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diff --git a/34214.txt b/34214.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fb75dc0 --- /dev/null +++ b/34214.txt @@ -0,0 +1,14185 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Francis Beaumont: Dramatist, by Charles Mills +Gayley + + +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 + + + + + +Title: Francis Beaumont: Dramatist + With Some Account of His Circle, Elizabethan and Jacobean, and of His Association with John Fletcher + + +Author: Charles Mills Gayley + + + +Release Date: November 5, 2010 [eBook #34214] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCIS BEAUMONT: DRAMATIST*** + + +E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Christine Aldridge, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 34214-h.htm or 34214-h.zip: + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34214/34214-h/34214-h.htm) + or + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34214/34214-h.zip) + + +Transcriber's note: + + Text in italics is surrounded by _underscores_. + + Text in large bold font is surrounded by =equals=. + + Superscripted characters are shown as {^x} with "x" + representing the superscripted letter. + + A broken bar character "|" has been used in place of + the feminine caesura, which resembles a vertical + ellipsis "...". + + [+!] is used for the stress syllable symbol, which + resembles an upside-down subscripted capitol V. + + Footnotes have been moved collectively to the chapter + ends. Anchors and footnotes have been renumbered + sequentially. + + Detailed notes about spelling variations, and other + transcriber notes are located at the end of this e-text. + + + + + +[Illustration: By permission of the Right Hon. Lord Sackville, G. C. M. G. + +PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS BEAUMONT +From the original painting at Knole Park] + + + +FRANCIS BEAUMONT: DRAMATIST + +A Portrait + +With Some Account of His Circle, Elizabethan and Jacobean, and of +His Association with John Fletcher + +by + +CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY, LITT.D., LL.D. +_Professor of the English Language and Literature +in the University of California_ + + +[Illustration: DESORMAIS] + + + + + + + +London +Duckworth & Co. +3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden +1914 + +Copyright, 1914, by +The Century Co. + +Published, February, 1914 + + + + +TO MY WIFE + + + + +PREFACE + + +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. + +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. + +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. + + CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY. + + Berkeley, California, + December 15, 1913. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART ONE + +BEAUMONT'S LIFE, HIS ACQUAINTANCES, AND HIS CAREER AS POET AND DRAMATIST + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I THE CASTOR AND POLLUX OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 3 + + II BEAUMONT'S FAMILY; HIS EARLY YEARS: GRACE-DIEU, + OXFORD 10 + + III AT THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY; THE + POEMS ASSIGNED TO THESE EARLIER YEARS 29 + + IV THE VAUX COUSINS AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOT 46 + + V FLETCHER'S FAMILY, AND HIS YOUTH 62 + + VI SOME EARLY PLAYS OF BEAUMONT AND OF FLETCHER 72 + + VII THE "BANKE-SIDE" AND THE PERIOD OF THE + PARTNERSHIP 95 + + VIII RELATIONS WITH SHAKESPEARE, JONSON, AND + OTHERS IN THE THEATRICAL WORLD 114 + + IX THE "MASQUE OF THE INNER TEMPLE": THE + PASTORALISTS, AND OTHER CONTEMPORARIES + AT THE INNS OF COURT 124 + + X AN INTERSECTING CIRCLE OF JOVIAL SORT 145 + + XI BEAUMONT AND SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S DAUGHTER; + RELATIONS WITH OTHER PERSONS OF NOTE 150 + + XII BEAUMONT'S MARRIAGE AND DEATH; THE SURVIVING + FAMILY 172 + + XIII THE PERSONALITY, AND THE CONTEMPORARY + REPUTATION OF BEAUMONT 190 + + XIV TRADITION, AND TRADITIONAL CRITICISM 206 + + XV A FEW WORDS OF FLETCHER'S LATER YEARS 211 + + +PART TWO + +THE COLLABORATION OF BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER + + CHAPTER PAGE + + XVI STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM; CRITICAL APPARATUS 225 + + XVII THE DELIMITATION OF THE FIELD 236 + + XVIII THE VERSIFICATION OF FLETCHER AND OF + BEAUMONT 243 + + XIX FLETCHER'S DICTION 260 + + XX FLETCHER'S MENTAL HABIT 277 + + XXI BEAUMONT'S DICTION 281 + + XXII BEAUMONT'S MENTAL HABIT 291 + + XXIII THE AUTHORSHIP OF THREE DISPUTED PLAYS 300 + + XXIV "THE WOMAN-HATER," AND "THE KNIGHT" 307 + + XXV THE FIVE CENTRAL PLAYS 332 + + XXVI THE LAST PLAY 368 + + XXVII THE DRAMATIC ART, PRINCIPALLY OF BEAUMONT 378 + + XXVIII DID THE BEAUMONT "ROMANCE" INFLUENCE + SHAKESPEARE? 386 + + XXIX CONCLUSION 396 + + + APPENDIX + + Table A 419 + + " B 420 + + " C 421 + + " D 422 + + " E 423 + + INDEX 425 + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + Portrait of Francis Beaumont _Frontispiece_ + + FACING + PAGE + The Ruins of Grace-Dieu Nunnery 22 + + Ruins of Grace-Dieu 26 + + A Priory, Ulveston, Extant in 1730 26 + + Thomas Sackville, First Earl of Dorset 66 + + The Temple 96 + + The Globe Theatre, with St. Paul's in the Background 104 + + Ben Jonson 120 + + Francis Bacon 146 + + George Villiers, First Duke of Buckingham, and Family 160 + + John Selden 170 + + The Beaumont of the Nuneham Portrait 192 + + Michael Drayton 202 + + John Fletcher 226 + + John Earle, Bishop of Worcester and Salisbury 244 + + Don Diego Sarmiento, Count Gondomar 372 + + + + +BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST + +PART ONE + +BEAUMONT'S LIFE, HIS ACQUAINTANCES, AND HIS CAREER AS POET AND +DRAMATIST. + + + + +BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE CASTOR AND POLLUX OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA + + +"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 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. + +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 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 _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, 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 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, _Philaster_ and _The +Maid's Tragedy_, it should be clear to the most sluggish or cursory of +readers that he has not to do with the author of _Valentinian_ +[Fletcher] and _The Double Marriage_ [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." + +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 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, _The Woman-Hater_, and ascribes to him the +predominance in, and the better portions of _Philaster_ and _The Maid's +Tragedy_, and the high interest and graduated action of the serious part +of _A King and No King_, and also justly associates him with Fletcher in +the composition of _The Scornful Lady_, and gives him alone "the +admirable study of the worthy citizen and his wife who introduced to the +stage and escort with their applause _The Knight of the Burning +Pestle_," 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 interest of _The Coxcombe_, and of +_Cupid's Revenge_ the note of Beaumont's manner, he couples with the +former _The Honest Man's Fortune_ in which it is more than doubtful +whether Beaumont had any share. To speak of Arbaces in _A King and No +King_ 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 +_Triumph of Love_ is perhaps defensible; but, with grave reluctance, we +now question the attribution. He is justified in withdrawing "the noble +tragedy of _Thierry and Theodoret_" from the field of Beaumont's +cooperation 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 _Valentinian_. 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 _par excellence_,--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 him, foundered, sods from a dozen turf-stacks which he +never helped to build. + +But the _chorizontes_--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. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +BEAUMONT'S FAMILY; HIS EARLY YEARS: GRACE-DIEU, OXFORD + + +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 from Beau Manor.[1]... 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."[2] 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. + +The barony ran from father to son for six generations of alternating +Henries and Johns, _c._ 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.[3] In a quaint tetrastich in the church of Barton-upon-Humber, +the memory of these alliances is thus preserved: + + Rex Hierosolymus cum Bellomonte locatur, + Bellus mons etiam cum Baghan consociatur, + Bellus mons iterum Longicastro religatur, + Bellus mons ... Oxonie titulatur.[4] + +The sixth Baron became, in 1440, the first Viscount of English creation; +he married a granddaughter of the Lord Bardolph of Shakespeare's _2 +Henry IV_; 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. + +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 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 L20 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."[5] 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 manoeuvre 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.[6] This prudent, strenuous, and high-born lady, Elizabeth +Hastings, 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."[7] 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. + +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 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,"[8] 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. + +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; 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.[9] His career on the +bench was both successful and honourable; and he is described by a +contemporary, William Burton, the author of the _Description of +Leicestershire_, 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.[10] 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 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.[11] Holme-Pierrepoint is +seventeen miles northeast 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. + +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, "_or thereaboutes_"; but of Francis as +"of thirteen yeares _or more_." + +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 L1500, 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.[12] 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. + +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 to Loughborough. It +lies low in a valley, near the river Soar. In his _Two Bookes of +Epigrammes and Epitaphs_, 1639, Thomas Bancroft gives us a picture of +the spot: + + Grace-Dieu, that under Charnwood stand'st alone, + As a grand relicke of religion, + I reverence thine old, but fruitfull, worth, + That lately brought such noble Beaumonts forth, + Whose brave heroicke Muses might aspire + To match the anthems of the heavenly quire: + The mountaines crown'd with rockey fortresses, + And sheltering woods, secure thy happiness + That highly favour'd art (tho' lowly placed) + Of Heaven, and with free Nature's bounty graced. + +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:-- + + Beneath yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound, + Rugged and high, of Charnwood's forest ground + Stand yet, but, Stranger! hidden from thy view, + The ivied Ruins of forlorn Grace-Dieu,-- + Erst a religious house, which day and night + With hymns resounded, and the chanted rite: + And when those rites had ceased, the Spot gave birth + To honourable Men of various worth: + There, on the margin of a streamlet wild, + Did Francis Beaumont sport, an eager child: + There, under shadow of the neighboring rocks, + Sang youthful tales of shepherds and their flocks; + Unconscious prelude to heroic themes, + Heart-breaking tears, and melancholy dreams + Of slighted love, and scorn, and jealous rage, + With which his genius shook the buskined stage. + Communities are lost, and Empires die, + And things of holy use unhallowed lie; + They perish;--but the Intellect can raise, + From airy words alone, a Pile that ne'er decays.[13] + +So far as the "youthful tales of shepherds" go, Wordsworth is probably +thinking of the verses of Francis' brother, Sir John, which open: + + A shepherdess, who long had kept her flocks + On stony Charnwood's dry and barren rocks,-- + +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 _Faithfull Shepheardesse_. Francis, himself, has given us +nothing of the pastoral vein, save sweet snatches in the dramas "with +which his genius shook the buskined stage." + +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 _Divine Poems_, 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 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: + + The Winter's storme of Civill Warre I sing, + Whose end is crown'd with our eternall Spring; + Where Roses joyn'd, their colours mixe in one, + And armies fight no more for England's Throne. + +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: + + Here Stanley and brave Lovell trie their strength.... + So meete two bulls upon adjoyning hills + Of rocky Charnwood, while their murmur fills + The hollow crags, when striving for their bounds, + They wash their piercing homes in mutuall wounds. + +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 _Richard III_, Shakespeare had dramatized more than twenty +years before John wrote. + +[Illustration: Steel Engraving by W. Finden +THE RUINS OF GRACE-DIEU NUNNERY] + +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 _Schoolmaster_, 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 _Phaedon_ 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 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. + +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 _Chaucer_, 1598; +and still another more distant relative, Dr. Joseph, Master of +Peterhouse, and author of the epic allegory, _Psyche_, was one of the +poetic imitators through whom Spenser's 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,[14] 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. + +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 _Corpus Juris_ +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, they would have under arm or in pocket a +tattered volume of Ovid, preferably in translation,--Turberville's +_Heroical Epistles_, or Golding's rendering of the _Metamorphoses_,--or +Painter's _Palace of Pleasure_, or Fenton's _Tragical Discourses_ 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 _Orlando Furioso_ to wonder +upon; or some cheap copy of _Amadis_ or _Palmerin_ to waken laughter. +And, other days, fresh quartos of _Tamburlaine_ and _Edward II_ and +_Dido_, or Kyd's _Spanish Tragedy_ and Lyly's _Gallathea_, or Greene's +_Frier Bacon_ and _James IV_, or Shakespeare's _Richard II_, and +_Richard III_, and _Romeo and Juliet_, and _Love's Labour's Lost_. +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 _Songs and Sonnettes_ known as _Tottel's Miscellany_ +and _The Paradyse of Daynty Devises_, 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 _Hero and Leander_ or +Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_, and Drayton's fantastic but graceful +_Endimion and Phoebe_ 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 first in +print in the year when Frank and his brothers entered Oxford. + +[Illustration: View taken by Buck in 1730 +RUINS OF GRACE-DIEU + +Note: After Buck's time the ruins were "carried away to mend the roads." +See John Throsby, _Select Views of Leicestershire_, Vol. II, 461.] + +[Illustration: Taken by Buck +A PRIORY, ULVESTON, EXTANT IN 1730] + +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, succeeded to the +title. For, writing _Teares_ 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." + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] Leland's _Itinerary_, Ed. L. T. Smith, Vol. I, 18-19. + +[2] Leland's _Itinerary_, Ed. L. T. Smith, Vol. IV, 126. + +[3] Collins, _Peerage of England_, IX, 460. + +[4] J. Nichols, _Collections toward the History of Leicestershire_ +(_Biblioth. Topogr. Brit._, VII, 534). See, below, Appendix, A. + +[5] _Letters relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries_, pp. +251-252, Camden Society, 1843. The editor, Thos. Wright, describes the +petitioner as of Thringston, Co. Leicester. + +[6] J. M. Rigg, _Dict. Nat. Biog._ art., _John Beaumont_; and +Nichols's _History of Leicestershire_, III, ii, 651, _et seq._ + +[7] Collins, _Peerage_, VI, 648, _et seq._; H. N. Bell, _The +Huntingdon Peerage_, 1821. See also, below, Appendix, Table B. + +[8] _Calendar of State Papers_ (_Domestic_), 1595, p. 154. + +[9] Challoner, _Missionary Priests_, I, 347. + +[10] For the preceding details, and some of those which follow, see +the respective articles in the _Dictionary of National Biography_; +Dyce's _Works of Beaumont and Fletcher_, Vol. I, _Biographical +Memoir_; Grosart, _Sir John Beaumont's Poems_, and the sources as +indicated. See also, below, Appendix, Table C. + +[11] See Shaw's _Knights of England_; Collins, _Peerage_; and articles +in _D. N. B._ under names. + +[12] Dyce says that the Judge was knighted; so Rigg (_D. N. B._) and +others. The _Inner Temple Records_ 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 _Knights +of England_. + +[13] _For a Seat in the Groves of Coleorton._ + +[14] _Works of B. and F._, XVI. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +AT THE INNS OF COURT AND CHANCERY; THE POEMS ASSIGNED TO THESE EARLIER +YEARS. + + +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 _specialiter_, _gratis_, +_comitive_,--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 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." + +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[15] 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 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."[16] + +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, Whitefriars and Paget Place,--"the noblest nurseries of +humanity and liberty in the kingdom," as Ben Jonson calls them in his +dedication[17] to the Inns of Court of _Every Man out of his Humour_, +first published in the year when Beaumont entered. + +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" _Damon and Pythias_, and the tragedy of _Palamon and Arcite_, +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 _Twelfth Night_. If Beaumont of the +Inner 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. + +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 'winged 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" 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."[18] 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 _Revesby Sword-Play_ 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 +_Supposes_ in 1566, and in the same year, with Francis Kinwelmersh, +produced at Gray's Inn an English rendering of Ludovico Dolce's +_Giocasta_, a tragedy descended from Euripides' _Phoenissae_ by way of a +Latin version. "Altogether," remarks Professor Cunliffe,[19] "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 _Supposes_ +proceeds more or less directly the minor plot of _The Taming of the +Shrew_. 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, _The Misfortunes of Arthur_, 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 _A Comedy of Errors_, "like to Plautus +his _Menaechmus_." + +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, 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,[20] 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 _Flowers_, presented by the gentlemen of Gray's +Inn, in 1614, which, alone, cost him about L10,000 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 +L20,000,--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. + +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 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 _Gorboduc_ 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,"[21] _Gismond of Salerne_, +a distant but unmistakable forerunner in tempestuous passion and pathos +of plays in which young Beaumont was to compose the major part, _The +Maides Tragedy_ and _A King and No King_. + +Here, in the intervals between moots and bolts in the day time or during +the long evenings about the 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. + + * * * * * + +If we could be sure that a poem called _The Metamorphosis of Tabacco_, 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, was John's we might regard +the half dozen verses in praise of "thy pleasing rime," signed F. B., +and beginning, + + My new-borne Muse assaies her tender wing, + And where she should crie, is inforst to sing,-- + +as young Francis' earliest effort in rhyme. The dedication of the +_Metamorphosis_ 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 _Metamorphosis_ 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 _Salmacis and Hermaphroditus_, of which we cannot be +certain that he was not the author. The poem was first published, +without name of writer, in 1602,[22] and was not assigned to Francis +Beaumont until 1639, when Lawrence Blaiklock included it among the +_Poems_: By Francis Beaumont, Gent., entered on the Stationers' +Registers, September 2, and published, 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, _To Calliope_, and +to alter the signature, A. F., appended to an introductory sonnet, _To +the Author_, 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 _The Woman-Hater_, a play now reasonably +accepted as by Beaumont, originally alone; and, in Hodgets's edition of +the _Salmacis and Hermaphroditus_, 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, _In +Laudem Authoris_, 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 _Salmacis_. 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 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 _Salmacis_, 1602; and that he was by way +of subscribing himself simply W. B. + +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 _Salmacis and +Hermaphroditus not by Beaumont_.[23] 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 _The Woman-Hater_ and _The Knight of the +Burning Pestle_. 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 _The Endimion and Phoebe_ 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 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: + + Looke how, when Autumne comes, a little space + Paleth the red blush of the Summer's face, + Searing the leaves, the Summer's covering, + Three months in weaving by the curious Spring,-- + Making the grasse, his greene locks, go to wracke, + Tearing each ornament from off his backe; + So did she spoyle the garments she did weare, + Tearing whole ounces of her golden hayre. + +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 _Moyses in a Map of his Miracles_, published in June +of the latter year; and also, in 1605, to Drayton's revision of the +_Barrons Wars_. On April 19, 1606, Drayton issued a volume entitled +_Poems Lyrick and Pastoral_, which included with other verses a +revision, under the name of _Eglogs_, of his _Idea, the Shepheard's +Garland_, 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 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 + + Then that dear nymph that in the Muses joys, + That in wild Charnwood with her flocks doth go, + Mirtilla, sister to those hopeful boys, + My loved Thyrsis and sweet Palmeo; + That oft to Soar the southern shepherds bring, + Of whose clear waters they divinely sing. + + So good she is, so good likewise they be, + As none to her might brother be but they, + Nor none a sister unto them, but she,-- + To them for wit few like, I dare will say: + In them as Nature truly meant to show + How near the first, she in the last could go. + +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.[24] Under the +pastoral pseudonym of Mirtilla, Elizabeth is again celebrated by Drayton +twenty-four years later, in his _Muses Elizium_. 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 +_Shepheards Calender_. 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 _Eglog_ 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." + +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."[25] One of those thus +decorated was the poet's brother Henry, who was dubbed knight bachelor +at Worksop in Derbyshire, on 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.[26] + +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,[27] 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 +_menage_ with John Fletcher, which followed the years of residence at +the Inner Temple, was a matter of choice, not of poverty. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[15] _Inns of Court and Chancery_ (Lond., 1912), p. 45; W. R. +Douthwaite, _Gray's Inn, its History and Associations_ (Lond., 1886), +pp. 36, 78, 253. For the Beaumonts, and what follows, see, also, +Inderwick, _Inner Temple Records_ (Lond. 1896), I, 421; II, 435; +Introductions, and subjects as indexed. + +[16] _Inns of Court, etc._, p. 163. + +[17] The Dedication first appears in the folio of 1616. + +[18] H. E. Duke, K. C., M. P., _Gray's Inn in Six Lectures on the Inns +of Court and of Chancery_, 1912. + +[19] _Early English Classical Tragedies_, Introduction, p. lxxxvi. + +[20] Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, I, 342. + +[21] Cunliffe, _E. E. Class. Tragedies_, p. lxxxvi. + +[22] Reprinted by _Dramaticus, Sh. Soc. Pap._ III, 94 (1847). + +[23] _Dramaticus_, (as above). + +[24] On these identifications, see Fleay, _Chron. Eng. Dr._, I, +143-145; Elton, _Michael Drayton_, pp. 13, 58; Child, _Michael +Drayton_ (in _Camb. Hist. Lit._, IV, 197, _et seq._). + +[25] Gardiner, _Hist. Engl._ 1603-1607, p. 87. + +[26] Shaw's _Knights of Engl._, Vol. II, under dates. + +[27] Grosart (_D. N. B._ art. _John Beaumont_) says that John had been +admitted to the Inner Temple with Henry. John does not appear in +Inderwick. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE VAUX COUSINS AND THE GUNPOWDER PLOT + + +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.[28] Before 1594, Henry, +"that blessed 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 _Narrative_[29] 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 _virgo_ became _virago_. 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 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. + +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 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."[30] + +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."[31] 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 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.[32] 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, 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. + +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![33] + +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 +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,[34]--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 of Blackwell's famous treatise on +_Equivocation_, destined to play a baleful role in the ensuing +examination of certain of the suspects. + +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 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 _Narrative_ it +appears that he had been hiding at Harrowden before, that now he is +concealed in London, and Elizabeth Vaux knows where.[35] 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: + + "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 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.' + + "'I do not know where he is,' she answered, 'and if I did know, I + would not tell you.' + + "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.' + + "To which she answered with a loud voice, 'Then, my lord, I will + die.' + + "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." + +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:-- + + "Immediately she was released from custody, knowing that I was + then in London, quite forgetful of herself, 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."[36] So much at present of Elizabeth. + We shall hear of her, as did Beaumont, during the succeeding + years. + +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 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 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 he will "die not as a victorious martyr, but as a penitent +thief,"--and bids her farewell. + +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, _The Woman-Hater_ +(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 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." + +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 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[28] John Morris, _Life of Father John Gerard_, p. 311, _et seq._ + +[29] Morris, _op. cit._, p. 113. See below, Appendix, Table D. + +[30] Gardiner, _Hist. Engl._ 1603-1642, I, 234. + +[31] Morris, p. 360. See also, below, Appendix, Table D. + +[32] 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. + +[33] The facts as here presented are drawn from the _Calendar of State +Papers (Domestic)_, the _Gunpowder Plot Book_, and Father Gerard's +_Narrative_ (in Morris), in the order of dates as indicated. + +[34] Nov. 5-8. + +[35] Morris, _Life of Father Gerard_, p. 385. + +[36] Morris, pp. 413-414. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +FLETCHER'S FAMILY, AND HIS YOUTH + + +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 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.[37] 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[38] 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." + +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 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." _Praesul +splendidus_, 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 _Sicelides_ was acting at King's College, +Cambridge, in the year of John's _Chances_ in London, and whose +_Brittain's Ida_ is as light in its youthful eroticism as his _Purple +Island_ 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 _Christ's Victorie_ was published, in +1610, a year or so later than John's pastoral of _The Faithfull +Shepheardesse_. 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!"[39] 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. + +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 primitive and pious Anabaptists +who had taken up their abode about Cranbrook, and he hunted them +down;[40] 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 +association between the Fletchers and Lady Buckhurst's sister-in-law of +Sissinghurst grew out of this alliance of the Sackvilles with the +Bakers. + +[Illustration: THOMAS SACKVILLE, FIRST EARL OF DORSET +From the portrait in the possession of Lord Sackville, at Knole Park] + +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,[41] "the more happy she in herself, though unhappy that the +world did not believe it."[42] 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.'" + +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_li._ or thereaboutes, his whole state is but one house wherein the +widow claimeth her thirds, his plate valewed at 400_li._, his other +stuffe at 500_li._" Anthony Bacon, who sympathized with the purpose of +this memorial, enlisted the cooperation 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.[43] + +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 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.[44] 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. + +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 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 +_Gorboduc_ and _The Mirror for Magistrates_ 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 in the dining-room of the Baron Sackville at Knole, were +painted.[45] + + * * * * * + +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." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[37] _Cal. State Papers (Dom.)_, April 7, 1593. + +[38] _Briefe View of the State of the Church._ + +[39] Nichols's _Progresses of Queen Elizabeth_, II, 506-510. + +[40] See the story in _Camden Miscellany_, III (1854). + +[41] Sir Richard Baker, in his _Chronicle of the Kings of England_. + +[42] Fuller's _Worthies_, as cited by Dyce, I, x, xi. + +[43] The materials as furnished by Dyce, _B. and F._, I, xiv-xv, from +Birch's _Mem. of Elizabeth_, and the Bacon Papers in the Lambeth +Library are confirmed by _Cal. St. Papers_ (_Dom._), June 1596, July +9, 1597, _etc._ + +[44] As her monument in Canterbury would indicate. Hasted, _Hist. +Kent_, XI, 397. + +[45] For the Bakers and their connections, see Hasted, _Hist. Kent_, +III, 77; IV, 374, _et seq._; VII, 100-101; for the Sackvilles.--Hasted, +III, 73-82; for the Lennards,--Hasted, III, 108-116; the _Peerages_ of +Collins, Burke, etc., and the articles in _D. N. B._ See also, below, +Appendix, Table E. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +SOME EARLY PLAYS OF BEAUMONT AND OF FLETCHER + + +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 _Volpone_ 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 cooperation 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 _Philaster_," but "before that they had written two or three very +unsuccessfully." _Philaster_, 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 +_The Woman-Hater_ and _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_; Fletcher, +_The Faithfull Shepheardesse_, 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 _The +Woman-Hater_, 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, _The Knight_ and +_Faithfull Shepheardesse_ were ungraciously received; and Richard Brome, +about fourteen years after Fletcher's death, suggests that perhaps +_Monsieur Thomas_ shared "the common fate." + +_The Woman-Hater_ 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 _The Woman-Hater_ 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 _Eastward Hoe_. If it does, "he that made this +play," undoubtedly Beaumont, made it after the publication of _Eastward +Hoe_ 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 King James's weakness for handsome young +men, "Why may not _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,"[46] 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_ 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 _face_ 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 _The Woman-Hater_ +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.[47] +Without violating the plague regulations, as laid down by the City, +_The Woman-Hater_ could have been acted during the six months following +November 20, 1606. A passage in Act III, 2,[48] which I shall presently +quote in full, is, as has not previously been noticed, a manifest parody +of one of Antony's speeches in _Antony and Cleopatra_[49] 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. + +_The Woman-Hater_ 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 _dramatis personae_, "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 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 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 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." + +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 +role 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 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 _Hamlet_ and _All's Well +that End Well_, _Othello_[50] and _Eastward Hoe_[50] and bombastic +catches from other plays. To me the most ludicrous bit of burlesque is +of the moment of last suspense in _Antony and Cleopatra_ (IV, 14 and 15) +where Antony, thinking to die "after the high Roman fashion" which +Cleopatra forthwith emulates, says "I come my queen,"-- + + Stay for me! + Where souls do couch on flowers, we'll hand in hand, + And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze. + Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops, + And all the haunt [of Elysium] be ours. + +So Lazarillo, in awful apprehension lest his love, his fish-head, be +eaten before he arrive,-- + + 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; + + And after death, amidst the Elysian shades, + I'll meet my love again. + +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. + +I have no hesitation in assigning to the same year, 1607, although most +critics have dated it three or four years later, Beaumont's admirable +burlesque of contemporary bourgeois drama and chivalric romance, _The +Knight of the Burning Pestle_. 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 _Don +Quixote_; 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. _The Knight of the Burning +Pestle_ is in some respects of the same boyish tone and outlook upon the +humours of life as _The Woman-Hater_, 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, 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." + +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.[51] +Suffice it to say here that _The Knight_ followed _The Travails of Three +English Brothers_, acted. June 29, 1607, and that the Robert Keysar who +rescued the manuscript of _The Knight_ 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. + +In the same year, 1607, both young men are writing commendatory verses +for the first quarto of Ben Jonson's _Volpone_, 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,-- + + I would have shewn + To all the world the art which thou alone + Hast taught our tongue, the rules of time, of place + And other rites, deliver'd with the grace + Of comic style, which only is far more + Than any English stage hath known before. + But since our subtle gallants think it good + To like of nought that may be understood ... + ... let us desire + They may continue, simply to admire + Fine clothes and strange words, + +and offensive personalities. + +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." + + * * * * * + +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."[52] It has been +conjectured by some that the elder of our dramatists was in the field as +early as 1604, with his comedy of _The Woman's Prize_ or _The Tamer +Tamed_,--a well contrived and witty continuation of Shakespeare's +_Taming of the Shrew_,--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, _The Woman's Prize_ 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.[53] + +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 _The Faithfull +Shepheardesse_, a composition entirely his own. This delicate confection +of sensual desire, ideal love, translunar chastity, and subacid cynicism +regarding "all ideas of chastity whatever,"[54] 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 a little later +characterized his _Monsieur Thomas_. 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,[55] 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. + +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: + + I, that am glad thy innocence was their guilt, + + for the rabble found not there the "vices, which they look'd for," + I-- + + Do crown thy murder'd poem; which shall rise + A glorified work to time, when fire + Or moths shall eat what all these fools admire. + +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, + + Your censurers must have the quality + Of reading, which I am afraid is more + Than half your shrewdest judges had before. + +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,"-- + + But because + Your poem only hath by us applause, + Renews the golden world, and holds through all + The holy laws of homely pastoral, + Where flowers and founts, and nymphs and semi-gods, + And all the Graces find their old abodes, + Where forests flourish but in endless verse, + And meadows nothing fit for purchasers; + This iron age, that eats itself, will never + Bite at your golden world; that other's ever + Lov'd as itself. Then like your book, do you + Live in old peace, and that for praise allow. + +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 unconcerned smil'd." An +attitude toward the public that characterized him all through life. + +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 _Cynthia's Revels_, and, as one of +the Queen's Revels' Children, he had probably taken part in _The +Faithfull Shepheardesse_ 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,-- + + Can my approovement, sir, be worth your thankes, + Whose unknowne name, and Muse in swathing clowtes, + Is not yet growne to strength, among these rankes + To have a roome? + +Now he is planning to write dramas himself; and it is pleasant to note +with what modesty he touches upon the project: + + But I must justifie what privately + I censur'd to you, my ambition is + (Even by my hopes and love to Poesie) + To live to perfect such a worke as this, + Clad in such elegant proprietie + Of words, including a morallitie,[56] + So sweete and profitable. + +He is alluding to his not yet finished comedy, _A Woman is a +Weather-cocke_. The youth must have been close to Beaumont as well as to +Fletcher; he soon afterwards, 1609-10, played the leading part in their +_Coxcombe_,--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 +_Foure Playes in One_, 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 _The Foure Playes_ not written by +Fletcher were written by no other than Nat. Field. And since in Field's +_Address to the Reader_ of the _Weather-cocke_, licensed for publication +November 23, 1611, he still speaks as if the _Weather-cocke_ were his +only venture in play-writing, we may conclude that _The Foure Playes in +One_ 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.[57] + +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 _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ that may with any degree of +safety be admitted to consideration is a comedy of romance, manners, and +humours, _Monsieur Thomas_. 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 +_Parasitaster_, of 1606.[58] 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 _Philaster_, 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 _Knight of the Burning Pestle_ of 1607. The +play was acted, too, apparently 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. + +For my present purpose, which is to show how Fletcher, not assisted by +Beaumont, wrote during his youth, it makes little difference whether +_Monsieur Thomas_ 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 Cellidee together (she is Francisco's +beloved) we are pointed at once to the source of the romantic plot--the +_Histoire de Celidee, Thamyre, et Calidon_ at the beginning of the +Second Part of the _Astree_ of the Marquis D'Urfe.[59] 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 1610. It would, therefore, appear that Fletcher could not have +written _Monsieur Thomas_ before the latter date. On the other hand, as +Dr. Upham[60] has indicated, the _Astree_ 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. + +No matter what the exact date of composition, _Monsieur Thomas_ is the +one play beside _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ 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 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 "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. + +The characters are well grouped; and the spirit of merriment prevails. +The reversals of motive and fortune, the recognitions and the denouement +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 _Every Man in his Humour_ or _Volpone_, or something by +Shakespeare, or soon afterwards for Beaumont and Fletcher's _Philaster_ +or _A King and No King_. But, as Brome assures us, "the world's grown +wiser now." That is to say, it had learned by 1639 "what was +legitimate," and could believe that in Fletcher's _Monsieur Thomas_ 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. + +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 _Knight of the Burning Pestle_ +and those portions of _The Woman-Hater_ which Fletcher did not touch, +for the Jacobean salaciousness of Fletcher's _Monsieur Thomas_ and the +carnal cynicism which lurks beneath the pastoral garb of innocence even +in _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_;--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, + + wisely submit each birth + To knowing Beaumont e're it did come forth, + Working againe untill _he_ said 'twas fit; + And make him the sobriety of his wit.[61] + +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.[62] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[46] The King's letter to Salisbury (undated, but of 1608). Gardiner, +_Hist. Engl._ 1603-1642, II, 43-45. + +[47] This much more distinguished favour has been overlooked by +Thorndike and other critics. But it is possible that Shaw, _Knights of +England_, I, 154, may be confounding him with another Carr, a +favourite of Queen Anne's. + +[48] Dyce, _B. and F._, Vol. I, p. 53. + +[49] Act IV, 14, 50-54. + +[50] _Cf._, Lazarillo's _Farewells_, Act III, 3. + +[51] See Chap. XXIV, below. + +[52] Prologue, for a revival, in 1649, of _The Woman-Hater_, which +D'Avenant mistakenly attributes to Fletcher. + +[53] Reasons for dating an earlier version of the play about 1604 are +given by Oliphant, _Engl. Studien_, XV, 338-339, and Thorndike, _Infl. +of B. and F._, 70-71. In its present form, however, the play dates +later than Jonson's _Epicoene_, 1610. See Gayley, _Rep. Eng. Com._, +III, _Introd._, Sec. 15. + +[54] I heartily concur with W. W. Greg's interpretation, _Pastoral +Poetry and Pastoral Drama_, p. 274. + +[55] See Fleay, _Chron. Eng. Dr._, I, 312, and Thorndike, _Infl. of B. +and F._, 64. + +[56] Folio, 1647, 'mortallitie'; a misprint. + +[57] See Chap. XXIII, below. + +[58] See Guskar, _Anglia_, XXVIII, XXIX. + +[59] Stiefel, _Zeitschr. f. Vergl. Litt._, XII (1898), 248; _Engl. +Stud._, XXXVI; Hatcher, _Anglia_, Feb. 1907; and Macaulay, _C. H. L._, +VI, 156. + +[60] _French Influence in English Literature_, pp. 300, 308. + +[61] Adapted from Cartwright in the _Commendatory Poems_, Folio of _B. +and F._, 1647. + +[62] Details in Inderwick, _op. cit._, Vols. I and II, passim. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE "BANKE-SIDE" AND THE PERIOD OF THE PARTNERSHIP + + +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";[63] 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 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 _Bury-Fair_ +(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."[64] 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." + +To the years 1609 and 1610 may be assigned with some show of confidence +Beaumont and Fletcher's first significant romantic dramas _The Coxcombe_ +and _Philaster_. 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 +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 _Philaster_. _Philaster_ 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 +_Letter to Ben Jonson_ may be said here. + +[Illustration: THE TEMPLE +From Ralph Agas's Map of London, about 1561] + +It was first printed at the end of a play called _The Nice Valour_ 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 _Letter_ 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 _Letter_, had been +interrupted by a visit to the country during which they were finishing +two of the comedies which precede _The Nice Valour_ 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 _The Nice Valour_ 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: _The +Captaine_, which may have been composed as late as 1611, and _Beggars' +Bush_,[65] 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 _The Coxcombe_. If, as I believe, it was acted first between December +1609 and July 1610[66] 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 _Beggars' Bush_ and _The Coxcombe_ abound in rural +scenes; but the latter especially, in scenes that might have been +suggested by Grace-Dieu and its neighborhood. + +The rubric prefixed to the _Letter_ by the publishers is of negligible +authority. The 'me' and 'us' of the _Letter_ 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, 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: + + Methinks the little wit I had is lost + Since I saw you; for Wit is like a Rest + Held up at Tennis, which men do the best + With the best gamesters; ... + +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": + + What things have we seen + Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been + So nimble, and so full of subtill flame, + As if that every one from whence they came + Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, + And had resolv'd to live a foole, the rest + Of his dull life. Then, when there hath been thrown + Wit able enough to justifie the Town + For three daies past,--wit that might warrant be + For the whole City to talk foolishly + Till that were cancell'd,--and, when that was gone, + We left an Aire behind us, which alone + Was able to make the two next Companies + Right witty; though but downright fooles, more wise. + +When he remembers all this, he "needs must cry," but one thought of Ben +Jonson cheers him: + + Only strong Destiny, which all controuls, + I hope hath left a better fate in store + For me thy friend, than to live ever poore, + Banisht unto this home. Fate once againe + Bring me to thee, who canst make smooth and plaine + The way of Knowledge for me, and then I, + Who have no good but in thy company + Protest it will my greatest comfort be + To acknowledge all I have to flow from thee. + Ben, when these Scaenes are perfect, we'll taste wine; + I'll drink thy Muses health, thou shalt quaff mine. + +The _Letter_ was written after Beaumont's Muse had produced something +worthy of a toast from Jonson,--the _Woman-Hater_ and the _Knight_, 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, _The Scornful Ladie_; and that does not precede +this _Letter_ in the folio of 1647; is not printed in that folio at all. +Nor was this _Letter_ 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 _Letter_, the "scenes" of which Beaumont speaks +as not yet "perfect" were of _The Coxcombe_; 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. + +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. + +As to the first production of the _Philaster_ 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 +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.[67] Their manager, Henry Evans, to whom with three others Richard +Burbadge had let Blackfriars in 1600, now sought to be set free from +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.[68] 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 _Epicoene_ and, I believe, Beaumont and Fletcher's +_The Coxcombe_. + +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 _Philaster, or Love +Lies a-Bleeding_, 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 +shows that it was in existence before October 8, 1610. _The Scourge of +Folly_ by John Davies of Hereford, entered for publication on that date, +contains an epigram to "the well deserving Mr. John Fletcher," which +runs-- + + _Love lies a-Bleeding_, if it should not prove + Her utmost art to show why it doth love. + Thou being the _Subject_ (now), It raignes upon, + Raign'st in _Arte, Judgement, and Invention:_ + _For this I love thee; and can doe no lesse_ + _For thine as faire, as faithfull_ Sheepheardesse. + +Since there is nothing in _Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding_, 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.[69] 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 in assuming that they were ever allowed at such times to play +in theatres thronged by the public.[70] 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 _Philaster_ 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.[71] + +[Illustration: THE GLOBE THEATRE, WITH ST. PAUL'S IN THE BACKGROUND +From Vischer's long view of London, 1616] + +With _Philaster_ 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 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 _The Coxcombe_, 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 +_Arcadia_. 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, external influences bear upon details of +character, situation, and device, not upon the construction of the play +as a whole. + +Toward the end of 1610 or early in 1611, the partner-dramatists gave +Shakespeare's company another play,--in many respects their +greatest,--_The Maides Tragedy_. Here, again, the novelty of the plot +attracted, in a degree heightened even beyond that of _Philaster_. 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 _n_-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.[72] 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, 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 _Arcadia_; and the quarrel of Melantius and Amintor reminds one +of that between Brutus and Cassius in _Julius Caesar_; but the plot has +no definite source. + +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." + +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 _Kill the +King_ 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."[73] History and fable +have fastened similar stories upon famous men; but if this one is +authentic it undoubtedly refers to the writing of _The Maides Tragedy_, +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." + +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, _A King and No King_. 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 +_The Maides Tragedy_. In poetry and in characterization, as well as in +humour, it is grander than _Philaster_. But in beauty and pathos its +subject did not permit it to equal either; and in denouement, tragicomic +and perforce somewhat strained, it is surpassed by the _Tragedy_. 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 _Cyropaedeia_ (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 France,--but such indebtedness is +naught.[74] Three-quarters of the play is Beaumont's; and that large +portion includes the majestic passion and conflict, the tragic irony and +suspense, of _A King and No King_; 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 _elan_ 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. + +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 _Much Ado_, _Tempest_, _Winter's Tale_, _Merry +Wives_, _Othello_, and _Julius Caesar_ of Shakespeare. They also +presented about the same time, in a series of six acted before the King +(including _I Henry IV_, _Much Ado_, and _The Alchemist_), one of +Fletcher's comedies of manners and intrigue, _The Captaine_, and a play +utterly lost, called _Cardenna_, in which it is supposed that Fletcher +collaborated with the Master himself. + +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, _Cupid's +Revenge_, was played by the Children three times, and their romantic +comedy, _The Coxcombe_ 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, _The Scornful +Ladie_. + +Neither _Cupid's Revenge_ nor _The Scornful Ladie_ (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 _Arcadia_,--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 _liaison_ with him and, failing, scheme his downfall. The dramatists +made considerable alteration, 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. + +_The Scornful Ladie_, 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 _vis comica_ already displayed in the _Woman-Hater_ +and the _Knight of the Burning Pestle_ and _King and No King_. 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, 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.[75] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[63] Aubrey's _Brief Lives_, Ed. Clark, I, 94-95. + +[64] Dyce, _B. and F._, I, XXVI, _n_. + +[65] Based upon Dekker's _Bellman of London_, 1608. Acted at Court, +1622. + +[66] See Chapter XXV, below. + +[67] Despatch of the French Ambassador in London, April 5, 1608, +quoted by Collier, _Hist. Eng. Dram. Poetry_, I, 352. + +[68] Answer of Heming and Burbadge to Kirkham's complaint, 1612, +_Greenstreet Papers_ in Fleay, _Hist. Stage_, p. 235. + +[69] See Murray, _Eng. Dram. Comp._, II, 171-191. + +[70] As suggested by Thorndike, _Infl. B. and F. on Shakespeare_, +16-18. See Murray, _Engl. Dram. Companies_, II, 175. + +[71] Further discussion of the _Philaster_ date will be found in +Chapter XXV, below. + +[72] See Chapter XXV, below. + +[73] Dyce, as above, _B. and F._, I, xxxii. + +[74] See Alden's edition, p. 172 (_Belles Lettres_), and Thorndike's +citation of Fauchet, _Les Antiquitez et Histoires Gauloises, etc._ +(1599), _Infl. of B. and F._, p. 82. + +[75] See below, Chapter XXVI. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +RELATIONS WITH SHAKESPEARE, JONSON, AND OTHERS IN THE THEATRICAL WORLD + + +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.[76] 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. + +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 +_Knight of the Burning Pestle_ steals from Hotspur:-- + + By heaven, methinks it were an easie leap + To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac'd Moon, + Or dive into the bottom of the Sea, + Where never fathome line toucht any ground, + And pluck up drowned honour from the lake of Hell; + +or as in _The Woman-Hater_, where it looks very much as if this stylist +of twenty-two was poking fun at the circumlocutions of Shakespeare's +Helena in _All's Well that Ends Well_. Labouring to say "two days" in +accents suitable to a monarch's ear, she had evolved: + + Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring + Their fiery torches his diurnal ring, + Ere twice in murk and accidental damp + Moist Hesperus hath quenched his sleepy lamp; + Or four and twenty times the pilot's glass + Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass, + What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly. + +In terms strikingly reminiscent of this, Beaumont's courtier Valore +instructs the gourmand of _The Woman-Hater_, how to address royalty: + + You must not talk to him [the Duke] + As you doe to an ordinary man, + Honest plain sence, but you must wind about him. + For example: if he should aske you what o'clock it is, + You must not say, "If it please your grace, 'tis nine"; + But thus, "Thrice three aclock, so please my Sovereign"; + Or thus, "Look how many Muses there doth dwell + Upon the sweet banks of the learned Well, + And just so many stroaks the clock hath struck." + +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: + + Full eight and twenty several Almanacks + Have been compiled all for several years, + Since first I drew this breath; four prentiships + Have I most truly served in this world; + And eight and twenty times hath Phoebus' car + Run out his yearly course since--. + Duke. I understand you, sir. + Lucio. How like an ignorant poet he talks! + +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? + +Like parodies of phrases in _Hamlet_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, 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 where the King in _Philaster_ tries to pray but, like +the kneeling Claudius, despairs-- + + How can I + Looke to be heard of gods that must be just, + Praying upon the ground I hold by wrong?-- + +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: + + Yes, with my fathers spirit. Its here, O King, + A dangerous spirit! Now he tells me, King, + I was a Kings heire, bids me be a King, + And whispers to me, these are all my subjects. + Tis strange he will not let me sleepe, but dives + In to my fancy, and there gives me shapes + That kneele and doe me service, cry me king: + But I'le suppresse him: he's a factious spirit, + And will undoe me. + +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 _Maides Tragedy_ to +Ophelia's, and of Bellario's situation in _Philaster_ to that of Viola +in _Twelfth Night_.[77] This last play, indeed, acted, as we have seen, +in the Middle Temple when Beaumont was a freshman in the Inns of Court, +affects Beaumont's method and style, more than any other save the +_Pericles_ (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. + +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.[78] 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 Brooke of the pastoral +poets in Beaumont's Inns of Court was of the "councell" for +Shakespeare's company.[79] 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: _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, 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 "_History of Cardenio_ 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 _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ +borrows its antimasque from our friend Beaumont's _Maske of the Inner +Temple_, 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 _Cardenio_ we have +nothing but the publisher's statement; but we know that the play was +written after the appearance, in 1612, of the story upon which it is +based, in Shelton's English translation of the first part of _Don +Quixote_; and that it was acted at Court by Shakespeare's and Fletcher's +company in May and June 1613. + +The partnership of Fletcher and Shakespeare in the writing of these two +plays has been questioned, but as to their collaboration in a third, +_Henry VIII_, 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. + +[Illustration: BEN JONSON +From the miniature belonging to Mr. Evelyn Shirley] + +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 _The Silent +Woman_, which was acted early in 1610, and by verses of both Fletcher +and Beaumont prefixed to Jonson's tragedy of _Catiline_, 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,-- + + Thy labours shall outlive thee; and, like gold + Stampt for continuance, shall be current where + There is a sun, a people, or a year. + +The generous and graceful response of Ben to the 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 _Epigrams_, +entered in the Stationers' Registers, 1612. + + _To Francis Beaumont._ + + How I doe love thee, Beaumont and thy Muse, + That unto me dost such religion use! + How I doe feare my selfe, that am not worth + The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth! + At once thou mak'st me happie, and unmak'st; + And giving largely to me, more thou tak'st. + What fate is mine, that so it selfe bereaves? + What art is thine, that so thy friend deceives? + When even there, where most thou praisest mee, + For writing better, I must envie thee. + +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 +_Philaster_, and of perhaps both _The Maides Tragedy_ and _A King and No +King_. And whether there is any basis or not for the tradition handed +down by Dryden[80] 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. + +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 _The White +Devil_ 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 +_Chapman_: The labour'd and understanding workes of maister _Jonson_: +The no lesse worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Maister +_Beamont_ and Maister _Fletcher_: And lastly (without wrong last to be +named), the right happy and copious industry of M. _Shake-speare_, M. +_Decker_, and M. _Heywood_, wishing what I write may be read by their +light: Protesting that, in the strength of mine owne judgement, I 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 _Martiall--non norunt, +Haec monumenta mori_." + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[76] Wallace, _New Shakespeare Discoveries, Harper's Maga._, March, +1910. + +[77] For these and other reminiscences of Shakespeare, see Alden's +edition of Beaumont (_Belles Lettres Series_), XVI; Macaulay's +_Beaumont_; Leonhardt in _Anglia_, VIII, 424; Oliphant in _Engl. +Studien_, XIV, 53-94, Koeppel's _Quellen-studien_ in _Muenchener +Beitraege_, XI. + +[78] Wallace, _New Shakespeare Discoveries_ (_Harper's Maga._, March, +1910). + +[79] See the _Greenstreet Papers_, in Fleay, _Hist. Stage_, 239, 250. + +[80] _An Essay of Dramatick Poesie._ + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE "MASQUE OF THE INNER TEMPLE": THE PASTORALISTS, AND OTHER +CONTEMPORARIES AT THE INNS OF COURT + + +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. + +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 _The Maides Tragedy_ a masque of the very essence +of dreams, executed with singular grace and melody. + +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 _Plutus_, 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 L2,000." + +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 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{^r} 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 of countenance; and the world sayes yt comes to +passe after the old proverb--the properer men the worse lucke."[81] + +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 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."[82] + +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 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,-- + + Shake off your heavy trance, + And leap into a dance, + Such as no mortals use to tread, + Fit only for Apollo + To play to, for the Moon to lead, + And all the Stars to follow! + +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."[83] + +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. Though he had not professed the law, the +quiddities of its parlance enliven various passages of his _Woman-Hater_ +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{^r} +Beaumont," and advances 10_li._ "toward the mask business." Another, +Lewis Hele is twice paid 70_li._ 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_l._, the Ancients, and such as at that time were to be called +Ancients, at 2_l._ 10_s._ apiece, the Barristers at 2_l._ a man, and the +Students at 20_s._"; 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_li._,"--that is to say, from +seven to nine thousand pounds according our present valuation.[84] +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." + +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 _Rende vous_ 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 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 _First Book_ of his +_Britannia's Pastorals_. In a letter written some years later to a lover +of the Pastoral,--the translator of Tasso's Aminta, _Henery Reynolds, +Esq.,--Of Poets and Poesy_, 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,-- + + Then the two Beaumonts and my Browne arose, + My deare companions whom I freely chose + My bosome friends; and in their severall wayes, + Rightly borne Poets, and in these last dayes, + Men of much note, and no lesse nobler parts,-- + Such as have freely tould to me their hearts, + As I have mine to them. + +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 masque and poetic fame in mind when, in the +Dedication of his own _Masque of Ulysses and Circe_, 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." + +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, + + Underneath this sable hearse + Lies the subject of all verse: + Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother; + Death, ere thou hast slain another, + Fair, and learn'd, and good as shee + Time shall throw his dart at thee. + +To this Pembroke, William Herbert, third Earl, Browne dedicates the +_Second Book_ of the _Pastorals_, 1616, which contains the beautiful +tribute to Sidney and his _Arcadia_; 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 wrote the third eclogue appended to Browne's +_Shepherd's Pipe_, in which he figures as old Wernock, and Browne as +Willy; and, in 1616, commendatory verses to the _Second Book_ of +Browne's _Pastorals_,--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: + + Some that thy name abbreviate, call thee Franck: + So may they well, if they respect thy witt; + For like rich corne (that some fools call too ranck) + All cleane Wit-reapers still are griping it; + And could I sow for thee to reape and use, + I should esteeme it manna for the Muse.[85] + +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 _In Laudem Authoris_, signed W. B., and +prefixed to the 1602 edition of _Salmacis and Hermaphroditus_. With the +commendatory verses of Davies, George Wither, Thomas Wenman, and others +in Browne's _Second Book_ of the _Pastorals_, appear some again signed +W. B. "It is just possible," according to the most recent editor of +Browne's poems,[86] "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 +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 _Shepherd's Pipe_; 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 _Epithalamium_ 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,-- + + I'm none of those that have the means or place + With shows of cost to do your nuptials grace; + But only master of mine own desire, + Am hither come with others to admire. + I am not of those Heliconian wits, + Whose pleasing strains the court's known humour fits, + But a poor rural shepherd, that for need + Can make sheep music on an oaten reed. + +This "faithful though an humble swain" was of distinctive repute among +Beaumont's associates by 1615: no less for the lyric ease of his +_Shepherd's Hunting_, or of his + + Shall I wasting in despair + Die because a woman's fair?-- + +than for the "plain, moral speaking" of the _Abuses Stript and Whipt_ +that in 1613-14 had brought him a 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 _Duke of Milan_, about +1620, "I have had a fellow," says the Officer in Act III, ii, of that +play-- + + That could endite forsooth and make fine metres + To tinkle in the ears of ignorant madams, + That for defaming of great men, was sent me + Threadbare and lousy. + +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 _Elegies_, or in his _Ghost of Richard III_, 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."[87] + +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. Browne +succeeded Beaumont as poet of the Inner Temple, and the friends of the +former in that Society would be known to the latter. + +Among those who wrote verses laudatory of Browne's _Pastorals_ 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 _History of Kent_, 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 _Titles of Honour_," 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 _Session of the Poets_: + + The poets met the other day, + And Apollo was at the meeting, they say.... + 'Twas strange to see how they flocked together: + There was Selden, and he stood next to the chaire, + And Wenman not far off, which was very faire. + +Wenman came to the Inner Temple in 1613; he expresses 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 Temple in 1611, and whose early +death by drowning Browne bewails in the fourth eclogue of the +_Shepherd's Pipe_,--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. + +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 _Inner Temple +Records_, and described by Mr. Gordon Goodwin in his edition of Browne's +_Poems_, who set forth, ordered, and furnished Beaumont's _Masque of the +Inner Temple_; 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. + +Beaumont's friends were Fletcher's; and Fletcher must have known Browne. +It has always seemed strange to me that, when enumerating in his +_Britannia's Pastorals_ 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 _First Book of Britannia's Pastorals_ (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 _Faithfull Shepheardesse_--the scene in which +Fletcher's God of the River rescues Amoret 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: + + Remond, young Remond, that full well could sing, + And tune his pipe at Pan's birth carolling: + Who for his nimble leaping, sweetest layes, + A lawrell garland wore on holidayes; + In framing of whose hand dame Nature swore + That never was his like nor could be more.[88] + +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 _Second Book_ +of the _Pastorals_, written in 1614-15, swears fidelity to Remond-- + + Entreats him then + That he might be his partner, since no men + Had cases liker; he with him would goe-- + Weepe when he wept and sigh when he did so;[89] + +and that, in the second Song of the _First Book_,[90] 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: + + Upon this hill there sate a lovely swaine, + As if that Nature thought it great disdaine + That he should (so through her his genius told him) + Take equall place with swaines, since she did hold him + Her chiefest worke, and therefore thought it fit, + That with inferiours he should never sit.... + +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,-- + + And as when Plato did i' th' cradle thrive, + Bees to his lips brought honey from their hive; + So to this boy they came; I know not whether + They brought, or from his lips did honey gather.... + +He is also a master in the revels, + + His buskins (edg'd with silver) were of silke.... + Those buskins he had got and brought away + For dancing best upon the revell day. + +Browne, by the way, wrote the _Prefatory Address_ to this Book of +_Britannia's Pastorals_, June 18, 1613, only three months after +Beaumont's Masque upon the "revel day" was acted; and the book was +licensed for printing, the same year, November 15. + +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, _Salmacis and +Hermaphroditus_,-- + + Sweet death they needs must have, who so unite + That two distinct make one Hermaphrodite.[91] + +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 + + What shepheards on the sea were seene + To entertaine the Ocean's queene,-- + +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, + + Many a skilfull swaine + Whose equals Earth cannot produce againe, + But leave the times and men that shall succeed them + Enough to praise that age which so did breed them,-- + +and then, _without interim_, proceed: + + Two of the quaintest swains that yet have beene + Failed their attendance on the Ocean's queene, + Remond and Doridon, whose haplesse fates + Late sever'd them from their more happy mates.[92] + +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, + + Many weary dayes + They now had spent in unfrequented wayes. + About the rivers, vallies, holts, and crags, + Among the ozyers and the waving flags, + They merely pry, if any dens there be, + Where from the Sun might harbour crueltie: + Or if they could the bones of any spy, + Or torne by beasts, or humane tyranny. + They close inquiry made in caverns blind, + Yet what they look for would be death to find. + Right as a curious man that would descry, + Led by the trembling hand of Jealousy, + If his fair wife have wrong'd his bed or no, + Meeteth his torment if he find her so.[93] + +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 _Upon an Honest Man's Fortune_, and decide +whether the poet-philosopher of the one is not very much of the same +opinion as the shepherd-philosopher of the other.[94] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[81] John Chamberlain to Mris. Carleton, 18 February, 1612-3, in +_State Papers (Domestic) James I_, LXXII, No. 30. Quoted by Miss +Sullivan, _Court Masques of James I_, p. 76 (1913). + +[82] Foscarini in _Calendar of State Papers, Venetian_, XII, No. 832. +Quoted by Miss Sullivan, _op. cit._, p. 77. + +[83] _Calendar State Papers (Domestic)_, 1611-1618, pp. 171, 172, 175. + +[84] Dugdale's _Origines Juridicales_, as cited by Dyce, _B. and F._, +II, 453. Inderwick, _op. cit._, II, xxxix-xlii, 72, 77, etc. +Douthwaite, _op. cit._, 231. Nichols's _Progresses of King James_, II, +566, 591. + +[85] _To Worthy Persons_, in the volume entitled _The Scourge of +Folly_. + +[86] Gordon Goodwin, in _The Muses' Library_, 1894, p. 132. + +[87] See _Greenstreet Papers_, VIII, Fleay, _Hist. Stage_, 250. + +[88] _Brit. Past._, I, 1, 476. + +[89] _Ibid._, II, 2, 469. + +[90] Li. 405-470. + +[91] _Ibid._, I, 3, 297-8. + +[92] _Ibid._, II, 2, 247-352. + +[93] _Ibid._, II, 2, 510-512. + +[94] Cf. especially _Brit. Past._, II, 2, 706-732, with Fletcher's +defiance of poverty and independence of criticism in his poem, _Upon +an Honest Man's Fortune_. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +AN INTERSECTING CIRCLE OF JOVIAL SORT + + +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: + + He that from Helicon sends many a rill, + Whose nectared veines are drunk by thirsty men,[95] + +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 _Masque_, 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 _A King and No King_. +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 accident that the +manuscript _of A King and No King_ 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 _Northumbrian Manuscript_ of "Mr. Ffrauncis +Bacon's" essays and speeches. Sir Henry did not die till 1615, and it is +more than likely that the play, _A King and No King_, 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. + +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. + +[Illustration: FRANCIS BACON +From the portrait by Paul Van Somer in the National Portrait Gallery, +London] + +The symposium to which I have referred is celebrated in a copy of +macaronic Latin verses, entitled _Mr. Hoskins, his Convivium +Philosophicum_;[96] and I may be pardoned if I quote from the +contemporary 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.-- + + Whosoever is contented + That a number be convented, + Enough but not too many; + The _Miter_ is the place decreed, + For witty jests and cleanly feed, + The betterest of any. + + There will come, though scarcely current, + Christopherus surnamed _Torrent_ + And John ycleped _Made_; + And Arthur _Meadow-pigmies'-foe_ + To sup, his dinner will forgoe-- + Will come as soon as bade. + + Sir Robert _Horse-lover_ the while, + _Ne let_ Sir Henry _count it vile_ + Will come with gentle speed; + And _Rabbit-tree-where-acorn-grows_ + And John surnamed _Little-hose_ + Will come if there be need. + + And Richard _Pewter-Waster_ best + And Henry _Twelve-month-good_ at least + And John _Hesperian_ true. + If any be desiderated + He shall be amerciated + Forty-pence in issue. + + Hugh the _Inferior-Germayne_, + Nor yet unlearned nor prophane + Inego _Ionicke-pillar_. + But yet the number is not righted: + If Coriate bee not invited, + The jeast will want a tiller. + +In his edition of Aubrey's _Brief Lives_, Dr. Clark supplies the +glossary to these punning names. _Torrent_ is, of course, Brooke. +Johannes _Factus_, or _Made_, 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 _Twelve-month-good_, the Sir Henry Goodere, or +Goodeere, who married Frances (Drayton's Panape), one of the daughters +of "the first cherisher of Drayton's muse." _Ne-let_ Sir Henry _count it +vile_ is the elder Nevill under cover of his family motto, _Ne vile +velis_. Inigo Jones, _Ionicke-pillar_ is even more thinly disguised in +the Latin original as Ignatius _architectus_, Hugh Holland (the +_Inferior-Germayne_) was of Beaumont's Mermaid Club, the writer--beside +other poems--of commendatory verses for Jonson's _Sejanus_ in 1605, and +of the sonnet _Upon the Lines and Life_ 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 +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 _Pewter-waster_). 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 _The +Poetaster_ (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 _Little-hose_). 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. + +Of the participants in Serjeant Hoskins's _Convivium Philosophicum_, +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 +_Meadow-pigmies'-foe_ (Cranefield), Sir Robert _Horse-lover_ +(Phillips), _Rabbit-tree-where-acorn-grows_ (Conyoke or Connock), and +John _Hesperian_ (West), I have no information pertinent to the subject. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[95] _The Ghost of Richard III_, I, viii (1614). + +[96] In _Cal. State Papers (Dom.)_, 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 _Brief Lives_, +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +BEAUMONT AND SIR PHILIP SIDNEY'S DAUGHTER; RELATIONS WITH OTHER PERSONS +OF NOTE + + +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 +_Poems_, "by Francis Beaumont, Gent.," issued by Blaiklock in 1640 and +printed again in 1653, and among _The Golden Remains_ "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: + + I would avoid the common beaten ways + To women used, which are love or praise. + As for the first, the little wit I have + Is not yet grown so near unto the grave + But that I can, by that dim fading light, + Perceive of what or unto whom I write. + +Let others, "well resolved to end their days With a loud laughter blown +beyond the seas,"--let such + + Write love to you: I would not willingly + Be pointed at in every company, + As was that little tailor, who till death + Was hot in love with Queen Elizabeth. + And for the last, in all my idle days + I never yet did living woman praise + In prose or verse. + +A sufficient disavowal, this, of the foolish love songs attributed to +him by an uncritical posterity. + +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," + + I lose my ink, my paper and my time + And nothing add to your o'erflowing store, + And tell you nought, but what you knew before. + Nor do the virtuous-minded (which I swear, + Madam, I think you are) endure to hear + Their own perfections into question brought, + But stop their ears at them; for, if I thought + You took a pride to have your virtues known, + (Pardon me, madam) I should think them none. + +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 _The Forrest_, +where speaking of his tribute of verse, he says: + + With you, I know my off'ring will find grace: + For what a sinne 'gainst your great father's spirit, + Were it to think, that you should not inherit + His love unto the Muses, when his skill + Almost you have, or may have, when you will? + Wherein wise Nature you a dowrie gave, + Worth an estate treble to that you have. + Beauty, I know is good, and blood is more; + Riches thought most: but, Madame, think what store + The world hath scene, which all these had in trust, + And now lye lost in their forgotten dust. + +And in an Epigram[97] _To the Honour'd ---- Countesse of ----_, +evidently sent to her during the absence of her husband on the +continent, he compliments her conduct,-- + + Not only shunning by your act, to doe + Ought that is ill, but the suspition too,-- + +at a time when others are following vices and false pleasures. But +"you," he says, + + admit no company but good, + And when you want those friends, or neare in blood, + Or your allies, you make your bookes your friends, + And studie them unto the noblest ends, + Searching for knowledge, and to keepe your mind + The same it was inspired, rich, and refin'd. + +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. + +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," + + To whom all shepherds dedicate their lays, + And on her altars offer up their bays. + +"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 master, Jonson, dedicates in 1611, the tragedy of _Catiline_, +prefaced, as we have already observed, by verses of Beaumont himself. + +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, + + The love of learning which he oft express'd + In conversation, and respect to those + Who had a name in arts, in verse, in prose. + +Since Southampton was "a dear lover and cherisher as well of the lovers +of poets as of the poets themselves"[98] 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], 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."[99] 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. + + * * * * * + +Returning to Francis Beaumont's epistle to the Countess of Rutland, we +observe that it concludes with a promise: + + But, if your brave thoughts, which I must respect + Above your glorious titles, shall accept + These harsh disorder'd lines, I shall ere long + Dress up your virtues new, in a new song; + Yet far from all base praise and flattery, + Although I know what'er my verses be, + They will like the most servile flattery shew, + If I write truth, and make the subject you. + +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 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. + +Three days after the death of the lady whom he so revered, Beaumont +poured out his grief in verses justly praised as + + A Monument that will then lasting be + When all her Marble is more dust than she. + +That is what John Earle, writing after Beaumont's own death, some four +years later, says of the _Elegy on the Death of the Virtuous Lady, +Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland_. 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,-- + + Ere thou knewest the use of tears + Sorrow laid up against thou cam'st to years; + +sorrow in her wedded life,-- + + As soon as thou couldst apprehend a grief, + There were enough to meet thee; and the chief + Blessing of women, marriage, was to thee + Nought but a sacrament of misery. + +And then, + + Why didst thou die so soon? Oh, pardon me! + I know it was the longest life to thee, + That e'er with modesty was call'd a span, + Since the Almighty left to strive with man. + +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: + + I will not hurt the peace which she should have + By looking longer in her quiet grave,-- + +the consummation that all his heroines of tortured 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,-- + + Sorrow can make a verse without a Muse; + +and "Thou art gone,"-- + + Gone like the day thou diedst upon, and we + May call that back again as soon as thee. + +In still another way the lines on the death of Sidney's daughter are +instructive. Its noble tribute to Sidney's _Arcadia_ is payment of a +debt manifest in more than one of the dramas to which Beaumont had +contributed. Of Sir Philip, Beaumont here writes: + + He left two children, who for virtue, wit, + Beauty, were lov'd of all,--thee and his writ: + Two was too few; yet death hath from us took + Thee, a more faultless issue than his book, + Which, now the only living thing we have + From him, we'll see, shall never find a grave + As thou hast done. Alas, would it might be + That books their sexes had, as well as we, + That we might see this married to the worth, + And many poems like itself bring forth. + +The _Arcadia_ had already brought forth offspring: in prose, Greene's +_Menaphon_ and _Pandosto_, and Lodge's _Rosalynde_; in verse, Day's _Ile +of Guls_. It had fathered, immediately, the subplot of Shakespeare's +_King Lear_,--and, indirectly, portions of the _Winter's Tale_, and _As +You Like It_, and of other Elizabethan plays.[100] Within the twelve +months immediately preceding August 1612, it had inspired also, as we +have already observed, Beaumont and Fletcher's _Cupid's Revenge_, 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 _Arcadia_, virtue, art, and beauty, loved of all, +had earlier still been drawn by Beaumont, certainly for _The Maides +Tragedy_, and, perhaps, for _Philaster_ as well. + +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 admired vertues draw All harts to love her" +in John's poem, _The Shepherdess_, 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 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. + +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."[101] And he says "The chiefest house of the Villars at this +time is at Brokesby in Leicestershire, 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. + +[Illustration: GEORGE VILLIERS, FIRST DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, AND FAMILY +From the painting by Honthorst in the National Portrait Gallery] + +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 manoeuvred 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 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 L15,000 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";[102] in 1622 his cousin, Sir Thomas Beaumont of +Coleorton, the son of the Sir Henry[103] 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. + +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 John Beaumont celebrated it with a glowing epithalamium, +praying for the speedy birth of a son + + Who may be worthy of his father's stile, + May answere to our hopes, and strictly may combine + The happy height of Villiers race with noble Rutland's line. + +Soon afterwards and before 1623, John Beaumont's _Shepherdesse_, 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 + + Another lady, in whose brest + True wisdom hath with bounty equal place, + As modesty with beauty in her face: + She found me singing Flora's native dowres + And made me sing before the heavenly pow'rs, + For which great favour, till my voice be done, + I sing of her, and her thrice noble son. + +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: + + You, onely you, have pow'r to make me dwell + In sight of men, drawne from my silent cell; + +and of how Villiers had won him the recognition of the King: + + Your favour first th' anointed head inclines + To heare my rurall songs, and read my lines. + +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. + +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.[104] Young Lord Vaux got out +of the Fleet, in time married, and lived till 1661. + +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 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. + +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 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": + + We let our friends pass idly like our time + Till they be gone, and then we see our crime. + +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 +_innamorata_, the Stella to his Astrophel. + +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 _Faithfull Shepheardesse_: 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 admired and loved not only by Fletcher but by Beaumont's brother as +well--to whom we owe an encomium evidently sincere: + + ... A comely body, and a beauteous mind; + A heart to love, a hand to give inclin'd; + A house as free and open as the ayre; + A tongue which joyes in language sweet and faire, ... + +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,[105] 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. + +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 _Monsieur Thomas_. +"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 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. + +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: + + For brave comportment, wit without offence, + Words fully flowing, yet of influence, + Thou art that man of men, the man alone, + Worthy the publique admiration: + Who with thine owne eyes read'st what we doe write, + And giv'st our numbers euphonie and weight; + Tell'st when a verse springs high, how understood + To be, or not, borne of the royall-blood. + What state above, what symmetrie below, + Lives have, or sho'd have, thou the best can show.--[106] + +And it is likely that Cotton did the same for Fletcher and Beaumont. + +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 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. + +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: + + Whose smile can make a poet, and your glance + Dash all bad poems out of countenance.[107] + +And of our dramatists themselves, he writes about the same time that he +is writing to Selden, in his verses _To the Apparition of his Mistresse, +calling him to Elizium_,-- + + Amongst which glories, crown'd with sacred bayes + And flatt'ring ivie, two recite their plaies-- + Beaumont and Fletcher, swans to whom all eares + Listen while they, like syrens in their spheres, + Sing their Evadne.[108] + +[Illustration: JOHN SELDEN +From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London] + +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 _The Woman-Hater_, _The Knight of the Burning +Pestle_, _The Maske_, and several poems; Fletcher, _The Faithfull +Shepheardesse_ 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 _The Scornful Ladie_. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[97] _Underwoods_, XLVIII. + +[98] Thomas Nashe, _Dedication of The Life of Jack Wilton_. + +[99] _Itinerary_, Ed. L. T. Smith, Vol. I, 97. + +[100] See Greg's _Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Drama_, and my +former pupil, H. W. Hill's, _Sidney's Arcadia and the Elizabethan +Drama_. + +[101] _Itinerary_, Vol. I, 21. See also, below, Appendix, Table A. + +[102] _Cal. State Papers, Domestic_, Chamberlain to Carleton, Jan. 4, +1617. The Villiers descent is given in Collins, _Peerage_, III, 762. + +[103] Sir Henry had petitioned ineffectually for the revival of the +viscounty at an earlier date. _Cal. St. Pa., Dom._, Nov. 23, 1606; +see, also, reference in 1614. See also, below, Appendix, Table A. + +[104] _Calendar of State Papers_ (Domestic), 1611-1617, under dates. + +[105] Elton, _Drayton_, p. 28. + +[106] _Hesperides_, Aldine edition of _Herrick_, II, 136. + +[107] _Hesperides_, Aldine edition, _Herrick_, I, 301. + +[108] _Op. cit._, I, 329. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +BEAUMONT'S MARRIAGE AND DEATH; THE SURVIVING FAMILY + + +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 _The Examination of his Mistris' Perfections_, +the poem of which I speak, the writer praises with all sincerity the +woman of his love: + + Stand still, my happinesse; and, swelling heart,-- + No more! till I consider what thou art. + +Like our first parents in Paradise who "thought it nothing if not +understood," so the poet of his happiness-- + + Though by thy bountious favour I be in + A paradice, where I may freely taste + Of all the vertuous pleasures which thou hast + [I] wanting that knowledge, must, in all my blisse, + Erre with my parents, and aske what it is. + My faith saith 'tis not Heaven; and I dare swear, + If it be Hell, no pain of sence, is there; + Sure, 't is some pleasant place, where I may stay, + As I to Heaven go in the middle way. + Wert thou but faire, and no whit vertuous, + Thou wert no more to me but a faire house + Hanted with spirits, from which men do them blesse, + And no man will halfe furnishe to possesse: + Or, hadst thou worth wrapt in a rivell'd skin, + 'T were inaccessible. Who durst go in + To find it out? for sooner would I go + To find a pearle cover'd with hills of snow; + 'T were buried vertue, and thou mightst me move + To reverence the tombe, but not to love,-- + No more than dotingly to cast mine eye + Upon the urne where Lucrece' ashes lye. + But thou art faire and sweet, and every good + That ever yet durst mixe with flesh and blood: + The Devill ne're saw in his fallen state + An object whereupon to ground his hate + So fit as thee; all living things but he + Love thee; how happy, then, must that man be + Whom from amongst all creatures thou dost take! + Is there a hope beyond it? can he make + A wish to change thee for? This is my blisse, + Let it run on now; I know what it is. + +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 _Ad Comitissam Rutlundiae_ +contemns, praises "bestow'd at most need on a thirsty soul." The writer, +here, purports to examine 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,-- + + Nor do the virtuous-minded (which I swear + Madam, I think you are) endure to hear + Their own perfections into question brought, + But stop their ears at them. + +When the lines of the _Examination_ 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 _A King +and No King_, + + I have a thousand joyes to tell you of, + Which yet I dare not utter, till I pay + My thankes to Heaven for um. + +I date this poem, then 1612 or 1613, a year or two 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. + +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. + +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{^t} 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 ... 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 _Leicester_, 1619: "Ursula, the daughter and +coheir [evidently with Una] of Henry Isley."[109] In fact, Henry had +named Ursula after his mother, the daughter of Nicholas Clifford. + +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.[110] 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. + +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, _The Captaine_ and +_The Honest Man's Fortune_, were acted 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.[111] + +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 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 + + Well nyne and twenty in a companye, + Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle + In felawshipe, and pilgrims were they alle, + That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde. + +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. + +Another summer day, Francis would ride the ten miles north toward +Chislehurst (ashes of Napoleon _le petit_!), 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 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 _Henry VIII_ 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 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. + +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 _The Scornful Ladie_. + +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.[112] + +The lines written to Lady Rutland, some five years before, + + What little wit I have + Is not yet grown so near unto the grave, + But that I can, by that dim fading light, + Perceive of what, or unto whom I write, + +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,"-- + + On Death, thy murd'rer, this revenge I take: + I slight his terrour, and just question make, + Which of us two the best precedence have-- + Mine to this wretched world, thine to the grave. + Thou shouldst have followed me, but Death to blame + Miscounted yeeres, and measur'd age by fame: + _So dearely hast thou bought thy precious lines; + Their praise grew swiftly, so thy life declines._ + Thy Muse, the hearer's queene, the reader's love, + All eares, all hearts (but Death's), could please and move;-- + +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,[113] 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. + + He that hath such acuteness and such wit, + As would ask ten good heads to husband it; + He that can write so well, that no man dare + Refuse it for the best, let him beware: + Beaumont is dead; _by whose sole death appears, + Wit's a disease consumes men in few years_.-- + +And this conjecture is borne out by the portrait of the weary Beaumont +that now hangs in Nuneham. + +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, 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. + +The verses, _On the Tombs in Westminster_, 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:-- + + Mortality, behold, and feare, + What a change of flesh is here! + Thinke how many royall bones + Sleep within these heap of stones: + Here they lye, had realmes and lands, + Who now want strength to stir their hands; + Where from their pulpits, seal'd with dust, + They preach "In greatnesse is not trust." + Here's an acre sown, indeed, + With the richest, royall'st seed + That the earth did e're suck in + Since the first man dy'd for sin: + Here the bones of birth have cry'd, + "Though gods they were, as men they dy'd"; + Here are sands, ignoble things, + Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings. + Here's a world of pomp and state + Buried in dust, once dead by fate. + +If the lines are not by Francis, they still preach the calm, +deterministic spirit of his poems and his tragedies; and they are worthy +of him. + +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 _Battle of Bosworth Field_, which contains some +genuinely poetic passages, I have already spoken. In his lines to James +I _Concerning the True Forme of English Poetry_, composed probably the +year of Francis' death, or the year after, he desiderates regularity of +rhyme, + + Pure phrase, fit epithets, a sober care + Of metaphors, descriptions cleare, yet rare, + Similitudes contracted, smooth and round, + Not vex't by learning, but with nature crown'd,-- + +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 _Crowne of Thornes_, 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: + + Shall ever I forget with what delight + He on my simple lines would cast his sight? + His onely mem'ry my poore worke adornes, + He is a father to my crowne of thornes: + Now since his death how can I ever looke + Without some tears, upon that orphan booke? + +That this poem was printed we gather also from the elegy of Thomas +Hawkins upon Sir John. + +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,[114] 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-- + + There is no splendour, which our pens can give + By our most labour'd lines, can make thee live + Like to thine owne. + +In the commendatory poems, his friend, Thomas Nevill,[115] 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 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 _Anatomy of Melancholy_,--he was "a gentleman of +great learning, gravity, and worthiness." + +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,[116] +the father of the Ambrose who wrote the _Pastorals_ and _The Distrest +Mother_. 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 +between the Sundridge Isleys and the Phillipps de Lisles who came into +the Grace-Dieu estates in 1777. + +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 _Muses Elizium_. In the +third, fourth, and eighth _Nimphalls_, 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 _Nimphalls_ 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. + +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;[117] 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" 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"[118] on her +return. In 1682 she was "resident in the family of the Duke of Ormonde," +then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.[119] 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,"[120] 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 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[109] _Works of B. and F._, I, ii-iii. + +[110] Hasted's _History of Kent_ (1797), II, 433; III, 146, 154, 186. + +[111] For Sundridge and the Isleys, see Hasted's _Kent_, II, 513-521; +III, 128-132, 143-145; and _Cal, S. P._ (_Dom._) Jan. 23, Feb. 24, +1554. + +[112] Jonson's statement to Drummond "ere he was thirty years of age" +is incorrect, or was misreported. + +[113] _Introduction to The Works of B. and F._, ed. 1866, I, xviii. + +[114] According to the Register of burials in Westminster Abbey, 1627; +but some authorities say 1628. See Dyce, I, xxi; Chalmer's _English +Poets_, VI, 3, and Grosart's edition of his poems. + +[115] 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. + +[116] Nichols, _Coll. Hist., Leic.,-Bibl. Top. Britt._, VIII, 1329, +1341. + +[117] A. B. Grosart, in _D. N. B._, art. _Francis Beaumont_. + +[118] Preface to _B. and F.'s Works_, ed. 1711, p. 1. + +[119] Dyce, Vol. I, p. 211, from _MS., Vincent's Leicester_, 1683. + +[120] James Wills, _Lives of Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen_, +1841, Vol. III, Pt. ii, p. 244. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE PERSONALITY, AND THE CONTEMPORARY REPUTATION OF BEAUMONT + + +Our poet's contemporaries saw him, not as one of my scholarly friends, +Professor Herford, judging apparently from the crude engraving of +1711,[121] 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";[122] as we see him to-day in the soft and speaking +photogravure[123] recently made from the portrait at Knole Park or in +the reproduction of 1911[124] of the portrait which belongs to the Rt. +Hon. Lewis Harcourt at Nuneham,--a courtly gentleman of noble 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 _Philaster_. 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,[125] Drayton dedicated, 1630, the +_Nimphalls_ of his _Muses Elizium_, and to his Countess, Mary, the +_Divine Poems_, published therewith. If, as others have conjectured, the +Earl is himself the Dorilus of the _Nimphalls_, the exquisite +_Description of Elizium_ 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: + + A Paradice on earth is found, + Though farre from vulgar sight, + Which, with those pleasures doth abound, + That it Elizium hight,-- + +of its groves of stately trees, its merle and mavis, its daisies +damasking the green, its spreading vines upon the "cleeves," its +ripening fruits: + + The Poets Paradice this is, + To which but few can come; + The Muses onely bower of blisse, + Their Deare Elizium. + +It was the widow of the third Earl, Anne (Clifford), Countess of Dorset +and, afterwards, of Pembroke and Montgomery,[126] 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. + +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. + +[Illustration: By permission of Mr. Lewis Harcourt. + + THE BEAUMONT + OF THE + NUNEHAM PORTRAIT] + +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 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. + +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 _Hypercritica_, +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 +_Hypercritica_, prepared between 1616 and 1618,[127] Bolton omits the +later dramatists altogether;[128] 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 _Elements of Armories_ 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,"[129] who highly compliments the invention, judicial method, +and taste displayed in the _Elements_, and returns the manuscript with +promise of his patronage. + +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,[130] that it seems "very like Fletcher's epicede on +his beloved associate":-- + + Come, sorrow, come! bring all thy cries, + All thy laments, and all thy weeping eyes! + Burn out, you living monuments of woe! + Sad sullen griefs, now rise and overflow! + Virtue is dead; + O cruel fate! + All youth is fled; + All our laments too late. + + Oh, noble youth, to thy ne'er-dying name, + Oh, happy youth, to thy still-growing fame, + To thy long peace in earth, this sacred knell + Our last loves ring--farewell, farewell, farewell! + Go, happy soul, to thy eternal birth! + And press his body lightly, gentle Earth! + +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: + + Beaumont lyes here; and where now shall we have + A Muse like his, to sigh upon his grave? + Ah, none to weepe this with a worthy teare, + But he that cannot, Beaumont that lies here. + Who now shall pay thy Tombe with such a Verse + As thou that Ladies didst, faire Rutlands Herse? + A Monument that will then lasting be, + When all her Marble is more dust than she. + In thee all's lost: a sudden dearth and want + Hath seiz'd on Wit, good Epitaphs are scant; + We dare not write thy Elegie, whilst each feares + He nere shall match that coppy of thy teares. + Scarce in an Age a Poet,--and yet he + Scarce lives the third part of his age to see, + But quickly taken off, and only known, + Is in a minute shut as soone as showne.... + +Why should Nature take such pains to perfect that which ere perfected +she shall destroy?-- + + Beaumont dies young, so Sidney died before; + There was not Poetry he could live to, more: + He could not grow up higher; I scarce know + If th' art it self unto that pitch could grow, + Were 't not in thee that hadst arriv'd the hight + Of all that wit could reach, or Nature might.... + +The elegist likens Beaumont to Menander, + + Whose few sententious fragments show more worth + Than all the Poets Athens ere brought forth; + And I am sorry I have lost those houres + On them, whose quicknesse comes far short of ours, + And dwelt not more on thee, whose every Page + May be a patterne to their Scene and Stage. + I will not yeeld thy Workes so mean a Prayse-- + More pure, more chaste, more sainted than are Playes, + Nor with that dull supinenesse to be read, + To passe a fire, or laugh an houre in bed.... + Why should not Beaumont in the Morning please, + As well as Plautus, Aristophanes? + Who, if my Pen may as my thoughts be free, + Were scurrill Wits and Buffons both to Thee.... + Yet these are Wits, because they'r old, and now + Being Greeke and Latine, they are Learning too: + But those their owne Times were content t' allow + A thriftier fame, and thine is lowest now. + But thou shall live, and, when thy Name is growne + Six Ages older, shall be better knowne; + When thou'rt of Chaucers standing in the Tombe, + Thou shall not share, but take up all his roome.[131] + +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 _Microcosmographie_ is +but repeating the censure of his elegy on Beaumont in 1616. + +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 +rollicking scribbler mentions him in _The Praise of Hemp-seed_ 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: + + Renowned Spencer, lye a thought more nye + To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lye + A little neerer Spencer, to make roome + For Shakespeare in your threefold, fowerfold Tombe. + To lodge all foure in one bed make a shift + Untill Doomesdaye, for hardly will a fift, + Betwixt this day and that, by Fate be slayne + For whom your Curtaines may be drawn againe. + +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 carved marble of thine owne." The sonnet +contemplates the removal of Shakespeare's remains to Westminster, and +arranges the poets already lying there not in actual but chronological +order.[132] + +To these verses Jonson, as I have said, alludes in the series of stanzas +prefixed to the Shakespeare folio of 1623,--_To the memory of my +beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare and what he hath left us._ +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 +Aeschylus," Euripides, and Sophocles, Pacuvius, Accius, "him of Cordova +dead," must be summoned + + To life againe to heare thy Buskin tread + And shake a Stage. + +Therefore it is, that Jonson calls-- + + My Shakespeare rise; I will not lodge thee by + Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lye + A little further to make thee a roome: + Thou art a Moniment without a toombe, + And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live, + And we have wits to read, and praise to give. + That I not mixe thee so, my braine excuses; + I meane with great, but disproportion'd Muses. + +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 _Epistle to Henery Reynolds, Esq., Of +Poets and Poesy_, 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 + + meane to run + In quest of these that them applause have wonne + Upon our Stages in these latter dayes, + That are so many; let them have their bayes, + That doe deserve it; let those wits that haunt + Those publique circuits, let them freely chaunt + Their fine Composures, and their praise pursue; + +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 +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" + + Whose works oft printed, set on every post, + To publique censure subject have bin most. + +By 1627 all of the dramas in which Francis had an undoubted share, +except _The Coxcombe_ 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.' + +[Illustration: MICHAEL DRAYTON +From the portrait in the Dulwich Gallery] + +This volume is Henry Fitzgeffrey's _Certayn elegies done by sundrie +excellent wits_ (Fr. Beau., M. Dr., N. H.), with _Satyres and +Epigrames_. 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, +philosopher, and poet, Nicholas Hill[133] Beaumont could not have failed +to know him. He was of St. John's College, Oxford; he wrote and +published a _Philosophia Epicurea Democritiana_ to which, mentioning him +by name, Ben Jonson alludes in his epigram (CXXXIV) _Of The Famous +Voyage_ of the two wights who "At Bread-streets _Mermaid_ 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 _Convivium Philosophicum_. He died in 1610. + +Whether the anonymous writer on _The Time Poets_[134] 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, + + One night, the great Apollo, pleas'd with Ben, + Made the odde number of the Muses ten; + The fluent Fletcher, Beaumont rich in sense, + In complement and courtship's quintessence; + Ingenious Shakespeare, Massinger that knows + The strength of plot to write in verse or prose,-- + +and continue with "cloud-grappling Chapman" and others, as of the ten +Muses. + +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 _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ upon his +bourgeois drama of _The Foure Prentises_ of London. Writing as late as +1635, he remembers Francis as a wit: + + Excellent Bewmont, in the formost ranke + Of the rarest Wits, was never more than Franck.-- + +The touch of familiarity with which Heywood[135] 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. + +We may surmise that one more eulogist of Beaumont, his kinsman,[136] 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, correctly,--the nobler scenes of "brave +Mardonius" in _A King and No King_. One attaches, therefore, more than +mere literary, or hearsay, significance to his selection for special +praise of Beaumont's force, when he says, + + Thou strik'st our sense so deep, + At once thou mak'st us Blush, Rejoyce, and Weep. + Great father Johnson bow'd himselfe when hee + (Thou writ'st so nobly) vow'd he envy'd thee. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[121] From the portrait at Knole Park. + +[122] _Encyc. Brit., sub nomine._ + +[123] By Cockerell, in the _Variorum Edition of B. and F.'s Works_, +Vol. I, 1904. See Frontispiece to this volume. + +[124] _Historical Portraits_, Vol. II, 1600-1700, Oxford, 1911. + +[125] Not to the third Earl, Richard, as Cyril Brett, _Drayton's Minor +Poems_, p. xix, has it. + +[126] Clark's _Aubrey's Brief Lives_, II, 175, 239. Not Mary (Curzon), +the wife of the fourth Earl, as Professor Elton, _Drayton_ (1895), p. +45, has it. + +[127] After the appearance of Montague's edition of King James's +_Works_, and before the execution of Raleigh. + +[128] Save for non-dramatic productions such as Ben Jonson's +_Epigrams_, etc. + +[129] Grosart, _D. N. B._, art, _Sir John Beaumont_, and _Sir J. B.'s +Poems_, xxxvi. + +[130] _B. and F._, Vol. I, lii. + +[131] Revised by Earle for the _Commendatory Verses_, Folio 1647; but +I have retained some of the readings of the 1640 copy included in +Beaumont's _Poems_. + +[132] The version given above is that of Brit. Mus. _MS. Lansdowne_ +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 _Centurie of Praise_, p. 139. + +[133] Mr. Bullen, _D. N. B._, under _Fitzgeffrey_, queries "Nathaniel +Hooke." I have not been able to identify Hooke. + +[134] _Choice Drollery, Songs, and Sonnets, 1656, in Sh. Soc. Pap._, +III, 172. + +[135] _The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells._ + +[136] Through the Villierses and therefore probably through the +Coleorton Beaumonts. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +TRADITION, AND TRADITIONAL CRITICISM + + +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 _The Stationer to the Readers_ 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 _To the Reader_ 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 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 learned 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." + +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, _The Coxcombe_ and the _Masque of the Inner Temple_, 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. + +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," + + That should the Stage embattaile all its Force, + Fletcher would lead the Foot, Beaumont the Horse; + +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: + + So Beaumont dy'd; yet left in Legacy + His Rules and Standard-wit (Fletcher) to Thee. + +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,-- + + Perhaps his quill flew stronger, when + 'T was weaved with his Beaumont's pen; + And might with deeper wonder hit. + +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. + +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, + + Added his sober spunge, and did contract + Thy plenty to lesse wit to make 't exact. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +A FEW WORDS OF FLETCHER'S LATER YEARS + + +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 +_Valentinian_, the sole author of tragicomedies such as _The Loyall +Subject_, and long-lived comedies--_The Chances_, _Rule a Wife and Have +a Wife_, and several more,--he is a syndicate: he stands sponsor for +plays like _The Queene of Corinth_ and _The Knight of Malta_ in which +others collaborated largely with him; and his name is occasionally +stamped upon plays of associates, in which he had no hand whatever. +"Thou grew'st," says his contemporary and admirer, John Harris,-- + + "Thou grew'st to govern the whole Stage alone: + In which orbe thy throng'd light did make the star, + Thou wert th' Intelligence did move that Sphear." + +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, + + The Stage grew narrow while thou grew'st to be + In thy whole life an Exc'llent Comedie,-- + +and admires his behaviour: + + To these a Virgin-modesty which first met + Applause with blush and fear, as if he yet + Had not deserv'd; till bold with constant praise + His browes admitted the unsought-for Bayes. + +So, addressing the public, concludes this panegyrist,-- + + Hee came to be sole Monarch, and did raign + In Wits great Empire, abs'lute Soveraign. + +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: + + His Works (says Momus) nay, his Plays you'd say: + Thou hast said right, for that to him was Play + Which was to others braines a toyle: with ease + He playd on Waves which were Their troubled Seas.... + But to the Man againe, of whom we write, + The Writer that made Writing his Delight, + Rather then Worke. He did not pumpe, nor drudge, + To beget Wit, or manage it; nor trudge + To Wit-conventions with Note-booke, to gleane + Or steale some Jests to foist into a Scene: + He scorn'd those shifts. You that have known him, know + The common talke that from his Lips did flow, + And run at waste, did savour more of Wit, + Then any of his time, or since have writ, + (But few excepted) in the Stages way: + His Scenes were Acts, and every Act a Play. + I knew him in his strength; even then when He-- + That was the Master of his Art and Me-- + Most knowing Johnson (proud to call him Sonne) + In friendly Envy swore, He had out-done + His very Selfe. I knew him till he dyed; + And at his dissolution, what a Tide + Of sorrow overwhelm'd the Stage; which gave + Volleys of sighes to send him to his grave; + And grew distracted in most violent Fits + (For She had lost the best part of her Wits) ... + +"Others," concludes this old admirer unpretentiously, + + Others may more in lofty Verses move; + I onely, thus, expresse my Truth and Love. + +No better testimony to the character of the man who, even though Jonson +was still writing, became 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 +_Dedication_ of _The Wild-Goose Chase_: "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." + +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 greater fame."[137] If we may take him at his word, and +estimate him by the noblest lines he ever wrote,--the verses affixed to +_The Honest Man's Fortune_ (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: + + Man is his own Star, and the soul that can + Render an honest and a perfect man, + Commands all light, all influence, all fate; + Nothing to him falls early, or too late. + Our Acts our Angels are, or good or ill, + Our fatal shadows that walk by us still; + And when the Stars are labouring, we believe + It is not that they govern, but they grieve + For stubborn ignorance. + +That star is in "the Image of thy Maker's good": + + He is my Star, in him all truth I find, + All influence, all fate; + +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: + + So I enjoy all beauty and all youth, + And though to time her Lights and Laws she lends, + She knows no Age, that to corruption bends.... + +Perhaps through all this, there echoes the voice of that _praesul +splendidus_, 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: + + Man is his own Star, and that soul that can + Be honest, is the only perfect man. + +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 _Faithfull Shepheardesse_,[138] 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.[139] In Beaumont, that "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, + + All commendations end + In saying only: Thou wert Beaumont's friend. + +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 _Ayre_ and _Spirit_, 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 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. + +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. + +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 +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. + +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. + +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 Dyce[140] by Collier, "more in +jest than in earnest," from the Parish-registers, are suggestive, if we +reflect that, about 1612 or 1613, the _menage a trois_, 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 +_Bury-Fair_ (see page 96 above), whole and as something digestible. + +These are Collier's cullings from the Registers: + + 1612. Nov. 3. John Fletcher and Jone Herring [were married]. + _Reg. of St. Saviour's, Southwark._ + + John, the son of John Fletcher and of Joan his wife was baptized + 25 Feb., 1619. _Reg. of St. Bartholomew the Great._ + +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 _Upon an +Honest Man's Fortune_, 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,-- + + Were I in love, and could that bright Star bring + Increase to Wealth, Honour, and everything: + Were she as perfect good, as we can aim, + The first was so, and yet she lost the Game. + My Mistriss then be Knowledge and fair Truth; + So I enjoy all beauty and all youth. + +We may be sure that when Fletcher wrote this poem he had known poverty, +sickness, and affliction, but not a consolation in wedded happiness: + + Love's but an exhalation to best eyes; + The matter spent, and then the fool's fire dies. + +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. + + * * * * * + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[137] See his _Ode to Sir William Skipwith_. + +[138] "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. + +[139] Ward, _E. Dr. Lit._, II, 649,--quoting, in the footnote, from +_The Nice Valour_, V, 3. + +[140] Dyce, _B. and F._, I, lxxiii. + + + + +PART TWO + +THE COLLABORATION OF BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM; CRITICAL APPARATUS + + +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 _The Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes-Inne and the Inner Temple_ +"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 _Maske_) 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 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.[141] + +[Illustration: JOHN FLETCHER +From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery +Painter unknown but contemporary] + +Sir Aston Cockayne was, therefore, fully justified, when, some time +between 1647 and 1658, he thus upbraided the publishers of the folio: + + In the large book of Playes you late did print + In Beaumont's and in Fletcher's name, why in't + Did you not justice? Give to each his due? + For Beaumont of those many writ in few, + And Massinger in other few; the Main + Being sole Issues of sweet Fletcher's brain. + But how came I (you ask) so much to know? + Fletcher's chief bosome-friend informed me so. + I' the next impression therefore justice do, + And print their old ones in one volume too; + For Beaumont's works and Fletcher's should come forth, + With all the right belonging to their worth. + +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: + + I wonder, Cousin, that you would permit + So great an Injury to Fletcher's wit, + Your friend and old Companion, that his fame + Should be divided to another's name. + If Beaumont had writ those Plays, it had been + Against his merits a detracting Sin, + Had they been attributed also to + Fletcher. They were two wits and friends, and who + Robs from the one to glorify the other, + Of these great memories is a partial Lover. + Had Beaumont liv'd when this Edition came + Forth, and beheld his ever living name + Before Plays that he never writ, how he + Had frown'd and blush'd at such Impiety! + His own Renown no such Addition needs + To have a Fame sprung from another's deedes: + And my good friend Old Philip Massinger + With Fletcher writ in some that we see there. + But you may blame the Printers: yet you might + Perhaps have won them to do Fletcher right, + Would you have took the pains; for what a foul + And unexcusable fault it is (that whole + Volume of plays being almost every one + After the death of Beaumont writ) that none + Would certifie them so much! I wish as free + Y' had told the Printers this, as you did me. + . . . . . . + ... While they liv'd and writ together, we + Had Plays exceeded what we hop'd to see. + But they writ few; for youthful Beaumont soon + By death eclipsed was at his high noon. + +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 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 _almost every play_ 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 _Maske of the Gentleman of Grayes +Inne_ and a portion of _The Coxcombe_. + +The confusion concerning authorship was redoubled by the second folio, +which appeared as "_Fifty Comedies and Tragedies_. Written by Francis +Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. Published by the Authors Original +Copies (_etc._)" in 1679. There are fifty-three plays in this volume; +the thirty-five of the first folio, and eighteen previously printed but +not 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, _The Coronation_, principally, if not entirely, by Shirley.[142] 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. + +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,"[143] that is to say, in +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 _Philaster_ and +_The Maides Tragedy_ (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. + + Oh, when I read those excellent things of thine, + Such Strength, such sweetnesse, coucht in every line, + Such life of Fancy, such high choise of braine,-- + Nought of the Vulgar mint or borrow'd straine, + Such Passion, such expressions meet my eye, + Such Wit untainted with obscenity, + And these so unaffectedly exprest, + But all in a pure flowing language drest, + So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon, + And all so borne within thyself, thine owne, + I grieve not now that old Menanders veine + Is ruin'd, to survive in thee againe. + +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. + +A year or so later, and still during Fletcher's lifetime, we find +Drummond of Hawthornden confusing in his turn the facts of authorship; +for he "reports Jonson as saying that 'Flesher and Beaumont, ten years +since, hath written _The Faithfull Shipheardesse_, a tragicomedie well +done,'--whereas both Jonson and Beaumont had already addressed lines to +Fletcher in commendation of his pastoral."[144] 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: + + For still your fancies are so wov'n and knit, + 'T was Francis Fletcher or John Beaumont writ; + +and repeated by Sir John Pettus: + + How Angels (cloyster'd in our humane Cells) + Maintaine their parley, Beaumont-Fletcher tels: + Whose strange, unimitable Intercourse + Transcends all Rules. + +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 appears) but to others like _The Maides +Tragedy_ and _The Scornful Ladie_ in which, undoubtedly, Beaumont +cooperated, says: + + Fletcher, to thee wee do not only owe + All these good Playes, but those of others, too; ... + No Worthies form'd by any Muse but thine, + Could purchase Robes to make themselves so fine; + +and by Hills, who writes,--"upon the Ever-to-be-admired Mr. John +Fletcher and his Playes,"-- + + "Fletcher, the King of Poets! such was he, + That earn'd all tribute, claim'd all soveraignty." + +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: + + Though when all Fletcher writ, and the entire + Man was indulged unto that sacred fire, + His thoughts and his thoughts dresse appeared both such + That 't was his happy fault to do too much; + Who therefore wisely did submit each birth + To knowing Beaumont ere it did come forth; + Working againe, until he said 't was fit + And made him the sobriety of his wit; + Though thus he call'd his Judge into his fame, + And for that aid allow'd him halfe the name, + 'T is knowne that sometimes he did stand alone, + That both the Spunge and Pencill were his owne; + That himselfe judged himselfe, could singly do, + And was at last Beaumont and Fletcher too. + +A similar view is implied by Dryden, when, in his _Essay of Dramatick +Poesie_, 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." + +This tradition of Fletcher as creator and Beaumont as critic continued +for generations, only occasionally disturbed,[145] in spite of the +testimony of Cockayne to Fletcher's sole authorship of most of the plays +in the first folio, to the cooperation 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 _The Fellows and Followers of +Shakespeare_, Part Two.[146] The succeeding history of opinion through +Langbaine, Collier, Theobald, Sympson and Seward, Chalmers, Brydges, +_The Biographia Dramatica_, 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 _Dramatic +Method of John Fletcher_. + +With Fleay, in 1874, began the scientific analysis 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.[147] 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 _The Knight of the Burning +Pestle_ and _A King and No King_. 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 _Cambridge History of English +Literature_, and by A. H. Thorndike in his _Influence of Beaumont and +Fletcher upon Shakespeare_. + +Concerning the authorship of the successive scenes 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 differentiae yielded by such preliminary +methods of investigation,--what these differentiae 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[141] See G. C. Macaulay (_Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit._, VI), and other +authorities as in footnote toward end of this chapter. + +[142] See authorities as in footnote, below. + +[143] Included "thirty years" after, among the commendatory poems in +the folio of 1647; but published earlier with _Beaumont's Poems_, +1640. + +[144] Miss O. L. Hatcher, _John Fletcher_, Chicago, 1905. + +[145] As by Langbaine, _An Account of the English Dramatick Poets_ +(1691), who acknowledges Cockayne as the only conclusive authority +upon the subject. + +[146] _R. E. C._, Vol. III. + +[147] F. G. Fleay, in _New Shakespeare Society Transactions_, 1874; +_Shakespeare Manual_, 1876; _Englische Studien_, IX (1866); _Chronicle +of the English Drama_, 1891. R. Boyle, in _Engl. Stud._, V, VII, VIII, +IX, X, XVII, XVIII, XXVI, XXXI (1881-1902), and in _N. Shaksp. Soc. +Trans._, 1886. G. C. Macaulay, _Francis Beaumont_, 1883; and in +_Cambridge History of English Literature_, VI (1910). A. H. Bullen, +article _John Fletcher_ in _Dictionary of National Biography_, XIX +(1889). E. H. Oliphant, in _Engl. Stud._, XIV, XV, XVI (1890-92). A. +H. Thorndike, _The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare_, +1901; Beaumont and Fletcher's _Maid's Tragedy_, etc. (Belles Lettres +Series), 1910. R. M. Alden, Beaumont's _Knight of the Burning Pestle_, +etc. (Belles Lettres Series), 1910. The introductions in the _Variorum +Edition_, 1904, 1905. For a general treatment of the subject see, +also, A. W. Ward's _History of English Dramatic Literature_, II, +155-248 (1875), II, 642-764 (1809), and F. E. Schelling's _Elizabethan +Drama_, II, 184-204, and for bibliography, 526. For general +bibliography, Thorndike and Alden in Belles Lettres Series, as above; +and _Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit._, VI, 488-496. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE DELIMITATION OF THE FIELD + + +The plays contained in the first folio of Beaumont and Fletcher's +_Comedies and Tragedies_, 1647, are _The Mad Lover_, _The Spanish +Curate_, _The Little French Lawyer_, _The Custome of the Countrey_, _The +Noble Gentleman_, _The Captaine_, _The Beggers Bush_, _The Coxcombe_, +_The False One_, _The Chances_, _The Loyall Subject_, _The Lawes of +Candy_, _The Lovers Progresse_, _The Island Princesse_, _The Humorous +Lieutenant_, _The Nice Valour_, _The Maide in the Mill_, _The +Prophetesse_, _The Tragedy of Bonduca_, _The Sea Voyage_, _The Double +Marriage_, _The Pilgrim_, _The Knight of Malta_, _The Womans Prize_ or +_The Tamer Tamed_, _Loves Cure_, _The Honest Mans Fortune_, _The Queene +of Corinth_, _Women Pleas'd_, _A Wife for a Moneth_, _Wit at Severall +Weapons_, _The Tragedy of Valentinian_, _The Faire Maide of the Inne_, +_Loves Pilgrimage_, _The Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne, and the +Inner Temple, at the Marriage of the Prince and Princesse Palatine of +Rhene_ written by Francis Beaumont, Gentleman, _Foure Playes_ (or +_Moralle Representations_) _in One_. + +Of these thirty-five, which purport to be printed from "the authours +originall copies," only one, as I have already said, _The Maske_, had +been published before. + +The second folio, entitled _Fifty Comedies and Tragedies_, 1679, +contains, beside those above mentioned, eighteen others, one of which, +_The Wild-Goose Chase_, 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 _The Maides +Tragedy_, _Philaster_, _A King and No King_, _The Scornful Ladie_, _The +Elder Brother_, _Wit Without Money_, _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_, +_Rule a Wife and Have a Wife_, _Monsieur Thomas_, _Rollo_, _The Knight +of the Burning Pestle_, _The Night-Walker_, _The Coronation_, _Cupids +Revenge_, _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, _Thierry and Theodoret_, and _The +Woman-Hater_. + +In addition to these fifty-three plays, one, _The Faithful Friends_, +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. + +According to the broadest possible sweep of modern opinion, the presence +of Beaumont cannot by any _tour de force_ be conjectured in more than +twenty-three of the fifty-four productions listed above. The +twenty-three are (exclusive of _The Maske_) _The Woman-Hater_, _The +Knight of the Burning Pestle_, _Cupids Revenge_, _The Scornful Ladie_, +_The Maides Tragedy_, _A King and No King_, _Philaster_, _Foure Playes +in One_, _Loves Cure_, _The Coxcombe_, _The Captaine_, _Thierry and +Theodoret_, _The Faithful Friends_, _Wit at Severall Weapons_, _Beggers +Bush_, _Loves Pilgrimage_, _The Knight of Malta_, _The Lawes of Candy_, +_The Nice Valour_, _The Noble Gentleman_, _The Faire Maide of the Inne_, +_Bonduca_, and _The Honest Mans Fortune_. With regard to the last twelve +of these plays beginning with _Thierry and Theodoret_ there is no +convincing proof that more than the first four were written before +February 1613, when after preparing the _Maske_ for the Lady Elizabeth's +marriage to the Elector Palatine, Beaumont seems (except for his share +of _The Scornful Ladie_ 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: _The Honest +Mans Fortune_, which is said on manuscript evidence to have been played +in the year 1613, but probably later than August 5;[148] _Bonduca_, +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, _Loves Pilgrimage_, and _The Nice Valour_. The +balance of proof with regard to the other four, _The Knight of Malta_, +_The Lawes of Candy_, _The Noble Gentleman_, and _The Faire Maide of the +Inne_, is altogether in favour of their composition after Beaumont's +death. + +In each of these twelve plays, however, beginning with _Thierry_ and +ending with _The Honest Mans Fortune_, 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. + +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: _The Woman-Hater_, published +without name of author in 1607; _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, also +anonymous, published in 1613; _Cupids Revenge_, published as Fletcher's +in 1615; _The Scornful Ladie_, published in 1616, as Beaumont and +Fletcher's, just after the death of the former; _The Maides Tragedy_, +published, without names of authors, in 1619; _A King and No King_, +published as Beaumont and Fletcher's in 1619; _Philaster_, published as +Beaumont and Fletcher's in 1620; and _Foure Playes in One_, _Loves +Cure_, _The Coxcombe_, and _The Captaine_, 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 _Loves Cure_ the Epilogue mentions "our Author"; the +Prologue, spoken "at the reviving of this play," attributes it to +Beaumont and Fletcher. As for _The Coxcombe_, the Prologue for a revival +speaks of "the makers that confest it for their own." + +It is worthy of notice that three only of these eleven possible +"Beaumont-Fletcher" plays were printed during Beaumont's lifetime,--_The +Woman-Hater_, _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ and _Cupids Revenge_, +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 +_The Scornful Ladie_ and ending with _Philaster_, were published before +the death of Fletcher in 1625; and that while three of them have +title-page ascriptions to both authors, one, _The Maides Tragedy_, is +anonymous. + +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,--_The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ +and _Thierry and Theodoret_. The former, printed between December 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 _Comedies and Tragedies_ 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. + +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, _Philaster_, _The Maides Tragedy_, and _A King and No King_, 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. + +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 and cumulatively, of diction and mental habit. Ultimately, +and by induction, they are of dramatic technique and creative genius. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[148] See Fleay, _Chron. Eng. Dram._, I, 195; and W. W. Greg, +_Henslowe Papers_, 90. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE VERSIFICATION OF FLETCHER AND OF BEAUMONT + + +I. In Plays Individually Composed. + +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,[149] such as _Monsieur +Thomas_ of the earlier period, ending 1613, _The Chances_, _The Loyall +Subject_, and _The Humorous Lieutenant_ of the middle period, ending +1619, and _Rule a Wife and Have a Wife_ 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: + + Or wander after that they know not where + To find? or, if found how to enjoy? Are men's brains + Made nowadays of malt, that their affections + Are never sober, but, like drunken people + Founder at every new fame? I do believe, too, + That men in love are ever drunk, as drunken men + Are ever loving,--[150] + +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. + +Of this metrical style examples will be found on pages in Chapter XIX, +Section 2, below; or on any page of Fletcher's _Rule a Wife and Have a +Wife_, as for instance the following from Act III, Scene 1, 14-23: + + _Altea._ My life|, an in|nocent|! + + _Marg._ That's it | I aim | at, + That's it | I hope | too; | then | I am sure | I rule | + him; 15 + For in|nocents | are like | obe|dient chil|dren + Brought up | under a hard | [+!] moth|er-in-law|, a cru|el, + Who be|ing not us'd | to break|fasts and | colla|tions, + [+!] When | they have coarse | bread of|fer'd 'em | are thank|full, + And take | it for | a fa|vour too|. Are the rooms | 20 + Made read|y to en|tertain | my friends|? I long | to dance now, + [+!] And | to be wan|ton. | Let | me have | a song. + Is the great | couch up | the Duke | of Medi|na sent? + +[Illustration: JOHN EARLE, BISHOP OF WORCESTER AND SALISBURY +From the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery] + +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: + + And take 't | for a fa|vour too|. Are the rooms | made read|y + To en|tertain | my friends|? I long | to dance | now.-- + +Trisyllabic feet occur in nine; final pauses in nine; stress-syllable +openings and compensating anapaests in two; the feminine caesura (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. + +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 +_Monsieur Thomas_, 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: + + But to the silent streets we turn'd our furies: + A sleeping watchman here we stole the shooes from, + There made a noise, at which he wakes, and follows: + The streets are durty, takes a Queen-hithe cold, + Hard cheese, and that choaks him o' Munday next: + Windows and signs we sent to Erebus; + A crew of bawling curs we entertain'd last, + When having let the pigs loose in out parishes, + O, the brave cry we made as high as Algate! + Down comes a Constable, and the Sow his Sister + Most traiterously tramples upon Authority: + There a whole stand of rug gowns rowted mainly, + And the King's peace put to flight, a purblind pig here + Runs me his head into the Admirable Lanthorn,-- + Out goes the light and all turns to confusion. + +No one, once acquainted with this style of blank verse, with its +end-stopped lines, double endings, stress-syllable openings, +feminine caesurae, 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. + +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 _The Maske of the +Gentlemen of Grayes Inne and the Inner Temple_, 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: + + Is great Jove jealous that I am imploy'd + On her Love-errands? | She did never yet + Claspe weak mortality in her white arms, + As he hath often done: I only come + To celebrate the long-wish'd Nuptials + [+!] Here | in Olym|pia, | which | are now | perform'd. + Betwixt two goodly rivers, | that have mixt + Their gentle, rising waves, and are to grow + [+!] In | to a thou|sand streams | [+!] great | as themselves. + +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 +anapaests; feminine caesurae, in three (dotted); and a stress-syllable +opening for the verse-section after the caesura occurs in but one, +whereas there are at least three such in the passage from _Monsieur +Thomas_, quoted above. + +Nothing could be more pronounced than the difference between the +metrical style of Fletcher's _Monsieur Thomas_ and _Rule a Wife_ and +that of Beaumont's _Maske_, 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 _Maske_ side by side with +something of Fletcher's written in similar formal and declamatory +style,--_The Faithfull Shepheardesse_, for instance, a youthful +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 _The Maske_, the following lines from Act I, 1, are +perhaps even more distinctive. "What greatness," says the +Shepherdesse,-- + + What greatness, | or what private hidden power, + [+!] Is | there in me, | to draw submission + From this rude man and beast? Sure I am mortal, 105 + The Daughter of a Shepherd; | he was mortal, + And she that bore me mortal: | prick my hand, + And it will bleed; a Feaver shakes me, and + The self-same wind that makes the young Lambs shrink + + Makes me | a-cold; | my fear says I am mortal. 110 + [+!] Yet have I heard | (my Mother told it me, + And now I do believe it), | if I keep + My Virgin Flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair, + No Goblin, | Wood-god, Fairy, Elf, or Fiend, + [+!] Sa|tyr, or oth|er power that haunts the Groves, 115 + Shall hurt my body, | or by vain illusion + [+!] Draw | me to wan|der | after idle fires. + +We have here, in fifteen lines, four double endings, nine final pauses +(end-stopped verses), four stress-syllable openings with compensating +anapaests, and seven feminine caesurae. In every way this sample even of +Fletcher's more formal style displays, in its salient characteristics, a +much closer resemblance in kind to the sample of his later blank verse +quoted from _Rule a Wife_, above, than to that quoted from Beaumont's +_Maske_. + +When we pass from samples to larger sections, and compare percentages in +the one hundred and thirty-one blank verses of _The Maske_ and the first +one hundred and sixty-three of _The Shepheardesse_, 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 _Maske_ 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 _Maske_ we +find but one double ending; whereas in the first one hundred and +sixty-three blank verses of _The Shepheardesse_ we count as many as +fourteen. In these productions the proportion of feminine caesurae is +practically uniform--about forty per cent. But when we come to examine +the more subtle movement of the rhythm, we find that in _The Maske_ not +more than ten per cent of the lines open with the stress-syllable, while +in the blank verse of the _Shepheardesse_ 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 anapaestic substitutions, and of stress-syllable openings for +the verse-section after the caesura, Beaumont is similarly inelastic; +while the Fletcher of the _Shepheardesse_ displays a marvellous freedom. +It follows that in the _Maske_ we 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 caesura. + +We are not limited, however, to the material afforded by the _Maske_ in +our attempt to discover Beaumont's metrical characteristics when writing +alone. _The Woman-Hater_, 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,[151] the author was +certainly not Fletcher. An examination of the inner structure of the +verse of _The Woman-Hater_, reveals, except in those scenes, precisely +the peculiarities that distinguish Beaumont's _Maske_: the same +infrequency of stress-syllable openings, and of anapaestic substitutions +and of suppressed syllables in metrical scheme. In respect of the more +evident device of the run-on line _The Woman-Hater_ 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 Fletcher's stage plays, and a much larger +proportion of prose both for dialogue and soliloquy. + +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 _Induction_ to the +_Foure Playes in One_, and of the first two plays, _The Triumph of +Honour_ and _The Triumph of Love_. But for reasons, later to be stated, +I agree with Oliphant that the _Induction_ and _Honour_ are not by +Beaumont; and I hold that he can not be traced with certainty even in +the two or three scenes of _Love_ 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. + +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 _Letter to Ben +Jonson_, 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 _Shepheardesse_. In Beaumont's _Elegy on +the Countess of Rutland_, the last forty-four lines afford a fine +example of dramatic fervour--the indictment of the physicians. 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 _Shepheardesse_. 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.[152] + + +2. In Certain Joint-Plays. + +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. + +The three plays, as I have said before, are _Philaster_, _The Maides +Tragedy_ and _A King and No King_. A passage, which in the opinion of +nearly all critics[153] 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: + + "Philaster, brave Philaster!" Let Philas|ter + Be deeper in request, my ding [a] dongs, + My paires of deere Indentures, | Kings of Clubs, + [+!] Than | your cold wa|ter-cham|blets | or | your paint|ings + [+!] Spit|ted with cop|per, | Let | not your has|ty + Silkes, 10 + [+!] Or | your branch'd cloth | of bod|kin, | or | your ti|shues,-- + [+!] Deare|ly belov'd | of spi|ced cake | and cus|tards,-- + Your Rob|in-hoods, |[+!] Scar|lets and Johns, |[+!] tye | + your affec|tions + In darknesse to your Shops. No, dainty duc|kers, + [+!] Up | with your three|-piled spi|rits, | your | wrought + va|lors. 15 + And let | your un|cut col|lers | make | the King feele + The measure of your mightinesse, Philas|ter![154] + +Note the double endings, the end-stopped lines, the stress-syllable +openings, the anapaests, the feminine caesurae (dotted), the two omissions +of the light syllable after the caesural pause and the following accent +at the beginning of the verse section, and the six feet of line 13. + +Of the non-Fletcherian part of _Philaster_, a typical example is the +following from Act I, Scene 2, where Philaster replies to Arethusa's +request that he look away from her: + + I can indure it: Turne away my face? + I never yet saw enemy that lookt + So dreadfully but that I thought my selfe + As great a Basiliske as he; or spake + So horrible but that I thought my tongue + Bore thunder underneath, as much as his, + Nor beast that I could turne from: shall I then + Beginne to feare sweete sounds? a ladies voyce, + Whom I doe love? Say, you would have my life; + Why, I will give it you; for it is of me + A thing so loath'd, and unto you that aske + Of so poore use, that I shall make no price. + If you intreate, I will unmov'dly heare. + +Or the famous description of Bellario, beginning: + + I have a boy, + Sent by the gods, I hope to this intent, + Not yet seen in the court-- + +from the same scene. + +Or the King's soliloquy in Act II, Scene 4, containing the lines: + + You gods, I see that who unrighteously + Holds wealth or state from others shall be curst + In that which meaner men are blest withall: + Ages to come shall know no male of him + Left to inherit, and his name shall be + Blotted from earth. + +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, +anapaests, and feminine caesurae by which Fletcher achieves now +conversational abruptness, now lyrical lilt. + +In _The Maides Tragedy_, such soliloquies as that of Aspatia in Act V, +Scene 4, with its mixture of blank verse and rhyme: + + This is my fatal hour; heaven may forgive + My rash attempt, that causelessly hath laid + Griefs on me that will never let me rest, + And put a Woman's heart into my brest. + It is more honour for you that I die; + For she that can endure the misery + That I have on me, and be patient too, + May live, and laugh at all that you can do-- + +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: + + Alas, Amintor, thinkst thou I forbear + To sleep with thee because I have put on + A maidens strictness; + +or + + As mine own conscience too sensible;-- + + I must live scorned, or be a murderer;-- + + That trust out all our reputation. + +Nor did Fletcher write, with any frequency, improper run-on lines, such +as III, 2, 135 (one of his collaborator's scenes): + + Speak yet again, before mine anger grow + Up beyond throwing down. + +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. + +In _A King and No King_ 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[155] one +notes the high proportion of stress-syllable openings, and, +consequently, of anapaestic 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 caesura 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: + + [+!] Fool | that I am, | I have | undone | myself, + [+!] And | with mine own | hand | turn'd | my for|tune round, + That was | a fair | one: | I have child|ishly + [+!] Plaid | with my hope | so long, till I have broke | it, + And now too late I mourn for 't, | O | Spaco|nia, + Thou hast found | an e|ven way | to thy | revenge | now! + [+!] Why | didst thou fol|low me, |[+!] like | a faint shad|ow, + To wither my desires? But, wretched fool, + [+!] Why | did I plant | thee | 'twixt | the sun | and me, + To make | me freeze | thus? | Why | did I | prefer | her + [+!] To | the fair Prin|cess? | O | thou fool, | thou fool, + Thou family of fools, |[+!] live | like a slave | still + And in | thee bear | thine own |[+!] hell | and thy tor|ment,-- + +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 anapaestic sequences, +three omissions of the light syllable after the caesural pause with the +consequent accent at the beginning of the verse-section, and no fewer +than six feminine caesurae (or pauses after an unaccented syllable) of +which three at least (vv. 2, 5, 10) are exaggerated jolts. + +Beaumont is capable in occasional passages, as, for instance, Arbaces' +speech beginning Act I, 1, 105, of lines rippling with as many feminine +caesurae. 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 anapaests, one omitted thesis after the caesural +pause, four end-stopped lines. He is more frequently capable, as in the +passage beginning l. 129, of a sequence without a single feminine +caesura, but with several feminine (or double) endings: + + _Tigranes._ Is it the course of + Iberia, to use their prisoners thus? + Had Fortune throwne my name above Arbaces, + I should not thus have talkt; for in Armenia + We hold it base. You should have kept your temper, + Till you saw home agen, where 't is the fashion + Perhaps to brag. + + _Arbaces._ Bee you my witness, Earth, + Need I to brag? Doth not this captive prince + Speake me sufficiently, and all the acts + That I have wrought upon his suffering land? + Should I then boast? Where lies that foot of ground + Within | his whole | realme | that | I have | not past + Fighting and conquering?[156] + +Up to the twelfth verse with its exceptional jolting pause the caesurae +are masculine, and fall uncompromisingly at the end of the second and +third feet. + +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 _Philaster_, _The Maides Tragedy_ and _A King and No +King_ 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 _The Woman-Hater_, which is originally, and in +general, the work of one author--Beaumont; and since they are also of a +piece with the versification of the _Maske_, 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. + +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 _A King and No King_, 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 _Philaster_, +and the tricks of alliteration, triplet, and iteration, are those of +Fletcher's verse in the same scenes. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[149] Some sixteen plays in all. + +[150] _The Chances_, I, 1, p. 222 (Dyce); but as a rule I use in this +chapter the text of the _Cambridge English Classics_. + +[151] For these scenes, and the reasons for asserting that Fletcher +revised them, see Chapter XXIV below. + +[152] The reader may judge for himself by referring to the citation +from the _Letter_ and the poems to the Countess in Chapters VII and +XI, above. + +[153] Fleay, Boyle, Oliphant, Alden. And even G. C. Macaulay, who once +claimed the whole play for Beaumont, says now "perhaps Fletcher's." + +[154] Q 1622, slightly modernized. + +[155] IV, 1, 2, 3; V, 1, 3. + +[156] Quarto of 1619 as given by Alden. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +FLETCHER'S DICTION + + +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 _Philaster_ 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 +(_viz._ 38) than Beaumont ever used, but does not fully come up to +Fletcher's usage; while on the other hand, it has a higher percentage +of run-on lines[157] (_viz._ 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.[158] + +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. + + +1. Fletcher's Diction in _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_. + +Though rather poetic than dramatic, and composed only partly in blank +verse, _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ 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 _Philaster_. + +The soliloquy of Clorin, with which _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ opens, +runs as follows: + + Hail, holy Earth, whose cold Arms do imbrace + The truest man that ever fed his flocks + By the fat plains of fruitful Thessaly! + Thus I salute thy Grave; thus do I pay + My early vows and tribute of mine eyes 5 + To thy still-loved ashes; thus I free + Myself from all insuing heats and fires + Of love; all sports, delights, and [jolly] games, + That shepherds hold full dear, thus put I off: + Now no more shall these smooth brows be [be] girt 10 + With youthful Coronals, and lead the Dance; + No more the company of fresh fair Maids + And wanton Shepherds be to me delightful, + Nor the shrill pleasing sound of merry pipes + Under some shady dell, when the cool wind 15 + Plays on the leaves; all be far away, + Since thou art far away, by whose dear side + How often have I sat Crowned with fresh flowers + For summers Queen, whilst every Shepherds boy + Puts on his lusty green, with gaudy hook 20 + And hanging scrip of finest Cordovan. + But thou art gone, and these are gone with thee + And all are dead but thy dear memorie; + That shall out-live thee, and shall ever spring, + Whilst there are pipes or jolly Shepherds sing. 25 + And here will I, in honour of thy love, + Dwell by thy Grave, forgetting all those joys, + That former times made precious to mine eyes; + Only remembring what my youth did gain + In the dark, hidden vertuous use of Herbs: 30 + That will I practise, and as freely give + All my endeavours as I gained them free. + Of all green wounds I know the remedies + In Men or Cattel, be they stung with Snakes, + Or charmed with powerful words of wicked Art, 35 + Or be they Love-sick, or through too much heat + Grown wild or Lunatic, their eyes or ears + Thickened with misty filme of dulling Rheum; + These I can Cure, such secret vertue lies + In herbs applyed by a Virgins hand. 40 + My meat shall be what these wild woods afford, + Berries and Chestnuts, Plantanes, on whose Cheeks + The Sun sits smiling.[159] + +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 +_Monsieur Thomas_ of his earlier period, _The Chances_ of the middle +period, or _A Wife for a Month_ and _Rule a Wife_ of his later years, +has the feminine endings, redundant syllables, anapaestic 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 _Faithfull +Shepheardesse_--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. + +In Clorin's soliloquy, the reader cannot but notice, first, a tendency +toward alliteration, the _fed_ and _flocks_, _fat_ and _fruitful_, +_fresh_ and _fair_, _pleasing_ and _pipes_,--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 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 _Faithfull Shepheardesse_ 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 that "all are dead but thy dear memorie" is not enough; +she must specify "_that_ 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. + +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."[160] Even in the formal _Shepheardesse_ this characteristic lends +a quality of naturalness and conversational spontaneity to the speech. + + +2. In the Later Plays. + +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, _The +Humorous Lieutenant_ of about the year 1619,--we find on every page and +passages like the following.[161]--The King Antigonus upon the entry of +his son, Demetrius, addresses the ambassadors of threatening powers: + + Do you see this Gent(leman), + You that bring Thunders in your mouths, and Earthquakes, + To shake and totter my designs? Can you imagine + (You men of poor and common apprehensions) + While I admit this man, my Son, this nature + That in one look carries more fire, and fierceness, + Than all your Masters lives[162]; dare I admit him, + Admit him thus, even to my side, my bosom, + When he is fit to rule, when all men cry him, + And all hopes hang about his head; thus place him, + His weapon hatched in bloud; all these attending + When he shall make their fortunes, all as sudden, + In any expedition he shall point 'em, + As arrows from a Tartar's bow, and speeding, + Dare I do this, and fear an enemy? + Fear your great master? yours? or yours? + +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 _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ 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: + + Shew where to lead, to lodge, to charge with safetie,--[163] + + Here's a strange fellow now, and a brave fellow, + If we may say so of a pocky fellow.--[164] + + And now, 't is ev'n too true, I feel a pricking, + A pricking, a strange pricking.--[165] + + With such a sadness on his face, as sorrow, + Sorrow herself, but poorly imitates. + Sorrow of sorrows on that heart that caus'd it![166] + +In the passages cited above there happen to be, also, a few examples of +the elocutionary afterthought: + + You come with thunders in your mouth _and earthquakes_,-- + + As arrows from a Tartar's bow, _and speeding_.-- + +To this device, and to the intensive use of the pronominal "one" +Fletcher is as closely wedded as to the repetition of "all,"-- + + They have a hand upon us, + A heavy and a hard one.[167] + + To wear this jewel near thee; he is a tried one + And one that ... will yet stand by thee.[168] + +Other plays conceded by the critics to Fletcher alone, and written in +his distinctive blank verse, display the same characteristics of style: +_The Chances_ of about 1615, _The Loyall Subject_ of 1618 (like _The +Humorous Lieutenant_ of the middle period), and _Rule a Wife and Have a +Wife_ of the last period, 1624. I quote at random for him who would +apply the tests,--first from _The Chances_,[169] the following of the +repeating revolver style: + + Art thou not an Ass? + And modest as her blushes! what a blockhead + Would e're have popt out such a dry Apologie + For this dear friend? and to a Gentlewoman, + A woman of her youth and delicacy? + They are arguments to draw them to abhor us. + An honest moral man? 't is for a Constable: + A handsome man, a wholesome man, a tough man, + A liberal man, a likely man, a man + Made up by Hercules, unslaked with service: + The same to night, to morrow night, the next night, + And so to perpetuity of pleasures. + +Now, from _The Loyall Subject_[170]--the farewell of _Archas_ to his +arms and colours. I wish I could quote it all as an example of noble +noise, enumerative and penny-a-line rhetoric: + + Farewell, my Eagle! when thou flew'st, whole Armies + Have stoopt below thee: at Passage I have seen thee + Ruffle the Tartars, as they fled thy furie, + And bang 'em up together, as a Tassel, + Upon the streach, a flock of fearfull Pigeons. + I yet remember when the Volga curl'd, + The aged Volga, when he heav'd his head up, + And rais'd his waters high, to see the ruins, + The ruines our swords made, the bloudy ruins; + Then flew this Bird of honour bravely, Gentlemen; + But these must be forgotten: so must these too, + And all that tend to Arms, by me for ever. + +And from Act II, Scene 1, pages 101-102, for triplets: + + Fight hard, lye hard, feed hard, when they come home, sir.... + + To be respected, reckon'd well, and honour'd.... + + Where be the shouts, the Bells rung out, the people?... + +And, for "alls," and triplets: + + And whose are all these glories? why their Princes, + Their Countries and their Friends. Alas, of all these, + And all the happy ends they bring, the blessings, + They only share the labours! + +Finally, from _Rule a Wife_, a few instances of the iterations, +three-fold or multiple, and redundant expositions. In the first +scene[171] Juan describes Leon: + + Ask him a question, + He blushes like a Girl, and answers little, + To the point less; he wears a Sword, a good one, + And good cloaths too; he is whole-skin'd, has no hurt yet, + Good promising hopes; + +and Perez describes the rest of the regiment, + + That swear as valiantly as heart can wish, + Their mouths charg'd with six oaths at once, and whole ones, + That make the drunken Dutch creep into Mole-hills; ... + +and he proceeds to Donna Margarita: + + She is fair, and young, and wealthy, + Infinite wealthy, _etc._ + +And then to Estefania who has tautologized of her chastity, he +tautologizes of his harmlessness:[172] + + I am no blaster of a lady's beauty, + Nor bold intruder on her special favours; + I know how tender reputation is, + And with what guards it ought to be preserv'd, lady. + +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. + +If now the reader will turn, by way of confirmation, to _The Triumph of +Time_ and _The Triumph of Death_ 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 _Shepheardesse_ of his early years and the genuine +dramas of the later. + + +3. Stock Words, Phrases, and Figures. + +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[173] has mentioned +'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.' + +Another characteristic of Fletcher's diction is his preference for the +pronoun _ye_ instead of _you_. This was pointed out by Mr. R. B. +McKerrow, who in his edition of _The Spanish Curate_[174] notes that in +the scenes generally attributed, in accordance with other tests, to +Fletcher, _ye_ occurs 271 times, while in the scenes attributed to +Massinger it occurs but four. That is to say, for every _ye_ in +Fletcher's part there are but 0.65 _you's_; for every _ye_ in +Massinger's part, 50 _you's_. Mr. W. W. Greg, applying the test in his +edition of _The Elder Brother_,[175] and counting the _y'are's_ as +instances of _ye_, finds that the percentage of _ye's_ to _you's_ in +Fletcher's part is almost three times as high as in Massinger's. In a +recent article in _The Nation_[176] 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 _ye_ for _you_ 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 _ye's_ in the third and +fourth of the _Foure Playes_ 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. "In the +plays which are units," continues Mr. More, "such as _The Maid's +Tragedy_, _Philaster_, _A King and No King_, _The Knight of the Burning +Pestle_, and _The Coxcomb_, 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. _The Knight_, +to be sure, is Beaumont's alone; but with regard to the other four plays +mentioned above, in which they undoubtedly cooperated, the suggestion +that the writing, at least in its final form, was almost entirely +Beaumont's, because of the practically complete absence of _ye's_, 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 _The Woman-Hater_, stamping them with his _ye's_ +after Beaumont had finished it as a whole; and it has confirmed me in +the belief that _The Scornful Ladie_ was one of the latest joint-plays, +only partly revised by Beaumont,--and that, not long before his death. +Fletcher's preference for _ye_ is a distinctive mannerism. His usage +varies from the employment of one-third as many _ye's_ to that of twice +as many _ye's_ as _you's_; whereas Beaumont rarely uses a _ye_. Even +more distinctive is Fletcher's use of _y'are_, and of _ye_ in the +objective case. The latter, Beaumont does not tolerate. + +For figurative purposes Fletcher finds material 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'Urfe's Astraean 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 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 +_A Wife for a Month_, 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 _King and No King_, IV, 2, 45-62. + +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 _all_ 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!' + +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 +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[157] In the King's speech, 89-121. + +[158] For particulars, see Chapter XXV, Sec. 7, below. + +[159] As given in the _Camb. Engl. Classics_. + +[160] G. C. Macaulay, _Francis Beaumont_, p. 45. + +[161] Act I, Sc. 1, _Camb. Engl. Classics_, II, p. 286. + +[162] Crane _MS._ (1625). + +[163] _Cambridge_, II, p. 290. + +[164] _Ibid._, p. 292. + +[165] _Ibid._, p. 323. + +[166] _Ibid._, p. 346. + +[167] _Loyall Subject_, III, 1, end. + +[168] _Hum. Lieut., Cambridge_, II, p. 290. + +[169] John in II, 3, _Camb._, IV, p. 202. + +[170] I, 3, _Camb._, III, p. 84. + +[171] _Camb._, III, p. 170. + +[172] _Ibid._, p. 172. + +[173] _Engl. Studien_, XIV, 65. + +[174] _Variorum, B. and F._, Vol. II, 1905. + +[175] _Variorum, B. and F._, Vol. II, 1905. + +[176] New York, Nov. 14, 1912. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +FLETCHER'S MENTAL HABIT + + +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 _The Faithfull +Shepheardesse_ 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. _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_, 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. _The Faithfull +Shepheardesse_ 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 +outlook when he is purveying for the public. His tragedies, for instance +_Valentinian_ and _Bonduca_ (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 _A Wife for a Month_, _The Loyall Subject_, _The +Humorous Lieutenant_, _The Pilgrim_, _The Island Princesse_, 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. + +Like the tragicomic plays, Fletcher's lighter comedies _The Chances_, +_The Mad Lover_, _The Wild-Goose Chase_, _Women Pleased_, 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 _can_ 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. + +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 _Wit Without Money_, the devices of the inimitable Maria in +_The Tamer Tamed_, and of the _Humorous Lieutenant_. 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, the more boisterous and +bestial. His populace feeds upon "opinions, errors, dreams." + +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. + +These characteristics of the Fletcherian habit mark all the author's +independent plays from _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ of 1607 or 1608 to +_Rule a Wife_ 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 _The Honest +Mans Fortune_, and judge. The characteristics sketched above are of the +maker of a mimic world. Since I have elsewhere discussed them in +full,[177] 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[177] _The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare_ (Part Two) in +_Representative English Comedies_, Vol. III. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +BEAUMONT'S DICTION + + +From a consideration of Beaumont's work in his poems, in his _Maske_ and +_Woman-Hater_, 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. + + +1. Rhetorical Peculiarities in General. + +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,--_e. g._, in _The +Woman-Hater_: "Lisping cry 'Good Sir!' and he's thine own"; or "Every +one that does not know, cries 'What nobleman is that?'"--and in _A King +and No King_ "That hand was never wont to draw a sword, But 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 role 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. + + +2. Stock Words, Phrases, and Figures. + +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 +have further exemplification when we consider his figures of speech. + +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 _Lear_, 'O ruined piece of nature,' and frequently in +_Antony and Cleopatra_, and later repeated in the _Tempest_ and +_Winter's Tale_. 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, + + To bear and bow beneath a thousand griefs + To keep that little credit with the world; + +and so, 'that little passion,' 'that little training,' 'these little +wounds,' _ad libitum_. 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 _Cupid's Revenge_ in a scene undoubtedly of +Beaumont's verse 'loathes' herself and is 'become another woman; one, +methinks, with whom I want acquaintance.' + +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.' + +The younger poet personifies abstractions as frequently as Fletcher, but +in a more poetic way. He 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 _Cupid's Revenge_; and in a speech of Melantius 'I +did a deed that plucked five years from time' in _The Maides Tragedy_. +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 _The Woman-Hater_; +Chance, Death, and Fortune in _The Knight_; Death, Victory, and +Friendship, in _The Maides Tragedy_; Destiny, Falsehood, Mortality, +Nature in _Philaster_; and so on. + +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 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 _The Coxcombe_, 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,-- + + 'T is not the treasure of all Kings in one, + The wealth of Tagus, nor the rocks of pearl + That pave the court of Neptune, can weigh down + That virtue. + +Echoes not of Kyd and Marlowe only, but of Shakespeare from _Romeo_ to +_Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_, reverberate in the magniloquent hyperbole of +Beaumont. + +Beaumont has more ejaculations than Fletcher, but fewer optatives. He is +chary of rhetorical questions, and his exclamations run by preference +into some figured 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. + + +3. Lines of Inevitable Poetry. + +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: + + Such strength, such sweetness couched in every line, + Such life of fancy, such high choice of brain, + +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), + + Sorrow can make a verse without a Muse,-- + +by the 'unassuming beauty' of Viola's loneliness (in his subplot of _The +Coxcombe_), + + All things have cast me from 'em but the earth. + The evening comes, and every little flower + Droops now as well as I;-- + +by the sublimity of those few words to the repentant lover, + + All the forgiveness I can make you is to love you;-- + +by the superb simplicity of Bellario's scorn of life, in _Philaster_, + + 'T is but a piece of childhood thrown away, + +and the finality of her definition of death (which, as if in premonition +of his too sudden fate, is characteristic of Beaumont),-- + + 'T is less than to be born; a lasting sleep; + A quiet resting from all jealousy, + A thing we all pursue; I know, besides, + It is but giving over of a game + That must be lost;-- + +by the pathetic irony of Aspatia's farewell to love in _The Maides +Tragedy_, + + So with my prayers I leave you, and must try + Some yet-unpractis'd way to grieve and die; + +and the heroism (in _Cupid's Revenge_, the final scene, undoubtedly of +Beaumont's verse) of Urania's confession to Leucippus, + + I would not let you know till I was dying; + For you could not love me, my mother was so naught; + +by Panthea's cry of horror, in _A King and No King_, + + I feel a sin growing upon my blood; + +and by those flashes of incomparable verity that intensify the gloom of +_The Maides Tragedy_: Amintor's + + Those have most power to hurt us, that we love; + We lay our sleeping lives within their arms; + +and after Evadne's death, + + My soul grows weary of her house, and I + All over am a trouble to myself;-- + +by the wounded Aspatia's + + I shall sure live, Amintor, I am well; + A kind of healthful joy wanders within me; + +and her parting whisper, + + Give me thy hand; mine eyes grope up and down, + And cannot find thee. + +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? + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +BEAUMONT'S MENTAL HABIT + + +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 +_Philaster_ expresses it in a nutshell: + + If destiny (to whom we dare not say, + Why didst thou this?) have not decreed it so, + In lasting leaves (whose smallest characters + Was never altered yet), this match shall break.-- + +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,-- + + But thou hadst, ere thou knew'st the use of tears, + Sorrow laid up against thou cam'st to years. + +'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 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.'[178] + +Similarly familiar is Beaumont's recurrent doctrine of the divinity of +kings. "In that sacred word," says his Amintor of _The Maides +Tragedy_,-- + + In that sacred word + 'The King,' there lies a terror: what frail man + Dares lift his hand against it? Let the gods + Speak to him when they please; till when let us + Suffer and wait. + +And again, to the monarch who has wronged him, + + There is + Divinity about you, that strikes dead + My rising passions; as you are my King + I fall before you, and present my sword + To cut mine own flesh, if it be your will. + +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'-- + + On lustful kings + Unlooked-for sudden deaths from Heaven are sent; + But curs'd is he that is their instrument. + +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 _A King and No King_ cries: + + "Accursed man! + Thou bought'st thy reason at too dear a rate, + For thou hast all thy actions bounded in + With curious rules, when every beast is free." + +And, in the moment of jealousy, Philaster laments, + + Oh, that, like beasts, we could not grieve ourselves + With that we see not! + +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.' + +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 + + There is a method in man's wickedness + It grows up by degrees. + +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 _Cupid's Revenge_, 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.' + +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 _Coxcombe_, 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 _A King and No King_, beginning-- + + Lord, how fine the fields be! What sweet living 'tis in + the country!-- + + Ay, poor souls, God help 'em, they live as contentedly as + one of us. + +Through the fourth act of _Philaster_, 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. + +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: + + The name of friend is more than family + Or all the world besides. + +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.'[179] 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, + + And have a subtilty in everything + Which love could never know; but we fond women + Harbour the easiest and the smoothest thoughts, + And think all shall go so. It is unjust + That men and women should be match'd together. + +His Viola of the _Coxcombe_ continues the contention: + + Woman, they say, was only made of man + Methinks 'tis strange they should be so unlike; + It may be, all the best was cut away + To make the woman, and the naught was left + Behind with him. + +And the philosophy of Beaumont's love-lorn maidens she sums up in her +conclusion: + + Scholars affirm the world's upheld by love; + But I believe women maintain all this, + For there's no love in men. + +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: + + I will set no penance + To gain the great forgiveness you desire, + But to come hither, and take me and it ... + For God's sake, urge your faults no more, but mend! + All the forgiveness I can make you, is + To love you: which I will do, and desire + Nothing but love again; which if I have not, + Yet I will love you still. + +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-- + + I do kneel because it is + An action very fit and reverent, + In presence of so pure a creature. + +So kneels Arbaces; and so, in spirit, Philaster and Amintor. + +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 _The +Woman-Hater_ can aver: + + The child this present hour brought forth + To see the world has not a soul more pure, + More white, more virgin that I have. + +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 _Philaster_, +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: + + I shall have peace in death + Yet tell me this: there will be no slanders, + No jealousy in the other world; no ill there? + +"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 beloved Countess of +Rutland: + + I will not hurt the peace which she should have, + By longer looking in her quiet grave. + +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,-- + + Kill me; all true lovers, that shall live + In after-ages crossed in their desires, + Shall bless thy memory. + +Ricardo of the _Coxcombe_ would have some woman 'grave in paper' their +'matchless virtues to posterities.' Even the mock-romantic Jasper in the +_Knight_ (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 _Philaster_: + + You gods, I see that who unrighteously + Holds wealth or state from others shall be cursed + In that which meaner men are blest withal: + Ages to come shall know no male of him + Left to inherit, and his name shall be + Blotted from earth; if he have any child + It shall be crossly matched. + +"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 +_Cupid's Revenge_, "May all ages,"-- + + That shall succeed curse you as I do! and + If it be possible, I ask it, Heaven, + That your base issues may be ever monstrous, + That must for shame of nature and succession, + Be drowned like dogs! + +So, _passim_, in Beaumont--'lasting to ages in the memory of this damned +act'; 'a great example of their justice to all ensuing ages.' + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[178] Elegy on the Countess of Rutland. + +[179] I cannot understand how so careful a scholar as Professor +Schelling (_Engl. Lit. during Lifetime of Shakesp._, 207) can +attribute to him, from the hopelessly uncritical collection of +Blaiklock, the poem entitled _The Indifferent_, and argue therefrom +his "cynicism" concerning the constancy of woman. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +THE AUTHORSHIP OF THREE DISPUTED PLAYS + + +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."[180] 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. + + +1.--Of the _Foure Playes, or Morall Representations, in One_ (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, +_The Triumph of Death_ and _The Triumph of Time_, are, according to the +verse tests, undoubtedly Fletcher's and have been assigned to him by all +critics. _The Triumph of Death_ is studded with alliterations and with +repetitions of the effective word: + + Oh I could curse + And crucify myself for childish doting + Upon a face that feeds not with fresh figures + Every fresh hour; + +and with triplets: + + What new body + And new face must I make me, with new manners; + +and with the resonant "all": + + Make her all thy heaven, + And all thy joy, for she is all thy happiness; + +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 _The Triumph of Time_. As there is +less of the redundant epithet than in _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ +(1609), but more than in _Philaster_ (before July 12, 1610), I am of the +opinion that Fletcher's contribution to the _Triumphs_ falls +chronologically between those plays. As Fletcher matures he prunes his +adjectives. + +The rest of these _Morall Representations_ 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 _Induction_. But +Oliphant, taking into consideration also the rhetorical and dramatic +qualities, gives the _Induction_ and _The Triumph of Honour_ to a third +author, Nathaniel Field, and only _The Triumph of Love_ to Beaumont. As +to the _Induction_ and _The Triumph of Honour_ I agree with Oliphant. +They are full of polysyllabic Latinisms such as Field uses in his _Woman +is a Weather-cocke_ (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 _Woman is a +Weather-cocke_ and his _Amends for Ladies_ indicate the influence of +Beaumont in matters of comic invention, poetic hyperbole, burlesque and +pathos, as well as in metrical style. The _Honour_ is a somewhat +bombastic, puerile, magic-show written in manifest imitation of +Beaumont's verse and rhetoric. + +As to _The Triumph of Love_, 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, _Love_ and _Honour_. + +The commonly accepted date, 1608, for the composition of the _Foure +Playes in One_ is derived from Fleay, who mistakenly quotes a reference +in the 1619 quarto of _The Yorkshire Tragedy_ to the _Foure Playes_ as +if it were of the 1608 quarto where the reference does not appear.[181] +While Fletcher may have written the first draft of his contribution +before the middle of 1610, it is evident from Field's Address _To the +Reader_ in the first quarto of the _Woman is a Weather-cocke_ (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[182] that Field had not written +even his _Weather-cocke_, still less anything in collaboration with +Fletcher, at the time of the publication of _The Faithfull +Shepheardesse_ (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 _The +Shepheardesse_, "including a Morallitie, Sweete and profitable." That +Field's contribution to the _Foure Playes_ was not made before the date +of the first performance of _The Weather-cocke_ by the Revels' Children +at Whitefriars, _i. e._, January 4, 1610 to Christmas 1610-11 (when its +presentation before the King at Whitehall probably took place), further +appears from his dedication _To Any Woman that hath been no +Weather-cocke_ (quarto, 1611) in which he alludes not to _The Triumph of +Honour_, or of _Love_, but to _Amends for Ladies_, as his "next play," +then on the stocks, and, he thought, soon to be printed.[183] 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 _Time_ +and _Death_, though written at least two years earlier, were not +gathered up with Field's _Induction_, _Honour_, and _Love_, into the +_Foure Playes in One_ 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 _Cupid's Revenge_ at the +same theatre. + + +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 _Love's Cure_ 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.[184] 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 +_Woman-Hater_, 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. And there is +little, indeed, that bespeaks Fletcher. _Love's Cure_ 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. + + +3.--As to that comedy of prostitution, with occasional essays on the +special charms of cuckoldry, _The Captaine_ (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[185] do not preclude the possibility of +Beaumont's cooperation; 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[180] 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 _John Fletcher, A Study on Dramatic Method_, and sections 15 +and 16 of my essay on _The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare_, Part +Two, _Rep. Eng. Com._, 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, _N. S. S. +Trans._, 1874, _Shakesp. Manual_, 1876, _Engl. Studien_, 1885-1886, +and _Chron. Eng. Dram._, 1891; Boyle, _Engl. Studien_, 1881-1887, and +_N. S. S. Trans._, 1886; Macaulay, _Francis Beaumont_, 1883; Oliphant, +_Engl. Studien_, 1890-1892; Thorndike, _Infl. of B. and F._, 1901; and +section 16 of my essay mentioned above. There is no proof of +Massinger's dramatic activity before July 1613, nor of his cooperation +with Fletcher until after that date, _i. e._, 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. + +[181] See Thorndike, _Infl. of B. and F._, p. 85, for discussion and +authorities. + +[182] Chapter VI. + +[183] It was not printed till 1618; but had been acted long before. + +[184] II, 1, 2; III, 1, 3, 5; V, 3. + +[185] IV, 5; V, 2, 4, 5. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +"THE WOMAN-HATER," AND "THE KNIGHT" + + +Four.--_The Woman-Hater_ 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. + +In the lines which follow, D'Avenant has been supposed to credit the +same author with the whole of _The Maides Tragedy_, _Philaster_, and _A +King and No King_ as well: + + 'T was he reduc'd Evadne from her scorn, + And taught the sad Aspatia how to mourn; + Gave Arethusa's love a glad relief; + And made Panthea elegant in grief. + +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 _The Woman-Hater_, 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 _The Maides Tragedy_, etc., he +must have had a knowledge of the respective authorship of the dramatists +hardly to be reconciled with the palpable mistake of assigning _The +Woman-Hater_ to Fletcher. For, by an odd coincidence, he has indicated +in the first and second verses two[186] of the five scenes of _The +Maides Tragedy_, and in the third, two[187] of the five scenes of +_Philaster_ 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 _A King and No King_[188] in which, +according to our critical tests, Fletcher has contributed to the +characterization of Panthea. With regard to _The Woman-Hater_, it would +appear that D'Avenant was carelessly following the mistaken ascription +of authorship on the title-page of the quarto of 1648. + +Fleay, Boyle, Macaulay, and Ward, with but slight hesitation, pronounce +_The Woman-Hater_ to be an independent production of Beaumont, written +while he was under the influence of Ben Jonson; but as I shall +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.[189] In the quartos this scene is divided into two. By the _ye_ +test the first half-scene, running to _Enter Duke, Etc._, in which +Oriana tempts Gondarino, would be Fletcher's (15 _ye's_ to 9 _you's_); +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 _ye_ +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 _Enter Ladies_ in V, 5 (Dyce)--more +closely resembles his manner of verse, but is not markedly of his +rhetorical stamp. But by the _ye_ test (24 _ye's_ to 39 _you's_) the +whole of that scene, opening _Enter Arigo and Oriana_ is Fletcher's, or +Fletcher's revision of Beaumont. So, also, by the _ye_ test is another +scene not before ascribed to Fletcher, IV, 2 (27 _ye's_ to 25 _you's_), +as far as _Enter Oriana and her Waiting-woman_. In this and the other +_ye_ scenes, the _ye_ frequently occurs in the objective,--which is +absolute 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 +_Cambridge English Classics_. + +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. + + +5.--Evidence, both external and internal, points to the production of +_The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ 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. + +The dedication of the first quarto speaks in one place of the "parents" +of the play, and in others 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.[190] 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,[191] 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,[192] 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 _The Woman-Hater_ more +especially; and the scenes of low life and the conversation are coloured +by his rhetoric as we know them in _Philaster_, _A King and No King_, +and _The Coxcombe_. Of the portrayal of humours, mock-heroic and +burlesque, the same statements hold true. The verse of Jasper's +soliloquy:[193] + + Now, Fortune, if thou beest not onely ill, + Shew me thy better face, and bring about + My desperate wheele, that I may clime at length + And stand,-- + +is in the usual manner of Beaumont. Luce's lament, beginning:[194] + + Thou that art + The end of all, and the sweete rest of all + Come, come, o, Death! bring me to thy peace, + And blot out all the memory I nourish + Both of my father and my cruell friend,-- + +and ending: + + How happy had I bene, if, being borne, + My grave had bene my cradle! + +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 _Philaster_), 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 denouements which conclude the romantic plot. In short, I agree with +the critics[195] 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. + +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 _Amadis_ and _Palmerin_; 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. + +_The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ was written and first acted between +June 29, 1607 and April 1, 1608. The upper limit is fixed, as Boyle has +indicated,[196] by the mention, in Act IV, 1, 46, of an incident in _The +Travails of Three English Brothers_, "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 occupied by Queen Anne's Men +(whose plays Beaumont is especially ridiculing), since 1604.[197] _The +Travails_ 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.[198] _The +Travails_ 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 _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ 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 _The Knight_ 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.[199] One of these plays, _Cupid's Revenge_, +had certainly come down from the Queen's Revels' Boys in that way. + +That the original performance was by a company of children appears from +numerous passages in the 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 _Induction_, 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.[200] 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.[201] 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 _seven_ years would have been +utterly pointless, 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."[202] + +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 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 _The Knight of the Burning +Pestle_ was not written till after the _Travails of Three English +Brothers_ 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 +_Tragedie of Charles, Duke of Byron_, 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 _The Knight_ that +the play was written in eight days. It might have been staged in two or +three. If the plague regulations were enforced during 1607-8, as I have +no doubt they were, _The Knight_ was acted between July 10 and 23, 1607, +or between December 26, 1607 and the Biron day in March 1608. + +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 _The +Travails_; 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.[203] 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. + +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 Burre +says in the dedication of the first quarto) and who "afterwards" (in +1610-11) turned it over, "yet an infant" (_i. e._ 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.[204] 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."[205] 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, _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ among the +rest, during the last year of their occupancy of Blackfriars. And since, +according to Burre, he appreciated the merits of _The Knight_ 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. 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. + +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 _The Knight of the Burning +Pestle_. "Perhaps," says he, "it [_The Knight_] 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 _The +Knight_ was written and first acted in 1610 or 1611. But if Burre was +dating _The Knight_ as of 1610 or 1611, he was ignorant of the fact, as +established above, that the play was the elder of Shelton's printed _Don +Quixote_, 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 _Don +Quixote_, issued in the Spanish by Cervantes in 1605,[206] 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 _The Travails of Three English Brothers_, 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 _The Knight_ 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. + +If Burre, who was not a litterateur, did not know that Shelton's +translation of _Don Quixote_ had been going the rounds for years before +it was printed in 1612, everybody else did. Shelton had announced as +much in his _Epistle Dedicatorie_ 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 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 _Don Quixote_ 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 +_Don Quixote_ by an Englishman,--by a dramatic character, to be sure, +but a character created by Ben Jonson. In his _Epicoene_, 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 +_Amadis de Gaule_, or _Don Quixote_, as you are wont." There is no +ascription of Spanish to Dauphine, who is a typical London gallant. He +would read _Amadis_ in the French, or the English translation; and the +only translation of _Don Quixote_ accessible to him in 1609 would be +Shelton's manuscript of Part One.[207] 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,[208] his +knowledge of Spanish was extremely limited. "The Spanish phrases +pronounced by the improvised 'hidalgo' in the _Alchemist_ (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 _The Alchemist_ 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. + +As to Burre, however, I do not think that he had been informed by Keysar +of the exact provenience of the manuscript of _The Knight_, or of the +date of first acting. I incline to believe that he had the _Epistle +Dedicatorie_ of the newly printed Shelton before him when, in 1613, he +wrote his dedication of _The Knight_ 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 _Don +Quixote_ in favour of _The Knight_ 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. + +In spite of Burre's assertion of the priority of _The Knight of the +Burning Pestle_, nearly every editor or historian who has touched upon +_The Knight_ informs us that it is "undoubtedly derived from _Don +Quixote_." 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 _Epicoene_ 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, _The Knight_, 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.[209] As to the +possibility of information by hearsay, other dramatists allude to _Don +Quixote_ as early as 1607-8;[210] and, indeed, it would be virtually +impossible that any literary Londoner could have escaped the oral +tradition of so popular and impressive a masterpiece two years after its +publication. + +All this supposition of derivation from _Don Quixote_ is, however, so +far as verbal indebtedness goes, or indebtedness for _motifs_, 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 +_Don Quixote_. An examination of _The Knight_ and of the _Don_ 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. + +The title of the play was suggested by _The Knight of the Burning +Sword_, an English translation, current long before 1607, of the Spanish +_Amadis of Greece, Prince and Knight of the Burning Sword_. 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 _Foure +Prentises_, and Day and Wilkins's _Travails_, and the English +_Palmerins_, etc. He has absolutely nothing in common with the glorious +but pathetically unbalanced _Don_ of Cervantes. Nor is there any +resemblance between Ralph's Palmerin-born Squire and Dwarf--and that +embodiment of commonsense, Sancho Panza.[211] The specific conception of +_The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, 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 _Spanish +Tragedy_, Marlowe's _True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York_, 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. + +Beaumont may have received from the success of the _Don Quixote_ of 1605 +some impulse provocative to the writing of _The Knight_, but a dramatic +satire, such as _The Knight_, might have occurred to him if _Don +Quixote_ had never been written; just as that other dramatic satire upon +the dramas of folk-lore romance, _The Old Wives Tale_, had occurred to +Peele some fifteen years before _Don Quixote_ appeared; and as it had +occurred to the author of _Thersites_ 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 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 _Morte d'Arthur_ 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, _Amadis of Gaul_, +_Palmerin de Oliva_, _Palmerin of England_, and upon the vogue of the +English versions of _The Mirror of Knighthood_ with its culminating +bathos of the _Knight of the Sunne and His Brother Rosicleer_? These +had, in various instalments, befuddled the popular mind for thirty +years. + +Ben Jonson already, in his _Every Man out of His Humour_ (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 _Mirror of Knighthood_. 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 _Heroical Adventures of the Knight of the Sea_, where +"the queen of the fairies transforms a submissive and apathetic cow into +a knight-errant to do her business in the world."[212] And in 1605, also +before the appearance of Cervantes' burlesque, Chapman, with the +collaboration of Jonson and Marston, had, in _Eastward Hoe_, 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 giants. Nor had these authors failed to +specify the sources of delusion, the _Mirror of Knighthood_, the +_Palmerin of England_, 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 _Philaster_, a play that was written about two years later +than _The Knight_, 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. + +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 _Don Quixote_? Whether Beaumont read Spanish or not, and +there is no proof that he did read it; whether he had heard of _Don +Quixote_ or not, and there is little doubt that he had, there is nothing +in _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ that in any way presupposes either +verbal acquaintance with, or constructive dependence upon, the burlesque +of Cervantes.[213] In short, Professor Schevill, in the article cited +above, and following him Dr. Murch, in an admirable introduction to his +edition of _The Knight_, 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 _Don Quixote_, 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 _The Knight_, as Professor Schevill +has said, in no way recalls that of the _Don_, "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 and Sancho Panza." Beaumont, in addition, not only satirizes, +as I have said, the chivalric and bourgeois dramas of Heywood, _If You +Know Not Me, You Know Nobody_, etc., and dramas of romantic marvel like +_Mucedorus_ and the _Travails_, 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. _The Knight_ 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[186] IV, 1; and II, 2. + +[187] V, 3, 4. + +[188] IV, 1. + +[189] Between _Oriana sits down_ and _exit Oriana_, as in Dyce, Vol. +I, pp. 43-48. + +[190] I, 1; I, 2; II, 2; II, 3; III, 1; IV, 4. + +[191] _E. g._, the "lets" and the "alls" of IV, 4, 36-40, as numbered +in Alden's edition. The play is devoid of Fletcherian jolts. + +[192] V, 2, 63, _et seq._ + +[193] II, 2, 90. + +[194] IV, 4, 5. + +[195] Macaulay, Oliphant, Bullen, and Alden. + +[196] _Engl. Studien_, IX. + +[197] Wallace, _Shakspere's Money Interest in the Globe, Cent. Maga._, +Aug., 1910, p. 510. + +[198] Fleay, _Chr. Eng. Dr._, II, 277. + +[199] Fleay, _H. S._, p. 356. + +[200] Wallace, _Shakspere and the Blackfriars, Century Maga._, +Sept., 1910, p. 751. + +[201] Murray, _Eng. Dram. Comp._, I, 353, who cites Nichols, +_Progresses_, IV, 1074; but Whitefriars had been destined by Keysar +and others for the Queen's Revels' Children since 1608. + +[202] Rawlidge, _A Monster lately found out_, etc., 1622, as quoted by +Fleay, _H. S._, 36; Wallace, _Cent. Maga._, Aug., 1910; and Thorndike, +_Infl. of B. and F._, p. 60. + +[203] See the impressive array of evidence, internal and external, +presented by Thorndike, _Infl. of B. and F._, pp. 59-63; and by Alden, +_K. B. P._, pp. 166-169 (Belles Lettres Series). + +[204] Accounts in _Athenaeum_, 2, 1903, 220. + +[205] Wallace, _Cent. Maga._, _Sept._ 1910, p. 747. See also +Greenstreet Papers in Fleay, _H. St._, 249. + +[206] For this argument see _Engl. Studien_, XII, 309. + +[207] Baudouin's French version of 1608 is merely of the episodic +narrative of _The Curious Impertinent_. + +[208] _On the Influence of Spanish Literature upon English_ +(_Romanische Forschungen_, XX, 613-615, _et seq._). + +[209] 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 +_Romanische Forschungen_, already cited; others, communicated by him +to Dr. H. S. Murch, appear in _Yale Studies in English_, XXXIII, _The +K. B. P._, Introduction. Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach's unpublished +conclusions, as cited by Miss Hatcher, _John Fletcher_, etc., 1905, p. +42, are to the same effect. + +[210] Wilkins, _Miseries of Enforced Marriage_, III; Middleton, _Your +Five Gallants_, IV, 8; cited by Schevill, _ut supra_. + +[211] See Schevill, _u. s._ + +[212] H. V. Routh, in _C. H. L._, IV, 410. + +[213] The lines, + + Who like Don Quixote do advance + Against a windmill our vaine lance, + +occur in a copy of verses _To the Mutable Faire_ included among _The +Poems of Francis Beaumont_ 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. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +THE FIVE CENTRAL PLAYS + + +Six.--_The Coxcombe_ 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.[214] 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, _El Curioso Impertinente_, which appeared +in the First Part of _Don Quixote_, printed 1605, or (since we have no +evidence that our dramatists read Spanish), from Baudouin's French +translation which was licensed April 26, 1608[215] and may have reached +England about June,--we might have a definite earlier limit of later +date. But there is no resemblance between the _motif_ 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.[216] + +Other English dramatists dealing with the theme of _The Curious +Impertinent_ between 1611 and 1615 followed Cervantes more or less +closely in the main _motif_, in incident, and in dialogue: the author of +_The Second Maiden's Tragedy_, for instance, who made use of Baudouin's +translation; and Nathaniel Field, who used either Baudouin or Shelton's +publication of 1612 in his _Amends for Ladies_. But Beaumont and +Fletcher in their tale of a husband cuckolded and pommeled were drawing +upon another source, one of the many variants of _Le Mari coccu, battu +et content_, to be found in Boccaccio and before him in Old French +poems, and French and Italian _Nouvelles_. If they derived anything from +Cervantes, whose theme is lifted from the _Orlando Furioso_, 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 _Alchemist_, 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 _Alchemist_ 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; 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 _The Coxcombe_ about 1609, after +Baudouin's translation _Le Curieux Impertinent_ had reached England, and +Shelton's manuscript had been put in circulation. + +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 _The Coxcombe_ +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 _The Coxcombe_ 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 _Epicoene_ 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 _Coxcombe_ list, appears now second, as 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 _The Coxcombe_, 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 _Alchemist_, 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 _The Coxcombe_, and would manifestly be suggested by that +play. I prefer the former option; and date the acting,--on the +assumption that Taylor left the Queen's Revels by March 30, +1610,--before that date.[217] 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 _Letter to Ben Jonson_ and _Philaster_ were written. The play +as first performed was condemned for its length by "the ignorant +multitude."[218] I believe that it was one of the two or three +unsuccessful comedies which preceded _Philaster_; and, as I have said +above, that it is the play referred to in the _Letter to Ben Jonson_, +toward the end of 1609.[219] If the date of acting was before January 4, +1610, the theatre was Blackfriars; if after, Whitefriars. + +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 some of the words (_e. g._ "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.[220] 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. + +The romantic little comedy of _Ricardo and Viola_ 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.[221] 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:--[222] + + Might not God have made + A time for envious prying folk to sleep + Whilst lovers met, and yet the sun have shone? + +And then: + + Alas, how valiant and how fraid at once + Love makes a Virgin! + +When she comes upon her lover staggering outside the tavern with his +sodden comrades,[223] with what simplicity she shudders: + + I never saw a drunken man before; + But these I think are so.... + My state is such, I know not how to think + A prayer fit for me; only I could move + That never Maiden more might be in love! + +When, rescued from thieves in the country, she finds that her rescuer is +even more a peril,[224] with what childlike trust she appeals: + + Pray you, leave me here + Just as you found me, a poor innocent, + And Heaven will bless you for it! + +When again deserted, with what pathos she sighs: + + "I'll sit me down and weep; + All things have cast me from 'em but the earth. + The evening comes, and every little flower + Droops now, as well as I!" + +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:[225] + + Methinks I would not now, for any thing, + But you _had_ mist me: I have made a story + Will serve to waste many a winter's fire, + When we are old. I'll tell my daughters then + The miseries their Mother had in love, + And say, "My girls, be wiser"; yet I would not + Have had more wit myself. + +Ricardo, too, is a creative study in the development of personality; and +the rural scenes and characters are convincing. + +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;[226] and here and there, Rowley.[227] 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, 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. + +Though _The Coxcombe_ 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 _The Fugitives_, +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. + + +7.--_Philaster_ or _Love lies a-Bleeding_ was "divers times acted at the +Globe, and Blacke-Friers by his Majesties Servants." Under the second +title in the _Scourge of Folly_, entered for publication October 8, +1610, Davies of Hereford appears to mention it; and I have already +stated my reasons as based upon the history of the theatres[228] for +believing that its first performance took place between December 7, 1609 +and July 12, 1610. + +We might have something like confirmation of this date from the grouping +of epigrams in Davies of Hereford's _Scourge of Folly_, if we could +affirm that they were arranged in the order of their composition. For +just before the epigram on _Love lies a-Bleeding_, which, I think, +without doubt, applies to _Philaster_, appears one _To the Roscius of +these times, Mr. W. Ostler_, 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 _Poetaster_ 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,[229] 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, 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 _Alchemist_ (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 _Scourge of Folly_, +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 _Philaster_ presented by +that company indicates contemporaneity in the composition of the +epigrams,--that is to say, between January 4 and October, 1610. + +Since, however, the epigrams in _The Scourge of Folly_, 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 _Philaster_, as +conjectured above, is its resemblance to Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_ 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 _Philaster_ or the _Cymbeline_ 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.[230] For +the _Cymbeline_, 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 +_Much Ado About Nothing_ (the quarto of 1600). In execution the play is, +with _The Winter's Tale_ and the _Tempest_, 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 _Pericles_ written in +1607 or 1608. And since already in _Pericles_, Shakespeare had blazed +this new path, I cannot for a moment accept the hypothesis that he is +in his _Cymbeline_ borrowing profusely from _Philaster_, 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 +_Pericles_ and _Cymbeline_. And still the more so when one reflects +that, in _Pericles_ and _Cymbeline_, aside from the leading conception, +everything of major or minor detail had been already anticipated by +Shakespeare himself in earlier romantic comedies from _The Two Gentlemen +of Verona_ to _As You Like It_ and _Twelfth Night_; and that there is no +salient characteristic of dramatic construction in _Philaster_, +otherwise original and poetically impressive as it is, which a study of +those earlier comedies and of the _Pericles_ and _Cymbeline_ would not +suggest. I, therefore, rest with some assurance upon the conviction that +_Philaster_ 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. + +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 +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 _Love Lies a-Bleeding_ 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: + + Alas, what flegme are they [Plautus and Aristophanes], compared + to thee, + In thy _Philaster_ and _Maids Tragedy_! + Where's such an humour as thy Bessus? pray ... + +for, with the exception of three scenes, two half-scenes and a few +insertions or revisions by Fletcher, _Philaster_ is Beaumont's (and +practically the same holds true of _The Maides Tragedy_, and the Bessus +play--_A King and No King_). In _Philaster_ Fletcher's scenes, as proved +by rhetorical tests, and by metrical when they may be applied, are I, +1{^_b_} (from the King's entry, line 89--line 358,[231]--a revision and +enlargement of Beaumont's original sketch), II, 2{^_b_} (from _Enter +Megra_), II, 4{^_b_} (from _Megra above_), 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 _Enter Arethusa and Bellario_ to "how brave she keeps him"). +Similarly, the first draught 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: + + Soul-sick with poison, strike the monuments + Where noble names lie sleeping, till they sweat + And the cold marble melt;[232] + +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 _story_ of a woman's face," her inconstancy, the shadow +quality even of her "goodness" soon past and forgotten,--"these sad +texts"[233] Fletcher "to his last hour" is never weary of repeating. + +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 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 denouement 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 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 denouement. + +The popularity of _Philaster_ 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-role and Miss Jarmin as Bellario.[234] + + +8.--_The Maides Tragedy_, 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 _Philaster_, 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 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 _The +Woman-Hater_, 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 _Exit Evadne_), +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), anapaestic +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.[235] 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 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[236]), +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 + + Mock not _the powers above_ that can and dare + Give thee a great example of their justice + To all ensuing ages.[237] + +And in five verses of Evadne's succeeding asseveration of sincere +reform (255-259), we are thrilled by his sudden magic and his poetic +finality: + + _Those short days I shall number to my rest_ + (As many must not see me) shall, though too late, + Though in my evening, yet perceive a will,-- + Since I can do no good, because a woman,-- + _Reach constantly at something that is near it_. + +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 + + All the creatures + Made for Heaven's honours, have their ends, _and good ones_,-- + All but the cozening crocodiles, false women-- + They reign here like those plagues, those killing sores, + Men pray against; ... + +this remainder belongs, in verse no less than in diction, to the scene +as Fletcher originally wrote it. + +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 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. + +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, 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. + +In his _Tragedies of the Last Age_, licensed in 1677, Rymer attacked +_The Maides Tragedy_ 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 _Amintor_, or the _Lustful King_, or _The Concubine_. +But _The Maides Tragedy_ 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 _hamartia_. 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: + + I did that lady wrong. Methinks I feel + A griefe shoot suddenly through all my veins,--[238] + ... The faithless sin I made + To faire Aspatia is not yet revenged; + It follows me.--[239] + +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-- + + The soule is fled forever, and I wrong + Myselfe so long to lose her company, + Must I talke now? Heres to be with thee, love![240] + +Rymer's criticism and that of a recent essayist,[241] 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): + + Wilt thou kill this man? + Sweare, my Amintor, and I'le kisse the sin + Off from thy lips. + +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: + + "I wonnot sweare, sweet love," says he, "till I do know + the cause";-- + +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-- + + Why, it is _thou_ that wrongst me; I hate thee; + Thou shouldst have kild thy selfe. + +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: + + I doe appeare the same, the same Evadne, + Drest in the shames I liv'd in, the same monster, + But these are names of honour to what I _am_ ... I am hell + Till you, my deare lord, shoot your light into me, + _The beames of your forgivenesse_. + +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. + +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." + +The defect in the construction of the _Maides Tragedy_, if there is one, +lies in the failure of the Maid and her deserter to meet between the +first scene of 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 +_hamartia_. 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. + +The play, with Burbadge in the role 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 _Essay on Dramatick Poesy_, 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 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 _The +Bridal_, and, as Dyce tells us, was very favourably received by the +public.[242] + + +9.--Though the tragedy of _Cupid's Revenge_ 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 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 cooperated. 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.[243] +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: + + I desire you + To lay what trains you will for my wish'd death, + But suffer him to find his quiet grave + In peace. + +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 + + for love:-- + I would not let you know till I was dying; + For you could not love me, my mother was so naught. + +But the play as a whole lacks logical and natural motive, moral vigor +and vitality; and its history upon the stage is negligible. + + +10.--Of the dates of _A King and No King_ 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 _King and No King_, 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 +_Philaster_ and _The Maides Tragedy_, the play is derived from no known +source.[244] 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 +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. + +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 revolutions +of personality. "What are thou," he asks of this devilish unexpected +lust-- + + What are thou, that dost creep into my breast; + And dar'st not see my face? + +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:-- + + Why should there be such music in a voice, + And sin for me to hear it? + +When Tigranes, to whom he has offered that sister in marriage, presumes +to address her, with what majestic inconsistency the king rebukes him: + + The least word that she speaks + Is worth a life. Rule your disorder'd tongue + Or I will temper it! + +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: + + Thou art too wicked for my company, + Though I have hell within me, and mayst yet + Corrupt me further, + +The climax in which Arbaces can no longer refrain is of Beaumont's +best: + + Nay, you shall hear the cause in short, Panthea; + And when thou hear'st it, thou will blush for me + And hang thy head down like a violet + Full of the morning's dew. + +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: + + If you have any mercy, let me go + To prison, to my death, to anything: + I feel a sin growing upon my blood + Worse than all these! + +By a series of sensational _bouleversements_, 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. + +With the exception of a half-scene (Act IV, 2{^_b_}) 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{^_b_}), 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 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. + +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. + +To Beaumont, then, it may be said that we owe in the creation of _A King +and No King_ 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 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!" + +_A King and No King_ 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 +roles. In 1683 Betterton played Arbaces to Mrs. Barry's Panthea. It was +revived again in 1705, 1724, and 1788. Davies in his _Dramatic +Miscellany_ tells us that Garrick intended 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 _Variorum_ edition, mentions a German +adaptation of 1785, called _Ethelwolf, oder der Koenig Kein Koenig_. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[214] Cited by Oldys (MS. note in Langbaine's _Account of Engl. Dram. +Poets_, p. 208)--Dyce. + +[215] For this information I am indebted to my colleague, Professor +Schevill. + +[216] I know but two sane accounts of this matter: A. S. W. +Rosenbach's in _Mod. Lang. Notes_, 101, Column 362 (1898); and +Wolfgang von Wurzbach's, in _Romanische Forschungen_, XX, pp. 514-536 +(1907). + +[217] Oliphant, _Engl. Stud._, XV, 322. Macaulay, 'probably 1610.' + +[218] _Prologue_ in the first folio. + +[219] Chapter VII. + +[220] Even here, as Oliphant has said, Viola's first speech "is pure +Beaumont." + +[221] 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. + +[222] I, 4. Scenes as arranged in Dyce, Vol. III. + +[223] I, 6. + +[224] III, 3. + +[225] V, 2. + +[226] I, 1, 2{^_a_} (to Antonio's entry), III, 1{^_a_} (to servant's +entry). + +[227] III, 2; IV, 4; V, 1, 3. + +[228] Chapter VII, above. + +[229] Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare_, I, +317. + +[230] Chapter XXVIII, _Did the Beaumont 'Romance' Influence +Shakespeare?_ + +[231] Lines are numbered as in the _Variorum_ edition. + +[232] Fletcher affects this figure, _cf._ _A Wife for a Month_, Act +II, 2, lines 47-48. + +[233] _Cf._ his lines in _Maides Tragedy_, IV, 1, 252-254; in _King +and No King_, IV, 2, 57-62; _Philaster_, V, 4, 114; _Hum. Lieut._, IV, +5, 51; _Mad Lover_, III, 4, 105; _Loyall Subject_, III, 6, 141; IV, 3, +70; _Wife for a Month_, IV, 5, 38, 39. + +[234] The best editions of _Philaster_ since the time of Dyce are +those of F. S. Boas, in the _Temple Dramatists_ (1898), P. A. Daniel, +in the _Variorum_ (1904), Glover and Waller, in the _Camb. Engl. +Classics_ (1905), and A. H. Thorndike in _Belles Lettres_ (1906). + +[235] Thorndike, for instance,--who selects lines 22-40 as an instance +of Beaumont's skill in imitating natural conversation. _Influence of +B. and F. on Shakespeare_, p. 129. + +[236] Numbering of the _Variorum_. + +[237] Q2 "eies." + +[238] II, 1, 127. + +[239] III, 1, 221. + +[240] V, 3, 244. + +[241] P. E. More, _The Nation_, N. Y., April 24, 1913. + +[242] The best editions of _M. T._, since the time of Dyce, are those +of P. A. Daniel, in the _Variorum_ (1904), Glover and Waller, in the +_Cambridge English Classics_ (1905), and A. H. Thorndike, in the +_Belles Lettres_ (1906). + +[243] I, 3; II, 2; III, 2; IV, 1; V, 4. + +[244] For conjectural sources see Chapter VII, above. The best +editions to-day are the _Variorum_ and Alden's (_Belles Lettres_). + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +THE LAST PLAY + + +Eleven.--The first quarto of _The Scornful Ladie_, 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,"[245] 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 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.[246] But the Apocrypha controversy +was continued long after 1610. + +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 _Epicoene_, 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 _cast Cleve_ 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 _The Scornful +Ladie_ 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 or new, presented by the Queen's Children +(reorganized in 1614) when they opened at Rossiter's new Blackfriars in +1615-16. + +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 _The Scornful Ladie_ had been written before +March 1613, it would undoubtedly have shared with _The Coxcombe_ and +_Cupid's Revenge_ 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 +_Cupid's Revenge_ which the Children performed three times before +royalty in the four months preceding the marriage. + +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 nearly all of Fletcher's distinctive _ye's_ and +_y'are's_, and reducing to uniformity the nomenclature of the _dramatis +personae_. 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.[247] 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. + +The only provocation for styling Morecraft's 'widow' an Infanta in this +scene of _The Scornful Ladie_ 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 Acuna who had arrived as +Spanish ambassador, in 1613, "with the express object of winning James +over from his alliance with France and the Protestant powers."[248] +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 +_The Scornful Ladie_ 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;[249] 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 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 revision of the text--a +task evidently assumed by him in the preparation of the other plays +planned and produced in partnership with Fletcher. + +[Illustration: By permission of Methuen & Co., Ltd. + + DON DIEGO SARMIENTO, + COUNT GONDOMAR +From the portrait by G. P. Harding] + +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.[250] 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,[251] where the hero finally tricks his +scornful mistress into submission. The _ye_ 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 _ye_ (II, 1, l. 10) is to be found in those scenes. The results +are negative in Act II, 2 and 3--no _ye's_--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 _ye's_ 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 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 _ye's_ +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,[252] has suggested, Massinger. Act III, 2, on the other +hand, not only has several _ye's_ in the objective, but in proportion to +the _you's_ twenty-five per cent of _ye's_ and _y'are's_, 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 _ye's_ occur, not in great +number, but often enough in the objective case to corroborate the other, +metrical and stylistic, indications of his authorship. + +I have said that no _ye's_ 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 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. + +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 manoeuvers 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 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 _The Capricious Lady_ (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, _A Very Woman_, licensed 1634, but in +which Fletcher may have had a share; and for Sir Aston Cockayne's _The +Obstinate Lady_ of 1657.[253] + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[245] Murray, _Eng. Dram. Comp._, I, 153; Warwick Bond, _Variorum Ed. +of B. and F._, I, 359. + +[246] _Chr. Eng. Dr._, I, 181. + +[247] See Bond, _Variorum, B. and F._, I, 417; and references as given +there, and by Dyce, to _The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt, The +Captain_, and other plays. + +[248] See S. R. Gardiner, _History of England_, Vol. II (1607-1616), +pp. 165, 218, 225, 247, 255, 316, 321, 324, 327, 368, for this and the +following concerning Sarmiento. + +[249] Gardiner, _Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage_, pp. 6, 7, 69. + +[250] All critics agree in assigning I, 1, to Beaumont. They differ +concerning the rest of I and II. + +[251] So, also, Fleay, G. C. Macaulay, and Oliphant; Boyle, _N. S. S. +Trans._, XXVI (1886), and Bond, _u. s._, p. 360. + +[252] _Variorum_, I, 360. + +[253] The best editions of _The Scornful Ladie_ since Dyce's time are +that of R. Warwick Bond, in the _Variorum_, and of Glover and Waller +in the _Camb. Engl. Classics_. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + +THE DRAMATIC ART, PRINCIPALLY OF BEAUMONT + + +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, _Loves +Cure_ and _The Captaine_, do not definitely show the hand of Beaumont, +and one, _The Foure Playes_, but the suspicion of a finger. Two, _The +Woman-Hater_ and _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, are wholly or +essentially of his unaided authorship. The remaining six, _The +Coxcombe_, _Philaster_, _The Maides Tragedy_, _Cupids Revenge_, _A King +and No King_, _The Scornful Ladie_, 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 _Thierry and Theodoret_, _The Faithful Friends_, _Wit +at Severall Weapons_, _Beggers Bush_, _Loves Pilgrimage_, _The Knight of +Malta_, _The Lawes of Candy_, _The Honest Man's Fortune_, _Bonduca_, +_Nice Valour_, _The Noble Gentleman_, _The Faire Maide of the Inne_. +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 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. + +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 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. + +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."[254] But +Mardonius never deserts his King, Melantius does. 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 _Philaster_ and +_Cupid's Revenge_ Beaumont's tyrants are sonorific yet shadowy forms; +but the king of the _Maides Tragedy_ is a thoroughly visualized monster, +and Arbaces in _A King and No King_ 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 shame is merged and made beautiful in +the pity of it all. + +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 _The Woman-Hater_, +or the devil-may-care Merrythought, Luce, the grocer and his wife, and +in fact every convulsing caricature in his matchless _Knight of the +Burning Pestle_. 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. + +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 _The Maides Tragedy_, _Philaster_, +_King and No King_, and _The Scornful Ladie_; that in the tragedies 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 '_Ricardo and Viola_' +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. + +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, _The Scornful Ladie_ and _The Coxcombe_; and +especially in the sections of plot that are carnal, trivial, or +unnatural. He is in them just what he is in his own _Monsieur Thomas_ +and his pornographic _Captaine_--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 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 +_The Maides Tragedy_ 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 _Cupids Revenge_. Few of his scenes are vital; most are clever +histrionic inlays, subsidiary to the main action, or complementary and +explanatory, as in _Philaster_ and _A King and No King_. 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 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,[255] and shall have yet a word to say here. + +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: + + So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon, + And all so born within thyself, thine own. + +_The Maske_, _The Woman-Hater_, and _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ +should appear in a volume bearing Beaumont's name. And for the +partnership of Beaumont and Fletcher, perhaps, some day, + + Some publisher will further justice do + And print their _six_ plays in one volume too. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[254] Thorndike, _Influence of B. and F._, p. 123. + +[255] _The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare_, Part Two, in +_Representative English Comedies_, Vol. III, now in press. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + +DID THE BEAUMONT 'ROMANCE' INFLUENCE SHAKESPEARE? + + +Richard Flecknoe, in his _Discourse of the English Stage_, 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[256] +and others have conjectured that the Shakespeare of _Cymbeline_, +_Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_ 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 _Philaster_ +(acted before October 8, 1610) preceded _Cymbeline_ (acted between April +20, 1610 and May 15, 1611), and suggested to Shakespeare a radical +change of dramatic method, first manifest in _Cymbeline_. And that five +other "romances by Beaumont and Fletcher," _Foure Playes in One_, +_Thierry and Theodoret_, _The Maides Tragedy_, _Cupid's Revenge_ and _A +King and No King_, constituting with _Philaster_ a distinctly new type +of drama, were in all probability acted before the close of 1611, and +similarly influenced the method of _The Winter's Tale_ and _The +Tempest_, also of 1611. + +Before discussing the theory of Shakespeare's indebtedness to +_Philaster_ 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. +_The Maides Tragedy_ and _Cupid's Revenge_ are not romances; they are +romantic tragedies. _Philaster_, _A King and No King_, and _Cymbeline_ +are, of course, romantic; but specifically they are melodramatic +tragicomedies of heroic cast. _Pericles_, _The Winter's Tale_, and _The +Tempest_ 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 _and_ 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 _Thierry and Theodoret_, 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 +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 +_Foure Playes in One_, Beaumont does not appear. He may possibly be +traced in three scenes of _The Triumph of Love_; 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, _Philaster_, _The Maides Tragedy_, and _A King and No King_. +As I have shown, he contributed not more than four scenes to +_Philaster_, four to _The Maides Tragedy_, and five to _A King and No +King_. And, with the exception of two spectacularly violent scenes in +_The Maides Tragedy_, 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 _Cupid's Revenge_ +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.' + +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 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. +_Cupid's Revenge_, and _The Triumph of Death_ (in the _Foure Playes in +One_) could hardly have impressed the author of _Romeo and Juliet_ and +_Hamlet_ as in this respect astounding innovations; and _The Maides +Tragedy_ 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 _Timon_, _Antony_, and +_Coriolanus_, 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, _Philaster_ and _A King and No King_. +The tragicomic masques in the _Foure Playes in One_, that of _Honour_ +and that of _Death_, are too insignificant to warrant consideration; and +Beaumont had nothing to do with them. + +In determining the indebtedness, if any, of _Cymbeline_ to _Philaster_ +we lack the assistance of authentic dates of composition. The plays were +acted about the same time,--_Philaster_ certainly, _Cymbeline_ 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 _Cymbeline_ and _A King and No King_, 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 +_Cymbeline_. + +But that Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_ and his later romantic dramas betray +any consciousness of the existence of _Philaster_ and its succeeding +_King and No King_ 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 denouement, 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 +_Philaster_ and _A King and No King_ that had not been anticipated by +Shakespeare. _Cymbeline_, _The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_ are but +the flowering of potentialities latent in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ +and _As You Like It_, _Much Ado About Nothing_ and _Twelfth Night_, +_All's Well That Ends Well_ and _Measure for Measure_--latent in the +story of Apollonius of Tyre, and unavoidable in its dramatization as +_Pericles_, a play that was certainly not influenced by the methods of +_Philaster_. 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 _Gentleman Usher_, and +Shakespeare's _Measure for Measure_ and _All's Well that Ends Well_, an +example which, abused, led to the decadence of Elizabethan romantic +comedy. + +The resemblance between _Philaster_ and _Cymbeline_, such as it is, is +closer than that between _Philaster_ and the Shakespearian successors of +_Cymbeline_,--_The Winter's Tale_ and _The Tempest_. 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 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 _Philaster_ or _Cymbeline_. +_Philaster_ and _Cymbeline_ follow numerous clues in the idyllic-comic +of _Love's Labour's Lost_ and _Midsummer-Night's Dream_; in the +idyllic-romantic-pathetic of _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _As You Like +It_, and _Twelfth Night_; 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 _Much Ado_, _All's Well_, and _Measure for Measure_. 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 +_Much Ado_ 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 _Cymbeline_ is drawn,--Holinshed and Boccaccio, and that early +romantic drama, _Fidele and Fortunio_,--before _Philaster_ 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 +_Pandosto_, than that Shakespeare borrowed from Beaumont. Nor is +Shakespeare likely to have been indebted to Beaumont's example for the +sensational manner of the denouement in _Cymbeline_--the succession of +fresh complications and false starts by which suspense is sustained. +These are precisely the features that distinguish those scenes of +_Pericles_ which by the consensus of critics are assigned to +Shakespeare; and _Pericles_ was written by 1608, at least as early as +_Philaster_, and in all probability earlier. In his story of Marina, +Shakespeare is merely pursuing the sensational methods of _Measure for +Measure_ and anticipating those of _The Winter's Tale_. In general, the +plot lies half-way between the tragicomic possibilities of the _Comedy +of Errors_, _Twelfth Night_, _All's Well_, and _Measure for Measure_, +and the romantic manipulation of _Cymbeline_ and the later plays. + +In fine, there is closer resemblance between _Cymbeline_ and half a +dozen of Shakespeare's earlier comedies, than between _Cymbeline_ and +_Philaster_; and it might more readily be shown that the author of +_Philaster_ was indebted to those half-dozen plays, than Shakespeare to +_Philaster_. The differences between the Beaumont 'romances' and +Shakespeare's later romantic comedies are in fact more vital than the +similarities. In _Philaster_, _The Maides Tragedy_, and _A King and No +King_ 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 +_Pericles_, _Cymbeline_, and _The Winter's Tale_, the dramatic interest +revolves about the pursuit of a lost wife or child, the wanderings and +trials of the heroine, and her recovery;[257] in _The Tempest_, about +the disappearance and discovery of the ousted Duke and his daughter. +There is no 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 _Pericles_ and its +Shakespearian successors, the somewhat melodramatic denouement, 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. + +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 the partnership he +attempted but one romantic tragic drama of that particular kind, +_Thierry and Theodoret_,--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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[256] _The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare_, 1901. +See M. W. Sampson's critique in _J. Ger. Phil._, II, 241. + +[257] See Morton Luce, _Hand Book to Shakespeare's Works_, p. 338. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + +CONCLUSION + + +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 _The Maides Tragedy_ and _A King and No King_, +which respect the unities of interest and effect, as _Philaster_, _The +Coxcombe_, and _Cupid's Revenge_, 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. + +Upon the future of the comedy of intrigue and manners, Beaumont +exercised no distinctive influence. In plays like _The Coxcombe_ and +_The Scornful Ladie_, 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 preeminence 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. + +From the time of Prynne's _Histriomastix_, 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.[258] I +heartily concur with the scholarly and well-languaged editor of _The +Nation_, 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. 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 coordinated 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 coordinated +passions" to our "twin dramatists," and cites as his example _The Maides +Tragedy_ 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 _The Maides Tragedy_ anything but +a "loosely coordinated" concern, and secondly, because I disfavour this +attribution of the decadence of tragedy, or of comedy, for that matter, +to our _twin_ 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 +_Royall King and Loyall Subject_, for instance; in the "glaring colours" +of Chapman's _Bussy D'Ambois_, and in his _Gentleman Usher_ 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 +_Malcontent_, the sophistical theme and callous pornography of his +_Dutch Courtezan_, and in the inhuman imaginings of his _Insatiate +Countess_; 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 +_White Devil_ of their immediate contemporary, John Webster. + +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,'" but I deplore the application +of that criticism to _Beaumont_ and Fletcher, as that "_they_ loosed the +bonds of conduct and left human nature as a mere bundle of +irresponsibilities." + +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 _Valentinian_ of +Fletcher, or of Fletcher and Massinger, and very little in Fletcher's +_Wife for a Month_; but in many of Beaumont's scenes in _The Maides +Tragedy_, and _A King and No King_, and _The Coxcombe_ 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.[259] + +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, _The Humorous Lieutenant_, 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 _A King +and No King_? + +Written in 1619 _The Humorous Lieutenant_ 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. 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 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. + +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, _The Chances_ and the _Rule a +Wife and Have a Wife_, 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. _The Humorous Lieutenant_ 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? + +Inquiring further into the fibre of Fletcher, let us pass in brief +review another play, a genuine tragicomedy this time, _A Wife for a +Month_, written the year before he died, of whose heroine Mr. More says +that "from every point of view, ethical and artistic, 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 _dramatis personae_,--"This tyranny +could never be invented But in the school of Hell: earth is too +innocent." Beside it Zola's _L'Assommoir_ 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 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 _The Maides +Tragedy_ (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 coeducational public schools. + +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: + + "A Paradise, as thou art, my Evanthe, + Is only made to wonder at a little, + Enough for human eyes, and then to wander from,"-- + +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. + +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. + +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 +_Beaumont_ 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 age." So far as Fletcher's _dramatis +personae_ are concerned, there is truth in this; but why couple Beaumont +with him? If you omit a character or two in _The Woman-Hater_, which was +a youthful _jeu d'esprit_, 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 _The +Woman-Hater_; in that burlesque of bourgeois affectations, _The Knight +of the Burning Pestle_ (the Court, too, was still reading the literature +there satirized); or in his Philaster, who was a rebel; or in his +Amintor of _The Maides Tragedy_, 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 _Cupid's Revenge_, 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? + +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 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 Caesar the things that are Caesar's. + +As for Caesar, 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:[260] 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; +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. + +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:[261] 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, +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 _Valentinian_, a total disregard of the unity of +interest,--just that muddling of motives of which the editor of _The +Nation_ 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 _Valentinian_ and _Bonduca_ 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, _The Loyall Subject_ and +_A Wife for a Month_, this verdict may be even more readily pronounced. + +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, 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. + +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, _The Maides +Tragedy_ is a thousand times more enthralling and poetic than _Sejanus_ +or _Catiline_. 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 _Duchess of Malfy_ is lurid, miasmatic, stupefying; +that of _The Maides Tragedy_, breathless and heart-breaking. + +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 _A King and No King_,--the _Volpone_; but that is not +tragicomedy, and it drips venom. All that stands between _A King and No +King_ and artistic perfection is the denouement. If the lovers had died, +their struggle 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 _'Tis a +Pity, She's a Whore_. 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! + +In romantic comedy, between 1603 and 1625, others have produced plays +which from the dramatic point of view equal _Philaster_,--Dekker, +Heywood, Marston, Chapman, Middleton, and Rowley. Not all even of +Shakespeare's romantic comedies come up to _Philaster_ in literary or +dramatic excellence; but only Shakespeare has written what surpasses it. + +In the comedy that delineates humours, _The Woman-Hater_, 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 _Love's Labour's Lost_, the +_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, or the _Comedy of Errors_, that surpasses +Beaumont's Hungry Courtier; and the humorous dialogue and the prose as a +whole of _The Woman-Hater_ 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, _The Woman-Hater_, of course, can not be placed in +comparison. But if for the nonce, we consider Beaumont's _Knight of the +Burning Pestle_, 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 _Every Man in his Humour_, 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 _The Silent +Woman_,--even though the object of its ridicule be now _caviare_ to the +general. + +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 _The +Knight of the Burning Pestle_, 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 _Knight_ affords in every +scene. If Shakespeare instead of writing, say, the _Comedy of Errors_ +had written _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, scholars would now be +flooding us with _Variorum_ 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 manager's enterprise or ignorance, +and luck, is material for an essay in itself. I am not asserting that +_The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ 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. + +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 _The Maides Tragedy_ and _A King and No King_. +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 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 +_The Maides Tragedy_ and _A King and No King_. 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." + +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 +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[258] Mr. Paul Elmer More, _The Nation_, N. Y., Nov. 14, 1912, April +24, 1913, May 1, 1913. + +[259] Chapters XXII and XXV, above. + +[260] They are well presented by Miss Hatcher in her _John Fletcher_; +and they are again discussed in my forthcoming third volume of +_Representative English Comedies_. + +[261] See again Miss Hatcher's work, and G. C. Macaulay, _Francis +Beaumont, A Critical Study_, especially pp. 186-188; and my essay on +_The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare_ (Part Two) in the volume +mentioned above. + + + + +APPENDIX + +GENEALOGICAL TABLES + + + + +TABLE A. + +PLANTAGENET, COMYN, BEAUMONT, AND VILLIERS. + + + The + Earls of Buchan + | + Henry III Agnes, heiress de | + of England, Beaumont in Maine, | + b. 1207; d. 1272 m. Louis de Brienne Alexander + | | Comyn + | Henry, 1 Baron de | + Henry, Beaumont, == Alice Comyn + Earl of Lancaster fl. 1309; d. 1341 + | | + Alianor == John, 2 Baron de + Beaumont, + d. 1343 + | + Henry, 3 Baron de + Beaumont, + fl. 1363; d. 1370 + | + John, 4 Baron de + Beaumont, + fl. 1384; d. 1397 + Thomas, | + Ld. Bardolph +------+--------------+ + | | | + | Henry, 5 Baron de Sir Thomas + Joan, Beaumont, Beaumont, + m. Sir Wm. Philip d. 1422 m. (1427) Philippe + | | Maureward + | | of Coleorton + | | | + Elizabeth == John, 6 Baron, | + and 1 Viscount | + Beaumont, | + d. 1460 | + | +-----------+--------------+ + | | Sir John | + | John Villiers, Son + | Beaumont, d. 1506 (Henry Beaumont, + +--------------------+ d. 1460 | d. Towton, 1461?) + | | | | | + | | | William Son + | | | Villiers, (John, fl. 1485?) + William, Joan, | d. 1558. | + 2 Visc. and m. John, | | John Beaumont + Lord Bardolph, Lord Lovel | | of Grace-Dieu, + d. 1511, s. p. | | | fl. 1529-1554; m. + | | | =Elizabeth= + +----------------+ | | =Hastings= + | | | | | + Francis, Joan, | | | + Viscount m. Sir Bryan | | Francis, d. 1598 + Lovel, d. Stapleton | | | + 1487 : | | +---+---+----+ + : | | | | | | + Present Barons | | Henry | | Elizabeth + de Beaumont | | | | + | | John | + | | | + +-----------------------------+ | =Francis= + | | | =Beaumont= + Richard B. George B. | 1584-1616 + d. 1539 | | + | William | + Nicholas | | + Beaumont Anthony | + | of Glenfield | + +---------------+ | | + | | | | + Sir Henry, Sir Thomas, | | + d. 1607 of Stoughton, | | + | d. 1614 Maria, m. | + Sir. Thomas, : Sir Gen. Villiers + 1622, : | + 1 Viscount Present | + Beaumont, Baronets George, + of Swords of Coleorton Duke of + Hall =Buckingham= + 1592-1628 + + + + +TABLE B + +NEVIL, HASTINGS, BEAUMONT, TALBOT + + + Richard Nevil, + Earl of Salisbury + | + +------------+-------+ + | | + Richard, =Catherine Nevil= == Sir. William, + Earl of Warwick 1 Baron Hastings, + | executed 1483 + +--+-------------+ | + | | | + Isabel, Anne, | + m. Geo. Duke m. Richard III | + of Clarence, +--------------------------+-+-----------+ + bro. of Edw. IV | | | + | Edward, Sir William, Anne, m. + Margaret, 2 Baron Hastings Hastings =Geo. Talbot=, + Countess of d. 1507 fl. 1490 4 Earl of + Salisbury, | | Shrewsbury + m. Richard de +---------------+ | | + la Pole | | | Anne, m. + | =George=, Anne, m. Thos. | =Geo. Talbot=, + | 1 Earl of Stanley, | 4 Earl of + | Huntingdon, 2 Earl Derby | Shrewsbury + | c. 1488-1544, | | + | m. Anne, | Francis, + Henry de dau. of Henry | 5 Earl of + la Pole Stafford, | Shrewsbury + | 2 Duke of Buckingham | | + | | | George, + Katherine Pole == Francis, 2 Earl | 6 Earl of + of Huntingdon, | Shrewsbury + 1514-1560 | d. 1590 + | | | + +-------------+----+----------+---------+ | Gilbert, + | | | | | 7 Earl of + Henry, 3 Earl George, Walter, m. Lady | Shrewsbury, + of Huntingdon 4 Earl, Joyce Roper Mary | m. Mary + 1539-1595 d. 1604 (aunt of Mrs. Hastings | Cavendish, + | Elizab. Vaux) | sister-in-law + | | | of Anne + | Sir Henry Hastings | Pierrepoint + | m. Elizab. dau. of Thos. | Beaumont + Francis 1 Visc. Beaumont | | + Hastings, of Swords | +----+--+---+ + d. 1595 | | | | | + | | George, | | | + +----------+-------+-------------+ | | | | + | | | | John, | | + Henry, 5 Earl, Catherine, Edward, | | | + 1586-1643, m. m. Philip Captain | Mary, | + Elizab. dau. of Stanhope, under Sir | | + Ferdinando Stanley, Earl of Walter | Alethea + Earl of Derby Chesterfield Raleigh, | + 1617 | + | + =Elizabeth Hastings=, + m. c. 1540 + =John Beaumont=, + of Grace-Dieu, + (Master of the Rolls, + 1551, d. 1554) + | + +----------------+-----------+ + | | | + Francis, Henry, Elizabeth, + c. 1541-1598 d. s. p. m. William + the justice 3 Ld. Vaux + m. =Anne Pierrepoint= of Harrowden + | | + | +------------+-----+--------+ + | | | | + | Henry Vaux, Eleanor Anne Vaux + | d. c. 1590 Brookesby (_alias_ + | (_alias_ Mrs. Perkins) + | Mrs. Jennings) fl. 1605 + | + +----------+---+----------------------+-----------------+ + | | | | + Sir Henry, Sir John, =Francis=, Elizabeth, m. + d. 1605 1583-1627 1584-1616, m. Thomas Seyliard, + | Ursula Isley of Kent + | | + +-----------+---------+ +---+-----+ + | | | | | + Sir John, Francis Sir Thomas Elizabeth Frances + d. 1644 (a Jesuit) + + + + +TABLE C. + +BEAUMONT. PIERREPOINT. CAVENDISH, TALBOT. + + + Sir William Cavendish, + Sir George m. 1541, Elizabeth Hardwick + Pierrepoint, (afterwards wife of George Talbot, + d. 1564 6 Earl of Shrewsbury) + | | + +------+-------+ +------+------+----+----+----+ + | | | | | | | | + =Anne= Sir Henry | | | | | | + =Pierrepoint,= Pierrepoint, == =Frances= | | | | | + b. c. 1550; 1546-1615 | =Cavendish= | | | | | + widow of Thos. | | | | | | + Thorold of Marston; Robert Elizabeth, | | | | + m. (2) =Francis= Pierrepoint, m. Charles | | | | + =Beaumont=, 1584-1643, Stuart, | | | | + the Justice, 1 Earl of Earl of | | | | + d. 1598 Kingston, Lenox, bro. | | | | + | m. Gertrude, of Henry | | | | + +----+----+-----+ g-dau. of Geo. Darnley | | | | + | | | | Talbot, 6 Earl of | | | | | + Henry | | | Shrewsbury | | | | | + b. 1581 | | | | Lady =Arabella= | | | | + | | | | =Stuart= | | | | + John | | | cousin of | | | | + b. 1583 | | | James I. | | | | + | | | Henry, | | | + =Francis= | | m. Grace | | | + b. 1584 | | Talbot, dau | | | + | | of Geo. 6. | | | + Elizabeth | Earl of | | | + b. 1588 | Shrewsbury | | | + | | | | + +----------------------+ William, | | + | | 1 Earl of | | + Henry Pierepoint, William Pierrepoint Devonshire, | | + 1606-1680 1607-1678 in 1611 | | + 2 Earl of Kingston, | | | | + 1 Marq. Dorchester | William, | | + Robert, 3 Earl of Kingston; 1588-1679, | | + m. Elizab., dau. of Sir 2 Earl of | | + John Evelyn Devonshire; | | + | m. Christiana | | + +-----------------------+ Bruce of | | + | | Kinloss; | | + William, 4 Earl of Evelyn, 5 Earl of Ancestor | | + Kingston Kingston, 1690 of the present | | + Marq. Dorchester; Dukes of | | + Duke of Kingston, 1715 Devonshire | | + | | | + +---------------------+------+ Charles, | + | | of Welbeck, | + Mary (Lady Mary Wortley William, d. 1617 | + Montagu) 1689-1762 Viscount Newark | | + | Sir Wm. | + Frances, Cavendish, | + m. Philip Meadows 1592-1676. In | + | 1665, 1 Duke | + Charles, of Newcastle | + 1 Earl Manvers, | + of Holme-Pierrepoint Mary, + m. =Gilbert= + =Talbot=, 7 + Earl of + Shrewsbury + (d. 1616) + | + +---------------+---+ + | | + Mary, Alethea, m. + m. Wm. Herbert, Thos. Howard, + 3 Earl 2 Earl + Pembroke of Arundel + : + : + Present Dks + of Norfolk + + + + +TABLE D + +BEAUMONT, VAUX, TRESHAM, CATESBY + + + John Beaumont, + Grace-Dieu, Sir Thomas + m. Elizabeth Nicholas, Tresham, + Hastings 1 Lord Vaux Grand Prior, + | of Harrowden Order of + | (1524) St. John, + +------+ | d. 1559 + | | Thomas, | Anthony + | | the poet, | Catesby + Francis | 2 Lord Vaux, John | + Beaumont, | b. 1511 Tresham == Eleanor + d. 1598 | | | + | | | +------+ + | | =William=, | | + | =Elizabeth= == =3 Lord Vaux= == (2) =Mary= | Sir Robert + | =Beaumont= | d. 1595 | =Tresham= | Throckmorton + | | | | | + +-----+ +---+-+----+ | Sir Thomas +---+ + John, | Henry | | | Tresham == dau. | + 1583-1627 | | | | d. 1605 | | + | | | | | dau. + Francis | | | +--------+----+ m. Sir Wm. + 1584-1616 | | | =Frances= | | Catesby + | | | =Tresham=, | | | + Eleanor, | | the | | | + m. Edward | | conspirator, | | | + Brookesby; | | d. 1605 | | | + fl. 1605 | | | | | + | | Elizabeth | | + =Anne Vaux= | m. Ld. | | + (_alias_ Mrs. | Monteagle, | | + Perkins), | bro. of | | + fl. 1605 | Mrs. Abington | | + | | | + +--------------------------------+ Frances, | + | | m. Ld | + | John, 1 Ld. Ambrose Stourton | + | Teynham | + | | =Robert= + | +------------+ =Catesby= + George Vaux, | | the conspirator + d. 1594, m. =Elizabeth Roper= | d. 1605. + the Mrs. (Elizabeth) Vaux of | + the Gunpowder Plot. | + | Joyce, + +-------+----+ m. Walter + | | | Hastings + Edward, | | | + 4 Ld. Vaux | | Sir Henry + c. 1591-1661 | | Hastings, + | | m. Elizabeth + Katherine, | Beaumont + m. Henry | of Coleorton + Nevill, 1 Ld. | + Abergavenny | + | + Mary, + ancestress of + the present + Lord Vaux + + + + +TABLE E + +FLETCHER, BAKER, SACKVILLE + + + Richard + Fletcher, + Vicar of Sir John Baker, + Cranbrooke, of Sissinghurst, + fl. 1555-1574 c. 1490-1558 + | | + +------+-----+ John Giffard, of | + | | Weston-under-Edge | + Dr. Giles, Richard, | +-----------+--------+ + the diplomat; Bp. of | | | | + c. 1549-1611 London, m. (2) =Maria=, | Cicely | + | d. 1596; m. (1) widow of | m. Richard | + +---+--+ Elizabeth | Sir =Richard= Sackville, | + | | Holland | =Baker= Ld. Buckhurst, | + Phineas, | | no children d. 1594 1 Earl of | + 1582-1650 | | | Dorset; | + | =John Fletcher=, | (1536-1608) | + | the dramatist, | | | + | 1579-1625 | Robert | + Giles, | Sackville | + c. 1588-1623 | 2 Earl of | + | Dorset, | + +-------------+------------+ d. 1609 | + | | | | Mary, m. + Grisogone Sir Richard Cicely | John Tufton, + m. c. 1595, Baker (Blunt) | of Hothfield, + Sir Henry | | who d. 1567 + Lennard (in Sir Henry +--------------+ | + 1611, 12 Lord | | | + Dacre, of Richard Edward | + Chevening 3 Earl of 4 Earl of | + and Knole) Dorset, Dorset, | + c. 1588-1624 d. 1652 | + | + Sir John + Tufton, Bart., + d. 1624 + | + +------------------+ + | | + Anne Tufton Nicholas + m. =Francis= 1 Earl of + =Tresham=, Thanet, + who d. 1605 in 1629 + + + + +INDEX + + + + +INDEX + +(_The page-numbers refer to the foot-notes as well as to the main body +of the text._) + + + Abington, Mrs., the actress, 377 + + Abington (Habington), Mrs., sister of Lord Monteagle, 57 + + _Abuses Stript and Whipt_, 135 + + actors, lists preceding plays, 229 + + _Ad Comitissam Rutlundiae_, 173 + + Addison, Joseph, 188 + + Aeschylus, 200 + + afterthought-parentheses, 265, 350 + + _Alchemist, The_, 110, 325, 334, 336, 343 + + Alden, R. M., editions of _The Knight_ and _A King and No King_, 110, + 117, 234, 252, 258, 287, 300, 311, 312, 318, 361 + + alliteration, 259 + + _All's Well that Ends Well_, 79, 115, 390, 391, 392, 393 + + _Amadis de Gaule_, 313, 322, 327 + + _Amends for Ladies_, 302, 304, 334 + + _Anatomy of Melancholy, The_, 186 + + Anton, Robert, 328 + + _Antony and Cleopatra_, 75, 79, 116, 283, 389 + + _Apocrypha, The_, 369 + + apothegms, 289 + + _Arcadia_, 106, 108, 111, 133, 158, 159 + + Ariosto, 34 + + Aristophanes, 197, 230 + + Aronstein, P., 407 + + Ascham, Roger, 23 + + Ashby-de-la-Zouch, 10, 23, _et passim_ + + Aston, Sir Walter, 166, 167 + + _Astree_, D'Urfe, 89-90, 274 + + 'Astrophel,' 166 + + _As You Like It_, 159, 345, 390, 392 + + Aubrey, John, _Brief Lives_, ed., A. Clark, 32, 95, 137, 153, 219 + + + Bacon, Sir Francis, 35, 36, 37, 125f., 129, 146, _et passim_ + + Bacon, Sir Nicholas, and Anthony, 35, 64, 68 + + Baker, Sir John of Sissinghurst, Kent, 24, 65ff.; + Cicely, Countess of Dorset, 66, 69, 70; + Cicely, Lady Blunt, 69, 70; + Grisogone, Lady Dacre, 69, 70, 178 + + Baker family, 71, 137 + + Baker, Sir Richard, 65, 66 + + Baker, Richard, the historian, 67, 70 + + Bancroft, Bishop, 64, 216 + + Bancroft, Thomas, _Two Bookes of Epigrammes and Epitaphs, 1639_, 20 + + Bandello, Thomas, 392 + + Banke-Side, 95-96, 114, 170 + + Barkstead, William, 335 + + _Barrons Wars, the_, 42 + + Basse, William, 40, 134, 199, 200 + + _Battle of Bosworth Field, The_, 184, (22) + + Baudouin, _Le Curieux Impertinent_, 332 + + Beau Manor, 10; + "Beaumanoir," 12 + + Beaumont and Fletcher, portraits of, 190-192, 217-219; + collaboration of (in general), 3-9, 223-416; + the problem, 225-233; + critical apparatus, 233-235; + folios, 225-229, 236-239; + quartos, 239-241, and under individual plays; + editions, 217, 234, 244, 271, 318, 324, 338, 349, 359, 361, 368, + 371, 377; + delimitation of the field, 236-242; + versification, 243-260; + diction of Fletcher, 260-277, of Beaumont, 281-290; + mental habit of Fletcher, 277-280, of Beaumont, 281-290; + authorship of _Foure Playes_, _Love's Cure_, _The Captaine_, 300-306; + of the _Woman-Hater_, 73, 307; + of _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, 80, 310; + of _The Coxcombe_, 337; + of _Philaster_, 345; + of _The Maides Tragedy_, 349; + of _Cupid's Revenge_, 359; + of _A King and No King_, 361; + of the _Scornful Ladie_, 374; + influence upon Shakespeare (?) 386, upon the drama, 396; + Beaumont and Fletcher compared, 399-411 + + Beaumont, Anthony, 160 + + Beaumont, Barons and Viscounts de, 10-12 + + Beaumont's diction, 281ff. + + Beaumont, Elizabeth, Lady Vaux, 15, 46 + + Beaumont, Elizabeth, sister of the dramatist, Mrs. Seyliard, 43, 45, + 46, 70, 159, 176, 187 + + Beaumont, Elizabeth, daughter of the dramatist, 180, 187 + + Beaumont, Frances, posthumous daughter of the dramatist, 187ff. + + Beaumont, Francis, the dramatist: + his family, early years in Grace-Dieu, Oxford, 10ff.; + at the Inns of Court, earliest poems, etc., 29ff.; + the Vaux cousins and the Gunpowder Plot, 46ff.; + some early plays of, 72ff.; + period of partnership with Fletcher, 95ff.; + relations with Shakespeare, Jonson, and others in the theatrical + world, 114ff., 124ff., 145ff.; + _The Masque of the Inner Temple_, 124-144; + the Pastoralists, and other contemporaries at the Inns of Court, + 131-144; + an intersecting circle of jovial sort, 145-149; + the Countess of Rutland (Elizabeth Sidney), 150ff.; + his marriage, death, surviving family, 172ff.; + personality and contemporary reputation, portraits, 190ff.; + versification, 246ff., 281ff.; + stock words, phrases, and figures, 282ff.; + lines of Inevitable Poetry, 287; + his mental habit, 291ff.; + his dramatic art, adaptation, etc., 378ff.; + Did the Beaumont "romance" influence Shakespeare? 386ff.; + not a leader in decadence, 396-401; + Beaumont compared with Fletcher, 401-411; + and with other dramatists, 411-415 + + Beaumont, Francis, his _Poems_, 39, 40, 150ff., 172-174, 183, 230, + 251, 292, 295, 298, 330 + + Beaumont, Francis, the Justice, father of the dramatist, 15-19, 21, + 24, 29 + + Beaumont, Sir Henry, brother of the dramatist, 16, 18, 29, 44, 45, 99 + + Beaumont, Sir Henry, of Coleorton, 19, 160 + + Beaumont, Sir John, brother of the dramatist, 16, 18, 21, 22, 25, 26, + 29, 38-40, 42-45, 59-61, 116, 132, 146, 150, 154, 159, 162-164, + 166, 180, 182, 184-186, 195 + + Beaumont, John, Master of the Rolls, 12-14, 59-60 + + Beaumont, Maria, Lady Villiers, Countess of Buckingham, 19, 160-163 + + Beaumont, Sir Thomas, 45, 162 + + Beaumont's versification, 246ff. + + Beeston's Players, 314 + + _Beggers Bush, The_, 98, 236, 237, 378 + + Bell, H. N., 14 + + _Bellman of London, The_, 98 + + Belvoir Castle, 154 + + Berkenhead, John, 208 + + Betterton, Thomas, 366 + + _Biographia Dramatica, The_, 233 + + Birch, _Mem. of Q. Elizabeth_, 68 + + Blackfriars Theatre, the, 80, 81, 85, 89, 96, 97, 102, 103, 104, 105, + 114, 119, 122, 136, 179, 207, 314, 316, 317, 319, 342, 343, 368, + 370, 373 + + Blackwell's _Treatise on Equivocation_, 53 + + Blaiklock, Lawrence, 39, 40, 150, 165, 295 + + Blue Boar Inn, 22 + + Boas, F. S., ed. of _Philaster_, 349 + + Boccaccio, 101, 334, 392 + + Bolton, Edmund, 185, 194 + + Bond, R. Warwick, 367, 368, 371, 374; + ed. of _The Scornful Ladie_, 377 + + _Bonduca_, 236, 238, 278, 378, 410 + + Bosworth, battle of, 22, (184) + + _bouleversements_, 364 + + Boyle, R., 234, 252, 254, 300, 302, 308, 374 + + Bread-street, 99, 113, 203 + + Brett, Cyril, _Drayton's Minor Poems_, 191 + + _Bridal, The_, 359 + + _Britain's Ida_, Phineas Fletcher, 64 + + _Britannia's Pastorals_, 132-144 + + Broadgates, 29 + + Brome, Richard, 92, 168, 212, 213 + + Brooke, Christopher, 38, 119, 136, 145, 147-149 + + Brookesby, Bartholomew, 48, 57; + Edward, 47 + + Browne, William, 38, 40, 131-144, 153, 202, 214 + + Browning, Robert, 183, 246 + + Brydges, Egerton, 233 + + Buc, Sir George, 349 + + Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of, 19, 60, 159-164, 185 + + Bullen, A. H., art. _John Fletcher_ (D. N. B); gen. editor, _Variorum + Beaumont and Fletcher_, 203, 234, 271, 272, 312, _et passim_ + + Burbadge, Cuthbert, 103, 342, 343 + + Burbadge, Richard, 102, 103, 114, 118, 122, 136, 154, 316, 317, 358 + + Burre, Walter, 81, 319, 320, 322, 323 + + Burton, William, 16, 186 + + _Bury-Fair_, 96, 220 + + _Bussy D'Ambois_, 399 + + Butler, James, Duke of Ormonde, 188 + + + cadences, conversational and lyrical, 247 + + caesurae, 244ff. + + _Cambridge English Classics_, edition of _Beaumont and Fletcher_, 244, + 263-270, _et passim_ + + Camden, William, 137, 149, 178, 182 + + _Camden Miscellany, The_, 66 + + Campion, Father, 46 + + _Capricious Lady, The_, 377 + + _Captaine, The_, 98, 111, 176, 236, 240, 306, 378, 383 + + _Cardenio_ or _Cardenna_, 111, 119 + + Carey, Giles, 114, 122, 336 + + Carleton, Mistris, 125 + + Carr (Ker) Robert, Earl of Somerset, 74, 75, 179, 372 + + Cartwright, William, 209, 232 + + Casaubon, Isaac, 182 + + Catesby, Robert, 49, 50-53, 57, 58 + + Catholics, and the "Catholic Cousins" of Beaumont, 46ff., 179 + + _Catiline_, 120, 154, 411 + + Cavendish, Henry, 17, 24 + + Cavendishes, the, 16, 17, 38, 165 + + Cavendish, Sir William, first Duke of Newcastle, 165 + + _Centurie of Praise_, 200 + + Cervantes, see _Don Quixote_ + + Challoner, _Missionary Priests_, 16 + + Chalmers, A., 185, 233 + + Chamberlain, John, 125, 126, 155f. + + Chancery, Inns of, 29, 30, _et passim_; + and see _Inns of Court_ + + _Chances, The_, 64, 211, 230, 236, 243, 244, 263, 267, 268, 279, 403 + + Chapel Players, the, 32 + + Chapman, George, 85, 86, 87, 98, 102, 116, 122, 124, 125, 132ff., 135, + 142, 154, 182, 189, 194, 198, 200, 202, 203, 214, 317, 328, 329, + 391, 396, 399, 412 + + Charles I, 185, _et passim_ + + Charles II, 358 + + _Charles, Duke of Byron, The Tragedie of_, 317 + + Charles, Prince of Wales, 371, 372 + + Charnwood Forest, 10, 11, 13, 18, 20, 43, 151, 159 + + Chaucer, Geoffrey, 37 + + _Chaucer_, Speght's, 24, 178 + + Cheapside, 99, 114, _et passim_ + + Child, H. H., 43 + + _"chorizontes," the_, 9 + + _Christ's Victorie_, Giles Fletcher, 64 + + Cicely Tufton, see Rutland + + Cinthio, 392 + + Clarendon, Lord, 169 + + Clark, Andrew, 147, 148, 192 + + Cleves wars, the, 368-370, 372, 373 + + Clifford, Anne, Countess of Dorset, of Pembroke and Montgomery, 192 + + Clifford's Inn, 131 + + Clifton, Sir Gervase, 166 + + Clifton, Lady Penelope, 165f., 174, 202 + + Cockayne, Sir Aston, 168, 219, 226, 228, 233, 377 + + Coke, Sir Edward, 52, 58, 148, 162 + + Coleorton, 12, 19, 45, 160, _et passim_ + + Coleridge, S. T., 5, 397 + + Collier, J. P., 102, 220, 233 + + Collins, _Peerage of England_, 14, 17, 50, _et passim_ + + _Comedy of Errors, A_, 35, 393, 412, 413 + + _Commendatory Verses_, 94, 198, 229, 230, _et passim_ + + _Concerning the True Forms of English Poetry_, 184 + + Condell, Henry, 103, 120, 122, 343, 402 + + Congreve, William, 188 + + _Convivium Philosophicum_, 145-149, 203 + + Conyoke or Connock, 149 + + Cook, Alexander, 122 + + Cooke, W., 377 + + Coke, Sir Edward, 52, 58 + + Corbet, Bishop, 181, 195 + + _Coriolanus_, 389 + + _Coronation, The_, 229, 237 + + Coryate, Tom, 99, 149 + + Cotton, Charles, the elder, 98, 168-170, 226-228 + + couplet, 'heroic,' 252 + + Cowley, Abraham, 184 + + _Coxcombe, The_, 8, 87, 96-101, 103, 106, 111, 202, 208, 228, 236, + 240, 273, 286, 287, 294, 296, 298, 311, 332-341, 370, 378, 383, + 396, 400 + + Cranefield, Arthur, 149 + + Critics of Beaumont and Fletcher, 234 + + Croke, Sir John, Charles, and Unton, 138 + + Cromwell, Oliver, 74, 138, 170 + + _Crowne of Thornes, The_, 184 + + Cunliffe, J. W., 35, 37 + + _Cupid's Revenge_, 8, 111-112, 159, 237, 239, 240, 283, 285, 288, 294, + 299, 305, 314, 359ff., 370, 378, 381, 384, 386, 387, 388, 389, 396, + 407 + + _Curious Impertinent, The_, _El Curioso Impertinente_, _Le Curieux + Impertinent_, 332, 334, 335 + + _Custome of the Countrey, The_, 236 + + _Cymbeline_, 344, 345, 386-395 + + _Cynthia's Revels_, 85, 96 + + _Cyropaedeia_, 109 + + + Daborne, Robert, 122, 239, 379, 407 + + _Damon and Pythias_, 32 + + Daniel, Joseph, 149 + + Daniel, P. A., 349, 359 + + Daniel, Samuel, 142, 194 + + Darley, G., _Works of Beaumont and Fletcher_, 25, 181, 233 + + D'Avenant, William, 82, 307, 308, 350 + + Davies, John, of Hereford, 105, 133, 142, 145, 146, 209, 342, 343, + 346, 366 + + Day, John, 102, 122, 159, 314, 325 + + Dekker, John, 98, 102, 122, 211, 412 + + Denham, Sir John, 184 + + _Description of Elizium_, Drayton, 191 + + Devereux, Lady Penelope, 166 + + diction, 260ff., 275f., 281ff., and see Beaumont and Fletcher + + Diego Sarmiento, Don, Count Gondomar, 371ff. + + Digby, Sir Everard, 48, 50, 52, 53, 57 + + _Discourse of the English Stage_, 386 + + disputed plays, 300ff. + + _Distrest Mother, The_, 186 + + _Divine Poems_, Drayton, 191 + + Dolce, Ludovico, _Giocasta_, 35 + + Don Diego, see Sarmiento de Acuna + + Donne, John, 38, 98, 148, 149, 150, 169 + + _Don Quixote_, relation to _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, esp. + 321-331; + also 80, 120, 320, 332f., 413 + + 'Doridon,' 140ff. + + Douay, 369 + + Douthwaite, W. R., _Gray's Inn, etc._, 30ff. + + _Double Marriage, The_, 6, 236 + + Drake, Sir Francis, 37, 64, 138, 216 + + _Dramatic Miscellany_, Davies, 366 + + Drayton, Michael, 21, 26, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 72, 98, 116, 122, + 132ff., 137, 145, 153, 182, 185, 187, 191, 192, 194, 201, 202, 209 + + Drummond, William, of Hawthornden, 84, 90, 152, 193, 194, 202, 230 + + Dryden, John, 71, 72, 121, 188, 233, 358, 365 + + _Duchess of Malfi, The_, 411 + + Dugdale, G., 131 + + Duke, H. E., _Gray's Inn_, 34ff. + + _Duke of Milan, The_, 136 + + Duke of York, The, (Prince Charles's) Players, 335, 336 + + D'Urfe, Marquis, 89-90, 274 + + _Dutch Courtezan, The_, 399 + + Dyce, Alexander, _Works of Beaumont and Fletcher_, 16, 19, 96, 195, + 233, _et passim_ + + + Earle, John, Bishop, 156, 196-198, 209, 230, 241, 346, 385 + + _Eastward Hoe_, 73, 79, 328 + + Editions, also Folios and Quartos, see Beaumont and Fletcher + + Edwardes, Richard, 32 + + Edwards, Jonathan, 25 + + _Eglogs_, a revision of _Idea, the Shepheard's Garland_, Drayton, 42, + 187 + + Ekesildena, Catherine, 186 + + _Elder Brother, The_, 237, 272 + + _Elegies_, Brooke, 136 + + _(Certayn) Elegies--with Satyres and Epigrames_, Fitzgeffrey, 202 + + _Elegy on the Death of the Virtuous Lady Elizabeth, Countess of + Rutland_, 156, 251 + + _Elements of Armories_, Bolton, 195 + + Elizabeth Beaumont Seyliard, see Beaumont, Elizabeth + + Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland, see Sidney, Elizabeth + + Elizabeth, Princess, 33, 52, 110, 124, 139, 149 + + Elizabeth, Queen, 67 + + Elton, Oliver, _Michael Drayton_, 43, 167, 192 + + _Endimion and Phoebe_, 41 + + end-stopped lines, 243ff. + + _English Palmerin_, see _Palmerin_ + + _Epicoene_, 103, 120, 322, 324, 335, 369, 413 + + _Epigrams_, Jonson, 121, 195, 203 + + _Epistle Dedicatorie_, Shelton, 321, 323 + + _Epistle to Henery Reynolds_, Drayton, 201 + + _Epithalamium_, Wither, 135 + + _Equivocation_, Blackwell's treatise, 53 + + _Essay of Dramatick Poesie_, Dryden, 233, 358 + + _Ethelwolf, oder der Koenig Kein Koenig_, 367 + + Euripides, 35, 200, 207 + + Evans, Henry, 80, 102, 317, 342 + + Evelyn, John, letter to Pepys, 218 + + _Every Man in his Humour_, 92, 413 + + _Every Man out of his Humour_, 32, 327 + + _Examination of his Mistris' Perfections_, 172-174 + + extra syllables, 243 + + + _Faire Maide of the Inne, The_, 236, 238, 378 + + _Faithful Friends, The_, 237, 378 + + _Faithfull Shepheardesse, The_, 21, 65, 73, 83-88, 90, 93, 139, 166, + 171, 216, 231, 237, 240, 247, 249, 252, 261, 263, 264, 265, 266, + 270, 277, 280, 302, 304 + + _False One, The_, 236 + + _(Of The) Famous Voyage_, 203 + + Farquhar, George, 188 + + Fauchet, _Thierry_, 109 + + Fawkes, Guy, 49, 52, 56 + + feet, trisyllabic, 243 + + _Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare, The_, Gayley, 233, _et passim_; + see Gayley + + Fenner, Sir John, 130 + + Ferrar, William, 138 + + _Fidele and Fortunio_, 392 + + Field, Nathaniel, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 114, 122, 211, 214, 239, 251, + 272, 300, 302, 303, 304, 305, 335, 342, 343, 360, 379, 407 + + _Fifty Comedies and Tragedies_, 288 + + Fitzgeffrey, Henry, _Elegies, Satires, and Epigrams_, 202 + + Fleay, F. G., _Hist. Stage, Chron. Engl. Drama, etc._, 4, 8, 41, 74, + 84, 233, 234, 238, 252, 300, 303, 308, 316, 318 _et passim_ + + Flecknoe, Richard, 386, 397 + + Fletcher, John, ("I. F.") 40, 195; + his family, his youth, 62ff.; + some early plays of, 82ff.; + period of partnership with Beaumont, 95ff.; + relations with Shakespeare, Jonson, etc., 114ff., 124ff., 145ff.; + later years, portraits, 211ff.; + his versification, 243ff.; + his diction, 260ff.; + stock words, phrases, and figures, 270ff.; + his mental habit, 277ff.; + the Fletcher of the joint-plays, 383ff.; + his dramatic art, 383-385, 399-411 + + Fletcher, criteria, 243ff.; 260ff.; + see Beaumont and Fletcher, diction, verse, Ye-test, etc. + + Fletcher, Richard, Bishop, 62-68 + + Fletcher, Dr. Giles, 64, 68; + Giles, the younger, 64 + + Fletcher, Phineas, 64 + + 'Fletcherian Syndicate, the,' 379, 407 + + _Flowers, The_, 36, 125 + + Folio, First, Beaumont and Fletcher's _Comedies and Tragedies_, 1647, + (35 Plays), 236 + + Folio, Second, _Fifty Comedies and Tragedies_, 1679 (53 Plays), 237 + + Ford, John, 211, 412 + + _Forrest, The_, Jonson, 152 + + Fortescue, George, 186 + + _Foure Playes, or Morall Representations, in One_, (see also + _Triumphs_), 87, 236, 240, 251, 272, 301-305, 378, 386, 388, 389 + + _Foure Prentises, The_, 204, 325 + + Frederick, the Elector Palatine, 33, 36, 110, 124 + + Fuller, Thomas, _Worthies_, 67, 108 + + + Gardiner, Robert, 337 + + Gardiner, S. R. _Hist. Engl._, and _Prince Charles_, 44, 49, 74, + 372ff., _et passim_ + + Gardiner, Thomas, 138 + + Garnet, Father Henry, 47, 51-54, 56-59 + + Garrick, David, 366 + + Gascoigne, George, _Supposes_, 34, 35, 37 + + Gayley, C. M., _The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare_, Part Two, + in _Rep. Eng. Com._, Vol. III, now in press, 233, 300, 385, 408, + 409, _et passim_ + + _Gentleman Usher, The_, 391, 399 + + Gerard, Father John, 47-56, 165 + + _Ghost of Richard III_, Brooke, 136 + + Giffard, Maria, Lady Baker, Mrs. Fletcher, Lady Thornhurst, 65-71 + + Gilbert, Adrian, 156 + + _Giocasta_, Ludovico Dolce, 35 + + _Gismond of Salerne_, 37 + + Globe Theatre, the, 79, 97, 103, 105, 114, 118, 120, 122, 144, 179, 280 + + Glover, A, and Waller, A. R., editors of _Camb. Engl. Class., Beaumont + and Fletcher_, 244, 263-270, _et passim_ + + _Golden Remains, The_, 150 + + Goodere, Sir Henry, 43, 148; + Francis, Anne, 43 + + Goodwin, Gordon, 134, 139 + + _Gorboduc_, 37, 70 + + Grace-Dieu, 13, 17, 18, 20, 22, 45, 61, 72, 95, 98, 151, 159, 391, _et + passim_ + + Gray's Inn, 33, 34, 35, 37, 124, 125, 130f. + + Greene, Robert, _Menaphon and Pandosto_, 26, 159, 387, 392 + + _Greenstreet Papers, The_, 103, 119, 136, 319 + + Greg, W. W., 83, 159, 238, 272 + + Grey Friars, at Leicester, 22 + + Grey, Lady Jane, 23, 63, 66 + + Grosart, A. B., art. in _D. N. B., Sir John Beaumont's Poems_, 16, 185, + 187, 195, _et passim_ + + Gunpowder Plot, the, 46-61, 73, 138, 164 + + Gurlin, Nat., 202 + + Guskar, H., 88 + + Gwynn, Nell, 366 + + + Hakluyt, Richard, 182 + + Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O., 342 + + _hamartia_, 354, 358 + + _Hamlet_, 79, 116, 117, 286, 389 + + Harcourt, the Rt. Hon. Lewis, 190 + + Harleian MS. of Fletcher, 195 + + Harington, Sir John, 63, 67 + + Harris, John, 212 + + Hasted, _Hist. Kent_, 50, 69, 71, 176, _et passim_ + + Hastings, Edward, second Lord, 14; + Elizabeth (grandmother of the dramatist), 13, 14; + Sir Henry, 48, 165; + Lady Mary, 14; + William, first Lord, 14, 23; + Sir William, 14 + + Hastings, Earls of Huntingdon: George, first Earl, 13, 14; + Francis, second Earl, 13-15, 23, 24, 46; + Henry, third Earl, 14, 24; + George, fourth Earl, 48; + Henry, fifth Earl, 38, 164, 165 + + Hatcher, O. L., _John Fletcher, A Study in Dramatic Method_, 231, 232, + 233, 300, 408, 409, _et passim_; + in _Anglia_, 89 + + Hawkins, Sir Thomas, 138, 185 + + Hele, Lewis, 130 + + Heming, John, 103, 118, 120, 136, 342, 343 + + Hemings, John, see Heming + + _Henry IV_, 110, 115 + + _Henry VIII_, 120, 179 + + Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, 42 + + Herbert, William, third Earl of Pembroke, 133, 153 + + Herford, C. H., 287 + + Herodotus, 109 + + _Heroical Adventures of the Knight of the Sea_, 328 + + Herrick, Robert, 169, 170, 350, 361 + + Herring, Joan, 220 + + _Hesperides_, Herrick, 169, 170 + + Heyward, Edward, 137 + + Heywood, Thomas, 122, 204, 325, 331, 399, 412 + + _Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells, The_, 204 + + Hill, H. W., 159 + + Hill, Nicholas, 203 + + Hills, G., 337 + + _Histoire de Celidee, Thamyre, et Calidon_, 89 + + Historical Portraits (Oxford), 190, 234ff. + + _Histriomastix_, 397 + + _History of Cardenio_, by Fletcher and Shakespeare, 119 + + Hodgets, John, 40 + + Holinshed, 392 + + Holland, Aaron, 318 + + Holland, Elizabeth, 62, 66 + + Holland, Hugh, 98, 148, 149 + + Holme-Pierrepoint, 16, 17 + + _(Upon an) Honest Man's Fortune_, 8, 144, 176, 215, 220, 236, 238, 280, + 378 + + Hoskins, John, his _Convivium Philosophicum_, 146ff., 149, 203 + + Howard, Henry, 349, 361 + + Howard of Walden, Lord, 321 + + Howe, Josias, 209 + + Hughes, Thomas, _Misfortunes of Arthur_, 35 + + _Humorous Lieutenant, The_, 236, 243, 265, 268, 278, 279, 401-403 + + Huntingdon, see Hastings + + hyperbole, 285 + + _Hypercritica_, Bolton, 194 + + + _Idea, the Shepheard's Garland, Eglogs_, Drayton, 42 + + _If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody_, 331 + + _Ile of Guls_, 159 + + Imogen, Innogen, 392 + + Inderwick, F. A., _Calendar of Inner Temple Records_, 30, 131, _et + passim_ + + _In Laudem Authoris_, 40, 134 + + Inner Temple, 18, 29, 33, 37, 99, 124ff., 129, 131, 137, 138, 139, 162 + + _Inner Temple Records_, 29-31, 131, 139, _et passim_ + + Inns of Court and Chancery, 29, 32, 37, 118, 135, 145, _et passim_ + + _Insatiate Countess, The_, 399 + + _Island Princesse, The_, 236, 278 + + Isley, Ursula, wife of the dramatist, 175-178, 180, 187 + + Isleys, the, 175-177, 186 + + iteration, 259 + + + James I, Progress of 1603, 44, 60, 74, 77, 91, 161, 162, 164, 165, 372 + + joint-plays, 252ff., 400ff., etc. + + Jones, Inigo, 125, 145, 147, 148 + + Jonson, Ben, 3, 5, 9, 24, 32, 52, 72, 82, 84, 85, 86, 96, 97, 98, 99, + 100, 101, 102, 103, 110, 111, 114ff., 122, 124, 132ff., 136, 137, + 142, 145, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 157, 169, 170, 174, 182, + 185, 191, 193, 199, 200, 201, 205, 209, 211, 213, 214, 231, 272, + 322, 327, 328, 329, 334, 335, 336, 342, 343, 369, 411, 412 + + Jovius, Paulus, 78 + + Juby, Edward, 114 + + _Julius Caesar_, 108, 110 + + + Ker (Carr) Robert, Earl of Somerset, 74, 75, 179, 372 + + Keysar, Robert, 80, 81, 315, 318, 320, 323 + + Kinwelmersh, Francis, 35 + + King, Edward, Milton's 'Lycidas,' 24 + + _King and No King, A_, 7, 8, 37, 92, 109-110, 112, 121, 145, 146, 174, + 205, 237, 239, 241, 252, 255, 258, 259, 273, 275, 288, 293, 294, + 307, 308, 311, 346, 361-367, 378, 381, 382, 384, 386-396, 400, 401, + 411, 414, 415 + + _King Lear_, 159, 283 + + King's Players, the, 38, 97, 102, 103, 105, 109, 110, 114, 119, 120, + 122, 124, 136, 211, 306, 315, 316, 343, 345, 349, 360 + + King's Bench, 138 + + Kirkham, Edward, 118, 136 + + _Knight of Malta, The_, 211, 236, 238, 239, 378 + + _Knight of the Burning Pestle, The_, 7, 41, 73, 79-81, 88, 93, 100, + 112, 115, 171, 204, 237, 240, 273, 285, 310-332, 378, 382, 385, + 407, 413, 414 + + _Knight of the Burning Sword, The_, 325 + + _Knight of the Sunne and His Brother Rosicleer, The_, 327 + + Knole Park, Kent, 70, 187, _et passim_ + + Knowles, Sheridan, 359 + + Koeppel, E., 117 + + Kyd, Thomas, 26, 200, 204, 285, 286, 313 + + + Lady Elizabeth's Players, 314 + + Lamb, Charles, 233, 397 + + Langbaine, G., 233, 332 + + Lansdowne MS., 200 + + _Lawes of Candy, The_, 236, 238, 378 + + Leland, John, _Itinerary_, 10, 11, 154, 160, _et passim_ + + Lennard, Sir Henry, twelfth Lord Dacre, 70, 71, 178 + + Leonhardt, B., 117 + + _Letter to Ben Jonson_, 97-101, 193, 251, 337 + + Lincoln's Inn, 32, 124f., 135, 136, 145, 148 + + Lisle, Sir George, 204, 231, 361 + + _Little French Lawyer, The_, 236 + + Lodge, Thomas, 159, 392 + + _Love Lies a-Bleeding_, 103, etc., see _Philaster_ + + Lovell, John, Lord, 22, 23 + + _Lovers Progresse, The_, 236 + + _Loves Cure_, 236, 240, 305, 378 + + _Love's Labour's Lost_, 392, 412 + + _Loves Pilgrimage_, 236, 237, 238, 378 + + Lowin, John, 122, 214, 402 + + _Loyall Subject, The_, 211, 236, 243, 268, 278, 410 + + Luce, Morton, 393 + + Lyly, John, 26, 200 + + + Macaulay, G. C., _Francis Beaumont, a Critical Study_; _Beaumont and + Fletcher_ in _Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit._, 89, 108, 117, 226, 234, 252, + 265, 287, 300, 302, 305, 308, 312, 337, 374, 409 + + _Macbeth_, 286 + + Macready, W. C., 359 + + _Mad Lover, The_, 236, 279 + + _Maide in the Mill, The_, 236 + + _Maides Tragedy, The_, 6, 7, 107-109, 117, 121, 124, 159, 230, 232, + 234, 237, 239, 240, 241, 252, 255, 258, 273, 285, 288, 289, 292, + 308, 346, 349-359, 361, 378, 381, 382, 384, 386-395, 398, 400, 405, + 407, 411, 414, 415 + + _Malcontent, The_, 399 + + Malone, Edmund, 233 + + Manners, Lady Katharine (Villiers), Duchess of Buckingham, 159, 162, + 163 + + Manners, Roger, see Rutland + + Manningham, John, 32 + + Manverses, the, 16-18 + + Manwood, Thomas, 136 + + _Mari coccu, battu et content, Le_, 334 + + Markham, Lady, 165 + + Marlowe, Christopher, 33, 194, 200, 201, 204, 285, 286, 313, 326, 362 + + Marston, John, 73, 88, 102, 122, 328, 329, 396, 399, 412 + + Martin, Richard, 99, 149 + + Mary, Queen of Scots, 24, 65, 179 + + _Masque of the Inner Temple, The_, 119, 124-139, 145, 208, 225, 228, + 236, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 259, 281, 385 + + _Masque of Flowers_, see _Flowers_ + + _Masque of Ulysses and Circe, The_, 133 + + Massinger, Philip, 6, 8, 98, 119, 122, 136, 168, 169, 201, 203, 211, + 214, 219, 226, 228, 234, 241, 265, 272, 300, 305, 306, 326, 340, + 379, 400, 407; + authorities upon his style, 300 + + Mayne, Jasper, 361 + + McKerrow, R. B., 271, 272 + + _Measure for Measure_, 391, 392, 393 + + _Menaechmus_, 35 + + _Menaphon_, 159 + + Merchant Taylors' School, 86 + + Mermaid Tavern, the, 97-99, 114, 145, 148, 149, 193, 203 + + _Merry Wives, The_, 110 + + _Metamorphosis of Tobacco_, 38 + + _Microcosmographie_, 198 + + Middle Temple, the, 118, 124f., 138 + + Middleton, Thomas, 102, 122, 201, 211, 239, 272, 305, 324, 399, 407, + 412 + + _Midsummer-Night's Dream, A_, 392 + + Milner, J. D., 218 + + _Mirror for Magistrates, The_, 70 + + _Mirror of Knighthood, The_, 327, 329 + + 'Mirtilla', 43, 45, 187 + + _Miseries of Enforced Marriage, The_, 324 + + _Misfortunes of Arthur, The_, 35 + + Mitre Inn, The, 94, 145, 146 + + _Monsieur Thomas_, 73, 84, 88-94, 168, 237, 243, 245, 247, 263, 383 + + Montaigne, 228 + + Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 25 + + Monteagle, Lord, 50, 51, 57 + + Montemayor, 392 + + Moore, Sir Thomas, 194 + + More, Paul Elmer, 272f., 355f., 397ff., 415 + + Morris, John, _Life of Father Gerard_, 46-59 _et passim_ + + Mosely, Humphrey, _The Stationer to the Readers_, 130, 206, 216, 217 + + _Morte d'Arthur_, 327 + + Mountjoy, Christopher, 114, 118 + + _Moyses in a Map of his Miracles_, 42 + + _Mucedorus_, 331 + + _Much Ado About Nothing_, 110, 344, 390, 392 + + Mulcaster, Richard, 86, 318 + + Munday, Anthony, 327 + + Murch, H. S., ed. of _The Knight_, 324, 330 + + Murray, J. T., _Eng. Dram. Comp._, 104, 105, 315, 368 + + _Muses Elizium_, 44, 187, 191 + + + _Narrative_ of Father Gerard, 47, 54 + + Nashe, Thomas, 154, 204 + + Nevill, Sir Henry, the elder, 145-148, 153; + the younger, 145, 146 + + _Nice Valour, The_, 97, 98, 216, 236, 238, 378 + + Nichols, J., _Collections_, _Hist. Leicestershire_, _Progresses of + Queen Elizabeth_, _Progresses of James I_, 12, 13, 19, 65, 131, + 186, _et passim_ + + _Nimphalls_, Drayton, 187, 191 + + _Night Walker, The_, 237 + + _Noble Gentleman, The_, 236, 238, 378 + + Northumbrian MS. of _Bacon_, 146 + + Norton, Thomas, _Gorboduc_, 37 + + + oaths, 275, 286 + + _Oath of Allegiance, The_, 60, 164 + + _Obstinate Lady, The_, 377 + + _Ode to Sir William Skipworth_, 215 + + Oldfield, Mrs., 377 + + _Old Wives Tale, The_, 326 + + Oliphant, E. H., 83, 117, 234, 241, 252, 270, 272, 281, 300, 302, 304, + 309, 312, 337, 338, 340, 374 + + _On the Tombs in Westminster_, 183 + + optatives, 275, 286 + + _Orlando Furioso_, 334 + + Ostler (Osteler, Ostler, Osler), Wm., 122, 342, 343 + + _Othello_, 79, 110 + + Overbury, Sir Thomas, 27, 153, 179 + + Ovid, 38, 41, 142 + + + _Palamon and Arcite_, 32 + + 'Palmeo', 43, 187 + + _Palmerin de Oliva, Palmerin of England_, 313, 325, 327, 329 + + _Pandosto_, 159, 392 + + _Parisitaster_, 88 + + Pastoralists, the, 124, 132-144, 145 + + _Pastorals_, Ambrose Philips, 186 + + Paul's Players, the, 73, 83, 102, 315, 316, 318 + + Peele, George, 326, 329 + + Pepys, Samuel, 218, 358, 366 + + Percy, Thomas, 49-52 + + _Pericles_, 118, 344, 345, 387, 391, 392, 393, 394 + + Persons, Father, 46, 47 + + Pettus, Sir John, 231 + + _Philaster_, 6, 7, 72, 88, 92, 96, 97, 101-107, 109, 116, 121, 159, + 191, 230, 237, 239, 240, 241, 252, 253, 258, 259, 260, 261, 273, + 285, 294, 297, 298, 302, 307, 308, 311, 312, 329, 337, 341-349, + 361, 378, 381, 382, 384, 386-396, 412, _et passim_. + + Philip III of Spain, 371, 372 + + Philips, Sir Ambrose, 186 + + Phillipps de Lisles, the present, 186 + + Phillipps, J. O. Halliwell, 342 + + Phillips, Sir Robert, 149 + + _Philosophia Epicurea Democritiana_, 203 + + Pierce, Edward, 315 + + Pierrepoint, Anne, mother of the dramatist, 16-18, 25 + + Pierrepoint, Sir Henry, 16, 18, 45 + + Pierrepoint, Robert, first Earl of Kingston, 17, 27, 38, 164, 179 + + _Pilgrim, The_, 236, 278 + + Plautus, 35, 197, 230 + + _Plutus_, 125 + + _Poems, The_, of Beaumont, see Beaumont, Francis, _The Poems_ + + _Poems Lyrick and Pastoral_, Drayton, 42 + + _Poetaster, The_, 149, 342 + + Poets' Corner, 182ff., 192, 196, 199 + + Pole, Katherine, 14 + + Portraits of Beaumont, Nuneham, 181, 190, 192; + Robinson's engraving of 1840, 190, 217; + Knole, 190, 192, 217; + G. Vertue, 217; + Evans, 217; + Walker and Cockerell, 218 + + Portraits of Fletcher, Knole: Blood, 217; + G. Vertue, 217; + Evans, 217; + Robinson, 217; + Walker, 218; + Earl of Clarendon's, 218; + Janssen, 219 + + 'Prince of Misrule', 34 + + 'Prince of Portpoole', 34 + + Prince's Players, the, 114 + + _Praise of Hemp-seed, The_, 199 + + Princess Elizabeth's Players, 336 + + _Prophetesse, The_, 236 + + prose-test, the, 259 + + Prynne, William, 397, 399 + + _Purple Island, The_, Phineas Fletcher, 64 + + + Queen Anne's Players, 314, 318 + + _Queene of Corinth, The_, 211, 236 + + Queen Henrietta's Players, 314 + + Queen's Revels' Children, the, 80, 81, 83, 86, 87, 89, 96, 102, 103, + 111, 114, 122, 124, 304, 305, 314, 315, 317, 319, 332, 335-337, + 342, 343, 360, 368-370, 373 + + + Raleigh, Sir Walter, 36, 100, 138, 149, 155, 165, 179 + + Randolph, Thomas, 150 + + Red Bull Theatre, the, 313, 318 + + 'Remond' and 'Doridon,' query, Fletcher and Beaumont, 139-144 + + _Revesby Sword-Play_, 34 + + Reynolds, Henry, 132, 201 + + Reynolds, John, 147 + + rhyme, 250 + + '_Ricardo and Viola_,' 338, 383 + + Richard III, 14, 22 + + Rigg, J. M., 13ff., 19 + + _Rollo_, 237 + + 'romance,' 279, 394, _et passim_ + + _Romeo and Juliet_, 286, 389 + + _Rosalynde_, 159 + + Rosenbach, A. S. W., 333 + + Rossiter, Philip, 103, 315, 316, 319, 370 + + Routh, H. V., 328 + + Rowley, William, 211, 239, 272, 314, 407, 412 + + _Royall King and Loyall Subject_, 399 + + _Rule a Wife and Have a Wife_, 211, 237, 243, 244, 249, 263, 268, 269, + 280, 403 + + run-on lines, 174, 250, 255, 258ff., 261ff. + + Rutland, Roger Manners, fifth Earl, 48, 152-155; + Francis, sixth Earl, 162, 163; + Elizabeth, Countess of, see Sidney, Elizabeth; + Cicely (Tufton), Countess of, 163 + + Rymer, Thomas, 233, 354, 355, 397 + + + Sackville, Edward, fourth Earl of Dorset, 191 + + Sackville, Lionel, seventh Earl of Dorset, 191, 217 + + Sackville, Richard, third Earl of Dorset, 70, 179, 180, 191 + + Sackville, Thomas, first Earl of Dorset, 37, 65-71 + + _Salmacis and Hermaphroditus_, 39, 40, 41, 134, 141, 142 + + Sampson, M. W., 386 + + Sannazarro, 392 + + Sarmiento de Acuna, Don Diego, Count Gondomar, 371-373 + + Schelling, F. E., 234, 295 + + Schevill, Rudolph, 322f., 324, 330, 332 + + _Scornful Ladie, The_, 7, 100, 111-113, 171, 180, 232, 237, 238, 239, + 240, 273, 368-378, 382, 383, 396 + + _Scourge of Folly, The_, 104, 342, 343, 344 + + _Sea Voyage, The_, 236 + + '_Second Maiden's Tragedy_,' 334 + + _Sejanus_, 148, 411 + + Selden, John, 99, 137, 149, 169, 170 + + Semphill, Sir James, 59-60 + + Seneca, 37 + + _Session of the Poets, The_, Suckling, 137 + + Seyliard, Mrs., see Elizabeth Beaumont + + Seyliard, Thomas, 45, 159, 176, 187; + see also Beaumont, Elizabeth + + Shadwell, Thomas, 96 + + Shakespeare, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12, 23, 26, 32, 33, 35, 79, 83, 92, 98, 101, + 102, 103, 105, 106, 108, 110, 111, 114ff., 118, 122, 124, 136, 145, + 154, 159, 182, 184, 193, 194, 199, 201, 211, 214, 219, 272, 280, + 283, 286, 309, 326, 329, 330, 343, 344, 386ff., 387ff., 389, 396, + 401, 411ff. + + Shakespeare, and Beaumont, 114-118 + + Shakespeare, and his company of players, 110-111, 118-120, 145, 316 + + Shakespeare, Was he influenced by Beaumont and Fletcher? 386-395 + + Shaw, _Knights of England_, 17, 45, _et passim_ + + Shelton, Thomas, transl. of _Don Quixote_, 120, 321-331, 335 + + _Shepheard's Calendar_, 44 + + _Shepherdesse, The_, John Beaumont, 159, 163 + + _Shepherd's Hunting, The_, 135 + + _Shepherd's Pipe, The_, 134, 135, 139 + + Shirley, James, 150, 206, 208, 229 + + _Sicelides_, Phineas Fletcher, 64 + + Sidney, Elizabeth Manners, Countess of Rutland, 133, 139, 150-159, 165, + 172-174, 180, 287 + + Sidney, Sir Philip, 26, 37, 106, 111, 133, 142, 143, 150ff., 158, 159, + 166, 197, 201, 392 + + Sidney, Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, 42, 133, 153 + + _Silent Woman, The_, 120, 413, see _Epicoene_ + + Skipwith, Sir William, 45, 166, 215 + + _Spanish Curate, The_, 236, 271 + + Slye, Christopher, 103 + + Smith, L. T., 11, 200 + + Southampton, see Wriothesley + + Spedding, James, 36 + + Speght's _Chaucer_, 24, 178 + + Spenser, Edmund, 24, 44, 182, 193, 199, 200 + + Stanhope, Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, 165 + + Stanley, Thomas, second Earl of Derby, 14 + + Stanley, Thomas, 350, 374 + + Stapleton, Miles Thomas, 12 + + _State Papers Domestic, Calendar of_, 15, 51-61, 63, 127, 129, 146, + 162, 164, 177, _et passim_ + + _Stationers' Registers_, 84, 121, 237, _et passim_ + + _Stationer to the Readers, The_, Mosely, 206 + + 'Stella', 166 + + Stephens, John, 202 + + Stiefel, A. L., 89 + + Stourton, Lord, 50 + + Stratford upon Avon, 118 + + Stuart, Lady Arabella, 17, 179 + + Suckling, Sir John, 137 + + Sullivan, Mary, 127, 128 + + Sundridge, 175-180, 377, _et passim_ + + _Supposes, The_, Ariosto--George Gascoigne, 34, 35 + + suspense, 389 + + Symonds, J. A., 386 + + Swinburne, Algernon, 4, 7, 8, 190, 233, 397 + + Sympson and Seward, 233 + + + Talbots, the, Earls of Shrewsbury, 14, 17 + + _Tamer Tamed, The_, 83, 236, 279, _et passim_, _The Woman's Prize_ + + _Taming of the Shrew, The_, 35, 83 + + Tasso, _Aminta_, 132 + + Taylor, John, 198 + + Taylor, Joseph, 122, 214, 332, 335ff., 402 + + _Tempest, The_, 110, 283, 344, 386, 387, 390, 391, 393 + + Tennyson, Alfred, 183 + + Theobald, Lewis, 237, 359 + + _Thersites_, 326 + + _Thierry and Theodoret_, 8, 109, 237, 238, 240, 378, 386, 387, 395 + + Thorndike, A. H., _Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare_, + editions of _Maides Tragedy_ and _Philaster_, 73, 83, 84, 105, 110, + 234, 241, 300, 303, 304, 305, 316, 318, 349, 350, 380, 386f. + + Thornhurst, Sir Stephen, 69 + + 'Thyrsis,' 43, 187 + + _Time Poets, The_, 203 + + _Timon_, 389 + + _'Tis a Pity, She's a Whore_, 412 + + _Titles of Honour_, 137 + + _Tombs in Westminster, On the_, 183 + + _To the Apparition of his Mistresse calling him to Elizium_, 170 + + _To the Honour'd Countess of ----_, 152 + + _To the Memory of my beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare, and + what he hath left us_, 200 + + Tourneur, Cyril, 272 + + Townshend, Sir Robert, 167 + + _Tragedies of the Last Age, The_, 354 + + _Tragedy of Bonduca, The_, see _Bonduca_ + + _Travails of Three English Brothers, The_, 81, 313, 314, 317, 318, 321, + 325, 331 + + Tresham, Francis, 48, 50, 52, 57, 58 + + Tresham, Mary, 46 + + Tresham, Sir Thomas, 46 + + triplet, the, 259 + + _Triumph of Death, The_, 270, 301-305, 389 + + _Triumph of Honour, The_, 251, 301-305, 389 + + _Triumph of Love, The_, 8, 251, 301-305, 388 + + _Triumph of Time, The_, 270, 301-305 + + _True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, The_, 326 + + _(On the) True Forms of English Poetry_, 184 + + _Twelfth Night_, 32, 117, 345, 390, 392, 393 + + _Two Gentlemen of Verona, The_, 345, 390, 392, 412 + + _Two Noble Kinsmen, The_, 5, 119, 237 + + + Underwood, John, 342, 343 + + Upham, A. H., 90 + + _Upon an Honest Man's Fortune_, see _Honest Man's Fortune_ + + _Upon the Lines and Life of Shakespeare_, Hugh Holland, 148 + + + _(Tragedy of) Valentinian, The_, 6, 8, 211, 236, 287, 400, 410 + + Vanbrugh, Sir John, 188 + + _Variorum Edition of Beaumont and Fletcher_, 190, 217, 234, 271, 346, + 367, 413, _et passim_ + + Vaux, Anne, _alias_ Mrs. Perkins, 46-59, _passim_, 164 + + Vaux, Eleanor, _alias_ Mrs. Jennings, 46, 47, 57 + + Vaux, Mrs., Elizabeth Roper, 46-56, 138, 164 + + Vauxes, the, cousins of the dramatist, and the Gunpowder Plot, 46-61, + 164f. + + verse-endings, double, triple, etc., 243 + + verse-tests, 243ff., 246ff. + + versification of Fletcher and of Beaumont, 243-259 + + _Very Woman, A_, 377 + + Villiers, Christopher, 161, 162 + + Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham, 19, 60, 148, 159-164, 185 + + Villiers, John, 161-162, 164 + + _Volpone_, 72, 82, 92, 411 + + von Wurzbach, Wolfgang, 334 + + + Walker, Henry, 119 + + Walkley, Thomas, 145 + + Wallace, C. W., _Shakspere's Money Interest in the Globe_, etc., + _Century Maga._, 114, 118, 314, 315, 316, 319 + + Waller, A. R., and Glover, A., editors of _Camb. Eng. Class., Beaumont + and Fletcher_, 244, _et passim_; + Waller, ed. of _The Scornful Ladie_, 377 + + Waller, Edmund, 150, 184, 231, 349, 359, 374 + + Walpole, Henry, 16, 48 + + Ward, Sir Adolphus William, _Hist. Eng. Dram. Lit._, 3, 91, 216, 234, + 308, 377, 397 + + Warwick, Richard, Earl of, 14 + + Webster, John, 102, 122, 211, 396, 399, 411 + + Wenman, Sir Richard, 53, 138 + + Wenman, Thomas, 134, 137, 138 + + West, John, 149 + + _White Devil, The_, 122, 399 + + Whitefriars Theatre, the, 96f., 102f., 122, 304, 315, 316, 343, 360, + 369 + + Whitehall, 125f. + + White Webbs, 52, 56 + + _Wife for a Month, A_, 236, 263, 275, 278, 400, 403-406, 410 + + _Wild-Goose Chase, The_, _Dedication_, 214, 237, 279 + + Wilkins, George, 314, 324, 325 + + Wills, James, 188 + + Wilson, Arthur, 160 + + Winter, Henry and Thomas, 49-52, 57 + + _Winter's Tale, The_, 110, 159, 283, 344, 386, 387, 390, 391, 393 + + _Wit at Severall Weapons_, 236, 237, 378 + + Wither, George, 134f., 138, 142 + + _Wit Without Money_, 237, 279 + + _Woman-Hater, The_, 7, 40, 41, 59, 72-79, 80, 82, 93, 100, 112, 115, + 130, 171, 237, 239, 240, 250, 258, 273, 281, 285, 297, 305, + 307-311, 350, 378, 382, 385, 407, 412 + + _Woman is a Weather-Cocke_, 87, 302-305 + + _Woman's Prize, The_, or _The Tamer Tamed_, 83, 236, 279 + + _(To Any) Woman that hath been no Weather-cocke_, 304 + + _Women Pleas'd_, 236, 279 + + Wood, Anthony, 32 + + Wordsworth, W., 20, 21, 25 + + Wright, Christopher and John, 49-52 + + Wright, Thomas, 13 + + Wriothesley, Henry, third Earl of Southampton, 154, 184 + + Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 175 + + + Xenophon's _Cyropaedeia_, 109 + + + Ye-test, the 271-273, 309, 371, 374-375 + + _Yorkshire Tragedy, The_, 303 + + _Your Five Gallants_, 324 + + + Zola, 404 + + + + + * * * * * + + + +Transcriber's note: + +Minor punctuation and capitalization inconsistencies have been +corrected without comment and include adding missing opening or +closing quotes, closing parenthesis, and sentence closing periods. + +Tables of Family Trees on pages 419-423 have been formatted to fit +into the page margins. + +Images falling within an unbroken paragraph have been relocated to +either the top or bottom of said paragraph. + +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. + + +Typographical corrections: + + p. 17, "Holme-Pierpoint" to "Holme-Pierrepoint" (5) + (Holme-Pierrepoint is seventeen) + p. 23, "Huntington" to "Huntingdon" (20) (Francis of Huntingdon) + p. 62, "clerygyman" to "clergyman" (had been a clergyman) + p. 68, "worldy" to "worldly" (Bishop's worldly estate) + p. 118, "Aven" to "Avon" (2) (Stratford upon Avon) + p. 164, "Beaument" to "Beaumont" (674) (John Beaumont never recalls) + p. 345, "Gentleman" to "Gentlemen" (The Two Gentlemen of Verona) + p. 445, "320" to "302" ("Woman is a Weather-Cocke," 87, 302-305) + p. 444, "Kinsman" to "Kinsmen" (Two Noble Kinsmen, The) + p. 445, "Cycropaedeia" to "Cyropaedeia" (Xenophon's Cyropaedeia) + + +Possible typographical errors retained in text; falling within quoted +material: + + p. 64, "lived in her highnes," (highness) + p. 81, "it was no ofspring" (offspring) + p. 108, "Drammatick and Scenical King" (Dramatick) + p. 122, "... excellent Maister Beamont" (Beaumont) + p. 194, "... Francis Beamont" (Beaumont) + p. 231, "Flesher and Beaumont" (Fletcher) + p. 231, "The Faithfull Shipheardesse" (Shepheardesse) + p. 375, "Abigal," (Abigail) + p. 430, "Cavendishes" (Cavendishs') (in Index) + + +Several instances of "Middle English Spellings" used are: + + "Maiesties" (Middle English) and "Majesties," and + "Doe, se, yt, yn, y'll" and "do, see, it, in, I'll" + + +Play Title Variations, each of which appears several times: + + "Aeschylus" and "AEschylus" + "Amadis de Gaule" and "Amadis de Gaul" + "Beggars' Bush" and "Beggars Bush" + "... Curious coxcombe" and "... Curious cox-combe" + "Duchess of Malfi" and "Duchess of Malfy" + "Julius Ceasar" and "Julius Caesar" + "Maid's Tragedy", "Maids Tragedy", "Maides Tragedy" + "Maske of the Gentleman of Grayes Inne" and "Maske of the + Gentlemen of Grayes Inne". + "Morall Representations" and "Moralle Representations" + "Parisitaster" and "Parasitaster" + "Essay of Dramatick Poesie" and "Essay on Dramatick Poesy" + "The Scornful Lady" and "The Scornful Ladie" + "The Shepheardesse" and "The Shepheardess" + "The Coxcomb" and "The Coxcombe" + "Weather-cocke" and "Weather-Cocke" + "Women Pleas'd" and "Women Pleased" + + +Other word variations: + + "Zouch" and "Zouche" (Ashby-de-la-----) + "Bedchamber" and "Bed-chamber" + "birthright" and "birth-right" + "Cal, S. P.," "Cal. St. Pa., Dom.," + "Calendar of State Papers (Domestic)" (see Footnotes) + "Condel" and "Condell" (Henry ----) + "countryside" and "country-side" + "D'Urfey" and D'Urfe (Marquis ----) + "Hoskyns" and "Hoskins" (Serjeant ----) + "milkmaid" and "milk-maid" (both occur on p. 27) + "northwest" and "north-west" + "Pierepoint" and "Pierrepoint" + "Sannazzaro" and "Sannazarro" + "Shepherdesse" and "Shepheardesse" + "Sempill" and "Semphill" (Sir James ----) + "southeast" and "south-east" + "White-hall" and "Whitehall" + + +Words using the [oe] ligature which has been changed to "oe" in this +e-text: manoeuvere, manoeuvered, manoeuvers. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FRANCIS BEAUMONT: DRAMATIST*** + + +******* This file should be named 34214.txt or 34214.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/4/2/1/34214 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +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. 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