successful of theatrical companies and, in spite of +changing fashions, the most steadily progressive and +popular dramatic artist of the early Jacobean period. +With regard to Beaumont it is marvel sufficient, that +between his twenty-fifth and his twenty-eighth year +of age he should have elaborated in dramatic art, +even with the help of Fletcher, so striking a combination +of preceding models, and have infused into the +resulting heroic-romantic type such fresh poetic +vigour and verve of movement.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_256_256" id="Footnote_256_256"></a><a href="#FNanchor_256_256"><span class="label">[256]</span></a> <i>The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare</i>, 1901. +See M. W. Sampson's critique in <i>J. Ger. Phil.</i>, II, 241.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_257_257" id="Footnote_257_257"></a><a href="#FNanchor_257_257"><span class="label">[257]</span></a> See Morton Luce, <i>Hand Book to Shakespeare's Works</i>, p. 338.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[396]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="regchap">CHAPTER XXIX</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">CONCLUSION</p> + + +<p class="cap">Beaumont's poetic virtues are his peculiar +treasure; but the dramatic method of his heroic-romantic +plays lent itself lightly to imitation and debasement. +Not so much <i>The Maides Tragedy</i> and <i>A +King and No King</i>, which respect the unities of interest +and effect, as <i>Philaster</i>, <i>The Coxcombe</i>, and +<i>Cupid's Revenge</i>, to which Fletcher's contribution of +captivating theatrical 'business' and device was more +considerable. Some of these plays, and some of +Shakespeare's, too, and of Marston's, and Chapman's, +and Webster's, paved the way for the heroic play of +the Restoration—a melodramatic development of +tragicomedy and sentimental tragedy, in which philandering +sentiment, strained and histrionic passion, +took the place of romantic love and virile conflict,—a +drama in which an affected view of life tinged crisis +and character alike, an unreasoning devotion to royalty +or some other chivalric ideal obscured personal +dignity and moral responsibility, and the thrill of surprise +dissipated the catharsis, proper to art, whether +tragic or comic.</p> + +<p>Upon the future of the comedy of intrigue and +manners, Beaumont exercised no distinctive influence. +In plays like <i>The Coxcombe</i> and <i>The Scornful Ladie</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[397]</a></span> +the genius of Fletcher dominated the scenes of lighter +dialogue and comic complication. And it is through +comedies of intrigue and manners written by Fletcher +alone or in company with others, especially Massinger, +that Fletcher's individual genius exercised most +influence on the subsequent history of the drama. The +characteristics which won theatrical preëminence for +his romantic comedies, heroic tragicomedies and tragedies, +written after the cessation of Beaumont's activity, +were a Fletcherian vivacity of dialogue, a Fletcherian +perfection of 'business,' and a Fletcherian exaggeration +of the tragicomic spirit and technique of which, +in the days of the Beaumont-Fletcher partnership, +Beaumont had availed himself but which he, still, by +virtue of his critical faculty, had held somewhat in +restraint.</p> + +<p>From the time of Prynne's <i>Histriomastix</i>, 1633, +there have been critics who have pointed to the gradual +deterioration of the stage which, beginning, say +some, with plays of Shakespeare himself, continued +through Beaumont and Fletcher to the drama of the +Restoration. Flecknoe, Rymer, Coleridge, Lamb, +Swinburne, Ward, have commented upon phases of +the phenomenon. And, recently, one of our most +judicious contemporary essayists has in a series of +articles developed the theme.<a name="FNanchor_258_258" id="FNanchor_258_258"></a><a href="#Footnote_258_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a> I heartily concur with +the scholarly and well-languaged editor of <i>The Nation</i>, +in many of his conclusions concerning the general +history of this decline; and I have already in this +book availed myself with profit of some of his suggestions.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[398]</a></span> +I agree with him that the downfall of +tragedy began when "the theme was altered from a +single master passion to a number of loosely coördinated +passions, thus relaxing the rigidity of tragic +structure and permitting the fancy to play more intimately +through all the emotions"; that this degeneration +may be traced to the time "when ecclesiastical +authority was broken by scepticism and knowledge, +and the soul was left with all its riches of imagination +and emotion, but with the principle of individual +responsibility discredited and the fibre of self-government +relaxed"; that "the consequences may be seen +in the Italy of the sixteenth century"; and that "the +result is that drama of the court which, besides its +frequent actual indecency, is at heart so often non-moral +and in the higher artistic sense incomprehensible." +But when he ascribes this alteration of the theme +of tragedy from a single master passion to a number +of "loosely coördinated passions" to our "twin +dramatists," and cites as his example <i>The Maides +Tragedy</i> in which, as he sees it, we have "but a succession +of womanly passions, each indeed cunningly +conceived and expressed, but giving us in the end nothing +we can grasp as a whole and comprehend";—and +says that Evadne is "no woman at all, unless +mere random passionateness can be accounted such," +I shake my head in sad demurrer. First, because, as +I have tried to show above, Evadne is anything but +an incomprehensible embodiment of unmotived passions, +and <i>The Maides Tragedy</i> anything but a +"loosely coördinated" concern, and secondly, because +I disfavour this attribution of the decadence of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[399]</a></span> +tragedy, or of comedy, for that matter, to our <i>twin</i> +dramatists. To substantiate such a charge it would +be incumbent upon the critic to prove not only that +the decadence is indubitably visible in the joint-work +of Beaumont and Fletcher, but that it is specifically +visible in Beaumont's, as in Fletcher's, contribution +to that work, and also, that it was not already patent +in the dramatic productions of their seniors; that it +was not patent in Heywood's <i>Royall King and Loyall +Subject</i>, for instance; in the "glaring colours" of +Chapman's <i>Bussy D'Ambois</i>, and in his <i>Gentleman +Usher</i> with its artificial atmosphere of courtly romance, +its melodramatic reverses and surprises, its +huddling up of poetic justice; in the sensational devices, +passionate unrealities and sepulchral action of +Marston's <i>Malcontent</i>, the sophistical theme and callous +pornography of his <i>Dutch Courtezan</i>, and in the +inhuman imaginings of his <i>Insatiate Countess</i>; that it +was not patent in the heartless irresponsibility and +indecency of Middleton, and in the inartistic warping +of tragic situations to comic solutions that characterize +his early romantic plays; that it was not patent in +the poisonous exhalations, the wildering of sympathy, +and the disproportioned art that characterize the +<i>White Devil</i> of their immediate contemporary, John +Webster.</p> + +<p>The decadence was hastened by Fletcher; but not in +any distinctive degree by Beaumont. I second Mr. +More's commendation of Prynne's "philosophic criticism +of 1632 that 'men in theatres are so far from +sinne-lamenting sorrow, that they even delight themselves +with the representations of those wickednesses,'"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[400]</a></span> +but I deplore the application of that criticism +to <i>Beaumont</i> and Fletcher, as that "<i>they</i> loosed the +bonds of conduct and left human nature as a mere +bundle of irresponsibilities."</p> + +<p>Many of Fletcher's excesses and defects not only +in the plays written with Beaumont, but in plays written +after his death, have been conferred from the +day of Flecknoe to the present upon Beaumont. +There is very little "sinne-lamenting sorrow" in the +<i>Valentinian</i> of Fletcher, or of Fletcher and Massinger, +and very little in Fletcher's <i>Wife for a Month</i>; +but in many of Beaumont's scenes in <i>The Maides +Tragedy</i>, and <i>A King and No King</i>, and <i>The Coxcombe</i> +the genuine accents of "sinne-lamenting sorrow" +are heard. Fletcher certainly "loosed the +bonds of conduct and left human nature as a mere +bundle of irresponsibilities," but not Beaumont. Let +the reader turn to that poet's scenes in the joint-plays +(two-thirds of the great ones) as I have indicated +them, or to what I have unrolled of Beaumont's mental +habit, and judge for himself.<a name="FNanchor_259_259" id="FNanchor_259_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a></p> + +<p>The concession of the essayist from whom, as a +representative of enlightened modern opinion upon +the subject, I have been quoting,—that "as Fletcher's +work stands, he may appear utterly devoid of conscience, +a man to whom our human destinies were +mere toys," I hail with delight, although I think that +Fletcher the man had more honest ideals than Fletcher +the dramatist. But, as a critic, I resent the surmise +that Fletcher "was by nature of a manlier, sounder +fibre than Beaumont." In the heroic-romantic comedy,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[401]</a></span> +<i>The Humorous Lieutenant</i>, Fletcher displays, indeed, +as Mr. More says, "a strain almost like that of +Shakespeare, upon whom he manifestly modelled himself +in everything except Shakespeare's serious insight +into human motives." But does that play reveal anything +of manlier, sounder fibre than Beaumont's <i>A +King and No King</i>?</p> + +<p>Written in 1619 <i>The Humorous Lieutenant</i> has enduring +vitality, though not because of its tragicomic +presupposition; for the wars and rumours of war are +rhetorical or humorous, the devilish design of the +King upon the chastity of the heroine is predestined +to failure,—and the announcement of her death, but +a dramatic device which may impose upon the credulity +of her noble lover but not upon the audience. In +the MS. of 1625 it is styled "a pleasant comedie"; +and such it is, of 'humour' and romantic love, upon +a background of the heroic. It is Fletcher's best +comedy of the kind; one of the best of the later Shakespearian +age. The conception of the Lieutenant, +whose humour is to fight when he is plagued by +loathsome disease and to wench when he is well, is +not original, nor is the character of the hero Demetrius; +but in the elaboration Fletcher has created these +characters anew, has surrounded them with half a +dozen other figures no less life-like, and has set them +in a plot, cunningly welded of comic, sentimental, +and martial elements, and captivatingly original. +Though the interest is partly in a wanton intrigue, +and the mirth grossly carnal even when not bawdy, +I think that the objectionable qualities are, for almost +the only time in Fletcher's career in comedy, not ineradicable.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[402]</a></span> +The wondrous charm, "matchless spirit," +vivacity, and constancy of Celia render the machinations +of the procuress, Leucippe, and her "office of +concealments" futile,—so much dramatic realism to +be accentuated or mitigated at the will of the stage +manager;—and the alluring offers of the king are +but so many weapons for his own defeat. If the +Lieutenant were not an indissoluble compound of +hero, swashbuckler, shirker, and "stinkard," I fear, +indeed, that he would lose his savour. But the love +of Rabelaisian humour is, after all, ingrained in the +male of the species, and if the license be not nauseating +it is not necessarily damnable. This boisterous, +pocky rascal who "never had but two hours yet of +happiness," and who courts the battlefield to save +him "from the surgeon's miseries," held the stage +from the time of Condel, Taylor, and Lowin, to that +of Macready and Liston, and there is no reason +why his vitality should not be perennial. There are +few more laughable scenes in farcical literature than +those in which, having drained a philtre intended to +make Celia dote upon the King, the Lieutenant imagines +himself to be a handsome wench of fifteen, +wooes the King most fatuously, even kisses the royal +horses as they pass by. The meeting and the parting, +the trials and the reunion, of Celia and Demetrius +constitute the most convincing and attractive romantic-pathetic +love-affairs in Jacobean drama since Shakespeare +had ceased to write. Indeed, this "perilous +crafty," spirited, "angel-eyed" girl "too honest for +them all" who so ingeniously and modestly shames +the lustful monarch and wins her affianced prince is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[403]</a></span> +not unworthy of the master. Nor is Demetrius. The +play contains many genuinely poetic passages, and +some of those lines of meteoric beauty—"our lives are +but our marches to the grave"—in which Beaumont +abounded, and that Fletcher too rarely coined. With +all the rankness of its humour, the play has such literary +and dramatic excellence that one cannot but +regret the infrequency with which Fletcher produced +that of which he was capable.</p> + +<p>But even this best of Fletcher's heroic-dramatic +plays contains, as Mr. More has observed, "one of +those sudden conversions which make us wonder +whether in his heart he felt any difference between a +satyr-like lust and a chaste love—the conversion of +the lecherous old king." I grant Fletcher's surpassing +excellence in comedy, especially the comedy of +manners and intrigue as, for instance, <i>The Chances</i> +and the <i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i>, and I have +elsewhere acknowledged his supremacy after Shakespeare +in that realm. But we are now considering not +that kind of composition or its technique, but the fibre +which might be expected to show itself in compositions +involving the element of seriousness. <i>The Humorous +Lieutenant</i> is of that kind,—it is called a tragicomedy +by some. Has it one tithe of the serious insight into +human life of any of Beaumont's plays involving ethical +conflict?</p> + +<p>Inquiring further into the fibre of Fletcher, let us +pass in brief review another play, a genuine tragicomedy +this time, <i>A Wife for a Month</i>, written the +year before he died, of whose heroine Mr. More says +that "from every point of view, ethical and artistic,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[404]</a></span> +she is one of the most finely drawn and truest women +in the whole range of English drama." The complication, +here, assuredly affords opportunity for the display +of sound and manly fibre; and the tragicomedy +is instructive in more ways than one: it illustrates +Fletcher's skill in construction and his disregard of +probability; his sense of moral conflict and his insensibility +to moral beauty; his power to conceive +characteristic situations and his impotence to construct +natural characters; his capability of noble sentiment +and poetic expression and his beastly perverseness of +fancy, his prostitution of art to sordid sensationalism. +The story of the cumulative torments to which a lustful +usurper subjects the maiden, Evanthe, whom he +desires, and Valerio whom she loves, is graphically +estimated by one of the <i>dramatis personae</i>,—"This +tyranny could never be invented But in the school of +Hell: earth is too innocent." Beside it Zola's <i>L'Assommoir</i> +smells sweet, and a nightmare lacks nothing +of probability. Ugly, however, as the fundamental +assumption is: namely, that the tyrant should permit +a wedding on condition that at the end of a month +the husband shall suffer death,—and with provision +that meanwhile the honeymoon shall be surrounded +with restriction more intolerable than death itself; +and incredible as is the contrivance of the sequel,—kept +a-going by the suppression of instinct and commonsense +on the part of the hero, and withheld from +its proper tragic conclusion by miraculous cure, an +impossible conversion, and an unnatural clemency,—the +plot is after all deftly knit, and the interest sustained +with baleful fascination. But it would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[405]</a></span> +difficult to instance in Jacobean drama a more incongruous +juxtaposition of complication morally conceived, +and execution callously vulgarized, than that +offered by the scene between Valerio and Evanthe on +their wedding-night. In the corresponding scene of +<i>The Maides Tragedy</i> (II, 1), Beaumont had created a +model: Amintor bears himself with dignity toward +his shameless and contemptuous bride. But in +Fletcher's play it is this "most finely drawn and truest +woman" that makes the advances; and she makes +them not only without dignity, but with an unmaidenly +persistence and persuasiveness of which any abandoned +'baggage' or Russian actress of to-day might +be ashamed. And, still, the dramatist is never weary +of assuring us that she is the soul of "honour mingled +with noble chastity," and clad in "all the graces" +that Nature can give. In the various other trying +situations in which Evanthe is placed it is requisite +to our conviction of reality that she be the "virtuous +bud of beauty": but the tongue of this "bud" blossoms +into billingsgate, she swears "something awful," +and she displays an acquaintance with sexual pathology +that would delight the heart even of the most rabid +twentieth-century advocate of sex-hygiene for boys +and girls in coëducational public schools.</p> + +<p>Two or three of the characters are nobly conceived +and, on occasion, contrive to utter themselves with +nobility. Valerio achieves a poetry infrequent in +Fletcher's plays when he says of the shortness of his +prospective joys:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A Paradise, as thou art, my Evanthe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is only made to wonder at a little,<br /></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[406]</a></span> +<span class="i0">Enough for human eyes, and then to wander from,"—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and when he describes the graces of spiritual love. +And the Queen's thoughts upon death, though melodramatic, +have something of the dignity of Beaumont's +style. But the minds of the principal personages reflect +not only the flashing current but the turbid +estuaries of Fletcher's thought. The passion, save +for Valerio's, is lurid, and the humour latrinal. To +sketch the bestial even in narrative, however fleeting, +is inartistic; to fix it on canvas is offensive; to +posture it upon the stage is unpardonable. The last +is practically what Fletcher has done here; and the +wonder is that he appears to think that he is justifying +virtue.</p> + +<p>No; Fletcher had not the fibre of Beaumont even +when he was writing with him; and he did not achieve +"a manlier, sounder fibre," after Beaumont had +ceased, and he had swung into the brilliant orbit which +he rounded as sole luminary of the stage.</p> + +<p>I object again,—and the reader who has followed +the exposition of the preceding pages will, I hope, object +with me,—to the dictum of a German writer of +this latter day, that the reason of the degeneracy of +<i>Beaumont</i> and Fletcher, ethically, "seems to lie in the +narrowing of the drama from a national interest to +the flattery of a courtly caste." Mr. More opines that +such an explanation should not be pressed too far; and +he suggests that one reason why "we are unable to +comprehend many of the persons upon the stage of +Beaumont and Fletcher" is that we are similarly +unable to comprehend "the more typical men and +women who were playing the actual drama of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[407]</a></span> +age." So far as Fletcher's <i>dramatis personae</i> are +concerned, there is truth in this; but why couple Beaumont +with him? If you omit a character or two in +<i>The Woman-Hater</i>, which was a youthful <i>jeu d'esprit</i>, +you shall find very few incomprehensible figures +among those of Beaumont's creation. And as to the +German mentioned above, Dr. Aronstein, what +"flattery of a courtly caste" can he possibly detect +in Beaumont's satire upon favourites in <i>The Woman-Hater</i>; +in that burlesque of bourgeois affectations, +<i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i> (the Court, too, +was still reading the literature there satirized); or +in his Philaster, who was a rebel; or in his Amintor of +<i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, whose fate hinged upon his +shuffling subservience to a king, or in the King himself +on whom God sends "unlookt-for sudden death," because +of his lust; or in his King Arbaces, whose general +has "not patience to looke on whilst you runne +these forbidden courses"; or in his scenes of <i>Cupid's +Revenge</i>, which scourge the vices of the Court; or in +his Sir Roger and Mistress Abigail and her scornful +Lady,—or in his Ricardo and Viola, who are just a +lover and his lass, and have never dreamed of Court +or King at all?</p> + +<p>I wonder whether it may not be possible for us +henceforth to give to Fletcher, and the whole Fletcherian +syndicate,—the Massingers, Fields, Middletons +and Rowleys, Dabornes, and the rest,—the praise +and the blame for what they produced, but eliminate +Beaumont from the award. One grows weary of the +attribution to him of moral irresponsibilities and extravagances +in art of which he was, in all that we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[408]</a></span> +have learned of his breeding, life, and mental habit +the implicit opponent—very much like his brother +Sir John,—and of the opposite of which he was in +his poetic and dramatic output, as I have minutely +demonstrated, the professed exponent. In the broad +daylight of philological science and modern historical +criticism we should no longer regard Beaumont-and-Fletcher +as an indivisible pair of Siamese twins, constructing +with all four hands at once the fabric of +fifty-three plays, or even of ten, and tongue-and-grooving +the boards with such diabolic deftness that +each artisan shall for ever be credited with the merits +and defects of both. It is, at any rate, time that the +world of scholars,—and then the world of readers +may follow,—render unto Cæsar the things that are +Cæsar's.</p> + +<p>As for Cæsar, we concede to him, John Fletcher, +once for all, as he may be read in his independent +work, by one even running, artistic virtues numerous +and brilliant:<a name="FNanchor_260_260" id="FNanchor_260_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_260_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a> gaiety, wit, sprightly dialogue; mastery +of stage-craft,—of all the devices of captivating +plot and rattling 'business,' and all the conventions +and theatrically legitimate clap-trap of dramatic types +and humours, hallowed by success, adored by the +actor, and darling to the public. We concede skill in +the weaving of romantic complications, captivatingly +cunning, and in the construction of situations irresistibly +ludicrous; remarkable inventiveness of sensational +adventure and spectacular scene and attractive setting;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[409]</a></span> +realism at every turn, and an ability to portray +manners, varied and minute. Above all, we admire, +and thankfully rejoice in, his smoothness of mechanism, +his lightness of touch, his contrivance and manipulation +of pure comedy—whether of manners or +intrigue,—and in his world of characters, not only +laughter-compelling, but endowed with humour themselves +and sworn to the enthronement of the Spirit +of Mirth.</p> + +<p>On the other hand we read on every page of +Fletcher's independent contribution to English drama +what, perhaps, was not the man himself, but his dramaturgic +pose—still for the world the essence of the +Fletcher who ruled it from the stage:<a name="FNanchor_261_261" id="FNanchor_261_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_261_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a> we read his +"shallowness of moral nature," his acquiescence in +the ethical apathy and cynicism of the time; his indelicacy; +his indifference to, if not irreverence for, the +dramatic proprieties,—his subservience to popular +taste and favour in an age when "the theatre had +ceased to be the expression of patriotism and of the +national life and had become the amusement of the +idle gentleman and of such members of the lower +classes as were not kept away by the Puritan disapproval +of the stage." We witness with amusement +but with self-reproach his presentation of characters +superficial, and superficially refracting the evanescent +vanities and heartless vices of Jacobean London, as +if representative of actual and general life; his play +of emotions feigned or sentimental; his violent contrasts,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[410]</a></span> +unnatural conversions, impossible revolutions +of fortune; we discern the absence of subtle intuition, +the failure to effect profound and lasting impression, +the "lack of seriousness and of spiritual poise." We +note, in the heroic-romantic dramas, improbability +and extravagance; and, in the tragedies, such as <i>Valentinian</i>, +a total disregard of the unity of interest,—just +that muddling of motives of which the editor of +<i>The Nation</i> has written,—and therefore the failure +to realize unity of effect. There has been no moral +sequence: the suspense has been distracted by the variety +of emotions stirred. After the hours of strain +to which the spectator has imaginatively subjected +himself, the relief—what Aristotle calls the catharsis—is +not forthcoming: because the intellect has not +been clarified but fuddled; the will has not been braced; +the feelings appropriate to tragedy—of pity and of +fear—have not enjoyed an unthwarted, undiverted +outflow. The faculties have been tantalized by manifold, +deceptive, agonies of thirst. They should have +been centred in one yearning, conducted to one clear +spring of medicament, and purged by waters of truth, +justice, and sympathy. From Fletcher's <i>Valentinian</i> +and <i>Bonduca</i> despite the poetry and the onrush of +the dramatic action there proceeds no calm, "all passion +spent"; no beauty that is peace. And of the +tragicomedies, <i>The Loyall Subject</i> and <i>A Wife for +a Month</i>, this verdict may be even more readily pronounced.</p> + +<p>Such are the excellences and defects of Fletcher. +Let us give him all the glory of the former: but stay +from burdening Beaumont, who had faults of his own,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[411]</a></span> +with responsibility for the latter,—with the unmorality +or immorality or extravagant artistry of Fletcher +when not associated with Beaumont. With the vices +and virtues of Fletcher's rocket, bursting in stellar +polychrome, Beaumont had nothing to do. To him +justice can be accorded only if he, after these three +centuries, be considered alone,—not for ever coupled +with Fletcher, but spoken and thought of, and known, +as dramatist, poet, man of far sounder fibre, and more +virile marrow,—of superior insight, imagination, and +art.</p> + +<p>Next to Shakespeare, the most essentially poetic +dramatist of the early Jacobean period was Francis +Beaumont. He had not the learning of Jonson, nor +the long career, nor the dictatorial position; nor did +he attempt to rival him in comedy, or criticism. But +his great poem, <i>The Maides Tragedy</i> is a thousand +times more enthralling and poetic than <i>Sejanus</i> or +<i>Catiline</i>. Shakespeare always excepted, the only author +of tragedy in that day whose intuitions and lines +of astounding splendour at all compete with, sometimes +surpass, Beaumont's is Webster; but the fascination +of his <i>Duchess of Malfy</i> is lurid, miasmatic, stupefying; +that of <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, breathless and +heart-breaking.</p> + +<p>In the drama of mingled motive, Jonson produced +but one masterpiece that in poetry, valiancy of design, +and portrayal of the ridiculous, equals Beaumont's +<i>A King and No King</i>,—the <i>Volpone</i>; but that is not +tragicomedy, and it drips venom. All that stands between +<i>A King and No King</i> and artistic perfection is +the dénouement. If the lovers had died, their struggle<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[412]</a></span> +against temptation still continuing, their passion unfulfilled,—if +in the moment of death, they had discovered +that their union were no incest after all, Beaumont +would have left behind him another consummate +tragedy. As it is, to find a parallel in Jacobean literature, +outside of Shakespeare, one must turn to Ford's +<i>'Tis a Pity, She's a Whore</i>. There again with poetic +effulgence the problem of incest is dramatized; but +how half-hearted the struggle, insincere the moral,—the +poetry, purple and unconvincing!</p> + +<p>In romantic comedy, between 1603 and 1625, others +have produced plays which from the dramatic point +of view equal <i>Philaster</i>,—Dekker, Heywood, Marston, +Chapman, Middleton, and Rowley. Not all even of +Shakespeare's romantic comedies come up to <i>Philaster</i> +in literary or dramatic excellence; but only Shakespeare +has written what surpasses it.</p> + +<p>In the comedy that delineates humours, <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, +as regards both poetry and technique, falls +below several plays of Dekker, Chapman, Marston, +Middleton, and Jonson, and below the earlier efforts +of Shakespeare; but in characterization it is as good +as some of Shakespeare's. There is no comic figure +in <i>Love's Labour's Lost</i>, the <i>Two Gentlemen +of Verona</i>, or the <i>Comedy of Errors</i>, that surpasses +Beaumont's Hungry Courtier; and the humorous dialogue +and the prose as a whole of <i>The Woman-Hater</i> +are more natural, and more intelligible to the modern +ear. With Shakespeare's later comedies that in any +degree avail themselves of the 'humours' element, or +with Jonson's masterpieces in this kind, <i>The Woman-Hater</i>, +of course, can not be placed in comparison.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[413]</a></span> +But if for the nonce, we consider Beaumont's <i>Knight +of the Burning Pestle</i>, merely in its 'humours' aspect, +we must acknowledge that its characters are as clear-cut, +as typical of the time and as provocative of laughter +as those of <i>Every Man in his Humour</i>, which +for all its historic significance most people nowadays +read, or might read, with a yawn; and that it is less +artificial in construction, more human in motive and +character, more modern in mirth than <i>The Silent +Woman</i>,—even though the object of its ridicule be +now <i>caviare</i> to the general.</p> + +<p>To set Beaumont's burlesque as a comedy of manners +beside any of Shakespeare's comedies from 1594 +down, would be futile, but of the early Shakespearian +plays mentioned above none shakes more with fun +than <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>, and not one +gives us the flavour of London,—its citizens, their affectations +and ideals, their reading, habits and life,—or +of England, that the <i>Knight</i> affords in every +scene. If Shakespeare instead of writing, say, the +<i>Comedy of Errors</i> had written <i>The Knight of the +Burning Pestle</i>, scholars would now be flooding us with +<i>Variorum</i> editions of it, women's literary clubs would +be likening him with fervour to Cervantes, and the public +might be so well educated to its allusions and ideas +that our Hebrew emperors of the theatrical world and +arbiters of dramatic vogue would be "starring" it +through the country to the delight of audiences +that wisely make a show of understanding and enjoying +everything that Shakespeare wrote. To what unrealized +extent the fate of plays hangs upon the tradition +of the green-room, the actor's whim, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[414]</a></span> +manager's enterprise or ignorance, and luck, is material +for an essay in itself. I am not asserting that +<i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i> pretends to poetry, +as do all of Shakespeare's plays; but that for chuckling +and side-long mirth, and for manners and +insight into the life of a rarely interesting period, it +is fine comedy, while as burlesque it is equalled by +few of the kind in our language and excelled by none.</p> + +<p>It may be true that burlesques lose their flavour with +the passing of their victims. But that does not hold +true of the drama of problems perennially recurring +and of emotions common to men of every age and clime. +Of such drama are <i>The Maides Tragedy</i> and <i>A King +and No King</i>. They are not antiquated. And I doubt +whether they are stronger meat than some of Shakespeare's +plays, all of which are more or less 'arranged' +before they are placed upon the modern stage. As +to strong meat, the difference between the Elizabethan +taste and the present Georgian is more a matter of +variety than of flavour. Our forefathers liked their +venison in gobbets, for three hours at a stretch, and +washed it down with a tun or two of sack. The theatre-going +public to-day likes its game just as high, but +it varies the meal with other dishes as highly seasoned,—and +washes it down with a foreign-labeled little bottle +of champagne. Our ancestors called a depraved +woman by a brief bad name, and put it into poetry. +We denominate her, if at all, by some euphemistic circumlocution, +in prose; but we none the less throng the +theatre to see Dalilah play, and we follow with apparent +gusto her sinuous enticements upon the stage. +We rejoice in problem-plays more erotic, and far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[415]</a></span> +more subtly perilous, than those which Shakespeare +and Beaumont beheld. We are of an age of uplift, +and meticulous reform. We would eliminate fornication +and adultery; but not from our plays. They +teem with—suggestion. There is nothing neurotic, +nothing insidious in <i>The Maides Tragedy</i> and <i>A King +and No King</i>. The grave of sin is wide open; and the +spade that digged it stands in plain view, and is called +a spade. On the whole I had rather have the Anglo-Saxon +bluntness and gleaming poetry of the Beaumont +than the whitewashed epigram and miching-mallecho +of the twentieth-century play I saw last night. There +is no reason why, properly cut and staged, Beaumont's +greatest plays should not yield delight to-day. And as +for the reader why should he not turn back to "the +inexhaustible treasures" of entertainment offered by +these plays. "They were," as says Mr. Paul Elmer +More, "they were to the Elizabethan age what the +novel is to ours, and I wonder how many readers three +centuries from now will go back to our fiction for +amusement as we to-day can go back to Beaumont and +Fletcher."</p> + +<p>I began this book by quoting from an historian of +the drama of marked repute: "In the Argo of the +Elizabethan drama—as it presents itself to the imagination +of our own latter days—Shakespeare's is +and must remain the commanding figure. Next to +him sit the twin literary heroes, Beaumont and +Fletcher—more or less vaguely supposed to be inseparable +from one another in their works." And +also from the last great poet of the Victorian age: +"If a distinction must be made between the Dioscuri<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[416]</a></span> +of English poetry, we must admit that Beaumont +was the twin of heavenlier birth. Only as Pollux +was on one side a demigod of diviner blood than +Castor can it be said that on any side Beaumont was +a poet of higher and purer genius than Fletcher; but +so much must be allowed by all who have eyes and +ears to discern in the fabric of their common work +a distinction without a difference." If I have succeeded +in showing that in the fabric of their common +work the distinction between Beaumont and +Fletcher is measured by a wide and clearly visible +difference, I shall be happy. Others, to whom I have +repeatedly expressed my indebtedness even when disagreeing +with particulars of their criticism, have +cleared the way. If in this book anything has been +added to their services that may help the world to +distinguish these two dramatists not only hand from +hand but mind from mind, and to see Beaumont plain, +as I see him in the long gallery of his contemporaries, +I shall be happier still; but most amply rewarded if, +for the future, it may be fittingly recognized not only +that Beaumont was the twin of heavenlier birth—the +Pollux, but why he was. Then, perhaps, the +world of sagacious readers may turn from talking +always of Beaumont-and-Fletcher, and protest occasionally +and with well-informed reason in the name +of Francis Beaumont alone.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_258_258" id="Footnote_258_258"></a><a href="#FNanchor_258_258"><span class="label">[258]</span></a> Mr. Paul Elmer More, <i>The Nation</i>, N. Y., Nov. 14, 1912, +April 24, 1913, May 1, 1913.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_259_259" id="Footnote_259_259"></a><a href="#FNanchor_259_259"><span class="label">[259]</span></a> Chapters XXII and XXV, above.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_260_260" id="Footnote_260_260"></a><a href="#FNanchor_260_260"><span class="label">[260]</span></a> They are well presented by Miss Hatcher in her <i>John +Fletcher</i>; and they are again discussed in my forthcoming third +volume of <i>Representative English Comedies</i>.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_261_261" id="Footnote_261_261"></a><a href="#FNanchor_261_261"><span class="label">[261]</span></a> See again Miss Hatcher's work, and G. C. Macaulay, <i>Francis +Beaumont, A Critical Study</i>, especially pp. 186-188; and my essay +on <i>The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare</i> (Part Two) in +the volume mentioned above.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[417]</a></span></p> + +<h3 class="tall">APPENDIX</h3> + +<p class="chaphead">GENEALOGICAL TABLES</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[418]</a></span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[419]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="table">TABLE A.</h3> + +<h4 class="table">PLANTAGENET, COMYN, BEAUMONT, AND VILLIERS.</h4> + +<table class="family" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="Family Tree A."> +<tr><td style="width: 5.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="11"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">The<br /> <span class="nowrap">Earls of Buchan</span></td> +<td colspan="7"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="7"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Henry III of England,<br /> b. 1207; d. 1272</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Agnes, heiress de Beaumont in Maine,<br /> m. Louis de Brienne</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Alexander Comyn</td> +<td colspan="7"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right_dot"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="7"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Henry,<br /> Earl of Lancaster</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Henry, 1 Baron de Beaumont,<br /> fl. 1309; d. 1341</td> +<td colspan="1" class="center">==</td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Alice Comyn</td> +<td colspan="7"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="3" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="11"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Alianor</td> +<td colspan="1" class="center">==</td> +<td colspan="6" class="center">John, 2 Baron de Beaumont, d. 1343</td> +<td colspan="11"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="5"> </td> +<td colspan="3" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="11"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="5"> </td> +<td colspan="6" class="center">Henry, 3 Baron de Beaumont, fl. 1363; d. 1370</td> +<td colspan="11"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="3" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="11"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Thomas, Ld. Bardolph</td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="6" class="center">John, 4 Baron de Beaumont, fl. 1384; d. 1397</td> +<td colspan="11"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="13"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="3" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="10"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Joan, m. Sir Wm. Philip</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Henry, 5 Baron de Beaumont, d. 1422</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="6" class="center">Sir Thomas Beaumont,<br /> m. (1427) Philippa Maureward of Coleorton</td> +<td colspan="10"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="10" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Elizabeth</td> +<td colspan="1" class="center">==</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">John, 6 Baron, and 1 Viscount Beaumont, d. 1460</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">John Beaumont, d. 1460</td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Sir John Villiers, d. 1506</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Son (Henry Beaumont, d. Towton, 1461?)</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2" class="center">William, 2 Visc. and Lord Bardolph, d. 1511, s. p.</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Joan, m. John, Lord Lovel</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Richard B., d. 1539</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">George B.</td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">William Villiers, d. 1558.</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Son (John, fl. 1485?)</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Francis, Viscount Lovel, d. 1487</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Joan, m. Sir Bryan Stapleton</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Nicholas Beaumont</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right center">William</td> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">John Beaumont of Grace-Dieu, fl. 1529-1554; m. <span class="lgtext">Elizabeth Hastings</span></td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right_dot"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right_dot"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Present Barons de Beaumont</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir Henry, d. 1607</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir Thomas, of Stoughton, d. 1614</td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right center">Anthony, of Glenfield</td> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Francis, d. 1598</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right_dot"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right_dot"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir Thomas, 1622, 1 Viscount Beaumont, of Swords</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Present Baronets of Coleorton Hall</td> +<td colspan="4" class="center"><span class="nowrap">Maria m. Sir Geo. Villiers</span></td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Henry</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">John</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center"><span class="lgtext">Francis Beaumont</span><br /> 1584-1616</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Elizabeth</td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="10"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="10"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="10"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center"><span class="lgtext">George, Duke of Buckingham</span><br /> 1592-1628</td> +<td colspan="10"> </td></tr> +</table> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[420]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="table">TABLE B</h3> + +<h4 class="table">NEVIL, HASTINGS, BEAUMONT, TALBOT</h4> + +<table class="family" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="Family Tree B."> +<tr><td style="width: 3.6%"> </td><td style="width: 3.6%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.6%"> </td><td style="width: 3.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.6%"> </td><td style="width: 3.6%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.5%"> </td><td style="width: 3.6%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.6%"> </td><td style="width: 3.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.6%"> </td><td style="width: 3.6%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.5%"> </td><td style="width: 3.6%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.6%"> </td><td style="width: 3.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.6%"> </td><td style="width: 3.6%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.5%"> </td><td style="width: 3.6%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.6%"> </td><td style="width: 3.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.6%"> </td><td style="width: 3.6%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.5%"> </td><td style="width: 3.6%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.6%"> </td><td style="width: 3.6%"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="6" class="center">Richard Nevil, Earl of Salisbury</td> +<td colspan="19"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="21"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="14"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Richard, Earl of Warwick</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center"><span class="lgtext">Catherine Nevil</span></td> +<td colspan="1" class="center">==</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Sir William, 1 Baron Hastings, executed 1483</td> +<td colspan="14"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="7" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="16"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="5" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="16"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Isabel,<br /> m. Geo. Duke of Clarence,<br /> bro. of Edw. IV</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Anne, m. Richard III</td> +<td colspan="5" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="16"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="7" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="3" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="9" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="5"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Margaret,<br /> Countess of Salisbury,<br /> m. Richard de la Pole</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Edward, 2 Baron Hastings<br /> d. 1507</td> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Sir William Hastings,<br /> fl. 1490</td> +<td colspan="5"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Anne m.<br /> <span class="lgtext">Geo. Talbot,</span> 4 Earl of Shrewsbury</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="5"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="5"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Henry de la Pole</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center"><span class="lgtext">George</span>, 1 Earl of Huntingdon,<br /> c. 1488-1544, m. Anne,<br /> dau. of Henry Stafford,<br /> 2 Duke of Buckingham</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Anne, m.<br /> Thos. Stanley,<br /> 2 Earl Derby</td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center"><span class="lgtext">Elizabeth Hastings</span>,<br /> m. c. 1540</td> +<td colspan="5"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Francis, 5 Earl of Shrewsbury</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center"><span class="lgtext">John Beaumont</span>,<br /> of Grace-Dieu,</td> +<td colspan="5"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Katherine Pole</td> +<td colspan="1" class="center">==</td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Francis, 2 Earl of Huntingdon<br /> 1514-1560</td> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">(Master of the Rolls,<br /> 1551, d. 1554)</td> +<td colspan="5"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">George, 6 Earl of Shrewsbury,<br /> d. 1590</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Henry, 3 Earl of Huntingdon<br /> 1539-1595</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">George, 4 Earl,<br /> d. 1604</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Walter, m. Joyce Roper<br /> (aunt of Mrs. Elizab. Vaux)</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Lady Mary Hastings</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Francis,<br /> c. 1541-1598,<br /> the Justice,<br /> m. <span class="lgtext">Anne Pierrepoint</span></td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Henry, d. s. p.</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Elizabeth,<br /> m. William,<br /> S Ld. Vaux of Harrowden</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Gilbert, 7 Earl of Shrewsbury,<br /> m. Mary Cavendish,<br /> sister-in-law of<br /> Anne Pierrepoint Beaumont</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Francis Hastings,<br /> d. 1595</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir Henry Hastings,<br /> m. Elizab. dau. of Thos.,<br /> 1 Visc. Beaumont of Swords</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir Henry,<br /> d. 1605</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir John,<br /> 1583-1627</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Henry Vaux,<br /> d. c. 1590</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Eleanor Brookesby<br /> (alias Mrs. Jennings)</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Anne Vaux<br /> (alias Mrs. Perkins)<br /> fl. 1605</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">George,</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">John,</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Mary,</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Althea</td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="14"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="14"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Henry, 5 Earl,<br /> 1586-1643, m. Elizab. dau. of Ferdinando Stanley,<br /> Earl of Derby</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Catherine,<br /> m. Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Edward,<br /> Captain under Sir Walter Raleigh,<br /> 1617</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir John,<br /> d. 1644</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Francis<br /> (a Jesuit)</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir Thomas</td> +<td colspan="14"> </td></tr> +</table> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[421]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="table">TABLE C.</h3> + +<h4 class="table">BEAUMONT. PIERREPOINT. CAVENDISH, TALBOT.</h4> + +<table class="family" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="Family Tree C."> +<tr><td style="width: 4.1%"> </td><td style="width: 4.2%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.1%"> </td><td style="width: 4.2%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.2%"> </td><td style="width: 4.2%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.1%"> </td><td style="width: 4.2%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.1%"> </td><td style="width: 4.2%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.2%"> </td><td style="width: 4.2%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.1%"> </td><td style="width: 4.2%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.1%"> </td><td style="width: 4.2%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.2%"> </td><td style="width: 4.2%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.1%"> </td><td style="width: 4.2%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.1%"> </td><td style="width: 4.2%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.2%"> </td><td style="width: 4.2%"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="7" class="center"><span class="nowrap">Sir William Cavendish, m. 1541, Elizabeth Hardwick</span></td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="6" class="center">Sir George Pierrepoint,<br /> d. 1564</td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="4">(afterwards wife of George Talbot, 6 Earl of Shrewsbury)</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="3" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="3" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="3"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center"><span class="lgtext">Anne Pierrepoint</span>,<br /> b. c. 1550; +widow of Thos. Thorold of Marston; m. (2) <span class="lgtext">Francis Beaumont</span>, +the Justice,<br /> d. 1598</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir Henry Pierrepoint,<br /> 1546-1615</td> +<td colspan="1" class="center">==</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center"><span class="lgtext">Frances Cavendish</span></td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Elizabeth, m. Charles Stuart, Earl of Lenox, bro. of Henry Darnley</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Henry, m. Grace Talbot, dau. of Geo. 6 Earl of Shrewsbury</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">William, 1 Earl of Devonshire,<br /> in 1611</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Charles, of Welbeck,<br /> d. 1617</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Mary, m. <span class="lgtext">Gilbert Talbot</span> 7 Earl of Shrewsbury<br /> (d. 1616)</td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Henry<br /> b. 1581</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">John<br /> b. 1583</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center"><span class="lgtext">Francis</span><br /> b. 1584</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Elizabeth<br /> b. 1588</td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Robert Pierrepoint,<br /> 1584-1643, +1 Earl of Kingston, m. Gertrude, g-dau. of Geo. Talbot, 6 Earl of Shrewsbury</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Lady <span class="lgtext">Arabella Stuart</span>, cousin of James I.</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">William,<br /> 1588-1679,<br /> +2 Earl of Devonshire; m. Christiana Bruce of Kinloss; Ancestor of the present +Dukes of Devonshire</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir Wm. Cavendish, 1592-1676. In 1665, 1 Duke of Newcastle</td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="8"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="8"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="8"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Henry Pierepoint,<br /> 1606-1680<br /> +2 Earl of Kingston, 1 Marq. Dorchester</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">William Pierrepoint<br /> 1607-1678</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Mary,<br /> m. Wm. Herbert, 3 Earl of Pembroke</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Althea, m. Thos. Howard, 2 Earl of Arundel</td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="14"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right_dot"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="14"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Robert, 3 Earl of Kingston; m. Elizab., dau. of Sir John Evelyn</td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Present Dks of Norfolk</td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="10"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="6"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="8"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="8"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">William, 4 Earl of Kingston</td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Evelyn, 5 Earl of Kingston, 1690<br /> +Marq. Dorchester; Duke of Kingston, 1715</td> +<td colspan="4"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="8"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="10"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="10"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Mary (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu) 1689-1762</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">William, Viscount Newark</td> +<td colspan="4"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="10"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="16"> </td> +<td colspan="6" class="center">Frances, m. Philip Meadows</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="16"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="16"> </td> +<td colspan="8" class="center">Charles, 1 Earl Manvers, of Holme-Pierrepoint</td></tr> +</table> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[422]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="table">TABLE D</h3> + +<h4 class="table">BEAUMONT, VAUX, TRESHAM, CATESBY</h4> + +<table class="family" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="Family Tree D."> +<tr><td style="width: 3.3%"> </td><td style="width: 3.3%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.4%"> </td><td style="width: 3.3%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.3%"> </td><td style="width: 3.4%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.3%"> </td><td style="width: 3.3%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.4%"> </td><td style="width: 3.3%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.3%"> </td><td style="width: 3.4%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.3%"> </td><td style="width: 3.3%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.4%"> </td><td style="width: 3.3%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.3%"> </td><td style="width: 3.4%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.3%"> </td><td style="width: 3.3%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.4%"> </td><td style="width: 3.3%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.3%"> </td><td style="width: 3.4%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.3%"> </td><td style="width: 3.3%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.4%"> </td><td style="width: 3.3%"> </td> +<td style="width: 3.3%"> </td><td style="width: 3.4%"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="10"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Nicholas,<br /> 1 Lord Vaux of Harrowden (1524)</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Sir Thomas Tresham,<br /> Grand Prior, Order of St. John,<br /> d. 1559</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Anthony Catesby</td> +<td colspan="8"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="6" class="center">John Beaumont, Grace-Dieu,<br /> m. Elizabeth Hastings</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Thomas, the poet,<br /> 2 Lord Vaux, b. 1511</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">John Tresham</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="center">==</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Eleanor</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Sir Robert<br /> Throckmorton</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Francis Beaumont,<br /> d. 1598</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center"><span class="lgtext">Elizabeth Beaumont</span></td> +<td colspan="1" class="center">==</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center"> <span class="lgtext">William,<br /> 3 Lord Vaux</span><br /> d. 1595</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">==</td> +<td colspan="4" class="center"><span class="lgtext">Mary Tresham</span></td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Sir Thomas Tresham<br /> d. 1605</td> +<td colspan="1" class="center">==</td> +<td colspan="1" class="center">dau.</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">dau. m. Sir Wm. Catesby</td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">John,<br /> 1583-1627</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center"><span class="lgtext">Francis</span>,<br /> 1584-1616</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Henry</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Eleanor,<br /> m. Edward Brookesby;<br /> fl. 1605</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center"><span class="lgtext">Anne Vaux</span><br /> (alias Mrs. Perkins),<br /> fl. 1605</td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Ambrose</td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">John, 1 Ld. Teynham</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center"><span class="lgtext">Frances Tresham</span>,<br /> the conspirator,<br /> d. 1605</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Elizabeth<br /> m. Ld. Monteagle, bro. of Mrs. Abington</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Frances,<br /> m. Ld. Stourton</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center"><span class="lgtext">Robert Catesby</span>,<br /> the conspirator,<br /> d. 1605</td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="12"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="10"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="12"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="10"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="12"> </td> +<td colspan="6" class="center"><span class="nowrap pad3r">George Vaux,</span><br /> +<span class="nowrap"> d. 1594, m. <span class="lgtext">Elizabeth Roper</span></span><br /> +the Mrs. (Elizabeth) Vaux of the Gunpowder Plot.</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Joyce,<br /> m. Walter Hastings</td> +<td colspan="10"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="10"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="10"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="10"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="10"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="10"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Edward,<br /> 4 Ld. Vaux<br /> c. 1591-1661</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Katherine,<br /> m. Henry Nevill, 1 Ld. Abergavenny</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Mary,<br /> ancestress of the present Lord Vaux</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir Henry Hastings, m. Elizabeth Beaumont of Coleorton</td> +<td colspan="10"> </td></tr> +</table> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[423]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="table">TABLE E</h3> +<h4 class="table">FLETCHER, BAKER, SACKVILLE</h4> + +<table class="family" border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="Family Tree E."> +<tr><td style="width: 5.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td> +<td style="width: 4.5%"> </td><td style="width: 4.5%"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Richard Fletcher,<br /> Vicar of Cranbrooke,<br /> fl. 1555-1574</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">John Giffard,<br /> of Weston-under-Edge</td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir John Baker,<br /> of Sissinghurst,<br /> c. 1490-1558</td> +<td colspan="6"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Dr. Giles,<br /> the diplomat;<br /> c. 1549-1611</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="4" class="center">Richard,<br /> <span class="nowrap">Bp. of London, m.</span><br /> +<span class="nowrap">d. 1596; m. (1)</span><br /> Elizabeth Holland</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">== (2) <span class="lgtext">Maria</span>,<br /> widow of ==</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir <span class="lgtext">Richard Baker</span>,<br /> d. 1594</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center"><span class="lgtext">Cicely</span>,<br /> m. +<span class="lgtext">Richard Sackville</span>,<br /> Ld. Buckhurst,<br /> +1 Earl of Dorset;<br /> (1536-1608)</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Mary, m. John Tufton, of Hothfield, who d. 1567</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Phineas,<br /> 1582-1650</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Giles,<br /> c. 1588-1623</td> +<td colspan="4" class="center"><span class="lgtext">John Fletcher</span>,<br /> the dramatist,<br /> 1579-1625</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">no children</td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Robert Sackville,<br /> 2 Earl of Dorset,<br /> d. 1609</td> +<td colspan="4"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir John Tufton, Bart.,<br /> d. 1624</td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Grisogone<br /> m. c. 1595,<br /> Sir Henry<br /> Lennard<br /> (in 1611, +12 Lord Dacre,<br /> of Chevening<br /> and Knole)</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Sir Richard<br /> Baker</td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Cicely<br /> Blunt</td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Anne Tufton,<br /> m. <span class="lgtext">Francis +Tresham</span>,<br /> who d. 1605</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Nicholas,<br /> 1 Earl of Thanet,<br /> in 1629</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="6"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_bottom"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="10"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1" class="bor_right"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="6"> </td></tr> +<tr> +<td colspan="10"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center"> Richard,<br /> 3 Earl of Dorset,<br /> c. 1599-1624</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="2" class="center">Edward,<br /> 4 Earl of Dorset,<br /> d. 1652</td> +<td colspan="1"> </td> +<td colspan="6"> </td></tr> +</table> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[424]</a></span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[425]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="tall">INDEX</h3> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[426]</a></span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[427]</a></span></p> +<h3 class="tall">INDEX</h3> + +<p>(<i>The page-numbers refer to the foot-notes as well as to the +main body of the text.</i>)</p> + + + +<ul class="IX"><li>Abington, Mrs., the actress, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li> + +<li>Abington (Habington), Mrs., sister of Lord Monteagle, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> + +<li><i>Abuses Stript and Whipt</i>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> + +<li>actors, lists preceding plays, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> + +<li><i>Ad Comitissam Rutlundiae</i>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> + +<li>Addison, Joseph, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + +<li>Aeschylus, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> + +<li>afterthought-parentheses, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li><i>Alchemist, The</i>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li>Alden, R. M., editions of <i>The Knight</i> and <i>A King and No King</i>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li>alliteration, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li><i>All's Well that Ends Well</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a></li> + +<li><i>Amadis de Gaule</i>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li><i>Amends for Ladies</i>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li> + +<li><i>Anatomy of Melancholy, The</i>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li>Anton, Robert, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li> + +<li><i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a></li> + +<li><i>Apocrypha, The</i>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li>apothegms, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li> + +<li><i>Arcadia</i>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> + +<li>Ariosto, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> + +<li>Aristophanes, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> + +<li>Aronstein, P., <a href="#Page_407">407</a></li> + +<li>Ascham, Roger, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> + +<li>Ashby-de-la-Zouch, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Aston, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> + +<li><i>Astrée</i>, D'Urfé, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-<a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li> + +<li>'Astrophel,' 166</li> + +<li><i>As You Like It</i>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li>Aubrey, John, <i>Brief Lives</i>, ed., A. Clark, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Bacon, Sir Francis, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125f.</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Bacon, Sir Nicholas, and Anthony, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li> + +<li>Baker, Sir John of Sissinghurst, Kent, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65ff.</a>; + <ul class="IX"><li>Cicely, Countess of Dorset, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</li> + <li>Cicely, Lady Blunt, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;<span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[428]</a></span></li> + <li>Grisogone, Lady Dacre, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Baker family, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> + +<li>Baker, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li>Baker, Richard, the historian, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + +<li>Bancroft, Bishop, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> + +<li>Bancroft, Thomas, <i>Two Bookes of Epigrammes and Epitaphs, 1639</i>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li> + +<li>Bandello, Thomas, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li>Banke-Side, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>-<a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> + +<li>Barkstead, William, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> + +<li><i>Barrons Wars, the</i>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> + +<li>Basse, William, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> + +<li><i>Battle of Bosworth Field, The</i>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, (<a href="#Page_22">22</a>)</li> + +<li>Baudouin, <i>Le Curieux Impertinent</i>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> + +<li>Beau Manor, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> "Beaumanoir," <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Beaumont and Fletcher, portraits of, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>-<a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>-<a href="#Page_219">219</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> collaboration of (in general), <a href="#Page_3">3</a>-<a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>-<a href="#Page_416">416</a>;</li> + <li> the problem, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>-<a href="#Page_233">233</a>;</li> + <li> critical apparatus, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a href="#Page_235">235</a>;</li> + <li> folios, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>-<a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>-<a href="#Page_239">239</a>;</li> + <li> quartos, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>-<a href="#Page_241">241</a>, and under individual plays;</li> + <li> editions, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>;</li> + <li> delimitation of the field, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>-<a href="#Page_242">242</a>;</li> + <li> versification, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>-<a href="#Page_260">260</a>;</li> + <li> diction of Fletcher, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>-<a href="#Page_277">277</a>, of Beaumont, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>-<a href="#Page_290">290</a>;</li> + <li> mental habit of Fletcher, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>-<a href="#Page_280">280</a>, of Beaumont, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>-<a href="#Page_290">290</a>;</li> + <li> authorship of <i>Foure Playes</i>, <i>Love's Cure</i>, <i>The Captaine</i>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>-<a href="#Page_306">306</a>; + <ul class="IX"><li> of the <i>Woman-Hater</i>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>;</li> + <li> of <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;</li> + <li> of <i>The Coxcombe</i>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>;</li> + <li> of <i>Philaster</i>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>;</li> + <li> of <i>The Maides Tragedy</i>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>;</li> + <li> of <i>Cupid's Revenge</i>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>;</li> + <li> of <i>A King and No King</i>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>;</li> + <li> of the <i>Scornful Ladie</i>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>;</li></ul></li> + <li> influence upon Shakespeare (?) <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, upon the drama, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>;</li> + <li> Beaumont and Fletcher compared, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>-<a href="#Page_411">411</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Anthony, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Barons and Viscounts de, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>-<a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont's diction, <a href="#Page_281">281ff.</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Elizabeth, Lady Vaux, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Elizabeth, sister of the dramatist, Mrs. Seyliard, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Elizabeth, daughter of the dramatist, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Frances, posthumous daughter of the dramatist, <a href="#Page_187">187ff.</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Francis, the dramatist: +<ul class="IX"><li> his family, early years in Grace-Dieu, Oxford, <a href="#Page_10">10ff.</a>;</li> + <li> at the Inns of Court, earliest poems, etc., <a href="#Page_29">29ff.</a>;</li> + <li> the Vaux cousins and the Gunpowder Plot, <a href="#Page_46">46ff.</a>;</li> + <li> some early plays of, <a href="#Page_72">72ff.</a>;</li> + <li> period of partnership with Fletcher, <a href="#Page_95">95ff.</a>;</li> + <li> relations with Shakespeare, Jonson, and others in the theatrical world, <a href="#Page_114">114ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145ff.</a>;</li> + <li> <i>The Masque of the Inner Temple</i>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>-<a href="#Page_144">144</a>;<span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[429]</a></span></li> + <li> the Pastoralists, and other contemporaries at the Inns of Court, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>-<a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</li> + <li> an intersecting circle of jovial sort, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>-<a href="#Page_149">149</a>;</li> + <li> the Countess of Rutland (Elizabeth Sidney), <a href="#Page_150">150ff.</a>;</li> + <li> his marriage, death, surviving family, <a href="#Page_172">172ff.</a>;</li> + <li> personality and contemporary reputation, portraits, <a href="#Page_190">190ff.</a>;</li> + <li> versification, <a href="#Page_246">246ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281ff.</a>;</li> + <li> stock words, phrases, and figures, <a href="#Page_282">282ff.</a>;</li> + <li> lines of Inevitable Poetry, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;</li> + <li> his mental habit, <a href="#Page_291">291ff.</a>;</li> + <li> his dramatic art, adaptation, etc., <a href="#Page_378">378ff.</a>;</li> + <li> Did the Beaumont "romance" influence Shakespeare? <a href="#Page_386">386ff.</a>;</li> + <li> not a leader in decadence, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>-<a href="#Page_401">401</a>;</li> + <li> Beaumont compared with Fletcher, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>-<a href="#Page_411">411</a>;</li> + <li> and with other dramatists, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>-<a href="#Page_415">415</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Francis, his <i>Poems</i>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>-<a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Francis, the Justice, father of the dramatist, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>-<a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Sir Henry, brother of the dramatist, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Sir Henry, of Coleorton, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Sir John, brother of the dramatist, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>-<a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>-<a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>-<a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>-<a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont, John, Master of the Rolls, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>-<a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>-<a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Maria, Lady Villiers, Countess of Buckingham, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>-<a href="#Page_163">163</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> + +<li>Beaumont's versification, <a href="#Page_246">246ff.</a></li> + +<li>Beeston's Players, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> + +<li><i>Beggers Bush, The</i>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li> + +<li>Bell, H. N., <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li> + +<li><i>Bellman of London, The</i>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li> + +<li>Belvoir Castle, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li> + +<li>Berkenhead, John, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> + +<li>Betterton, Thomas, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li><i>Biographia Dramatica, The</i>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li>Birch, <i>Mem. of Q. Elizabeth</i>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li> + +<li>Blackfriars Theatre, the, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li>Blackwell's <i>Treatise on Equivocation</i>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + +<li>Blaiklock, Lawrence, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> + +<li>Blue Boar Inn, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> + +<li>Boas, F. S., ed. of <i>Philaster</i>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li>Boccaccio, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li>Bolton, Edmund, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> + +<li>Bond, R. Warwick, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> ed. of <i>The Scornful Ladie</i>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li></ul></li> + +<li><i>Bonduca</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_410">410</a></li> + +<li>Bosworth, battle of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, (<a href="#Page_184">184</a>)</li> + +<li><i>bouleversements</i>, <a href="#Page_364">364</a><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[430]</a></span></li> + +<li>Boyle, R., <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li>Bread-street, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li>Brett, Cyril, <i>Drayton's Minor Poems</i>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> + +<li><i>Bridal, The</i>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li><i>Britain's Ida</i>, Phineas Fletcher, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> + +<li><i>Britannia's Pastorals</i>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>-<a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> + +<li>Broadgates, <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li> + +<li>Brome, Richard, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li> + +<li>Brooke, Christopher, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>-<a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li>Brookesby, Bartholomew, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> Edward, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Browne, William, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>-<a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> + +<li>Browning, Robert, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></li> + +<li>Brydges, Egerton, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li>Buc, Sir George, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li> + +<li>Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>-<a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li> + +<li>Bullen, A. H., art. <i>John Fletcher</i> (D. N. B); gen. editor, <i>Variorum Beaumont and Fletcher</i>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Burbadge, Cuthbert, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li>Burbadge, Richard, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li>Burre, Walter, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li>Burton, William, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li><i>Bury-Fair</i>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li> + +<li><i>Bussy D'Ambois</i>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a></li> + +<li>Butler, James, Duke of Ormonde, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">cadences, conversational and lyrical, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> + +<li>caesurae, <a href="#Page_244">244ff.</a></li> + +<li><i>Cambridge English Classics</i>, edition of <i>Beaumont and Fletcher</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>-<a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Camden, William, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> + +<li><i>Camden Miscellany, The</i>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li>Campion, Father, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> + +<li><i>Capricious Lady, The</i>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li> + +<li><i>Captaine, The</i>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a></li> + +<li><i>Cardenio</i> or <i>Cardenna</i>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li> + +<li>Carey, Giles, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li> + +<li>Carleton, Mistris, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> + +<li>Carr (Ker) Robert, Earl of Somerset, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li>Cartwright, William, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></li> + +<li>Casaubon, Isaac, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> + +<li>Catesby, Robert, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>-<a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> + +<li>Catholics, and the "Catholic Cousins" of Beaumont, <a href="#Page_46">46ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li><i>Catiline</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a></li> + +<li>Cavendish, Henry, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li>Cavendishes, the, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> + +<li>Cavendish, Sir William, first Duke of Newcastle, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> + +<li><i>Centurie of Praise</i>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> + +<li>Cervantes, see <i>Don Quixote</i></li> + +<li>Challoner, <i>Missionary Priests</i>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li> + +<li>Chalmers, A., <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li>Chamberlain, John, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155f.</a></li> + +<li>Chancery, Inns of, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <i>et passim</i>; +<ul class="IX"><li> and see <i>Inns of Court</i><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[431]</a></span></li></ul></li> + +<li><i>Chances, The</i>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a></li> + +<li>Chapel Players, the, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li> + +<li>Chapman, George, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></li> + +<li>Charles I, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Charles II, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li><i>Charles, Duke of Byron, The Tragedie of</i>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li> + +<li>Charles, Prince of Wales, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li>Charnwood Forest, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> + +<li>Chaucer, Geoffrey, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li> + +<li><i>Chaucer</i>, Speght's, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> + +<li>Cheapside, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Child, H. H., <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li> + +<li><i>"chorizontes," the</i>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li> + +<li><i>Christ's Victorie</i>, Giles Fletcher, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> + +<li>Cicely Tufton, see Rutland</li> + +<li>Cinthio, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li>Clarendon, Lord, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> + +<li>Clark, Andrew, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> + +<li>Cleves wars, the, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>-<a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li>Clifford, Anne, Countess of Dorset, of Pembroke and Montgomery, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> + +<li>Clifford's Inn, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> + +<li>Clifton, Sir Gervase, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> + +<li>Clifton, Lady Penelope, <a href="#Page_165">165f.</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li>Cockayne, Sir Aston, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li> + +<li>Coke, Sir Edward, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> + +<li>Coleorton, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Coleridge, S. T., <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_397">397</a></li> + +<li>Collier, J. P., <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li>Collins, <i>Peerage of England</i>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li><i>Comedy of Errors, A</i>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a></li> + +<li><i>Commendatory Verses</i>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li><i>Concerning the True Forms of English Poetry</i>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li>Condell, Henry, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_402">402</a></li> + +<li>Congreve, William, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + +<li><i>Convivium Philosophicum</i>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>-<a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li>Conyoke or Connock, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li>Cook, Alexander, <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li> + +<li>Cooke, W., <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li> + +<li>Coke, Sir Edward, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> + +<li>Corbet, Bishop, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> + +<li><i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a></li> + +<li><i>Coronation, The</i>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li>Coryate, Tom, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li>Cotton, Charles, the elder, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>-<a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>-<a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> + +<li>couplet, 'heroic,' <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li> + +<li>Cowley, Abraham, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li><i>Coxcombe, The</i>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>-<a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>-<a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a></li> + +<li>Cranefield, Arthur, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li>Critics of Beaumont and Fletcher, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></li> + +<li>Croke, Sir John, Charles, and Unton, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li>Cromwell, Oliver, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> + +<li><i>Crowne of Thornes, The</i>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li>Cunliffe, J. W., <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[432]</a></span></li> + +<li><i>Cupid's Revenge</i>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>-<a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a></li> + +<li><i>Curious Impertinent, The</i>, <i>El Curioso Impertinente</i>, <i>Le Curieux Impertinent</i>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> + +<li><i>Custome of the Countrey, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li><i>Cymbeline</i>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>-<a href="#Page_395">395</a></li> + +<li><i>Cynthia's Revels</i>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> + +<li><i>Cyropædeia</i>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Daborne, Robert, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a></li> + +<li><i>Damon and Pythias</i>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li> + +<li>Daniel, Joseph, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li>Daniel, P. A., <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li>Daniel, Samuel, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> + +<li>Darley, G., <i>Works of Beaumont and Fletcher</i>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li>D'Avenant, William, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li> + +<li>Davies, John, of Hereford, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li>Day, John, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> + +<li>Dekker, John, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></li> + +<li>Denham, Sir John, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li><i>Description of Elizium</i>, Drayton, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> + +<li>Devereux, Lady Penelope, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> + +<li>diction, <a href="#Page_260">260ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275f.</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281ff.</a>, and see Beaumont and Fletcher</li> + +<li>Diego Sarmiento, Don, Count Gondomar, <a href="#Page_371">371ff.</a></li> + +<li>Digby, Sir Everard, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> + +<li><i>Discourse of the English Stage</i>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a></li> + +<li>disputed plays, <a href="#Page_300">300ff.</a></li> + +<li><i>Distrest Mother, The</i>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li><i>Divine Poems</i>, Drayton, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> + +<li>Dolce, Ludovico, <i>Giocasta</i>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li> + +<li>Don Diego, see Sarmiento de Acuña</li> + +<li>Donne, John, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> + +<li><i>Don Quixote</i>, relation to <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>, esp. <a href="#Page_321">321</a>-<a href="#Page_331">331</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> also <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332f.</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>'Doridon,' <a href="#Page_140">140ff.</a></li> + +<li>Douay, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li>Douthwaite, W. R., <i>Gray's Inn, etc.</i>, <a href="#Page_30">30ff.</a></li> + +<li><i>Double Marriage, The</i>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li>Drake, Sir Francis, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a></li> + +<li><i>Dramatic Miscellany</i>, Davies, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li>Drayton, Michael, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> + +<li>Drummond, William, of Hawthornden, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> + +<li>Dryden, John, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_365">365</a></li> + +<li><i>Duchess of Malfi, The</i>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a></li> + +<li>Dugdale, G., <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> + +<li>Duke, H. E., <i>Gray's Inn</i>, <a href="#Page_34">34ff.</a></li> + +<li><i>Duke of Milan, The</i>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li>Duke of York, The, (Prince Charles's) Players, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li> + +<li>D'Urfé, Marquis, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>-<a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[433]</a></span></li> + +<li><i>Dutch Courtezan, The</i>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a></li> + +<li>Dyce, Alexander, <i>Works of Beaumont and Fletcher</i>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + + +<li class="sect">Earle, John, Bishop, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a></li> + +<li><i>Eastward Hoe</i>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li> + +<li>Editions, also Folios and Quartos, see Beaumont and Fletcher</li> + +<li>Edwardes, Richard, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li> + +<li>Edwards, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + +<li><i>Eglogs</i>, a revision of <i>Idea, the Shepheard's Garland</i>, Drayton, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li>Ekesildena, Catherine, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li><i>Elder Brother, The</i>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> + +<li><i>Elegies</i>, Brooke, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li><i>(Certayn) Elegies—with Satyres and Epigrames</i>, Fitzgeffrey, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li><i>Elegy on the Death of the Virtuous Lady Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland</i>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> + +<li><i>Elements of Armories</i>, Bolton, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> + +<li>Elizabeth Beaumont Seyliard, see Beaumont, Elizabeth</li> + +<li>Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland, see Sidney, Elizabeth</li> + +<li>Elizabeth, Princess, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li>Elizabeth, Queen, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li>Elton, Oliver, <i>Michael Drayton</i>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> + +<li><i>Endimion and Phoebe</i>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li> + +<li>end-stopped lines, <a href="#Page_243">243ff.</a></li> + +<li><i>English Palmerin</i>, see <i>Palmerin</i></li> + +<li><i>Epicoene</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a></li> + +<li><i>Epigrams</i>, Jonson, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li><i>Epistle Dedicatorie</i>, Shelton, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li><i>Epistle to Henery Reynolds</i>, Drayton, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li> + +<li><i>Epithalamium</i>, Wither, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> + +<li><i>Equivocation</i>, Blackwell's treatise, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> + +<li><i>Essay of Dramatick Poesie</i>, Dryden, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li><i>Ethelwolf, oder der König Kein König</i>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a></li> + +<li>Euripides, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> + +<li>Evans, Henry, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li>Evelyn, John, letter to Pepys, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li> + +<li><i>Every Man in his Humour</i>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a></li> + +<li><i>Every Man out of his Humour</i>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li><i>Examination of his Mistris' Perfections</i>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>-<a href="#Page_174">174</a></li> + +<li>extra syllables, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> + + +<li class="sect"><i>Faire Maide of the Inne, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li> + +<li><i>Faithful Friends, The</i>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li> + +<li><i>Faithfull Shepheardesse, The</i>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>-<a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> + +<li><i>False One, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li><i>(Of The) Famous Voyage</i>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li>Farquhar, George, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + +<li>Fauchet, <i>Thierry</i>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> + +<li>Fawkes, Guy, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> + +<li>feet, trisyllabic, <a href="#Page_243">243</a><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[434]</a></span></li> + +<li><i>Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare, The</i>, Gayley, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <i>et passim</i>; +<ul class="IX"><li> see Gayley</li></ul></li> + +<li>Fenner, Sir John, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> + +<li>Ferrar, William, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li><i>Fidele and Fortunio</i>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li>Field, Nathaniel, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a></li> + +<li><i>Fifty Comedies and Tragedies</i>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li> + +<li>Fitzgeffrey, Henry, <i>Elegies, Satires, and Epigrams</i>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li>Fleay, F. G., <i>Hist. Stage, Chron. Engl. Drama, etc.</i>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a> <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Flecknoe, Richard, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_397">397</a></li> + +<li>Fletcher, John, ("I. F.") 40, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> his family, his youth, <a href="#Page_62">62ff.</a>;</li> + <li> some early plays of, <a href="#Page_82">82ff.</a>;</li> + <li> period of partnership with Beaumont, <a href="#Page_95">95ff.</a>;</li> + <li> relations with Shakespeare, Jonson, etc., <a href="#Page_114">114ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145ff.</a>;</li> + <li> later years, portraits, <a href="#Page_211">211ff.</a>;</li> + <li> his versification, <a href="#Page_243">243ff.</a>;</li> + <li> his diction, <a href="#Page_260">260ff.</a>;</li> + <li> stock words, phrases, and figures, <a href="#Page_270">270ff.</a>;</li> + <li> his mental habit, <a href="#Page_277">277ff.</a>;</li> + <li> the Fletcher of the joint-plays, <a href="#Page_383">383ff.</a>;</li> + <li> his dramatic art, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>-<a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>-<a href="#Page_411">411</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Fletcher, criteria, <a href="#Page_243">243ff.</a>; <a href="#Page_260">260ff.</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> see Beaumont and Fletcher, diction, verse, Ye-test, etc.</li></ul></li> + +<li>Fletcher, Richard, Bishop, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_68">68</a></li> + +<li>Fletcher, Dr. Giles, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> Giles, the younger, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Fletcher, Phineas, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> + +<li>'Fletcherian Syndicate, the,' <a href="#Page_379">379</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a></li> + +<li><i>Flowers, The</i>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> + +<li>Folio, First, Beaumont and Fletcher's <i>Comedies and Tragedies</i>, 1647, (35 Plays), <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li>Folio, Second, <i>Fifty Comedies and Tragedies</i>, 1679 (53 Plays), <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li>Ford, John, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></li> + +<li><i>Forrest, The</i>, Jonson, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> + +<li>Fortescue, George, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li><i>Foure Playes, or Morall Representations, in One</i>, (see also <i>Triumphs</i>), <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>-<a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a></li> + +<li><i>Foure Prentises, The</i>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> + +<li>Frederick, the Elector Palatine, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li> + +<li>Fuller, Thomas, <i>Worthies</i>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Gardiner, Robert, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li> + +<li>Gardiner, S. R. <i>Hist. Engl.</i>, and <i>Prince Charles</i>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372ff.</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Gardiner, Thomas, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li>Garnet, Father Henry, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>-<a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>-<a href="#Page_59">59</a></li> + +<li>Garrick, David, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li>Gascoigne, George, <i>Supposes</i>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li> + +<li>Gayley, C. M., <i>The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare</i>, Part Two, in <i>Rep. Eng. Com.</i>, Vol. III, now in +press, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>, <i>et passim</i><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[435]</a></span></li> + +<li><i>Gentleman Usher, The</i>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a></li> + +<li>Gerard, Father John, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> + +<li><i>Ghost of Richard III</i>, Brooke, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li>Giffard, Maria, Lady Baker, Mrs. Fletcher, Lady Thornhurst, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>-<a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + +<li>Gilbert, Adrian, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> + +<li><i>Giocasta</i>, Ludovico Dolce, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li> + +<li><i>Gismond of Salerne</i>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li> + +<li>Globe Theatre, the, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li> + +<li>Glover, A, and Waller, A. R., editors of <i>Camb. Engl. Class., Beaumont and Fletcher</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>-<a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li><i>Golden Remains, The</i>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> + +<li>Goodere, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> Francis, Anne, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Goodwin, Gordon, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> + +<li><i>Gorboduc</i>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + +<li>Grace-Dieu, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Gray's Inn, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130f.</a></li> + +<li>Greene, Robert, <i>Menaphon and Pandosto</i>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li><i>Greenstreet Papers, The</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> + +<li>Greg, W. W., <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> + +<li>Grey Friars, at Leicester, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> + +<li>Grey, Lady Jane, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li>Grosart, A. B., art. in <i>D. N. B., Sir John Beaumont's Poems</i>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Gunpowder Plot, the, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li> + +<li>Gurlin, Nat., <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li>Guskar, H., <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li> + +<li>Gwynn, Nell, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Hakluyt, Richard, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> + +<li>Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O., <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li><i>hamartia</i>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a></li> + +<li><i>Hamlet</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a></li> + +<li>Harcourt, the Rt. Hon. Lewis, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li> + +<li>Harleian MS. of Fletcher, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> + +<li>Harington, Sir John, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li> + +<li>Harris, John, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> + +<li>Hasted, <i>Hist. Kent</i>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Hastings, Edward, second Lord, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> Elizabeth (grandmother of the dramatist), <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;</li> + <li> Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;</li> + <li> Lady Mary, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;</li> + <li> William, first Lord, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li> + <li> Sir William, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Hastings, Earls of Huntingdon: George, first Earl, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> Francis, second Earl, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>-<a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li> + <li> Henry, third Earl, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</li> + <li> George, fourth Earl, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li> + <li> Henry, fifth Earl, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Hatcher, O. L., <i>John Fletcher, A Study in Dramatic Method</i>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_408">408</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a>, <i>et passim</i>; +<ul class="IX"><li> in <i>Anglia</i>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Hawkins, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li> + +<li>Hele, Lewis, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> + +<li>Heming, John, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li>Hemings, John, see Heming</li> + +<li><i>Henry IV</i>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[436]</a></span></li> + +<li><i>Henry VIII</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li>Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> + +<li>Herbert, William, third Earl of Pembroke, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> + +<li>Herford, C. H., <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> + +<li>Herodotus, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> + +<li><i>Heroical Adventures of the Knight of the Sea</i>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li> + +<li>Herrick, Robert, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li>Herring, Joan, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li> + +<li><i>Hesperides</i>, Herrick, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> + +<li>Heyward, Edward, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> + +<li>Heywood, Thomas, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></li> + +<li><i>Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells, The</i>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> + +<li>Hill, H. W., <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> + +<li>Hill, Nicholas, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li>Hills, G., <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li> + +<li><i>Histoire de Celidée, Thamyre, et Calidon</i>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + +<li>Historical Portraits (Oxford), <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234ff.</a></li> + +<li><i>Histriomastix</i>, <a href="#Page_397">397</a></li> + +<li><i>History of Cardenio</i>, by Fletcher and Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li> + +<li>Hodgets, John, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li> + +<li>Holinshed, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li>Holland, Aaron, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li>Holland, Elizabeth, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li> + +<li>Holland, Hugh, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li>Holme-Pierrepoint, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> + +<li><i>(Upon an) Honest Man's Fortune</i>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li> + +<li>Hoskins, John, his <i>Convivium Philosophicum</i>, <a href="#Page_146">146ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li>Howard, Henry, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li>Howard of Walden, Lord, <a href="#Page_321">321</a></li> + +<li>Howe, Josias, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> + +<li>Hughes, Thomas, <i>Misfortunes of Arthur</i>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li> + +<li><i>Humorous Lieutenant, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>-<a href="#Page_403">403</a></li> + +<li>Huntingdon, see Hastings</li> + +<li>hyperbole, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li> + +<li><i>Hypercritica</i>, Bolton, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> + + +<li class="sect"><i>Idea, the Shepheard's Garland, Eglogs</i>, Drayton, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> + +<li><i>If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody</i>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li> + +<li><i>Ile of Guls</i>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> + +<li>Imogen, Innogen, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li>Inderwick, F. A., <i>Calendar of Inner Temple Records</i>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li><i>In Laudem Authoris</i>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li> + +<li>Inner Temple, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> + +<li><i>Inner Temple Records</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>-<a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Inns of Court and Chancery, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li><i>Insatiate Countess, The</i>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a></li> + +<li><i>Island Princesse, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> + +<li>Isley, Ursula, wife of the dramatist, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>-<a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li>Isleys, the, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>-<a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li>iteration, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">James I, Progress of 1603, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li>joint-plays, <a href="#Page_252">252ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400ff.</a>, etc.</li> + +<li>Jones, Inigo, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[437]</a></span></li> + +<li>Jonson, Ben, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></li> + +<li>Jovius, Paulus, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li> + +<li>Juby, Edward, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> + +<li><i>Julius Caesar</i>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Ker (Carr) Robert, Earl of Somerset, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li>Keysar, Robert, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_320">320</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li> + +<li>Kinwelmersh, Francis, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li> + +<li>King, Edward, Milton's 'Lycidas,' <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li> + +<li><i>King and No King, A</i>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>-<a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>-<a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>-<a href="#Page_396">396</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>, <a href="#Page_415">415</a></li> + +<li><i>King Lear</i>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li> + +<li>King's Players, the, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a></li> + +<li>King's Bench, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li>Kirkham, Edward, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li><i>Knight of Malta, The</i>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li> + +<li><i>Knight of the Burning Pestle, The</i>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>-<a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>-<a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a></li> + +<li><i>Knight of the Burning Sword, The</i>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> + +<li><i>Knight of the Sunne and His Brother Rosicleer, The</i>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li>Knole Park, Kent, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Knowles, Sheridan, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li>Koeppel, E., <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> + +<li>Kyd, Thomas, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Lady Elizabeth's Players, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> + +<li>Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_397">397</a></li> + +<li>Langbaine, G., <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> + +<li>Lansdowne MS., <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> + +<li><i>Lawes of Candy, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li> + +<li>Leland, John, <i>Itinerary</i>, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Lennard, Sir Henry, twelfth Lord Dacre, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> + +<li>Leonhardt, B., <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> + +<li><i>Letter to Ben Jonson</i>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>-<a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li> + +<li>Lincoln's Inn, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124f.</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> + +<li>Lisle, Sir George, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li><i>Little French Lawyer, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li>Lodge, Thomas, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li><i>Love Lies a-Bleeding</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, etc., see <i>Philaster</i></li> + +<li>Lovell, John, Lord, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a></li> + +<li><i>Lovers Progresse, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li><i>Loves Cure</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li> + +<li><i>Love's Labour's Lost</i>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></li> + +<li><i>Loves Pilgrimage</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li> + +<li>Lowin, John, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_402">402</a><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[438]</a></span></li> + +<li><i>Loyall Subject, The</i>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_410">410</a></li> + +<li>Luce, Morton, <a href="#Page_393">393</a></li> + +<li>Lyly, John, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Macaulay, G. C., <i>Francis Beaumont, a Critical Study</i>; <i>Beaumont and Fletcher</i> in <i>Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit.</i> <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>, <a href="#Page_409">409</a></li> + +<li><i>Macbeth</i>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li>Macready, W. C., <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li><i>Mad Lover, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> + +<li><i>Maide in the Mill, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li><i>Maides Tragedy, The</i>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>-<a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>-<a href="#Page_395">395</a>, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a>, <a href="#Page_414">414</a>, <a href="#Page_415">415</a></li> + +<li><i>Malcontent, The</i>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a></li> + +<li>Malone, Edmund, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + +<li>Manners, Lady Katharine (Villiers), Duchess of Buckingham, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li> + +<li>Manners, Roger, see Rutland</li> + +<li>Manningham, John, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li> + +<li>Manverses, the, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>-<a href="#Page_18">18</a></li> + +<li>Manwood, Thomas, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li> + +<li><i>Mari coccu, battu et content, Le</i>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li> + +<li>Markham, Lady, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> + +<li>Marlowe, Christopher, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_362">362</a></li> + +<li>Marston, John, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></li> + +<li>Martin, Richard, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li>Mary, Queen of Scots, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li><i>Masque of the Inner Temple, The</i>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>-<a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a></li> + +<li><i>Masque of Flowers</i>, see <i>Flowers</i></li> + +<li><i>Masque of Ulysses and Circe, The</i>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li> + +<li>Massinger, Philip, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_379">379</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> authorities upon his style, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Mayne, Jasper, <a href="#Page_361">361</a></li> + +<li>McKerrow, R. B., <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> + +<li><i>Measure for Measure</i>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a></li> + +<li><i>Menaechmus</i>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li> + +<li><i>Menaphon</i>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> + +<li>Merchant Taylors' School, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li> + +<li>Mermaid Tavern, the, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li><i>Merry Wives, The</i>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + +<li><i>Metamorphosis of Tobacco</i>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li> + +<li><i>Microcosmographie</i>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> + +<li>Middle Temple, the, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124f.</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li>Middleton, Thomas, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></li> + +<li><i>Midsummer-Night's Dream, A</i>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li>Milner, J. D., <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li> + +<li><i>Mirror for Magistrates, The</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li> + +<li><i>Mirror of Knighthood, The</i>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li>'Mirtilla', <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[439]</a></span></li> + +<li><i>Miseries of Enforced Marriage, The</i>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> + +<li><i>Misfortunes of Arthur, The</i>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li> + +<li>Mitre Inn, The, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> + +<li><i>Monsieur Thomas</i>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>-<a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a></li> + +<li>Montaigne, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></li> + +<li>Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + +<li>Monteagle, Lord, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> + +<li>Montemayor, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li>Moore, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> + +<li>More, Paul Elmer, <a href="#Page_272">272f.</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355f.</a>, <a href="#Page_397">397ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_415">415</a></li> + +<li>Morris, John, <i>Life of Father Gerard</i>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>-<a href="#Page_59">59</a> <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Mosely, Humphrey, <i>The Stationer to the Readers</i>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> + +<li><i>Morte d'Arthur</i>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li>Mountjoy, Christopher, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> + +<li><i>Moyses in a Map of his Miracles</i>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> + +<li><i>Mucedorus</i>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li> + +<li><i>Much Ado About Nothing</i>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li>Mulcaster, Richard, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li>Munday, Anthony, <a href="#Page_327">327</a></li> + +<li>Murch, H. S., ed. of <i>The Knight</i>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li> + +<li>Murray, J. T., <i>Eng. Dram. Comp.</i>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a></li> + +<li><i>Muses Elizium</i>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> + + +<li class="sect"><i>Narrative</i> of Father Gerard, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li> + +<li>Nashe, Thomas, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li> + +<li>Nevill, Sir Henry, the elder, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>-<a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> the younger, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li></ul></li> + +<li><i>Nice Valour, The</i>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li> + +<li>Nichols, J., <i>Collections</i>, <i>Hist. Leicestershire</i>, <i>Progresses of Queen Elizabeth</i>, <i>Progresses of James I</i>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li><i>Nimphalls</i>, Drayton, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> + +<li><i>Night Walker, The</i>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li><i>Noble Gentleman, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li> + +<li>Northumbrian MS. of <i>Bacon</i>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li> + +<li>Norton, Thomas, <i>Gorboduc</i>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">oaths, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li><i>Oath of Allegiance, The</i>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li> + +<li><i>Obstinate Lady, The</i>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li> + +<li><i>Ode to Sir William Skipworth</i>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> + +<li>Oldfield, Mrs., <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li> + +<li><i>Old Wives Tale, The</i>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li>Oliphant, E. H., <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li><i>On the Tombs in Westminster</i>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> + +<li>optatives, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li> + +<li><i>Orlando Furioso</i>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li> + +<li>Ostler (Osteler, Ostler, Osler), Wm., <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li><i>Othello</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> + +<li>Overbury, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li>Ovid, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> + + +<li class="sect"><i>Palamon and Arcite</i>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[440]</a></span></li> + +<li>'Palmeo', <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li><i>Palmerin de Oliva, Palmerin of England</i>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li><i>Pandosto</i>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li><i>Parisitaster</i>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li> + +<li>Pastoralists, the, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>-<a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> + +<li><i>Pastorals</i>, Ambrose Philips, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li>Paul's Players, the, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li>Peele, George, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a></li> + +<li>Pepys, Samuel, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>, <a href="#Page_366">366</a></li> + +<li>Percy, Thomas, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>-<a href="#Page_52">52</a></li> + +<li><i>Pericles</i>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a>, <a href="#Page_394">394</a></li> + +<li>Persons, Father, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a></li> + +<li>Pettus, Sir John, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> + +<li><i>Philaster</i>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>-<a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>-<a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>-<a href="#Page_396">396</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a>, <i>et passim</i>.</li> + +<li>Philip III of Spain, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_372">372</a></li> + +<li>Philips, Sir Ambrose, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li>Phillipps de Lisles, the present, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li> + +<li>Phillipps, J. O. Halliwell, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li>Phillips, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li><i>Philosophia Epicurea Democritiana</i>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li>Pierce, Edward, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li> + +<li>Pierrepoint, Anne, mother of the dramatist, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>-<a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + +<li>Pierrepoint, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li> + +<li>Pierrepoint, Robert, first Earl of Kingston, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li><i>Pilgrim, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li> + +<li>Plautus, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> + +<li><i>Plutus</i>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> + +<li><i>Poems, The</i>, of Beaumont, see Beaumont, Francis, <i>The Poems</i></li> + +<li><i>Poems Lyrick and Pastoral</i>, Drayton, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li> + +<li><i>Poetaster, The</i>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a></li> + +<li>Poets' Corner, <a href="#Page_182">182ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li>Pole, Katherine, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li> + +<li>Portraits of Beaumont, Nuneham, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> Robinson's engraving of 1840, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li> + <li> Knole, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li> + <li> G. Vertue, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li> + <li> Evans, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li> + <li> Walker and Cockerell, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Portraits of Fletcher, Knole: Blood, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> G. Vertue, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li> + <li> Evans, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li> + <li> Robinson, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;</li> + <li> Walker, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</li> + <li> Earl of Clarendon's, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</li> + <li> Janssen, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>'Prince of Misrule', <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> + +<li>'Prince of Portpoole', <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> + +<li>Prince's Players, the, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> + +<li><i>Praise of Hemp-seed, The</i>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li> + +<li>Princess Elizabeth's Players, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li> + +<li><i>Prophetesse, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li>prose-test, the, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li>Prynne, William, <a href="#Page_397">397</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a></li> + +<li><i>Purple Island, The</i>, Phineas Fletcher, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Queen Anne's Players, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li><i>Queene of Corinth, The</i>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[441]</a></span></li> + +<li>Queen Henrietta's Players, <a href="#Page_314">314</a></li> + +<li>Queen's Revels' Children, the, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>-<a href="#Page_337">337</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>-<a href="#Page_370">370</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Raleigh, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li>Randolph, Thomas, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> + +<li>Red Bull Theatre, the, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li> + +<li>'Remond' and 'Doridon,' query, Fletcher and Beaumont, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>-<a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> + +<li><i>Revesby Sword-Play</i>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></li> + +<li>Reynolds, Henry, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li> + +<li>Reynolds, John, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li> + +<li>rhyme, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> + +<li>'<i>Ricardo and Viola</i>,' <a href="#Page_338">338</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a></li> + +<li>Richard III, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li> + +<li>Rigg, J. M., <a href="#Page_13">13ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li> + +<li><i>Rollo</i>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + +<li>'romance,' <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_394">394</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li><i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a></li> + +<li><i>Rosalynde</i>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> + +<li>Rosenbach, A. S. W., <a href="#Page_333">333</a></li> + +<li>Rossiter, Philip, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a></li> + +<li>Routh, H. V., <a href="#Page_328">328</a></li> + +<li>Rowley, William, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></li> + +<li><i>Royall King and Loyall Subject</i>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a></li> + +<li><i>Rule a Wife and Have a Wife</i>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a></li> + +<li>run-on lines, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261ff.</a></li> + +<li>Rutland, Roger Manners, fifth Earl, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_155">155</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> Francis, sixth Earl, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;</li> + <li> Elizabeth, Countess of, see Sidney, Elizabeth;</li> + <li> Cicely (Tufton), Countess of, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Rymer, Thomas, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>, <a href="#Page_397">397</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Sackville, Edward, fourth Earl of Dorset, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> + +<li>Sackville, Lionel, seventh Earl of Dorset, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li> + +<li>Sackville, Richard, third Earl of Dorset, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> + +<li>Sackville, Thomas, first Earl of Dorset, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>-<a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> + +<li><i>Salmacis and Hermaphroditus</i>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> + +<li>Sampson, M. W., <a href="#Page_386">386</a></li> + +<li>Sannazarro, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li>Sarmiento de Acuña, Don Diego, Count Gondomar, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>-<a href="#Page_373">373</a></li> + +<li>Schelling, F. E., <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li> + +<li>Schevill, Rudolph, <a href="#Page_322">322f.</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a></li> + +<li><i>Scornful Ladie, The</i>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>-<a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>-<a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a></li> + +<li><i>Scourge of Folly, The</i>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li> + +<li><i>Sea Voyage, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li> + +<li>'<i>Second Maiden's Tragedy</i>,' <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li> + +<li><i>Sejanus</i>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a></li> + +<li>Selden, John, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> + +<li>Semphill, Sir James, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>-<a href="#Page_60">60</a></li> + +<li>Seneca, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li> + +<li><i>Session of the Poets, The</i>, Suckling, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[442]</a></span></li> + +<li>Seyliard, Mrs., see Elizabeth Beaumont</li> + +<li>Seyliard, Thomas, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>; +<ul class="IX"><li> see also Beaumont, Elizabeth</li></ul></li> + +<li>Shadwell, Thomas, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li> + +<li>Shakespeare, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411ff.</a></li> + +<li>Shakespeare, and Beaumont, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>-<a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> + +<li>Shakespeare, and his company of players, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-<a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>-<a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li> + +<li>Shakespeare, Was he influenced by Beaumont and Fletcher? <a href="#Page_386">386</a>-<a href="#Page_395">395</a></li> + +<li>Shaw, <i>Knights of England</i>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Shelton, Thomas, transl. of <i>Don Quixote</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>-<a href="#Page_331">331</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a></li> + +<li><i>Shepheard's Calendar</i>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li> + +<li><i>Shepherdesse, The</i>, John Beaumont, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li> + +<li><i>Shepherd's Hunting, The</i>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> + +<li><i>Shepherd's Pipe, The</i>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li> + +<li>Shirley, James, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li> + +<li><i>Sicelides</i>, Phineas Fletcher, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li> + +<li>Sidney, Elizabeth Manners, Countess of Rutland, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>-<a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>-<a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a></li> + +<li>Sidney, Sir Philip, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a></li> + +<li>Sidney, Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> + +<li><i>Silent Woman, The</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>, see <i>Epicoene</i></li> + +<li>Skipwith, Sir William, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li> + +<li><i>Spanish Curate, The</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li> + +<li>Slye, Christopher, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li> + +<li>Smith, L. T., <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> + +<li>Southampton, see Wriothesley</li> + +<li>Spedding, James, <a href="#Page_36">36</a></li> + +<li>Speght's <i>Chaucer</i>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> + +<li>Spenser, Edmund, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> + +<li>Stanhope, Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> + +<li>Stanley, Thomas, second Earl of Derby, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li> + +<li>Stanley, Thomas, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li>Stapleton, Miles Thomas, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li> + +<li><i>State Papers Domestic, Calendar of</i>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li><i>Stationers' Registers</i>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li><i>Stationer to the Readers, The</i>, Mosely, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> + +<li>'Stella', <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> + +<li>Stephens, John, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> + +<li>Stiefel, A. L., <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> + +<li>Stourton, Lord, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li> + +<li>Stratford upon Avon, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> + +<li>Stuart, Lady Arabella, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> + +<li>Suckling, Sir John, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> + +<li>Sullivan, Mary, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> + +<li>Sundridge, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>-<a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <i>et passim</i><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[443]</a></span></li> + +<li><i>Supposes, The</i>, Ariosto—George Gascoigne, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li> + +<li>suspense, <a href="#Page_389">389</a></li> + +<li>Symonds, J. A., <a href="#Page_386">386</a></li> + +<li>Swinburne, Algernon, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_397">397</a></li> + +<li>Sympson and Seward, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Talbots, the, Earls of Shrewsbury, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></li> + +<li><i>Tamer Tamed, The</i>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <i>et passim</i>, <i>The Woman's Prize</i></li> + +<li><i>Taming of the Shrew, The</i>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li> + +<li>Tasso, <i>Aminta</i>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li> + +<li>Taylor, John, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> + +<li>Taylor, Joseph, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>, <a href="#Page_335">335ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_402">402</a></li> + +<li><i>Tempest, The</i>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a></li> + +<li>Tennyson, Alfred, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> + +<li>Theobald, Lewis, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a></li> + +<li><i>Thersites</i>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li><i>Thierry and Theodoret</i>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a></li> + +<li>Thorndike, A. H., <i>Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare</i>, editions of <i>Maides Tragedy</i> and <i>Philaster</i>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_380">380</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386f.</a></li> + +<li>Thornhurst, Sir Stephen, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li> + +<li>'Thyrsis,' <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li> + +<li><i>Time Poets, The</i>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> + +<li><i>Timon</i>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a></li> + +<li><i>'Tis a Pity, She's a Whore</i>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></li> + +<li><i>Titles of Honour</i>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> + +<li><i>Tombs in Westminster, On the</i>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> + +<li><i>To the Apparition of his Mistresse calling him to Elizium</i>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li> + +<li><i>To the Honour'd Countess of ——</i>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> + +<li><i>To the Memory of my beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and what he hath left us</i>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> + +<li>Tourneur, Cyril, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li> + +<li>Townshend, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> + +<li><i>Tragedies of the Last Age, The</i>, <a href="#Page_354">354</a></li> + +<li><i>Tragedy of Bonduca, The</i>, see <i>Bonduca</i></li> + +<li><i>Travails of Three English Brothers, The</i>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_331">331</a></li> + +<li>Tresham, Francis, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li> + +<li>Tresham, Mary, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> + +<li>Tresham, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> + +<li>triplet, the, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li><i>Triumph of Death, The</i>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>-<a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a></li> + +<li><i>Triumph of Honour, The</i>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>-<a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_389">389</a></li> + +<li><i>Triumph of Love, The</i>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>-<a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_388">388</a></li> + +<li><i>Triumph of Time, The</i>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>-<a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> + +<li><i>True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, The</i>, <a href="#Page_326">326</a></li> + +<li><i>(On the) True Forms of English Poetry</i>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li><i>Twelfth Night</i>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a></li> + +<li><i>Two Gentlemen of Verona, The</i>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[444]</a></span></li> + +<li><i>Two Noble Kinsmen, The</i>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Underwood, John, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a></li> + +<li>Upham, A. H., <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li> + +<li><i>Upon an Honest Man's Fortune</i>, see <i>Honest Man's Fortune</i></li> + +<li><i>Upon the Lines and Life of Shakespeare</i>, Hugh Holland, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li> + + +<li class="sect"><i>(Tragedy of) Valentinian, The</i>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>, <a href="#Page_410">410</a></li> + +<li>Vanbrugh, Sir John, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + +<li><i>Variorum Edition of Beaumont and Fletcher</i>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>, <a href="#Page_413">413</a>, <i>et passim</i></li> + +<li>Vaux, Anne, <i>alias</i> Mrs. Perkins, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>-<a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <i>passim</i>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li> + +<li>Vaux, Eleanor, <i>alias</i> Mrs. Jennings, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li> + +<li>Vaux, Mrs., Elizabeth Roper, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>-<a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li> + +<li>Vauxes, the, cousins of the dramatist, and the Gunpowder Plot, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>-<a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164f.</a></li> + +<li>verse-endings, double, triple, etc., <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> + +<li>verse-tests, <a href="#Page_243">243ff.</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246ff.</a></li> + +<li>versification of Fletcher and of Beaumont, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>-<a href="#Page_259">259</a></li> + +<li><i>Very Woman, A</i>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li> + +<li>Villiers, Christopher, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li> + +<li>Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>-<a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li> + +<li>Villiers, John, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>-<a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li> + +<li><i>Volpone</i>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a></li> + +<li>von Wurzbach, Wolfgang, <a href="#Page_334">334</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Walker, Henry, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li> + +<li>Walkley, Thomas, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> + +<li>Wallace, C. W., <i>Shakspere's Money Interest in the Globe</i>, etc., <i>Century Maga.</i>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li> + +<li>Waller, A. R., and Glover, A., editors of <i>Camb. Eng. Class., Beaumont and Fletcher</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <i>et passim</i>; +<ul class="IX"><li> Waller, ed. of <i>The Scornful Ladie</i>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a></li></ul></li> + +<li>Waller, Edmund, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a></li> + +<li>Walpole, Henry, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li> + +<li>Ward, Sir Adolphus William, <i>Hist. Eng. Dram. Lit.</i>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>, <a href="#Page_397">397</a></li> + +<li>Warwick, Richard, Earl of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li> + +<li>Webster, John, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_396">396</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a>, <a href="#Page_411">411</a></li> + +<li>Wenman, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li>Wenman, Thomas, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> + +<li>West, John, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li> + +<li><i>White Devil, The</i>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_399">399</a></li> + +<li>Whitefriars Theatre, the, <a href="#Page_96">96f.</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102f.</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>, <a href="#Page_369">369</a></li> + +<li>Whitehall, <a href="#Page_125">125f.</a></li> + +<li>White Webbs, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li> + +<li><i>Wife for a Month, A</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>-<a href="#Page_406">406</a>, <a href="#Page_410">410</a></li> + +<li><i>Wild-Goose Chase, The</i>, <i>Dedication</i>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> + +<li>Wilkins, George, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li> + +<li>Wills, James, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li> + +<li>Wilson, Arthur, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> + +<li>Winter, Henry and Thomas, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>-<a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><span class="pagenumidx"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[445]</a></span></li> + +<li><i>Winter's Tale, The</i>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_391">391</a>, <a href="#Page_393">393</a></li> + +<li><i>Wit at Severall Weapons</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a></li> + +<li>Wither, George, <a href="#Page_134">134f.</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> + +<li><i>Wit Without Money</i>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> + +<li><i>Woman-Hater, The</i>, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>-<a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>-<a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>, <a href="#Page_407">407</a>, <a href="#Page_412">412</a></li> + +<li><i>Woman is a Weather-Cocke</i>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>-<a href="#Page_305">305</a></li> + +<li><i>Woman's Prize, The</i>, or <i>The Tamer Tamed</i>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> + +<li><i>(To Any) Woman that hath been no Weather-cocke</i>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a></li> + +<li><i>Women Pleas'd</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li> + +<li>Wood, Anthony, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li> + +<li>Wordsworth, W., <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li> + +<li>Wright, Christopher and John, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>-<a href="#Page_52">52</a></li> + +<li>Wright, Thomas, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li> + +<li>Wriothesley, Henry, third Earl of Southampton, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li> + +<li>Wyatt, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Xenophon's <i>Cyropædeia</i>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Ye-test, the 271-<a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_371">371</a>, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>-<a href="#Page_375">375</a></li> + +<li><i>Yorkshire Tragedy, The</i>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li> + +<li><i>Your Five Gallants</i>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li> + + +<li class="sect">Zola, <a href="#Page_404">404</a></li> +</ul> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="tr"> +<h3>Transcriber's Note:</h3> + +<p>Minor punctuation and capitalization inconsistencies have been +corrected without comment and include adding missing opening or +closing quotes, closing parenthesis, and sentence closing periods.</p> + +<p>Images falling within an unbroken paragraph have been relocated to +either the top or bottom of said paragraph.</p> + +<p>Word spelling, hyphenation, abbreviation, capitalization, +apostrophization, diacritical accents and other variations or +inconsistencies occur throughout the authors text, footnotes, index, +noted verse(s) and quoted materials. All have been retained as printed +unless specifically noted. Examples are provided below.</p> + + +<p>Typographical corrections:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>p. 17, "Holme-Pierpoint" to "Holme-Pierrepoint" (5) Holme-Pierrepoint is seventeen)</li> +<li>p. 23, "Huntington" to "Huntingdon" (20) (Francis of Huntingdon)</li> +<li>p. 62, "clerygyman" to "clergyman" (had been a clergyman)</li> +<li>p. 68, "worldy" to "worldly" (Bishop's worldly estate)</li> +<li>p. 118, "Aven" to "Avon" (2) (Stratford upon Avon)</li> +<li>p. 164, "Beaument" to "Beaumont" (674) (John Beaumont never recalls)</li> +<li>p. 345, "Gentleman" to "Gentlemen" (The Two Gentlemen of Verona)</li> +<li>p. 445, "320" to "302" ("Woman is a Weather-Cocke," 87, 302-305)</li> +<li>p. 444, "Kinsman" to "Kinsmen" (Two Noble Kinsmen, The)</li> +<li>p. 445, "Cycropædeia" to "Cyropædeia" (Xenophon's Cyropædeia)</li></ul> +</div> + + +<p>Possible typographical errors retained in text; falling within quoted +material:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>p. 64, "lived in her highnes," (highness)</li> +<li>p. 81, "it was no ofspring" (offspring)</li> +<li>p. 108, "Drammatick and Scenical King" (Dramatick)</li> +<li>p. 122, "... excellent Maister Beamont" (Beaumont)</li> +<li>p. 194, "... Francis Beamont" (Beaumont)</li> +<li>p. 231, "Flesher and Beaumont" (Fletcher)</li> +<li>p. 231, "The Faithfull Shipheardesse" (Shepheardesse)</li> +<li>p. 375, "Abigal," (Abigail)</li> +<li>p. 430, "Cavendishes" (Cavendishs') (in Index)</li></ul> +</div> + + +<p>Several instances of "Middle English Spellings" used are:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>"Maiesties" (Middle English) and "Majesties," and</li> +<li>"Doe, se, yt, yn, y'll" and "do, see, it, in, I'll"</li></ul> +</div> + + +<p>Play Title Variations, each of which appears several times:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>"Aeschylus" and "Æschylus"</li> +<li>"Amadis de Gaule" and "Amadis de Gaul"</li> +<li>"Beggars' Bush" and "Beggars Bush"</li> +<li>"... Curious coxcombe" and "... Curious cox-combe"</li> +<li>"Duchess of Malfi" and "Duchess of Malfy"</li> +<li>"Julius Ceasar" and "Julius Cæsar"</li> +<li>"Maid's Tragedy", "Maids Tragedy", "Maides Tragedy"</li> +<li>"Maske of the Gentleman of Grayes Inne" and "Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne".</li> +<li>"Morall Representations" and "Moralle Representations"</li> +<li>"Parisitaster" and "Parasitaster"</li> +<li>"Essay of Dramatick Poesie" and "Essay on Dramatick Poesy"</li> +<li>"The Scornful Lady" and "The Scornful Ladie"</li> +<li>"The Shepheardesse" and "The Shepheardess"</li> +<li>"The Coxcomb" and "The Coxcombe"</li> +<li>"Weather-cocke" and "Weather-Cocke"</li> +<li>"Women Pleas'd" and "Women Pleased"</li></ul> +</div> + + +<p>Other word variations:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<ul class="IX"> +<li>"Zouch" and "Zouche" (Ashby-de-la-----)</li> +<li>"Bedchamber" and "Bed-chamber"</li> +<li>"birthright" and "birth-right"</li> +<li>"Cal, S. P.," "Cal. St. Pa., Dom.," "Calendar of State Papers (Domestic)" (see Footnotes)</li> +<li>"Condel" and "Condell" (Henry ----)</li> +<li>"countryside" and "country-side"</li> +<li>"D'Urfey" and D'Urfé (Marquis ----)</li> +<li>"Hoskyns" and "Hoskins" (Serjeant ----)</li> +<li>"milkmaid" and "milk-maid" (both occur on p. 27)</li> +<li>"northwest" and "north-west"</li> +<li>"Pierepoint" and "Pierrepoint"</li> +<li>"Sannazzaro" and "Sannazarro"</li> +<li>"Shepherdesse" and "Shepheardesse"</li> +<li>"Sempill" and "Semphill" (Sir James ----)</li> +<li>"southeast" and "south-east"</li> +<li>"White-hall" and "Whitehall"</li></ul> +</div> +</div> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> + +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCIS BEAUMONT: DRAMATIST***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 34214-h.txt or 34214-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/4/2/1/34214">http://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/2/1/34214</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution.</p> + + + +<pre> +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license">http://www.gutenberg.org/license)</a>. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS,' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's +eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII, +compressed (zipped), HTML and others. + +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over +the old filename and etext number. The replaced older file is renamed. +VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving +new filenames and etext numbers. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">http://www.gutenberg.org</a> + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000, +are filed in directories based on their release date. If you want to +download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular +search system you may utilize the following addresses and just +download by the etext year. + +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/</a> + + (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99, + 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90) + +EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are +filed in a different way. The year of a release date is no longer part +of the directory path. The path is based on the etext number (which is +identical to the filename). The path to the file is made up of single +digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename. For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a> + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** +</pre> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/34214-h/images/image01.jpg b/34214-h/images/image01.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..63ca554 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image01.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image02.jpg b/34214-h/images/image02.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..840095e --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image02.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image03a.jpg b/34214-h/images/image03a.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..51046c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image03a.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image03b.jpg b/34214-h/images/image03b.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..222ad65 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image03b.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image04.jpg b/34214-h/images/image04.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..9ef4131 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image04.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image05.jpg b/34214-h/images/image05.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c9bd388 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image05.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image06.jpg b/34214-h/images/image06.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8546688 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image06.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image07.jpg b/34214-h/images/image07.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..bfe0e89 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image07.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image08.jpg b/34214-h/images/image08.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b532cb6 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image08.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image09.jpg b/34214-h/images/image09.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..ec0648a --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image09.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image10.jpg b/34214-h/images/image10.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e13c84 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image10.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image11.jpg b/34214-h/images/image11.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..60082a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image11.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image12.jpg b/34214-h/images/image12.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..13d02ab --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image12.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image13.jpg b/34214-h/images/image13.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6a0bf7f --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image13.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image14.jpg b/34214-h/images/image14.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a161675 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image14.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/image15.jpg b/34214-h/images/image15.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2d73cf9 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/image15.jpg diff --git a/34214-h/images/publogo.jpg b/34214-h/images/publogo.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e925329 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214-h/images/publogo.jpg |
