Francis Beaumont

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT

A CRITICAL STUDY

BY

G. C. MACAULAY, M.A.

FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

LONDON
.<:EGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., i, PATERNOSTER SQUARE

1883

^ y^3 ^ ^^ ^

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{The rights of tratislation and of reproduction are reserved.)

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PREFACE.

The following essay is, so far as I am aware, the first
systematic attempt to separate Beaumont and Fletcher
on broad grounds of criticism. This task has been pro-
nounced impossible by some, while by others it has been
approached from one side or another; and so far as
metrical tests are concerned, it was to a certain extent
accomplished by Mr. Fleay in the papers read before the
New Shakspere Society in 1876. With these I only
became acquainted after my own work had made some
progress, and I was glad to find that they afforded in-
dependent confirmation of many of my results. I have
not been able however to accept all his conclusions ; and
while by no means inclined to neglect metrical evidence
of authorship, which is often both the most valuable as
well as the simplest test, I have avoided the statement
of it in a statistical form, which may be seriously mis-
leading. In that part of the essay — representing a greater
amount of work than any other — which deals with the
question of authorship, I have not attempted to set forth

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VI PREFACE.

in detail the evidence which leads me to assign each
scene to its author ; this would need a separate treatise
for each play, and would stand seriously in the way of
any broad view of the whole : I have desired only to
state definitely the conclusions, and to suggest the nature
of the evidence by which they were reached, in such a
way that it can be easily tested by the critic. Questions
of disputed authorship cannot but be wearisome to most
readers ; but upon the answer to them in this case
depends our estimate of one of the most remarkable of
Shakspere's contemporaries, whose individuality has for
various reasons been hitherto greatly obscured. And
this should be a subject of interest to students of English
literature. If the work consists more of disentangling
criticism than of presentation, that fault is inherent in
the subject.

In criticism I have endeavoured to be definite, and
to avoid exaggeration. Of Shakspere literature Carlyle
said long ago, " Volumes we have seen that were simply
one huge interjection, printed over three hundred pages."
My aim is not to demand admiration for the subject of
this essay, but to help in some small degree to define his
position, to illustrate one obscure passage in the most
interesting chapter of English literature.

Obligations must be acknowledged first and chiefly
to Dyce, the value of whose work on the text of Beau-
mont and Fletcher can only be fully appreciated by those
who, like myself, have had experience of other editions.

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PREFACE. Vll

" Did the name of criticism ever descend so low as in
the hands of those two fools and knaves, Seward and
Simpson ? " asks Coleridge : and most readers of Beau-
mont and Fletcher will be disposed to echo the com-
plaint. I am also indebted to Charles Lamb's Specimens
of tJie Dramatists* to Spalding's Essay on the Author-
ship of " The Two Noble Kinsmen',' to Collier's Annals
of the Stage, to Mr. Fleay's papers for the New Shak-
spere Society and Shakespeare Manual, and to Professor
Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature. Other
obligations will be acknowledged as they occur.

In quotations the text of Dyce has been followed in
all essential points, and in dates the modern system has
been adopted, assuming the year to begin January ist;
thus March, 1 615-16, is written simply March, 161 6.

* It may iillerest some of the many lovers of Charles Lamb, to hear
that the copy of Beaumont and Fletcher which belonged to him, and was
used in making selections for his Specimens, is at present in the British
Museum, having been jacked up accidentally at a sale a few years ago. It
is a copy of the folio of 1679, and contains MS. notes by S. T. Coleridge,
chiefly on The Frophetess, and an apology for them, signed with his initials.
'• I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in folio," says Elia ; and this
evidently must be the identical old folio which was dragged home late on a
Saturday night from Barker's in Covent Garden, as related in his essay on
Old China,

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

The mysteriously double personality which passes in
literature under the name of " Beaumont and Fletcher "
has perhaps had its due share of popular reputation ; but it
has certainly hitherto had less than its due share of sound
criticism. The first of English literary critics asserted,
as is well known, that in their own age the popularity of
these dramatists upon the stage exceeded Shakspere's ;
and the latest, historian of the English drama counts
them as names to which posterity has been inclined to
allow almost equal honour with his. " In the Argo of
the Elisabethan drama — as it presents itself even now
to popular imagination — Shakspere is the commanding
figure. Next to him sit the twin literary heroes, Beau-
mont and Fletcher, vaguely regarded as inseparable in
their achievements. The Herculean form of Jonson has
a more disputed place among the princes ; and the rest
are but dimly distinguished." * These statements point

• % ♦ Ward, History of the English Drama^ vol. ii. p. 155.

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2 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

rather to over-estimation than to neglect, and but for
the general absence of clear ideas upon the subject
which is hinted at by the phrase " vaguely regarded as
inseparable," one might almost suppose that it was a
needless impertinence to call public attention to them
any further. But in fact, whatever may be the popular
estimate of these writers (if indeed anything exists which
deserves to be called by that name), it seems to rest
upon no sound basis of criticism. The duty of the critic
in such a case as this is first to ascertain whether the
work to which are attached the names of two writers is in
fact a homogeneous product or no. If indeed it should
appear that in this notable instance two men were found
who had such a congenial spirit that they became in
truth but a single writer, it would matter little to the
critic what share each had in the writings which they
jointly put forth ; even the retirement of one would make
no essential difference in the quality of the subsequent
work. But if we have here a partnership like others in
that age, or differing only in being more continuous, and
formed rather from considerations of private friendship
than from the necessity of rapidly supplying the theatre
with a play ; if, in fact, there was no such wondrous
" consimility of fancy " so far as literary production was
concerned, however much tastes may have agreed in do-
mestic matters, and if the opinion to the contrary is merely
the invention of an uncritical age perpetuated by the
indolence of eighteenth-century editors, — then it becomes
a question whether any true estimate of the work can be
formed which does not distinguish the bent of each

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I

1

FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 3

individual genius, and elucidate the several principles of
art by which each was instinctively guided in contributing
his share to the whole. Without this, it may be that the
total result of our criticism will be uncertain. Separate
parts may be found perhaps to have a homogeneity result-
ing from the predominance of one or the other of the
two authors in their composition, but the whole collection
may seem to be a medley with no distinguishable artistic
aim or moral result. Nay, it may even prove that the
main defects of each separate work are the result of
co-operation, and that success in the highest sense of the
word depended chiefly upon the question whether one or
the other obtained a strong predominance. For without
in any way prejudging the poiiit whether one was dis-
tinctly superior in genius to the other, we may at least
admit the possibility that the work which was most
individual was also the best, and that such criticism as
Schlegel's — " They hardly wanted anything but a more
profound seriousness of mind, and that sagacity in art
which observes a due measure in everything, to deserve a
place beside the greatest dramatic poets of all nations," *
— is, in part at least, owing to the uncertain sound uttered
by their writings when treated as a whole, and to the
effect of incongruity produced by two minds in many
respects different from one another working upon the
same composition. It is possible that the critic may be
able to find within the volumes which have " Beaumont

* Schlegel, Lectures on Dramatic Literature^ lecture xiii. Darley, in
the introduction to his edition, speaks of certain of their characters as ** not
developed\i\iX reared up like Nebuchadnezzar's image," of materials which
do not amalgamate together.

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4 FRANCIS BEAUMONT,

and Fletcher" as their title, not one but two distinct
ideals of art, and may see that each is in its turn attained
by individual work, and missed, not always indeed where
co-operation appears, but where the co-operation was of
such a kind that there was not a distinct predominance
of one or the other author in the design and execution
of the work.

The present essay is partly intended as a contribution
towards this groundwork of criticism, and as it neces-
sarily brings into prominence the individual character-
istics of the authors with which it deals, and dwells upon
the special artistic qualities of their work, it may seem
desirable to emphasize also the other claim which these
productions have upon us, as manifestations of one great
phase of the national life, in the development of which
our own country enjoys an acknowledged pre-eminence
among the peoples of the world. For as Francis Bacon
introduces his work with " Soleo aestimare hoc opus
magis pro partu temporis quam ingenii," so we may
regard also the work which was being done simultane-
ously among the people at the Globe, and the BlackfriarSy
at the Fortune, and the Bull, as in a great measure a
birth of time, though so brilliantly illuminated by indi-
vidual genius that we are almost disposed to deny his
claim of parentage.

Nor can a sufficient acquaintance with this phase
of the national life be attained merely by the study of
Shakspere. The extraordinary character of Shakspere's
genius makes him not a fair representative of the
period to which he belonged : " He was not of an age.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 5

but for all time." And on the other hand, even he
must be partly interpreted by his age. We cannot duly
appreciate his position without careful study of this,
whole chapter of literary history. Unless we are ac-
quainted with the soil from which he grew, and with the
other products which that soil was capable of bearing,
he remains, not marvellous merely, but prodigious. If
he be regarded after the fashion of the last generation
but one, as a lusus naturce^ out of relation to the ordinary
laws of human development, he loses his interest for us
as a human being ; his actual bodily existence, which
has little enough of the substance imparted by the
biographer, becomes altogether shadowy and mythical :
we fall an easy prey to some " Baconian hypothesis "
about the authorship of his plays, and take a final leave,
so far as he is concerned, of criticism and common sense.
The historical method of dealing with prodigies,
though it may be thought irreverent in literature as in
religion, is in reality the only method which is consistent
with reasonable and just appreciation. It is only when
we have examined the materials prepared for the hand
of the workman, and when we have compared the edifice
raised by the master builder with those achieved by others
who worked with similar materials and in a like style,
that we can hope to distinguish that which belongs to
circumstance and the age from that which is the peculiar
and individual contribution of genius. And it is no new
remark that, as in the case of Shakspere the contribution
of the individual genius was more liberal than had been
hitherto made by man, so also was the stock of materials

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6 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

more abundant and the conjunction of circumstances
more favourable than any which had been up to this
time vouchsafed by nature. The Germans envy not
his genius only, but also his circumstances: "The
passionate sympathy of the people for the art of the
stage, the merry life of the court, the activity of a
great city, the prosperity of a youthful State, the multi-
tude of distinguished men, of famous persons by sea
and land, in the cabinet and in the field, who were con-
centrated in London, the ecclesiastical and political
advance on all sides, the scientific discoveries, the pro-
gress of the arts in other branches, — all this combined to
produce the poet, whose fascinated eye rested upon this
whole movement. . . . All that belonged to the theatrical
apparatus — the means and the material — lay ready for
the great poet's dramatic art. No great dramatist of
any other nation has met with a foundation for his
art of such enviable extent and strength, with such com-
pleteness of well-prepared materials for its construction,
as ancient tradition and present practice afforded to
Shakespeare." *

Shakspere was in no sense the founder of a school.
If Shakspere had never been born, the world would have
been immeasurably poorer, but England would still
have had her great dramatic age. That age had already
been inaugurated by Doctor Faustus, by Edward 11.^
and the originals of Henry VI., before Shakspere
appeared as anything more than an elaborator of other

* Gervinus, Shakespeare Commentaries ^ translated by Bunn^tt,
ed. 1877, p. 82. (With slight alterations in the translation.)

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 7

men's work ; and his later contemporaries, notwith-
standing their debt to him and to each other, have an
essential independence. The movement was national,
and that in a sense deeper than at first appears. There
has been much loose statement about the origin of the
drama, and a good deal of vague declamation about the
combination of causes which conduced to its exceptional
development in the England of Elizabeth : and though
we have not to deal directly with Elizabethan dramatists,
yet, for reasons which will hereafter appear, we cannot
altogether neglect these questions. The fundamental
statement that the " drama had everywhere a religious
origin," is, when applied to this period, in part untrue
and in part barren or misleading. Better were it at once
to return to Aristotle, and say "man naturally takes
pleasure in imitation, and imitation is either by way of
narration or by way of action." * To which let us add,
that the second of these two ways seems to be the more
natural to man, but in literature has usually been pre-
ceded by the other, which needs less of external accessory
for its full effect ; while at the same time there have
been natural tendencies to blend the two, and the rhap-
sode who recited the parting of Hector and Andro-
mache, differed not essentially from the actor who
narrated the farewells of Alcestis.

* " Let two people join in the same scheme to ridicule a third, and
either take advantage of or invent some story for that purpose, and mimicry
will have already produced a kind of rude comedy. . . . The first man
of genius who seizes this idea and reduces it into form, into a work of art
by metre and music, is the Aristophanes of the country." (Coleridge,
Lecture on the Progress of the Drama.)

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8 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

The connection of the drama with formal religion
was even among the Greeks rather of the accidental
kind. Scenic representations demanded the assemblage
of a crowd ; religious festivals supplied this condition,
and the narrative dithyramb was there rapidly sup-
planted by the more attractive way of imitation.
Similarly in modern Europe the dramatic instinct,
always ready to seize opportunities of indulging itself,
displayed itself naturally upon popular festivals and
holidays, that is to say in the Middle Ages upon festivals
of the Church ; and laid rude hands upon the only sub-
jects to which the popular mind was open. Unhappily
the Church, while utilizing this tendency for religious
purposes, had power at first to suppress it for all others ;
and though the popular taste for buffoonery was con-
siderably indulged in the so-called sacred performances,
" interloping," that is to say intrusion of the public into
what was regarded as the province of the clergy, was
strenuously denounced. Instead of being credited with
keeping alive the taste for dramatic representation, the
Church should rather be regarded as arresting its de-
velopment, and confining it within limits which were
inconsistent with art. Whether the Reformation of
religion did anything for the drama in England may
fairly be doubted. It is at least certain that without a
Reformation the national drama of Spain was developed
at the same period with a vigour and brilliancy un-
matched except in England, although in Spain too its
growth in popularity was viewed with disfavour by the
Church, in so far at least as it was not retained in

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 9

the service of religion. It is possible indeed that the
Reformation in England hastened the time when licence
was given to actors to perform regular stage plays, but
in other respects its influence was wholly antagonistic.
It is only when men are comparatively indifferent to
theological controversy, that they have room for the
interest in human life and human character which
the art of the dramatist presupposes. To say that
the Elizabethan drama sprang from " religion " in the
ordinary sense of the word, is not more true than to ^y
that it sprang from irreligion. Unless, indeed, all art
which regards human life in a serious spirit is religious,
the English drama must not be so called. "Just as
Bacon banished religion from science, so did Shakespeare
from art." *

The English drama sprang indeed directly from that
human nature to which it so faithfully held up the
mirror ; but it possessed one condition which, according
to European experience at least, seems indispensable to
a great dramatic age, that is the pride and enthusiasm
of nationality. The almost miraculous defeat of the
Armada was to the England of Shakspere what
Marathon and Salamis were to the Athens of iEschylus ;
and this is what must be meant when it is said that the
drama was national. Not till faction was silenced and
Catholic and Protestant forgot their differences in a

* Gervinus, Shakespeare Commentaries, translated by Bunnfett, ed.
1877, p. 886. The views of Gervinus on this subject seem to have caused
some controversy in Germany : see the pamphlet Das Buck, Shakspere
von Gervinus; ein Wort iiber Dasselbe, by H. von Friesen : but the
countrymen of Shakspere will probably agree with Gervinus.

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lo FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

common patriotism, did the stage win its acceptance as
the proper vehicle of expression for the thoughts and
feelings of the people. The dramatist is in more im-
mediate contact with the life of his age than any other
kind of writer, and consequently reflects every phase of
it more accurately, and feels more instantaneously every
change. It would seem that for its higher development
the drama demands not a select circle of hearers and
readers, but a whole population roused to sympathy with
great actions and to a catholic interest in human life and
character. Whence can come this common touch which
raises a whole population from the sordid interest and
commonplace routine of every-day life to something of
enthusiasm for the ideal, to a desire to see represented
not only the comedy or farce of their own vulgar lives,
but the drama which suggests widest problems of human
destiny and gives scope for highest heroisms and deepest
crimes? What might be we know not, but so far as
experience can answer the question it is replied that the
enthusiasm of nationality alone can do this. We seem
to be at present in a state of transition from particular
patriotism to universal sympathy : and it may be that
some cosmopolitan enthusiasm of humanity is capable of
supplying the place of the narrower influence; but
hitherto it has proved too watery a mixture. In Eng-
land under Elizabeth, as at Athens under Pericles, the
united enthusiasm of patriotism, the conscious pride and
sympathy of a common nationality were the elevating
influences. Yet it must not be inferred that the interests
excited were connected only with national themes.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. ii

Athens had indeed the PerscB, the EumenideSy the
CEdipus Coloneus ; England had her great historical
dramas in almost unbroken series from King John to
King Henry VIII. ;* and their effect upon the audience
is strikingly described by a contemporary if but sympathy
with national exploits and national heroes grew easily into
sympathy with heroism and the heroic in human nature
itself, while each man felt himself and his neighbour
raised out of their narrow and vulgar sphere by sharing
in the glories of a common country. When England
became great each Englishman felt himself enrolled in
the heroic rank, and began to recognize lofty action as
congenial to his character, and great men as his fellows ;
the humanity which he shared acquired in his eyes a
new dignity, and the problems of human life and destiny
had a fresh, interest for one who had learnt to regard
them as concerning himself, and to look upon his own
individual life as a thing not unworthy to be ordered by
philosophy. It may be thought that these are brave
words, and that mere patriotism could never have accom-
plished even the tenth part of this ; but we must beware
of judging by the standard of to-day. We touch the
masses of our people now with no enthusiasms for the
ideal, and patriotism appears to be dying a natural
death amid general execration.

This art then was national in the widest sense, and
as such it was essentially original. The direct in-

* Filling up the gaps in Shakspere's series we have Edward /. by
Peele, Edward I L by Marlowe, Edward II I. ^ anonymous (perhaps partly
Shaksperian), Edward IV, (in two parts) by Thomas Heywood.

t Thomas Heywood, in his Apology for Actors.

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12 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

fluence of classical models, however much felt at the
universities, was little enough perceptible upon the public
stage.* And, with the doubtful exception of Gorboduc,
Sidney, judging the tragedies and comedies of his own
day by classical standards, pronounced that they ob-
served rules "neither of honest civility nor skilful
poetry ; " and complained that the authors would always
unseasonably "thrust in the clown by the head and
shoulders, to play a part in majestical matters with
neither decency nor discretion/' t The last point is
eminently characteristic of the English stage ; the clown
had successfully invaded even the mysteries and morali-
ties performed under the auspices of the Church, and
that "leading principle of the romantic drama," the
portrayal of human life in all its variety, was, we may
suspect, chiefly evolved from the English national taste
for buffbonery.J This art, like everything which has
native originality, evolved its perfection out of itself, and

* It is likely enough that most of the dramatists, in spite of university
education, were in much the same case as Shakspere as regards Latin
and Greek, which was perhaps fortunate in an age when it was difficult to
be a scholar without being also a pedant. The most notable exceptions
are Chapman and Jonson. The use which the latter made of his learning
generally is well known, but not perhaps the fact (noticed by Cumberland)
that the song, "Drink to me only with thine Eyes," is closely translated
from passages in the love-letters of Philostratus, — a fact which proves not
only the extent of his reading but his power of making good use of
unlikely material.

t Sidney died in 1586. The Defence of Po€5ievi2& not published till
1595* ^ut was probably written in 1583.

X Even Milton, with all his admiration of Shakspere, speaks of the
"poets' error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity, or
introducing trivial and vulgar persons ; which by all judicious hath been
counted absurd, and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the
people." (Preface to Samson Agonistes,)

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 13

accepted no external standard or rules ; and if ultimately
the principles of the English romantic drama be found,
as Lessing found them, to be essentially in accordance
with the classical rules, that fact may be accepted as an
independent confirmation of the validity of those rules.
Not that their apparent rejection of classical rules was
generally thought by the writers themselves to be
theoretically defensible. Herein the national genius
asserted its influence over this particular branch of litera-
ture, that men who despised the popular taste neverthe-
less indulged it, and so involuntarily worked out their
own artistic destinies. From some of these men, too,
might have come the naifve confession of the Spanish
dramatist, who at this very time was leading the de-
velopment of an equally national drama in his own
country : " When I am going to write a play I lock up
my precepts with six keys, and cast Terence and Plautus
out of my study, lest they should cry out against me, as
truth is wont to do even from dumb volumes ; for I write
by the art which those invented who sought the applause
of the multitude, who ought to be humoured in their folly,
seeing that they pay." * But though we may be disposed

* Lope de Vega, Arte nuevo de hacer Comedias en este tiempo. Sismondi,
in his History of the Literature of Southern Europe, quoting this, re-
marks, " The Spanish scholars of this period, becoming disciples of the
classical authors, upheld with as much fervour as La Harpe and Marmontel
among the French the poetical system of Aristotle, and the rules of the three
unities. The dramatic writers, while they recognized the authority of these
rules, neglected to act upon them, for they were compelled to follow the
taste of the public. None of them were acquainted with the nature of the
independence which they possessed, or of that system of romantic poetry
which has been only in our own day developed by the Germans." (Roscoe's
translation, third edition, vol. ii. p. 233.)

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14 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

to think that the direct influence of the revival of
classical literature upon the development of the English
drama may easily be overrated, we must acknowledge
one external influence which was undoubtedly powerful.
The introduction of Italian literature into England sup-
plied food for the imagination of the people and
materials for the craft of the dramatist to an extent
which it is difficult for us, with our present stores of
native fiction, to realize. No wonder that "men made
more account of a story from Boccaccio than a story
from the Bible." To men eager for new experiences of
life the wealth of incident in the Italian novels must
have brought a hitherto undreamt-of excitement and
intoxication.* But however foreign literature may have
supplied the materials, the national genius determined the
use which was made of them, and rules of art were neither
accepted from abroad nor consciously developed at home.
Such a national impulse could not have had its be-
ginning and end in a single man, nor is it likely that
principles of art which were so unquestionably developed
from popular instincts should have been practically
realized by one alone of the dramatists whom the time
produced, however immeasurably he may have over-
topped the rest in individual genius. It is not sought to
establish any republican equality in literature, but, while
acknowledging the legitimate sovereign, we must also
claim recognition for the aristocracy out of whose ranks

* The " pamphlets " of Robert Greene and others, for which there was
so great a demand at the end of the sixteenth century, were to a great extent
adaptations or imitations of Italian novels.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT, 15

he rose. To speak, as some Shaksperian critics speak,
of the contemporary dramatists as rich indeed in creative
power but destitute of the regulating mind, is a blunder
differing only in degree from that of the French critics
who discover in Shakspere himself nothing but bar-
baric splendour and magnificent chaos. " Misused free-
dom and power, disfigured form, distorted truth, stunted
greatness — these are everywhere the characteristics of
the works of these poets. In the strictest contrast to
the French theatre, ridiculing all rules, void of all
criticism, and without any power of arrangement, they
generally compound a wild heap of ill-connected events
of the most opposite character in an exciting confusion
of buffoonery and horror." * Every word of this, which
is applied without distinction to writers so many leagues
apart as Webster and Munday, Ben Jonson and Nat
Field, might no doubt be justified by some of the pro-
ductions of the age, as probably similar language might
be justified by some of the productions of any age of
exuberant literary or artistic fertility, but in its general
application it conveys an impression which is essen-
tially untrue.

Nor, again, is it correct to regard Shakspere as the
centre of a system, a sun with inferior orbs revolving
round it and dominated by its influence. This is the
idea expressed in Colman's well-known prologue on the
revival of Philaster —

"Beaumont and Fletcher, those twin stars that run
Their glorious course round Shakespeare's golden sun. "

* Gervinus, p. 80 (Bunn^tt's translation).

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i6 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Whereas in fact these two writers in particular were
the leaders of a younger generation and a newer school,
notwithstanding the fact that the career of the first was
run to its close before the death of Shakspere. We must
look upon the dramatists who formed this school as in-
fluenced rather indirectly by the national movement of
patriotism. They feel the effects of the movement rather
than the movement itself. The enthusiasm which has
provided them with theatres, with companies of actors,
with audiences interested in their art, is not the spirit
which animates them, at least in its original form. It
is turning more and more into a purely literary impulse,
and appeals to patriotism are abandoned to writers who
supply the wants of more vulgar audiences than those of
the Globe and the Blackfriars, Then, it may be asked,
what need to have touched upon the questions connected
with the original impulse? And the answer is not simply
that the general interest in dramatic art which this
impulse called forth was a primary condition of the
existence of any school of dramatists whatever, but also
that unless we clearly understand what the nature of
this original impulse was we shall be at a loss to under-
stand the changes which led to decadence ; and certainly
in this particular case the history of origin and the
history of decline confirm and illustrate one another in
a most remarkable manner. To what extent the decline
proceeded in the case of our present subject, and of what
nature it was, will, it may be hoped, become apparent in
the course of this essay.

But with whatever school we may be dealing, the

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT, 17

method of criticism must evidently be the same in
all cases where the work is worth examination at all.
Whether we follow or not that interpretation of Hamlet,
" which is like a key to the works of the poet," we must
at least endeavour to reject " all divided beauty," to ex-
plain the whole by the whole, and to feel " the soul of
the outer framework, and the animating breath, which
created and organized the immortal work." Yet let us
beware, and it is a danger which German criticism has
not always escaped, of attributing to the original writers
that system of aesthetics which we may extract from
their works. Instinctively the best of them, and above
all Shakspere, have felt their way to an artistic unity,
which our criticism may analyse and justify, but it must
not be supposed that what is to the critic the " leading
idea " of the play was necessarily present as such to the
consciousness of the writer, still less that it was fixed
upon from the first in his mind and worked out by deli-
berately selected modes of expression. There may be a
moral effect without a moral purpose ; an idea may be
expressed in concrete shape by a work of art, which has
never found form or expression except in the concrete.
Creative inspiration goes before criticism, and rather
makes rules than conforms to them,* being at the same
time unconscious perhaps of its true relation to universal
art ; and Shakspere himself would possibly have been
as much at a loss how to give an account of the "motives"

* As Ben Jonson says, "Before they [the grammarians and philo-
sophers] found out those laws, there were many excellent poets that ful-
fiUed them."

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i8 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

of his works, as the poets, tragic and dithyrambic, who
were cross-examined by Socrates.*

Yet because of our deficiency in instinctive sympathy
with the highest creative art, this analysis seems to be
necessary for our full understanding of the significance
of the highest creative work ; and it is one of the objects
of the present essay to perform this service, however
incompletely, for the work of one who, among his con-
temporaries, stands nearest to Shakspere, certainly in
promise and perhaps also in performance; while at
the same time it may help in some degree to restore
to English literature an individuality long obscured,
partly by the darkness which envelopes the lives of
almost all the dramatists, and partly by the hopelessness
hitherto of distinguishing the characteristics even of his
work, in its inextricable combination with that of his
fellow-worker.

But first, to invest the subject with such bodily form
as may be attained, let the few biographical facts be here
thrown together which have been carried down by the
stream of time — a river which, so far as regards the lives
of the dramatists, has brought down to us the light things,
and allowed the weighty to sink to the bottom. For
the biographical facts acknowledgment must be made
chiefly to Dyce, whose statement is a model of accuracy.

* ** Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a
kind of genius or inspiration." (Plato, Apology ^ p. 22, B.)

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 19

II.

Francis Beaumont was the third son of Francis Beau-
mont of Grace Dieu under Charnwood Forest, in Leices-
tershire,* who became a Justice of the Common Pleas in
1 593 \ 2ind of Anne, daughter of Sir George Pierrepoint,
of Holme- Pierrepoint, in Nottinghamshire. Judge Beau-
mont had three sons, Henry, John, and Francis, and one
daughter, Elizabeth, considerably the youngest of the
family. The exact date of the birth of Francis is

* The inscriptions written by Wordsworth for the grounds of Coleorton,
the seat of Sir George Beaumont, contain allusions both to the dramatist
and to his elder brother : —

" Here may some Painter sit in future days.
Some future Poet meditate his lays ;
Not mindless of that distant age renowned
When Inspiration hovered o'er this ground,
The haunt of him who sang how spear and shield
In civil conflict met on Bosworth-field :
And of that famous youth full soon removed
From earth, perhaps by Shakespeare's self approved,
Fletcher's Associate, Jonson's Friend beloved."
And again, in another piece : —

"There on the margin of a streamlet wild.
Did Francis Beaumont sport, an eager child ;
There under shadow of the neighbouring rocks,
Sang youthful tales of shepherds and their flocks ;
Unconscious prelude to heroic themes.
Heartbreaking sighs, and melancholy dreams
Of slighted love, and scorn, and jealous rage.
With which his genius shook the buskined stage."

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20 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

uncertain — tradition says 1586, a date which seems to
have been arrived at from the statement of Jonson
to Drummond, that his death (in March, 1616) took
place before the completion of his thirtieth year. Against
this, Dyce sets first the fact that in the funeral certificate
of his father, dated April 22, 1598, he is described as
" Frauncys third sonne, of the age of thirteen or more,"
and secondly, that he is said to have been entered at
Broadgate's Hall, Oxford, in February, 1 597, at the age
of twelve.* The register of his baptism has not been
discovered. On the whole, perhaps, it is more probable
that his birth was in 1584 or iS8s,t and that when he
died he had completed his thirty-first year. Jonson may
well have been mistaken on such a point, and we may
remark that Fletcher was traditionally supposed to have
been bom in 1576, on the authority of a statement in
the first folio that his age at death was forty-nine,J until

* It is not, however, Anthony Wood who makes this statement. He
gives, indeed, the date of the entry of "Francis Beaumont," but without
any statement of age, and adds that this was not the dramatist, whom he
supposes to have been educated at Cambridge. The age is supplied by
Wood's editor, who corrects his mistake, and quotes the entry from the
matriculation book.

t His eldest brother, Henry, was bom at the end of 1581 ; the second
son, John, is variously stated to have been bom in 1582 and 1584. The
former date seems to have the better authority. Dyce vainly searched the
registers of Belton for a record of the baptism of Francis, and draws
the conclusion that he was probably not bom at Grace Dieu. But though
Grace Dieu is locally within the parish of Belton, it is extra-parochial, and
the Beaumonts may well have been baptised at Coleorton, the registers of
which begin in 161 1.

X The editors of the day, if editors they can be called, were careless
enough about such things. Thomas Randolph is said, in the first edition of
his works, to have died in 1635, aged twenty-seven, whereas we know that
he was bom in 1605.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 21

Dyce discovered the register of his baptism, dated
December, 1 579. One of the elder brothers, John (after-
wards Sir John) Beaumont, was celebrated as a poet in
his own day, and has been admired even in ours. Words-
worth, whose allusion to him has already been quoted,
paid him the compliment of adopting part of a line from
his poem of Bosworth Field.

Francis, who had been entered as aforesaid at Broad-
gate's Hall in 1597, seems to have taken no University
degree, and was admitted a member of the Inner Temple,
November 3, 1600. A poem called Salmacis and Her-
maphroditns^ was published anonymously in 1602, which
was afterwards attributed to him. But, notwithstanding
Dyce's opinion that he may have been the author, most
readers of this poem will probably be inclined to ascribe
it to some hand more practised in versification than that
of the young law-student, who at this time could not
have been more than eighteen years old. The poem is
of the school of Venus and Adonis, written apparently
with much facility, and showing some richness of fancy,
but nothing of the serious tone which afterwards cha-
racterized the dramatist, whose genius moreover moved
rather heavily when divorced from the stage, if we may
judge from those "poems" which are ascribed to him
without dispute — dull and rather laborious compositions,
these elegies on great ladies who made unfortunate mar-
riages, and even the letter to Ben Jonson, which has
human interest of its own, is not adorned by much
felicity of phrase. When to this it is added that the
external evidence of authorship comes after all to little

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22 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

or nothing,* we shall be content, perhaps, to leave Sal-
macis and Hermaphroditus anonymous, as at the first

It is probable that Francis Beaumont was not depen-
dent either upon his profession or upon literary labours
for subsistence. That he ever seriously followed the pro-
fession of the law there is no reason to suppose. At
what time he became acquainted with Fletcher is uncer-
tain ; perhaps not until 1608 or thereabouts ; but it is
certain that before this date he was on intimate terms
with Ben Jonson, whose comedy of Volpone was pub-
lished in 1607, with commendatory verses from Beaumont
headed, " To my dear friend, Master Ben Jonson," and
expressing that contemptuous opinion of the public
taste which was almost as characteristic of him as of
Jonson.

He paid a similar compliment to two subsequent
plays, The Silent Woman, and Catiline ; and on one
occasion, when staying in the country, wrote to Jonson
the poetical epistle in which the doings at the Mermaid
are alluded to, to which Jonson replied in lines which
testify respect as well as affection —

" How I do love thee, Beaumont, and thy Muse,
That unto me dost such religion use !
How I do fear myself, that am not worth
The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth !
At once thou mak'st me happy and unmak'st ;
And giving largely to me, more thou tak'st.
What fate is mine, that so itself bereaves ?
"What art is thine, that so thy friend deceives ?
When even there, where most thou praisest me.
For writing better I must envy thee."

* As shall be shown in an appendix.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 23

It must be recorded also that Jonson long afterwards
expressed to Drummond the opinion, "Francis Beau-
mont loved too much himself and his own verses."

We are told by Aubrey that he lived with Fletcher at
the Bankside (in Southwark), not far from the playhouse
(that is the Globe), and that they carried the maxim,
Koiva ra rcSv ^cAciii;, to a greater length than is usually
convenient Almost the only other fact preserved about
his social life is that his friends called him " Frank."
" Some that thy name abbreviate call thee Franck,"

says Davies, and Heywood in his record of the cur-
tailment of poets* names corroborates the statement*

The failure of Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess, in
1 610, called forth a copy of verses from his friend
expressing much contempt of the popular judgment.
Finally, the community of goods was broken up by the
marriage of Beaumont, perhaps about 161 3, to Ursula,
daughter of H. Isley, of Sundridge in Kent, by whom
he had two daughters (one posthumous). In 161 3 he was
employed by the Societies of the Inner Temple and
Gray's Inn, to furnish a masque on the occasion of the
marriage of the Lady Elizabeth, daughter of James I., to
the Prince Palatine. This performance was printed with
a dedication to Sir Francis Bacon, then Solicitor-General,
" whose good word is able to add value to the greatest
and least matters," and to the Bench of the two Houses.

Beaumont died, March 6, 161 6 —

"Beaumont dies young, so Sidney died before."

• " Excellent Bewmont, in the formost ranke

Of the rar*st wits, was never more than Franck,"

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24 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Little trust could be placed in the testimony of commen-
datory verses that the fire of his genius fretted his body
to decay,* but his brother also, in the feeling lines headed
"An epitaph upon my dearest brother Francis Beau-
mont," seems to make the same suggestion : —

" On Death, thy murderer, this revenge I take,
I slight his terror, 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 years, and measured age by fame.
So dearly has thou bought thy precious lines,
Their praise grew swiftly as thy life declines.
Thy Muse, the hearer's queen, the reader's love.
All ears, all hearts but Death's could please and move." ^

He was buried at the entrance of St. Benedict's chapel in
Westminster Abbey, on the 9th of March, but apparently
no inscription has ever been placed upon his tomb. The
visitor to the Abbey will in vain attempt to identify its
position by the indications afforded in Basse's well-
known epitaph on Shakspere, —

" Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh
To leamM Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie
A little nearer Spenser, to make room
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb.
To lodge all four in one bed make a shift
Until Doomsday, for hardly will a fift
Betwixt this day and that by Fate be slain,
For whom your curtains may be drawn again." —

for none of the various readings seem to agree with the
true position of the tombs.t Surely the place might at

* " Beaumont is dead, by whose sole death appears.
Wit's a disease consumes men in few years."

(Rich. Corbet.)
t See Shakespeare's Centurie of Fray se, 2nd edition, p. 137.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 25

least be indicated by a simple name and date, in that
transept where the inscription that so naively com-
memorates his early friend attracts the eye of every
passer by. That his genius was highly valued by his
contemporaries is proved, not only by the lines above
quoted and by the respect of Ben Jonson for one so much
younger than himself, but also by the precedence which
his name had always over Fletcher's, and by the use
which was made of it by booksellers, who constantly
attributed to him a share in plays in which he could
have had no part, and passed off under his name poems
by authors so well known and so popular as Cleveland
and Waller. One elegy deserves to be quoted here, both
for its intrinsic merit, and because it is possibly
Fletcher's last tribute to the genius of his associate. It
was found by Dyce among the Harleian MSS., with
the signature I. R, and placed between two songs which
were undoubtedly written by Fletcher. The authorship
therefore is tolerably certain, but the application must
of course remain doubtful. In any case, the lines are
sufficiently appropriate.

''A Sonnet

" Come, Sorrow, come ! bring all thy cries.
All thy laments, and all thy weeping eyes !
Bum out, you living monuments of woe !
Sad sullen griefs, now rise and overflow t

Virtue is dead ;

Ah cruel fate I

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,

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26 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

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." •

This is all, and it is little enough, that is known of
the person and life of Francis Beaumont The obscurity
which surrounds him veils from us also the personality
of most of his fellows. Of their lives and characters
nothing or next to nothing is known except what can
be gathered from their works, and the better the
dramatist the less we learn from his works of his own
individuality. Of Shakspere vast research has revealed
little or nothing, while of Beaumont, of Webster, of
Ford, of Tourneur we know hardly even the dates of
birth and death. Their personalities are almost a blank.
Ben Jonson indeed is a living and massive reality—

" Broad-based, broad-fronted, bounteous, multiform ; "

to him it is granted still to breathe in bodily form the
breath of life —

oX^ ireirvvaBai, to\ dh <rKial htffffovaiv.

But perhaps we need not much lament the fate of these
eloquent shades. Destiny has determined that of the
personality of the dramatic poet we need know nothing ;
his creation is complete in itself and stands apart from
the individual nature of the man.f To know much of him

* I have adopted Dyce*s readings. The last line will remind us of
Aspatia's song in The Matd*s Tragedy ; the expression is repeated in
Bottduca, and the thought is common enough.

+ For the distinction in this matter between the objective and the sub-
jective poet, see Mr. Robert Browning's preface to the (spurious) Letters
of Shelley f 1851. Republished by the Browning Society,

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 27

might set us on tracking his private relations through
the characters and situations which he has drawn,* and
the dramatic effect might be marred. Enough if we
can objectively appreciate his work, and recognize rightly
the characteristics of his genius.

• Already it is inferred from Twelfth Night, ii 4, that Shakspere
was unhappy in marriage because his wife had more years than himself.

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28 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

III.

** In the lai^e book of plays 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."

Thus wrote one who was a friend of poets but no poet
himself,* to the pubh'shers of the first folio edition of
Beaumont and Fletcher ;t and the complaint is just,
if it can be assumed that the persons addressed could
have done that which is suggested, — an assumption
which is apparently made by one of those persons in the
preface to that folio : " It was once in my thoughts,"
he says, " to have printed Mr. Fletcher's works by them-
selves, because single and alone he would make a just
volume ; but since never parted while they lived, I con-
ceived it not equitable to separate their ashes." But the
age was not an age of criticism, and play-writers, except
Jonson, were not very careful to claim their literary
wares when once sold ; added to which, Fletcher had been
dead more than twenty years, and Beaumont more than
thirty, so that we may take leave to doubt whether the

* Sir Aston Cockaine.

t This edition, printed in 1647, contains only so many of the plays as
had not been before printed separately in quarto. The folio of 1679 was
the first collected edition of the whole.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. ' 29

authority of Humphrey Moseley on the question of
respective authorship would have been much more valu-
able than that of the writers of commendatory verses, or
of prologues and epilogues upon the revival of plays.

However that may be, it will not be denied that an
endeavour to make a division between these "twin
stars," and to appreciate the very different qualities of
genius which live in their ashes, would be a legitimate
employment for criticism ; and of this task a part is to
be attempted here. Our present aim is so far to isolate
Beaumont that we shall be able to assign to him his
place in the hierarchy of genius: to make him what
he has not hitherto been for most readers, a distinct
personality ; and to point out the characteristics by
which he may be recognized.

In truth, the fame of Beaumont has been obscured
partly by his own early death, and partly by the
fecundity of his partner. The world is aware that here
are more than fifty plays, mostly well-reputed, in all of
which Fletcher is commonly thought to have had some
share'; while many, perhaps most, were produced by
Fletcher alone. The conclusion is a vague wonder that
the name of Beaumont should stand first in the partner-
ship, and a tendency to confer the laurels upon his
associate alone.* But when we find in arranging these

* It is against this that Sir Aston Cockaine protests in his lines to
Charles Cotton —

" They were two wits and friends, and who
Robs from the one to glorify the other,
Of these great memories is a partial Lover."
He proceeds to charge his cousin with neglect to inform the printers that

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30 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

fifty or more plays in something like chronological order,
that we have placed at the beginning of the list nearly
all those reputed to be the best,* a result which would
hardly follow in the case of any other dramatist, and
when we discover also that the excellence developed
in the later plays is an excellence of a totally different
kind from that which we found at first, the conjecture
is natural that the partner who died first may have
contributed something to the common stock which
deserves special attention, — attention which it cannot
duly receive until criticism has performed its functions
of analysis.

That the analysis can be performed there need be
little doubt, in spite of the popular notion, both of the
poets' time and of other times also, that these authors
were inseparable, —

" In fame as well as writings both so knit,
That no man knows where to divide your wit."

Yet there were certainly floating ideas also in the poets'
own time about the characteristics of each, ideas which
have become traditional, in so far at least that they are
handed down from one editor to another ; as, for example,

most of the plays in the edition just published were written after Beaumont's
death.

• The following are the plays which are known by external evidence to
have been produced during Beaumont's life, The Woman Hater, Philaster,
The Maid's Tragedy, The Faithftd Shepherdess, The Knight of the Burning
Pestle, A King and No King, Cupid* s Revenge, The Coxcomb, The Captain,
The Scornful Lady, and The Honest Man's Fortune. Of these, excluding
The Faithful Shepherdess, which was Fletcher's alone, five at least are in
the very first rank among the authors' works, and were surpassed by none
of those which followed.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT, 31

that Beaumont was " a plummet " hung on Fletcher's wit
to keep down its flights ; that the latter was the creator,
and the former the critic ; that Beaumont composed the
plots,- and Fletcher the dialogue ; that Beaumont was
a grave tragic genius, while Fletcher excelled most in
comedy ;

" That should the stage embattle all its force,
Fletcher would lead the foot, Beaumont the horse ; "

that in their works were combined in harmony

Fletcher's keen treble, and deep Beaumont's base ; "

various opinions expressed by various people, and doubt-
less having most of them some foundation, but not such
a one as we can be content to build upon if any other is
forthcoming.

On the whole, external evidence can do little for us
in this matter except indirectly ; but indirectly it may
be made to do much. The obvious difficulty which
meets us at the outset is that we have little or nothing
which we can at once set down as the unassisted com-
position of Beaumont ; but on the other hand we have
much upon which we are entitled without hesitation to
set the name of Fletcher, even when the largest possible
allowance has been made for co-operation with Massin-
ger and others ; and thus we can come into contact with
the mind of one of the fellow-workers, and we are able
to criticise its issues, not indeed at the time when he
was actually in partnership with his younger, friend, but
immediately after that time, when his tone of mind and
manner of expression can hardly have suffered much

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32 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

change, though probably the individuality would to some
extent have been developed after co-operation had
ceased. Evidently there is a prima facie ground for
expecting that the hand of Fletcher may thus be tracked
throughout the whole series, and it may not unfairly be
assumed that those characteristics of the earlier plays
of which no trace is perceptible in the later are due to
Beaumont. The point of chronology is first to be con-
sidered.

The prima facie evidence for the chronology of the
plays may be thus rapidly summed up.

Five, besides Beaumont's Masque, were printed not
later than 1616 : —

The Woman Haters 1607.

The Faithful Shepherdess i not dated, but dedicated partly to Sir William
Skipwith, who died on the 3rd of May, 1610.

The Knight of the Burning PestUy 16 1 3, after being kept by the pub-
lisher for two years.

Cupids Revenge, 1615; acted on the Sunday after New-year's
day, 16 12.

The Scornful Lady ^ 161 6.

The following are known by other evidence to have
been produced in the same period : —

Fhilastery mentioned by John Davies in his Epigrams (published accord-
ing to Oldys in 161 1) ; printed in 1620.

The Maid's Tragedy ^ before the 31st of October, 161 1, when a play was
licensed under the title of The Second Maid's Tragedy ; printed in 161 9.

A King and No King^ allowed to be acted in i6ii ; printed in 1619.

The Coxcomb, acted before November, 24, i6i2.

The Captain^ acted before May 20, 16 1 3.

The Honest Man^s Fortune, "Plaide in 16 1 3," according to the MS.
copy licensed in 1624 (Herbert's Office Book),

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 33

The following also were produced not later than
1619: —

Bonduca^

The Knight of Malia,

VaUntinian^

The Queen of Corinth^

The Mad Lover^

The Loyal Subject^ licensed in 1616.

in all of which Richard Burbadge played, who
died March 13, 16 19.

Later than 1619 : —

Tlie Island Princess y acted at Court, 162 1.

The Pilgrim^ acted at Court, 1 62 1.

The WUd-Goose Chase, acted at Court, 1621.

The Prophetess, licensed 1622.

The Sea Voyage, licensed 1622.

The Spanish Curate, licensed 1622.

The Beggar's Bush, acted at Court, 1622.

Lov^s Cure, apparently containing an allusion to the Russian Ambas-
sador ** lying lieger " in England during the winter of 1622. f

The Maid in the Mill, licensed 1623.

A Wife for a Month, licensed 1624.

Rule a Wife and have a Wife, licensed 1624, printed in 1640.

The Nice Vcdour, has an allusion to a book published in 1624.

TTu Fair Maid of the Inn, licensed January, 1626.

The Noble Gentleman, licensed February, 1626.

The Elder Brother, containing allusions in the prologue and epilogue to
the death of the author, which occurred in August, 1625 ; printed in 1637.

The Lovers^ Progress, perhaps left unfinished by Fletcher at his death.

The Night Walker, printed 1640; perhaps an alteration of Fletcher's
Devil of Dovjgate, written 1623, now lost.

About the following there is no precise evidence of
date, but some of them, marked with an asterisk, have
lists of actors in the folio of 1679, which do not include

• The Queen of Corinth cannot be earlier than 16 16, for it contains an
allusion to Coryate's Crudities, published in that year.

t This play has its scenes in Spain, which, as Mr. Nicholson has
remarked, is almost enough to justify the conclusion that it was as late
as 1621.

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34 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Burbadge, from which it has been inferred that they
are later than March 13, 1619 ; the rest have no list
attached to them : —

Four Flays in One.

Thierry and Theodorety printed in 162 1.

The Two Noble Kinsmen y printed in 1 634.

The Little French Lawyer, *

Wit at Several Weapons.

Wit without Money, containing an allusion to an event of August, 1614;
printed 1639.

The Custom of the Country^ called an **old play" in 1628.

The Laws of Candy*

The Double Marriage. *

The False One.*

The Humorous Lieutenant,*

Women Fleased.*

The Woman's Frize.

The Chances.

Monsieur Thomas, printed in 1639.

Rollo, printed in 1639 ; perhaps contains an imitation of Jonson's
masque, Neptune's Triumph, which was represented Twelfth Night, 1624.

Love's Filgrimage.

The Faithful Friends,

In the above list, all those plays which were printed
separately before 1647 are marked with the date of pub-
lication. The rest appeared in the folio of 1 647, with the
exception of The Wild-Goose Chase, which at that time
was missing, but in 1652 was published separately in
folio ; and The Faithful Friends, which remained in
manuscript until the present century, and of which the
authorship is more than doubtful. With the exception
of this last the whole collection was printed in 1679.

We have already quoted a statement of Aston
Cockaine — several times repeated — that his friend
Massinger contributed to this collection ; and there is

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 35

reason to believe that both Rowley * and Shirley f had
some share in a few of the plays, while Mr. Fleay is of
opinion that Middleton % also worked extensively with
Fletcher. We know also that both Fletcher and Beaumont
worked apart during the lifetime of the latter,§ — Fletcher
certainly in T/ie Faithful ShepherdesSy and Beaumont in
the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, More-
over, a play now lost, called The History of Mador, King
of Great Britain^ was entered in the Stationers' Com-
pany's books in 1660, as the production of Beaumont
alone ; and the commendatory verses of Jasper Maine
speak of "the divided pieces which the press Hath
severally sent forth," as if it were matter of common
knowledge that several of the published plays were
individual work.

Apart from chronology however, the external
evidence of authorship is of a very worthless kind.
There is a large collection of commendatory verses refer-
ring either to particular plays or to the collection ; but
the tone of indiscriminate compliment which pervades

♦ Rowley assisted Fletcher in The Maid in the Mill, and perhaps in
other plays.

t Shirley probably finished The Lovers* Progress, and perhaps revised
The Night Walker,

X The Widow (not generally printed in this collection) is attributed to
Fletcher, Middleton, and Jonson.

§ Fletcher had other partnerships even .in Beaumont's lifetime, as is
proved by the application of Field, Daborne and Massinger to Henslowe,
for a loan to be ** abated out of the money rema)ms for the play of Mr.
Fletcher and ours." The co-operation with Shakspere may also be
accepted as probable, though possibly The Two Noble Kinsmen may have
been completed by Fletcher after Shakspere's death. Henry VIII, and
The History of Cardenio were both acted in 161 3.

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36 FRANCIS BEAUMONT,

almost all these productions is not likely to give us much
confidence in the attribution of this or that drama or
character to the person in whose honour the copy is
written. The same plays are by different writers ascribed
either to Beaumont with no mention of Fletcher, or to
Fletcher with no mention of Beaumont* If we were
, compelled to choose between these, the testimony of
Earle, writing soon after Beaumont's death and in the
lifetime of Fletcher, and being moreover personally
acquainted with the former, would certainly claim the
preference. It would be well, however, not to build
much upon any such evidence.

The same may be said of the evidence of titlepages
where we have it Several of the early quartos were
anonymous ; f and where plays are ascribed to one
or both authors, the ascription sometimes varies in suc-
cessive editions, and when put forth by the same pub-
lisher.J

Nor, again, can we attach any great weight to the
evidence of prologues and epilogues, unless we can
prove them to have been written by the authors of the
play, or at least produced at its first appearance on the
stage ; and this is hardly to be proved in any instance,
unless it be that of the prose prologue to The Woman
Hater, from which we learn that the author of that play

♦ E.g. The Maid's Tragedy , ascribed to Beaumont alone by Earle, and
to Fletcher alone by Waller.

t E,g. the 6rst quartos of The Wofnan Hater, The Knight of the
Burning Pestle, The Masque, The Maid's Tragedy, Thierry and Theodoret.

X As in the later quartos of The Woman Hater and Thierry and
Theodoret,

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 37

had no taste for the fashion of prologues ; and in fact the
earlier plays of Beaurriont and Fletcher are for the most
part entirely without them.

The rest of the external evidence of authorship
may be reduced to this : that Beaumont alone wrote
the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn,
which is stated in the folio, and has never been
doubted ; that Fletcher alone wrote The Faithful
Shepherdess, as is testified, not only by the titlepage of
the first quarto, but irresistibly, so far as regards him-
self at least, by Beaumont in his verses, " To my friend
Master John Fletcher, upon his Faithful Shepherdess^* ;
and finally, Langbaine asserts that The Woman Hater
was the work of Fletcher alone, a point in which he may
have simply followed the authority of the quarto edition
published in 1648.

It is evident, then, that the critic must place his
dependence chiefly upon the internal evidences of style,
subject always to the regulating influence of dates,
where dates are ascertainable. But it will be necessary
to approach this question of style at first from one side
only, for while we have quite sufficient data to determine
the characteristics of Fletcher's work, there is nothing
which we can point to at once as the sole production
of Beaumont except the Masque, and this being in its
nature essentially different from the other works with
which we are concerned will not serve as a satisfactory
touchstone of style. For the same reason we must set
aside The Faithful Shepherdess in our estimate of the
dramatic style of Fletcher. This performance is quite

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38 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

exceptional, and belongs to the class of pastoral poems
rather than of plays, as indeed its audience perceived at
its first production. And as regards the style of execu-
tion we may note the comparatively large proportion
which is thrown undisguisedly into a lyrical form, and
the fact that the whole is written in rhyming couplets
with the exception of about 190 lines, nearly all of which
occur in the first act. Evidently this is not a fair speci-
men of the dramatic style of Fletcher, either as regards
versification or development of dialogue and plot

To arrive at an estimate of Fletcher's true stage
characteristics we must first select a few plays which we
know to have been produced after Beaumont's death,
and to which no suspicion of a second author has ever
attached. This group might perhaps consist of the
following (i) Tragedies or Tragi-comedies : The Loyal
Subject^ The Island Princess, A Wife for a Month ; (2)
Comedies : The Wild-Goose Chase, The Pilgrim, and
Rule a Wife and have a Wife. Taking these as our
starting point, and examining others of which the date
is not so certain, we shall probably conclude that the
following are by the sarne author, and show no evidence
of other hands than his ; in the first class — Valentinian,
Bonduca, The Mad Lover, and The Humorous Lieu-
tenant; and of comedies — The Chances, Monsieur Thomas,
and The Custom of the Country. These thirteen plays
should be enough for our purpose, though doubtless a few
more might be added.*

♦ The Double Marriage is assigned to Fletcher alone by Mr. Fleay,
on the ground apparently that it has the average proportion of double end-

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 39

It is well known that in the case of Fletcher the style
of versification is a very distinctive mark. So much is
this the case that there is some danger that other
characteristics may be overlooked, and that it may be
thought possible to track him by this mark alone. That
it is a most valuable test cannot be denied, and the
united presence in any passage of his most marked
characteristics of versification may probably be held con-
clusive of his authorship. But their absence, partial or
entire, can hardly be held conclusive of the opposite :
for, in the first place, there may have been progressive
development of style, and, in the second place, we have
evidence that he sometimes deliberately chose a metrical
system different from that which was usual to him, when
the material with which he dealt seemed to require it.
Putting aside the rhyming couplets of Tke Faithful
ShepherdesSy we have in it nearly two hundred lines of
blank verse, which in style of versification differ from the
blank verse of his other plays in almost every respect

But before dealing with the metrical peculiarities of
Fletcher, it is almost necessary to obtain standards of
comparison by briefly tracing the development of blank
verse in the hands of his predecessors. The earliest
English plays, when in verse, were written either in
rhymed Alexandrines, as Ralph Roister Doister and
King CamhyseSy or in blank verse, as Gorboduc, The
latter, selected even by Sidney as the true metre of the

ings ; but this method of counting syllables, and then dealing with the
results in the mass, is hardly safe. In the first act at least the reader will
detect little of Fletcher's rhythm.

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40 FRANCIS BEAUMONT,

English stage, and adopted by Kyd, Greene, and Mar-
lowe, completely prevailed, though a certain tendency to
rhyme is still occasionally visible, for example in Shak-
spere's earlier work. The characteristics of the early
blank verse are an absolute regularity of structure,
which admits of no redundant syllables, and the pause
placed generally at the end of the verse, the sentences
not running freely from one line to another, but having
a tendency to fall into unrhymed couplets. The effect
is a very marked verse with a monotonous cadence,
which is in accordance with the declamatory character
of the early tragedies. The following passage will illus-
trate what has been said : —

" Ye all, my lords, I see, consent in one.
And I as one consent with ye in all.
I hold it more than need, with sharpest law
To punish this tumultuous bloody rage.
For nothing more may shake the common State,
Than sufferance of uproars without redress.
Whereby how some kingdoms of mighty power,
After great conquests made, and flourishing
In fame and wealth have been to ruin brought,
I pray to Jove that we may rather wail
Such hap in them than witness in ourselves."

{GorboduCf v. i.)

This represents the general character of nearly all the
blank verse before Shakspere. We find it in Kyd*s
Spanish Tragedy y in Greene and Lodge's Looking-glass
for London and England, and in Marlowe's Doctor
Faustus, It is true that blank verse did not pass from
the hands of Marlowe unchanged. There is certainly a
considerable development of freedom in the metre of

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 41

Edward the Second^ which, as compared with Doctor
Faustus for example, is a play of vigorous dramatic
action, and demands a less stilted verse ; * but some of
Shakspere's early plays have almost all the old regu-
larity of metre, together with a tendency to recur to
additional trammels of rhyme. But in the early his-
torical plays, Richard //.for example, and Richard I IL,
he has already asserted for himself far more freedom
than was ventured upon by any of his predecessors,
allowing resolution of syllables both at the end of the
line and elsewhere, and varying the cadence of the verse
by carrying on the sentence freely from one line to
another. Without attempting to trace the progress of
the Shaksperian versification we easily perceive that, as
he advances, so advances the tendency towards a more
dramatic form of verse, one with less appearance of pre-
meditation, and with so much of irregularity of various
kinds as to make the cadence unobtrusive in moments
of action or passion, until we reach such lines as the
following : —

" I am sorry for 't ;
All faults I make, when I shall come to know them,
I do repent. Alas ! I have showed too much
The rashness of a woman : he is touched
To the noble heart. What's gone and what's past help
Should be past grief : do not receive affliction
At my petition : I beseech you rather
Let me be punished that have minded you
Of what you should forget."

{Winter^ s Tale, iii. 2.)

♦ Collier r^ards Marlowe as the inventor of the redundant syllable in
English blank verse.

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42 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Thus there is a steady development to be traced in the
blank verse of the English stage, from a form suitable to
rhetorical declamation, such as was suggested by the
inferior classical models which were at first followed, to
the ease and freedom which lively dramatic expression
requires. And it is surprising that Dryden, able as he
was to state the arguments against rhyming plays, " that
rhyme is unnatural in a play, because dialogue there is
presented as the effect of sudden thought," was yet for
long unable to perceive that the rhyming system for
which he contends, was, on the French stage at least,
by whose example he recommends it, intimately con-
nected with that tiresome declamation of which he else-
where complains — " Look upon the Cinna and the
Pompey ; they are not so properly to be called plays,
as long discourses of reason of state ; . . . their actors
speak by the hour-glass, like our parsons ; nay, they
account it the grace of their parts, and think themselves
disparaged by the poet, if they may not twice or thrice
in a play entertain the audience with a speech of an
hundred lines." This, in fact, describes the style of
Norton and Sackvil as well as that of Corneille.

But to return to Fletcher. Of his verse the most
marked characteristic is freedom in the use of redundant
syllables in all parts of the line, but especially at the
end. At the end of the line he has commonly one, but
often two, and occasionally even three or four* super-

♦ The following speech will furnish examples of this and some other
characteristics : —

" God-a-mercy !
Thou hast hunted out a notable cause to kill me,

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 43

fluous syllables, though in some such cases it may be
difficult to say whether or not an alexandrine was
intended. So much is this the practice with him,
that in his writings out of every three lines generally
two at least have double or triple endings.* And even
this enormous proportion is often far exceeded. No
other writer not avowedly imitating Fletcher has any-
thing like this number of female endings. Massinger
sometimes approaches the proportion of i : i, and
Shakspere in his latest work has occasionally i : 2 (the
first figure in each case representing the double-ending
lines) ; but Fletcher actually reverses this last proportion
and gives us 2 : i. That is, in a play of 2500 lines Mas-
singer might possibly have as many as 1200 double or
triple endings, Shakspere in his last period might have

A subtle one : I die for saving all you.

Good sir, remember, if you can, the necessity,

The rudeness of time, the state all stood in ;
* * * * * #

Prithee find out a better cause, a handsomer ;
This will undo thee too : people will spit at thee ;
The devil himself would be ashamed of this cause.
Because my haste made me forget the ceremony,
The present danger everywhere, must my life satisfy ? "

{Loyal Subject^ iv. 5,)
* Whether Fletcher was or was not a partner with Shakspere in
Henry VIII. ^ it is certain that Wolsey's well-known speech, "Farewell, a
long farewell," etc., affords a good example of the metrical peculiarity here
described. And in substance, too, it can be paralleled from Fletcher's con-
temporary writings, e,g, —

" Farewell
To all our happiness, a long farewell ! "

{Cupid* s Revenge t iv. 4) ;

see also Wit at Several Weapons^ i. i, for an adaptation to comedy of the
idea of swimming on bladders.

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44 FRANCIS BEAUMONT,

as many as 850, while Fletcher would normally have at
least 1700, and might not improbably give as many as
2000.* And the nature of the double ending is often
not less characteristic than the frequency of its occur-
rence. The redundant syllable is often itself of no
small weight, not a mere appendage, but an emphatic
monosyllable perhaps, which cannot be slurred over
lightly, e.g, :—

** As many plagues as the corrupted air breeds.**

(Island Princess, ii. I.)

** But let's retire and alter, then we'll walk free."

(Pilgrim^ v. 2.)

"*Tis true she's English bom, but most part French now."

(Wild-Goose Chase, iv. 2.)

Such rhythm as this can hardly be found systematically
employed in any blank verse but Fletcher's.

The use of redundant syllables elsewhere than at the
end of the line is also very frequent, and springs from
the same tendency : they are often such as are slurred
over in familiar speech, but often also true resolutions of
the iambus into anapaest or tribrach, and make it neces-
sary to read the verse rapidly by accent, and with no
impertinent counting of syllables upon the fingers. The
practice is by no means confined to comedy, though there
it is naturally most conspicuous, e,g, : —

" I have more to. do with my honesty than to fool it,
Or venture it in such leak barks as women.
I put 'em off because I loved 'em not,
Because they are too queasy for my temper.
And not for thy sake, nor the contract-sake,
Nor vows nor oaths ; I have made a thousand of 'em :

• See Mr. Fleay's Shakes^are Manual, p. 154.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 45

They are things indifferent, whether kept or broken ;
Mere venial slips that grow not near the conscience ;
Nothing concerns those tender parts ; they are trifles ;
For, as I think, there was never man yet hoped for
Either constancy or secrecy from a woman,
Unless it were an ass ordained for sufferance."

{Wild- Goose Chase^ ii. I.)

That these peculiarities were deliberately adopted there
can hardly be a doubt. We have already seen that in
his pastoral drama he changed his style. There we have
about 190 lines of blank verse with certainly not more
than ten double endings, and with hardly any superfluous
syllables in other parts of the verse. He could there-
fore write blank verse of the ordinary type, but for his
plays generally he chose the form which, in his opinion,
was best suited for dramatic expression. The readers of
them cannot fail to observe how often, when the line
might have closed on the tenth syllable, an additional
word is thrown in, "sir," or "too," or "lady," which
might well have been dispensed with but for the desire
to give the verse its characteristic cadence. There is an
evident effort to avoid solemnity and weight, to make
the line less "mighty" and more flexible, to gain the
peculiar effect. of unevenness or want of premeditation
and polish which the writer seems to have thought
suitable to the dramatic verse. This is the very anti-
thesis of the French rhyme system. No mouthing is
possible, no rounding off* of a description or sentiment ;
all must be abrupt and almost spasmodic, the outcome
apparently of the moment, untrammelled as far as may
be by metre, though metre of some kind there always is.
It is an absolute breaking away from the rigidity of

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46 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

the older style, which in general confined the verse
strictly within its allotted ten syllables, and was per-
petually upon the tragic stilts which it borrowed from
Seneca. The quick and lively action of the later stage,
with its easy assumption of the ordinary speech of
gentlemen — a point in which Fletcher was considered,
justly enough, to have surpassed Shakspere, — developed a
metre which might not only support the serious dignity
of tragedy, but also supply the place of prose in the
lightest interchange of fashionable repartee.

The effect, however, which was thus aimed at would
perhaps have been more satisfactorily attained but for
another peculiarity of Fletcher's verse. For while break-
ing from the trammels in one respect, he remains bound
by them, perhaps unconsciously, in another. The chains
of the old rhyming couplet seem still to hang about him,
as about the early writers of blank verse ; not that he
uses rhyme, for from that he is almost entirely free ; but
he still has the tendency to make pause at the end of the
verse, and sometimes even to fall into couplets. Of this,
as of the other characteristics mentioned, every page of
his works will afford examples ; a single passage will be
sufficient for illustration here : —

**I adore the Maker of that sun and moon,
That gives those bodies light and influence.
That pointed out their paths, and taught their motions ;
They are not so great as we ; they are our servants,
Placed there to teach us time, to give us knowledge
Of when or how the swellings of the main are,
And their returns again ; they are but our stewards.
To make the earth fat with their influence, ^
That she may bring forth her increase, and feed us ;

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT, 47

Shall I fall from this faith to please a woman ?
For her embraces bring my soul to ruin ?
I looked you should have said, * Make me a Christian,
Work that great cure ; ' for 'tis a great one, woman ;
That labour truly to perform, that venture,
The crown of all great trial and the fairest ;
I looked you should have wept and kneeled to beg it," etc.

{Island Princess, iv. 5.)

In this there is but one unstopped line, and only one
decided pause which is not at the end of the verse. It
would be hard to parallel such passages, even from the
earliest plays of Shakspere.

One result of this tendency to pause at the end of
the verse is naturally that the line does not often end
upon a very light and insignificant word, a mere con-
necting particle or preposition, as is not seldom the
case in Massinger and the late work of Shakspere. We
shall hardly discover in Fletcher lines that end upon
words like "and," "but," "or," "with," "that," etc., which
in A Winter's Tale and The Tempest are often found at
the end of the verse. Such endings as we have in the
following (taken at random from The Tempest) are with
the stopped line obviously impossible : —

** Some food we had and some fresh water, that
A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo,
Out of his charity — being then appointed
Master of this design— did give us ; with
Rich garments, linens," etc. (i. 2.)

"This my mean task
Would be as heavy to me as odious ; but
The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead." (iiL I.)

* * Therefore my son i* the ooze is bedded ; and
I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded.*' (iii. 3.)

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48 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Evidently here the pauses are arranged with a design
of not marking the end of the verse, as in Fletcher they
seem to serve the opposite purpose. But whatever may
have been the design of Fletcher's system of stopped
line, the effect is partly to produce a rather marked dis-
continuity; to divide one sentence from another more
completely than would be done by the ordinary pause
not coinciding with the end of the line ; so that what is
added afterwards, if more is added, seems like an after-
thought tacked on to the already completed phrase, and
the effect is that there is less appearance of premeditation
and more of spontaneous development of thoughts from
the circumstances of the moment Impulses seem to
work before the eyes of the spectators, the speakers cor-
rect themselves, explain by parentheses hastily thrown
in, or add afterthoughts as they occur to the mind. In
short, the expression of thought becomes less narra-
tive and more dramatic ; and to this general effect the
pause at the end of line, as it is used by Fletcher, cer-
tainly contributes ; though it involves also a tiresome
monotony, and Shakspere in his later work attains
the same end by the structure of his sentences and
the variation of his pauses, without the rather marked
rhythmical mannerism of Fletcher.*

It has been before hinted that Fletcher uses no prose
in his undoubted works, and this in fact is one of his
distinguishing marks as compared with most dramatists
of his time. No prose, unless it be an occasional pro-

• It is remarked by Darley that Fletcher has a tendency to pause on
the uneven syllables of his verse, the third, fifth, or seventh.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 49

clamation or epistle, is found in any play attributed
without dispute to Fletcher alone, and only in one of
the whole series which was written after Beaumont's
death, that one being a joint production with Rowley.
His verse was a sufficiently flexible instrument to serve
all turns : the old blank verse would have been mere
burlesque in the lighter scenes of comedy, and accord-
ingly the older dramatists, including Shakspere, resorted
in such scenes to prose ; but Fletcher's verse was equal
to all his requirements. Massinger, whose verse is in
some respects even more free, observes also the rule
of admitting no prose, the few prose passages which
occur in his plays being apparently interpolated. At
the same time, the rule that Fletcher admits no prose
ought to be used very cautiously as a test for his earlier
work. It is easier to suppose .that he occasionally wrote
prose than to seek for a second author in every scene
which contains a few speeches not in verse.

Already it has been noted that with Fletcher, as with
every one who deserves to be called a poet, metrical
characteristics are an outgrowth of the matter, and of the
general style of expression. Something therefore has
already been said on the subject of style, in dealing with
the structure of his verse, and what has now to be said
of the structure of his sentences is little more than a de-
velopment of what was there indicated. The distinction
between the periodic or rounded style of speech, and its
opposite, which may perhaps be called the disjointed
style, is familiar enough, and of fundamental importance.
Which of the two is the more dramatic does not admit

E

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r'

50 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

of question : and while Shakspere worked his way slowly
from the first to the second, Fletcher, coming at a rather
later period of development, seems to have at once and
naturally adopted the second. The two styles are not,
of course, absolutely separated in any writing, but it will
perhaps be admitted without difficulty that the presenta-
tion of complete images fully preconceived and worked
out completely in detail is characteristic of Shakspere's
earlier style, while in the later we find rather point
added to point, each one as it comes being apparently
suggested by that which has preceded it, the whole con-
veying the impression of thoughts uttered as they passed
through the mind rather than of any elaborate composi-
tion. Compare, for example, in this respect the following
passages, the first produced about the year 1596, the
second about twelve or fourteen years later.

** Give me the crown. Here, cousin,
On this side my hand, and on that side thine.
Now is this gol 'tn crovjrn like a deep well,
That owes two buckets, filling one another ;
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen, and full of water :
That bucket down, and full of tears, am I,
Drmking my griefs, while you mount up on high."

{Richard ILf iv. I.)

The style of this is characteristic of the speaker no
doubt, but it is also characteristic of the writer at one
stage of his development, as the following at another : —

** Come, fellow, be thou honest ;
Do thou thy master's bidding ; when thou see*st him
A little witness my obedience : look !
I draw the sword myself; take it ; and hit
The innocent mansion of my love, my heart ;

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 51

Fear not ; *tis empty of all things but grief:
Thy master is not there : who was indeed
The riches of it : do his bidding ; strike.
Thou may' St be valiant in a better cause,
But now thou seem'st a coward."

{Cymbeline, m. 4.)

The last is evidently the dramatic style ; thoughts
are suggested successively, and accompanied by action ;
the sentences are short and disjointed. Fletcher, then,
was undoubtedly right in discarding the periodic style as
he had discarded the mouth-filling verse. But he gained
rather ease than strength ; for rapidity of movement and
metaphorical conciseness are not weapons of which he is
master. Notwithstanding the dramatic structure of his
verse and of his language, he often from weakness moves
slowly. The comparison with Shakspere is but a super-
ficial one after all. Shakspere's unequalled rapidity of
imagination makes him concise even to obscurity ; more
and more as he advances he abounds in metaphor, find-
ing as it were no leisure to do more than indicate his com-
parisons ; and this pregnant brevity carries with it quite
extraordinary force. Fletcher, on the other hand, not-
withstanding the extreme rapidity of action in his dramas,
is naturally inclined to move slowly in his expression
of thoughts. " He lays line upon line, making up one
after the other, adding image to image so deliberately
that we see where they join. Shakspere mingles every-
thing, he runs line into line, embarrasses sentences and
metaphors ; before one idea has burst its shell, another
is hatched and clamorous for disclosure."* But this very

* Lamb's Specimens of the Dramatists^ second edition, p. 419.

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5 2 FRANCIS SEA UMONT.

quality, this absence of confusion and presentation of
ideas in due succession and fully expressed, was likely
perhaps to make Fletcher the more popular of the two
upon the stage, as more intelligible to the " many-headed
bench,'' and there is certainly no reason to be surprised
at the statement of Dryden, fully supported by other
evidence, that two of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays
were acted for one of Shakspere's or Jonson's. Nor is it
at all inconsistent with this that two editions of Shak-
spere should have been printed for one of Beaumont and
Fletcher ; for even the modern appreciation of Shakspere
is not founded chiefly upon stage representation.

As regards construction Fletcher too often seems to
be of the opinion of Mr. Bayes, " What the devil does the
plot signify except to bring in fine things ? " The plots
of his plays are often very loosely put together ; some-
times scenes are thrown in without any sufficient con-
nection with the main course of the story — as for instance
the madhouse scenes in The Pilgrim; and sometimes
two stories are pursued in one play without closer con-
necting links than are supplied by some accident of
locality or relationship — this is the case in The Custom
of the Country^ and several others. There is wanting that
unity of idea which in Shakspere fuses together the most
various forms of life into a harmonious whole — the first
necessity for the romantic drama if it is not only to
" hold the mirror up to nature," but also to rise to the
level of art. There is wanting too often in Fletcher
the artistic earnestness which aims steadily at a single
end, and disregards merely temporary or partial success.

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^SWSS5HBHHH55HF"'?"1

FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 53

He is content to produce a series of effective situations ;
and the tradition of his method mentioned by Lang-
baine, is either true or well invented — "I have either
read or been informed that it was generally Mr. Fletcher's
practice, after he had finished three acts of a play to
show them to the actors, and after they had agreed upon
terms, he huddled up the two last without that proper
care which was requisite/* * Some such theory would
account for the phenomena observed in such plays as
The Custom of the Country, The Pilgrim or The Chances ;
and strikingly also in some of which Fletcher was per-
haps not the sole author, though largely concerned — for
example The Little French Lawyer, From this striving
after immediate and startling effect springs a tendency to
violent situations, and a fondness for the representation
of extreme physical agony, as in Valentinian and A Wife
for a Month, where we find scenes of this kind which re-
semble one another in other respects, and also in their dis-
regard for the maxim that stage representation should not
go beyond the point to which the sympathizing imagina-
tion of the audience can reach, and that therefore violent
bodily pain is generally an unfit subject for the dramatist.
It is not however only in artistic but also in moral
earnestness that Fletcher is found wanting. He is capable
of representing exalted virtue and heroic chastity ; we
find no fault with the morality of Arnoldo, Armusia
and Valerio, among his men, still less with Zenobia,
Lucina and Evanthe, among his women ; nor need we
greatly complain of the odious exhibitions of vice in a

♦ English Poets, p. 144.

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54 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Hippolyta or a Frederick, though we might wish that to
such as these severity had been more strictly dealt out
But it is to be remarked that most of Fletcher's gentlemen
and men of honour, persons in whom we are meant to be
interested, Mirabel, Monsieur Thomas, Don John, and in
fact his characters of comedy generally, are open profli-
gates in their relations to women. He " understood and
imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better than
Shakespeare,'* says Dryden ; and if the points which
characterize a gentleman are as he seems to suggest,
" wild debaucheries and quickness of wit in repartee," he
is certainly right in his judgment. But one whose
morality is justly suspected in comedy can hardly be
trusted on the same point in more serious essays, and
for all the superhuman virtue of Fletcher's heroines, we
cannot but doubt whether the atmosphere in which they
live is altogether healthy ; whether there be not some-
thing overstrained and unnatural even in their virtues,
from lack of knowledge in their creator regarding the
simple and natural workings of true rtiodesty and chastity.
But in fact it is in comedy that his real strength lies.
Here alone he is truly original and the founder of a
school destined to have a remarkable further develop-
ment He is in fact the father of the polite comedy of
the next generation but one. From him is traced the
spiritual descent of Wycherly, Congreve and Vanbrugh,
and both the wit and the morality of the descendants
find their prototype in the author of The Spanish Curate
and Wit without Money.*

* This harmony of Fletcher with the prevailing tendencies accounts no
doubt for his great popularity upon the stage in the years after his death.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 55

IV.

We have now perhaps reached a point of view from
which we may hope to recognize the hand of Fletcher in
those works of which he seems not to have been the sole
author. As regards the work which was produced before
the death of Beaumont we have evidence, as already
stated, that each of the partners worked separately at times
during this period, and that one of them had occasionally
partners other than his most intimate friend. But, unless
The Two Noble Kinsmen be an exception, no work of
this period in which others besides Beaumont and Fletcher
were concerned seems to have found its way into the
collected editions. By examining, then, in chronological
order, those earlier plays of which the date is most clearly
ascertained, we may hope to trace the characteristics of
Beaumont, as we have already found those of Fletcher,
by examining the later work of which he seems to be
the sole author.

First in order of publication is The Woman Hater,
printed in 1607. Here, on the question of authorship, we
shall have the misfortune to come into direct conflict
with one of the few pieces of external evidence which
can be alleged in making division between the two

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56 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

authors. Langbaine, as has been already stated, writing
in the year 1691, asserts that "this play was one of those
writ by Fletcher alone." The first quarto mentions no
author: the second, printed in 1648, has the name of
Fletcher alone; and the third 1649, practically a reprint
of the second with a new titlepage, has both names. It
seems possible that Langbaine may have made his state-
ment on the authority of the second quarto alone. How
little he is likely to have had independent information of
any value on this subject, may be judged from the fact
that, of fifty-two plays which he notices under the names
of Beaumont and Fletcher, only in the case of three
others beside this has he a word to say about the author-
ship. One of these is The Faithful ShepherdesSy about
the authorship of which there has never been any doubt ;
the others are The Two Noble Kinsmen^ which, following
the quarto of 1634, he ascribes to Fletcher and Shak-
spere, and The Woman's Prize^ which is put down to
Fletcher. As an illustration of the accuracy of his
observations generally, we may notice what he says of
Love's Pilgrimage^ which he apparently thinks was the
work of both authors though it was certainly written
long after Beaumont's death. He suggests that the
scene in that play which occurs also in Ben Jonson's
New Inn, was probably taken by the authors with
Jonson's consent on the failure of The New Inn, which
play we know was not produced till 1629, when Fletcher
had been dead four years and Beaumont thirteen ! *

* The scene no doubt was introduced into Lovers Pilgrimage on the
occasion of some later revival of that comedy. Langbaine also thought

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 57

Finally, he includes, without remark, among the plays
of our authors The Coronation, which was printed as
Fletcher's in 1640, and also included in the folio of 1679,
but was claimed by Shirley, in 1653, as his own production
" falsely ascribed to Fletcher," an assertion which there
is no reason whatever to doubt

On a question of authorship, then, we may perhaps
disregard the evidence of Langbaine without much
scruple, but at the same time we may admit that the
internal evidence to which we appeal, confirms his state-
ment thus far, that it bears witness of one author rather
than of two. The work seems to be quite homo-
geneous, and the prologue, which is certainly by the
author of the play, speaks distinctly of a single writer ;
e.g. " he that made this play means to please auditors so
as he may be an auditor himself hereafter," etc. ; but at
the same time it has not, so far as we can judge, a single
characteristic of Fletcher. Fletcher, so far as we know
him apart, never uses prose : this play has prose in every
scene. Fletcher's blank verse has, as we have seen, an
unmistakable character : the blank verse in this play has
nothing of that character, but rather an opposite one of
its own. Fletcher does not, so far as we know him
apart, deal at all in burlesque : The Woman Hater has
more burlesque than any other play in this collection,
except The Kjught of the Burning Pestle, When we
come to the question of positive evidence, we must take
into account the "religion" used by Beaumont to Ben

that The Staple of News, produced in 1625, was imitated in The Knight of
the Burning Pestle*

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58 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Jonson, and the strong resemblances to Jonson in this
play. No other author of the time has a quite similar
mixture of prose and verse ; and the resemblance in style
of characters is obvious enough. Gondarino and Laza-
rillo are both characters, or rather caricatures, of the
Jonsonian type. They are, in fact, personified "humours,"*
— the one has no characteristic except his hatred of
women, and the other none except his love of eating.
There can be no question from whom this trick of
characterization was caught; and though perhaps the
most striking parallel in Jonson's works is to be found
in one published after this date. The Silent Womatiy the
tendency had been visible enough from the first to be
imitated. Then, again, in the occasional observations
on men and things in The Woman Hater there is a vein
of satire which reminds us of the elder poet ; e.g, —

*' In my conscience she went forth with no dishonest intent ; for she
did not pretend going to any sermon in the further end of the city ;
neither went she to see any odd old gentlewoman, that moiurns for the
death of her husband or the loss of her friend, and must have yoimg ladies

* The word is thus explained by Jonson in the Induction to Every
Man out of his Humour : —

** So in every human body,
The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood.
By reason that they flow continually
In some one part, and are not continent.
Receive the name of humours. Now thus far
It may, by metaphor, apply itself
Unto the general disposition :
As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits and his powers
In their confluxions all to run one way.
This may betruly said to be a humour.*'

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 59

come and comfort her .... 'Twas no set meeting certainly, for there was
no waferwoman with her these three days, on my knowledge." *

There seems also to be some evidence that Beau-
mont did write at the beginning of his career both
without Fletcher and under Jonson*s influence, for in the
epistle to Jonson published in the folios as "written
before he and Master Fletcher came to London, with
two of the precedent comedies not yet finished " (though
the evidence of the title is probably not worth much)
he speaks of " scenes " upon which he is engaged —

** Ben, when these scenes are perfect well take wine ;
I'll drink thy Muse*s health, thou shalt quaff mine. "

And that he was not then in co-operation with any one

is made pretty clear by the melancholy description of

his lonely state ; while at the same time he makes

acknowledgment of owing all he has to Jonson.

Moreover, the contempt of the " twopenny gallery,"

and of the popular tricks and personalities of the stage,

which is expressed in the prologue to The Woman Hater^

may fairly be compared with the temper of Beaumont's

lines to Fletcher on The Faithful Shepherdess : —

** Why should the man, whose wit ne'er had a stain.
Upon the public stage present his vein,
And make a thousand men in judgment sit,
To call in question his undoubted wit.
Scarce two of which can understand the laws
Which they should judge by, nor the party's cause ?

*****
Nor want there those, who, as the boy doth dance
Between the acts, will censure the whole play ;
Some like, if the wax lights be new that day ;

♦ Woman Hater ^ ii. i. See also Valerio's speeches throughout.

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6o FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

But multitudes there are, whose judgment goes
Headlong according to the actor's clothes.
For this, these public things and I agree
So ill, that, but to do a right to thee,
I had not been persuaded to have hurled
These few ill-spoken lines into the world ;
Both to be read and censured of by those
Whose very reading makes verse senseless prose."

This contempt of the vulgar is also, it need hardly be
said, characteristic of Ben Jonson, and is strongly ex-
pressed in the verses addressed to him by Beaumont
shortly before the date of this play, on his comedy of
Volpone,

As regards the burlesque element which is so marked
a feature of Tke Woman Hater^ it is important to
observe that a strong touch of the same is to be found
in The Triumph of Honour (the first of the Four Plays
in One), which is perhaps more generally allowed to be
the work of Beaumont than any other part of the jointly
composed dramas. On the whole we are justified in
assuming that this, at least, is one of the marks of Beau-
mont as distinguished from his partner, and that it should
be so is not difficult to believe. The true burlesque or
mock heroic, a perfectly legitimate weapon of the satirist
when used to make absurdity more laughable and not
to bring down noble and serious things to the level of a
vulgar taste, uses naturally the grand as distinguished
from the familiar style of expression ; accordingly
Fletcher, the master of the latter style, is the last person
from whom we should expect the burlesque, which
delights in sonorous lines and flowing periods. That in

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 6i

fact, is the form of humour appropriate to the graver
tragic genius, by which however it must be handled with
caution, being perhaps the most difficult of all literary
tendencies to confine within due limits. We find hardly
a touch of it in any of the work which we have attributed
to Fletcher alone, while of that which was produced
during the lifetime of the younger poet it is almost
always a noticeable feature.

Finally, we may observe, as one of the characteristics
of the writer of this play, a decided tendency to imitate
Shakspere. Jonson may have been his personal friend and
his acknowledged master, but he is deeply imbued also
with the unacknowledged influence of Shakspere ; and
here, again, we shall perhaps recognize a note of distinc-
tion between the two partners. Shakspere is occasionally
parodied by both, and there is some evidence that
Fletcher and Shakspere worked together, but no one
would now call Fletcher Shaksperian in any sense of the
word,* while throughout the work which we shall find
reason to assign to Beaumont echoes and reminiscences
of Shakspere seem constantly to sound in our ears. In
The Woman Hater we have at least one case of burlesque
application : —

" Laz, Speak, I am bound to hear.
VaL So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear."

And possibly Lazarillo's speech (ii. i) —

**Full eight-and-twenty several almanacks
Have been compiled, all for several years,

♦ The old notion however was that it was Fletcher who imitated
Shakspere ; and Dryden goes so far as to say that he has but one character
not borrowed from this source.

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62 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Since first I drew this breath ; four 'prenticeships
Have I most truly served in this world ;
And eight-and-twenty times has Phcebus' car
Run out his yearly course, since '*

may contain a reference to Helena's in All's Well that
Ends WelKxl i)—

" Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring
Their fiery torcher his diurnal ring ;
Ere twice in murk and occidental 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" —

and if this be so, there is a rather unnecessary sneer

in the saying of Lucio upon Lazarillo, " How like an

ignorant poet he talks ! " But there are also in this

play several passages of more or less obvious imitation.

Of these the most unquestionable is in the scene of the

Intelligencers (iii. 2), as compared with the proceedings

of Dogberry's watch in Much Ado about Nothing: —

" Lea. Then am I greater than the Duke !

2 Int. There, there's a notable piece of treason! Greater than the
Duke ; mark that 1 "

Again —

Laz, " But, might I once attain the dish itself,
Tho* I cut out my means thro' sword and fire,
Thro' poison, thro' anything that may make good

My hopes

2 Int, Thanks to the gods, and our officiousness, the plot's discovered !
fire, steel and poison; burn the palace, kill the Duke, and poison his
privy council. "

The reader may also be reminded of Shakspere in other
passages ; e,g, (iii. i) :—

" Look on these cheeks

They have yet enough of nature, true complexion ;

If to be red and white, a forehead high,

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 63

An easy melting lip, a speaking eye, . . .
If these may hope to please, look here ! "

compare Twelfth Nighty i. 5.
Or again :

" There was a knight swore he would have had me if I would have
lent him but forty shillings to have redeemed his cloak to go to church
in " (ii. 2) :

compare Henry /F., part i, 1. 2.

And these are not the only passages where distant
echoes of Shakspere seem to sound in our ears as we
read this rather immature but undeniably amusing
comedy.

A considerable interval of time separates the publica-
tion of this play from the date of the next Beaumont
and Fletcher quarto. But it is probable that the next
play to be produced on the stage (at an interval of about
a year) was Philaster, which is not known to have been
printed till 1620. Of this celebrated drama, "the
loveliest though not the loftiest of tragic plays which
we owe to the comrades or the successors of Shakes-
peare," * Dryden observes that it was the first which
brought the authors into esteem, " for before that they
had written two or three very unsuccessfully." And
certainly it is no marvel that such a work, notwithstand-
ing its defects of construction, should have brought the
writer into esteem. Philaster is perhaps the most gene-
rally known of all these plays, and that chiefly beca'^se
of its very high poetical merits, by reason of which it

♦ A. C. S. in Encyclopedia Britannka^ 9th ed., article Beaumont and
Fletcher,

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64 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

lends itself to the purpose of the compiler of " Beauties
of Beaumont and Fletcher," or whatever the title may
be under which the public prefers to receive its scraps ;
but it has also undoubtedly high merit of a genuinely
dramatic kind.

This play has been universally considered to be one
in which both our authors took part ; that was of course
the opinion of Dryden ; and although Earle's commenda-
tory verses (which are perhaps a better authority on
such a question than most compositions of the kind)
speak of Philaster as the peculiar property of Beaumont,
yet it must be noted that they deal in the same way
with The Maid's Tragedy ^ in which undoubtedly Fletcher
took part. Nevertheless, paradox though it may be, it
must be confessed that in this play too it is impossible to
find any mark of Fletcher. The style of Philaster seems
to the present writer to be uniform throughout, and, if
what has been said of Fletcher's characteristics is well
founded, that style is not his. Not overmuch ought to
be built upon the fact that prose occurs frequently, for it
Impossible that he may have used it at first, though there
is no known instance of his having done so ; and it is
possible also that he may have written with his partner
in some scenes, though we shall perhaps have reason
hereafter to think that this was not his usual practice,
nor does it seem to have been the practice of the other
dramatists of the time who co-operated with one another
in plays. But it is impossible to believe that the style
of versification which appears within two years (perhaps
within one year) fully formed in The Maid's Tragedy

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 6$

should have been at this time quite imperceptible in his
work ; and the amount of verse in Philaster which, ac-
cording to the canons which we have adopted, can by
possibility be assigned to Fletcher is so small, that it is
difficult to imagine co-operation on such terms at all,
especially when we remember that Fletcher was de-
cidedly the elder of the two. On the whole it seems
preferable to disregard tradition and the authority of the
quartos, as we have already done in the case of The
Woman Hater.

There can hardly be much hesitation about the first
four acts, in which we may fairly challenge criticism to
produce a single passage which metrically resembles the
style of Fletcher.*

* There is a passage in act iv. scene 4 —

** Place me, some god, upon a piramis
Higher than hills of earth, and lend a voice
Loud as your thunder to me, that from thence
I may discourse to all the under-world
The worth that dwells in him \ "

which in expression is somewhat similar to two others by Fletcher, one in

TJic Two Noble Kinsmen^ iv. 2 —

" Fame and Honour,
Methinks, from hence, as from a promontory
Pointed in heaven, should clap their wings, and sing
To all the under- world the loves and fights, etc. ; "

and the other in Bonduca, iii. 2 —

** Loud Fame calls ye,
Pitched on the topless Apennine, and blows
To all the under- world, all nations, etc. ; "

as there is also a line in act v. scene 2—

"All your better deeds
Shall be in water writ, but this in marble,"

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6(> FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

As regard the fifth act it would be perhaps possible
to ascribe to Fletcher a part of the third and fourth
scenes, and this Mr. Fleay seems inclined to do; but
the only real difference here seems to be that there is
occasionally a somewhat larger number of double endings
than usual — a number which exceeds the average of
Beaumont, though not attaining to that of Fletcher ; but
for some of these the burlesque style of the citizen-
captain is reason good enough, and unless we found
much more unmistakable traces of Fletcher than these,
we should not be justified in supposing that he con-
tributed only such a very insignificant share. It seems
almost necessary therefore to assign this play to a single
writer, and in doing so we shall not after all run counter
to any very trustworthy external evidence; for setting
aside commendatory verses, the only evidence which can
by any stretch of language be called contemporary is
that of the editions of 1620 and 1622, which have upon
their titlepages the names of both the dramatists. These
were published some years after Beaumont's death, when
Fletcher was in the height of his stage popularity, and
the publishers would not lightly miss the opportunity
of using his name ; while Fletcher himself, considering

which closely resembles one in that part of Henry VIII, which is commonly
assigned to Fletcher —

** Men's evil manners live in brass, their virtues
We write in water."
But the sentiment of this last is familiar enough, and occurs for example in
Antony's speech over Caesar, while the form of expression is classical.
Both the parallels cited seem to be explicable in other ways than by sup-
posing identity of authorship, and the first passage quoted from Philasterzis
little resembles Fletcher in versification as any in the play.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 67

the general indifference which prevailed about the author-
ship of stage plays, would hardly think it necessary to
disclaim co-operation in one particular drama with the
partner whose labours he had usually shared. In any
case, it is certain that neither he nor any other friend
of the author was consulted in the publication of the
first edition, for it is printed from an incomplete manu-
script in which missing portions are supplied by another
writer. It is not likely that those who had so little
respect for the text would have had much more regard
for the rights of authorship.*

If the above judgment is correct, we have now an
opportunity cf estimating the style of Beaumont in a
serious drama of very high excellence ; and we shall at
once notice again that his work is pervaded by the
influence of Shakspere. Besides the general parallel
which may be drawn between the character of Philaster
and that of Hamlet, and the situation of Bellario and
that of Viola, the following particular passages will
readily suggest Shaksperian parallels either in matter or
style — parallels which are not generally very close in
language, but suggest by their resemblances of thought
and expression the unconscious imitation, which is the
natural homage of one original genius to another, of a

* Cupid's Revenge has been generally (and rightly) r^arded as a joint
composition, yet the first quarto assigns it to Fletcher alone, and this edition
was printed in 1615, during the lifetime of both the authors. The printer
in his "Address to the Reader," admits that he is "not acquainted " with
the author ; and in fact few of the dramatists, except Jonson, seem to have
taken any care about their works when once they were disposed of to the
actors : and these last were naturally adverse to the publication of plays.

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68 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Beaumont to a Shakspere. The plays which have pro-
duced the deepest impression upon him are apparently
Hamlet and Twelfth Night,
Act i. scene i : —

** Mark but the king, how pale he looks with fear !
Oh this same whoreson conscience, how it jades us I "

Act i. scene 2 : —

< * Are, Will Philaster come ?

Lady, Dear madam, you were wont to credit me
At first.

Are, But didst thou tell me so ?
I am forgetful, and my woman's strength
Is so overcharged with dangers like to grow
About my marriage, that these under-things
Dare not abide in such a troubled sea.
How looked he, when he told thee he would come ?
* ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Alas ! thy ignorance
Lets thee not see the crosses of our births ;
Nature, that loves not to be questioned
Why she did this or that, but has her ends.
And knows she does well, never gave the world
Two things so opposite, so contrary.
As he and I am."

Act 1. scene 2 (Arethusa confessing her love to Phi-
laster) : —

<* The words are such
I have to say, and do so ill beseem
The mouth of woman, that I wish them said.
And yet am loath to speak them."

Act ii. scene 3 (Arethusa to Euphrasia disguised as a
page):—

** Alas t what kind of grief can thy years know ? , . •
Thy brows and cheeks are smooth as waters be.
When no breath troubles them : believe me, boy.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 69

Care seeks out wrinkled brows and hollow eyes,
And builds himself caves, to abide in them."

Act 11. scene 3 (Bellario describing Philaster's love to
Arethusa) : —

"If it be love
To forget all respect of his own friends.
In thinking of your face ; if it be love
To sit cross-armed, and sigh away the day,
Mingled with starts, . . ,
If it be love to weep himself away.
When he but hears of any lady dead
Or killed, because it might have been your chance ;
If when he goes to rest (which will not be),
Twixt every prayer he says, to name you once.
As others drop a bead, be to be in love.
Then, madam, I dare swear he loves you."

Act li. scene 4 (the king on his usurpation) : —

** You gods, I see that who unrighteously
Holds wealth or state from others, shall be cursed
In that which meaner men are blest withal : . • ,

How can- 1
Look to be heard of gods that must be just,
Praying upon the ground I hold by wrong ? "

Act ii. scene 4 (Dion reporting his reception at
Megra's house) : —

"Sir, I have asked and her women swear she is within; but they I
think are bawds ; I told 'em, I must speak with her ; they laughed and
said, their lady lay speechless. I said, my business was important ; they
said, their lady was about it : I grew hot, and cried, my business was a
matter that concerned life and death ; they answered, so was sleeping,
xit which their lady was. . . ♦ In short, sir, I think she is not there."

Act iv. scene 2 (Philaster) : —

** Oh, that I had been nourished in these woods,
"With milk of goats and acorns, and not known
The right of crowns, nor the dissembling trains
Of women's looks ! "

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70 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

It IS hardly worth while to multiply quotations
further. Enough have been given to make it tolerably
certain that the writer of Philaster had recollections
floating in his mind of Hamlet and Twelfth Night at
least, if of no other Shaksperian plays. On the whole
it may be said that the author, in climbing to the higher
paths of the romantic and poetical drama, abandons
the guidance of Jonson, and recognizes more exclusively
the authority of him who rules the regions in which he
now essays to walk.

In these paths Philaster is a first essay, and, as
might have been expected, there is visible in it the
immaturity of the youthful poet. It is indeed to this
that we probably owe those poetical passages which so
much delight us as extracts, but are less suitable, as the
author himself soon saw, for the stage. It is indeed a
permanent characteristic of Beaumont that he delights
to present a poetical picture to his hearers. Even in The
Woman Hater vf^ had the picture of Andromeda chained
to the rock, and in Philaster this characteristic is more
marked than anywhere else. One example, Philaster's
description of his first meeting with Bellario, is too well
known to be quoted, and may be passed by with the
single remark that its introduction in the place where it
stands is certainly inopportune, however desirable it
may be from the point of view of the dramatist, to create
interest in Bellario. As other examples of this pic-
turesque quality, we may select, first, Bellario's account
of his own fortunes : —

** It pleased her to receive
Me as her page, and, when my fortunes ebbed,

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I-RANCIS BEAUMONT. ji

That men strid o'er them careless, she did shower
Her welcome graces on me, and did swell
My fortunes, till they overflowed their banks,
Threatening the men that crossed *em ; when, as swift
As storms arise at sea, she turned her eyes
To burning suns upon me, and did dry
The streams she had bestowed ; leaving me worse
And more contemned than other little brooks,
Because I had been great," (iv. 4.)

Next, the description of the love of Philaster and
Arethusa : —

" These two fair cedar-branches,
The noblest of the mountain where they grew,
Straightest and tallest, under whose still shades
The worthier beasts have made their lairs, and slept
Free from fervour of the Sirian star,
And the fell thunderstroke, free from the clouds,
When they were big with humour, and delivered
In thousand spouts their issues to the earth :
Oh, there was none but silent quiet there !
Till never-pleased Fortune shot up shrubs,
Base under-brambles, to divorce these branches ;
And for a while they did so, and did reign
Over the mountain, and choke up his beauty
"With brakes, rude thorns and thistles, till the sun
Scorched them even to the roots, and dried them there :
And now a gentle gale hath blown again.
That made these branches meet and twine together.
Never to be divided." (v. 3.)

And, finally, the picture of the first sight of Philaster
by Euphrasia : —

" Till, sitting in my window.
Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a god,
I thought, (but it was you), enter our gates :
My blood flew out and back again, as fast
As I had puffed it forth, and sucked it in
Like breath." (v. 5.)

These passages, and others like them, show the poet

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72 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

more than the dramatist, and a similar mark of imma-
turity appears in the squandering of some needlessly
beautiful lines upon the essentially ugly relations of
Pharamond and Megra.

Moreover, defects in the plot may be easily found.
Why, for instance, does not Bellario discover himself at
the end of the third act, unless because the discovery
was required by the dramatist at the end of the fifth ?
How is it consistent or natural that Philaster should
wound Bellario merely to save himself? And, finally,
how can we be satisfied with the untoward arrangement
that brings the play to its conclusion, by which Euphrasia
survives after the discovery of herself and of her love, to
live with and serve the lady to whom Philaster is married ?
It may be added that the calumnious falsehood of Dion,
from which all the mischief springs, is both too lightly
uttered and too easily forgiven.

The versification of Philaster is a complete contrast
to that which has been described as Fletcher's. It is
marked generally by a serious and stately character,
recalling the older style by its comparative freedom from
redundancy, though unrestricted freedom is used of
running on from verse to verse, points in which Fletcher's
practice is exactly the reverse. It is not, however, the
use of the writer, nor would it be consistent with the
dignity of his verse, to end the line often upon a weak
syllable ; and, generally speaking, the verse has much
resemblance to that of Shakspere in his first period.
The tendency is to the periodic structure of sentence,
and often we remark a rounded melody of cadence in

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 73

the more rhetorical passages, which belongs peculiarly
to this writer. For example, in the challenge of Philaster
to Pharamond : —

** Having myself about me and my sword,
The souls of all my name and memories.
These arms and some few friends beside the gods." (i. l) ;

in the description of Bellario at the fountain : —

** Leaving him to the mercy of the fields,
Which gave him roots ; and of the crystal springs.
Which did not stop their courses ; and the sun,
Which still, he thanked him, yielded him his light." (i. 2) ;

and in the conclusion of Bellario's prayer in parting
from his master : —

** And Heaven hate those you curse, though I be one."
Something of the same effect is aimed at in such
balanced sentences as these : —

** I am what I desire to be, your friend :
I am what I was bom to be, your prince," (v. 4) ;

and, again —

" That every man shall be his prince himself
And his own law ; yet I his prince and law."

Occasionally rhyme is introduced, chiefly at the end

of scenes, but elsewhere no particular pains seem to be

taken to avoid it, e.g. in Philaster's praise of a country

life—

*' Where I, my fire, my cattle and my bed.
Might have been shut together in one shed ; " (iv. 2.)

For that which requires not dignified expression, that
which is neither heroic nor mock-heroic, prose is the
vehicle adopted by Beaumont. And herein, as in almost
all the characteristics above mentioned, he differs abso-

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74 FRANCIS BEAUMONT,

lutely from Fletcher, whose writing is nearly if not quite
always in verse, who seems studiously to avoid the
rounded and rhetorical cadence, and who hardly ever
uses antithetical expression or rhyme.

Probably in 1609 appeared the drama which is
generally regarded as the finest of the whole series, and
is the only one which has lately been represented upon
the stage — The Maid's Tragedy, It is here that we find
the first certain indications of partnership : but it is
evidently the younger writer who admits the elder into
his fellowship, his own fame having been established by
Philaster, This we should infer from the fact that to
him apparently belongs the whole construction of the
plot (a point in which internal evidence is confirmed by
tradition), and by much the larger number of the scenes,
though Fletcher's share is by no means unimportant in
substance. To Beaumont belongs, almost without a
doubt, the whole of the first three acts. Equally certain
is it that the very important scene with which the fourth
act opens, containing Evadne's terrified repentance,
which presents on the whole the most striking situation
of the play, is either wholly or chiefly by Fletcher. In
the fifth act again, it is Fletcher who kills the king,*
and to him perhaps belong the second and third scenes
of this act ; . while in the fourth, Beaumont takes his
place.

The only passage in the first three acts about which

* Compare, for Fletcher's style in killing, Four Plays in One : Triumph
of Death (scene 5).

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT, 75

there can be much controversy is the last scene of the
second act, which has more than the usual proportion of
double endings, but in other respects seems to be strongly
characteristic of Beaumont, as well in the structure of
sentence and verse as in the picturesque and rhetorical
elements, and the suggestions of Shaksperian influence.
Take for example the following passage : —

" Asp» Then, my good girls, be more than wqmen, wise ;
At least be more than I was ; and be sure
You credit anything the light gives life to
Before a man. Rather believe the sea
Weeps for the ruined merchant, when he roars ;
Rather, the wind courts but the pregnant sails,
When the strong cordage cracks ; rather, the sun
Comes but to kiss the fruit in wealthy autumn,
When all falls blasted. If you needs must love,
(Forced by ill fate,) take to your maiden bosoms
Two dead-cold aspicks, and of them make lovers :
They cannot flatter, nor forswear : one kiss

Makes a long peace for all. But man

O that beast man ! Come, let's be sad, my girls !
That down-cast of thine eye, Olympias,
Shows a fine sorrow. Mark, Antiphila ;
Just such another was the nymph CEnone,
When Paris brought home Helen. — Now, a tear ;
And then thou art a piece expressing fully
The Carthage-queen, when from a cold sea-rock
FuU with her sorrow, she tied fast her eyes
To the fair Trojan ships ; ♦ and, having lost them.
Just as thine eyes do, down stole a tear. — Antiphila,
What would this wench do, if she were Aspatia ?
Here she would stand, till soitie more pitying god
Turned her to marble. — 'Tis enough, my wench. —
Shew me the piece of needlework you wrought.

Ant, Of Ariadne, madam ?

Asp, Yes, that piece.

* Cp. Merchant of Venice^ iii. 2, 53, sq.

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76 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

This should be Theseus ; he has a cozening face.
You meant him for a man ? " (ii. 2. )

It would be difficult to persuade any one who has the
least acquaintance with Fletcher's style that this can be
his. And the picture of Ariadne which follows, sug-
gested perhaps by Shakspere,* but much more
elaborately worked out, is not less characteristic. In
short we recognize the author's hand throughout the
scene, and the question of authorship would hardly have
delayed us even for a moment, if Mr. Fleay had not
been misled by the somewhat unusual number of double
and triple endings in the scene; of which it may be
remarked that a large proportion are occasioned by the
long names.

Finally, in that part of the fourth act which chiefly
belongs to Fletcher, there seem to be towards the end of
the scene some indications of the other hand. Fletcher
is there, but some passages have perhaps been interpo-
lated by the other, to whom probably should be attributed
the lines spoken by Amintor, " Thou hast brought me to
that dull calamity," etc., and the last few lines of the
scene with the concluding rhyme. But the opinion has
already been expressed, and is justified by general
observation, that these authors did not commonly work
together in the same scene, and whether this be so or
not, it may be admitted that the apportioning of scattered
passages of the kind referred to above must be con-
sidered very uncertain work. One observation more
may be made on this subject, namely that the prose of

* Cp. Tzvo Gentlemen of Verona, v. 4, 171.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 77

this play is not anywhere found in close neighbourhood
with verse which has any resemblance to Fletcher's.

Of picturesque description one instance has already
been referred to ; to this may be added that of Aspatia's
grief in the first scene of the play : —

"But this lady
Walks discontented, with her watery eyes
Bent on the earth. The unfrequented woods
Are her delight ; where, when she sees a bank
Stuck full of flowers, she with a sigh will tell
Her servants what a pretty place it were
To bury lovers in ; and make her maids
Pluck'em and strew her over like a corse."

Parallels with Shakspere occur constantly in Beaumont's
portion of the play. The connection of the famous
quarrelling scene of the third act with the quarrel of
Brutus and Cassius has often been observed, but it is
tlie general idea which is reproduced rather than any
particular details. Of special passages which suggest
imitation, conscious or unconscious, we may quote from
Act i. scene i : —

'* Victory sits on his sword ; "

compared with —

" Upon your sword sit laurel victory."

(Afitony and Cleopatra^ i. 3.)

Act ii. scene 2 : —

** Like Sorrow's monument ; **
compared with the expression —

** Like Patience on a monument."

[Iwelfth Night, ii. 4.)

— the supposed situations being also similar.

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7S FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Act 111. scene i : —

**But there is
Divinity about you that strikes dead
My rising passions ; "

compared with —

" There's such divinity doth hedge a king,
That treason can but peep to what it would,"

{Hamlety iv. 5.)

Act iii. scene 2 : —

" You do wrong us both :
People hereafter shall not say there passed
A bond, more than our loves, to tie our lives
And deaths together ; *

compared with the passage in Julius CcesaVy 11. i, where
Brutus similarly rejects the idea of an oath between the
conspirators.

Act V. scene 4 : —

* * Yet still, betwixt the reason and the act
The wrong I to Aspatia did stands up : " etc. j

compared with Julius Ccesar^ ii. i : —

** Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream."

The apparent Shaksperian parallel in Fletcher's portion
of the play (Act. v. scene i), where Evadne rejects the
idea of killing the king in his sleep, is really a contrast
rather than a parallel. Evadne will not " rock him into
another world " without first awakening his conscience,
while Hamlet rejects the moment when conscience is
^wakened, and will rather take his victim —

"When he is drunk, asleep, or in his rage.**

A true parallel to the passage in Hamlet may be found

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 79

in the Four Plays in One: Triumph of Deaths scene 5,
which IS also written by Fletcher.

On the whole, in reading this powerful tragedy we are
impressed with the increasing hold obtained by Shak-
spere over the mind of the young and gifted writer to
whom we have chiefly to ascribe it. Probably no one
then living was so near akin to that unapproachable
genius as the man who, at the age of twenty-three or
little more, planned and for the most part produced this
truly tragic work.

Before taking leave of the play which according to
our hypothesis formed the opening of the celebrated
partnership, it may not be amiss to set side by side, for
the purpose of illustration, examples taken from it of the
style of expression of each author. Let both be taken
from scenes of altercation and strong emotion — the first
from the quarrel of Melantius and Amintor, the second
from the final scene between Evadne and her seducer.

Act iii. scene 2 (Beaumont) : —

^^MeU Take, then, more

To raise thine anger : Tis mere cowardice
Makes thee not draw ; and I will leave thee dead,
However. But if thou art so much pressed
With guilt and fear, as not to dare to fight,
ril make thy memory loathed, and fix a scandal
Upon thy name for ever.

Am, Then I draw.

As justly as our magistrates their swords
To cut offenders off. I knew before
'T would grate your ears ; but it was base in you
To urge a weighty secret from your friend, •*

And then rage at it. I shall be at ease,
• If I be killed ; and, if you fall by me,

I shall not long out-live you.

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8o FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Met, Stay awhile —

The name of Friend is more than family,
Or all the world besides ; I was a fool.
Thou searching human nature, that didst wake
To do me wrong, thou art inquisitive.
And thrust'st upon me questions that will take
My sleep away I Would I had died, ere known
This sad dishonour ! — Pardon me, my friend.
If thou wilt strike, here is a faithful heart ;
Pierce it, for I will never heave my hand
To thine. Behold the power thou hast in me ! '*

Act V. scene 2 (Fletcher) : —

" King, How's this, Evadne ?

Ev. I am not she ; nor bear I in this breast
So much cold spirit to be called a woman :
I am a tiger ; I am anything
That knows not pity. Stir not ! * If thou dost,
I'll take thee unprepared, thy fears upon thee,
That make thy sins look double ; and so send thee
(By my revenge I will !) to look those torments
Prepared for such black souls.

King, Thou dost not mean this ; 'tis impossible ;
Thou art too sweet and gentle.

Ev, No, I am not.

I am as foul as thou art, and can number
As many such hells here. I was once fair.
Once I was lovely ; not a blowing rose
More chastely sweet, till thou, thou, thou foul canker,
(Stir not) didst poison me. 1 was a world of virtue,
Till your cursed court and you (Hell bless you for it !)
With your temptations on temptations.
Made me give up mine honour ; for which. King,
I am come to kill thee.

King, No !

Ev, I am.

King, Thou art not !

I prithee speak not these things : thou art gentle.
And wert not meant thus rugged,

Ev, Peace and hear me»

Stir nothing but your tongue, and that for mercy
To those above us."

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT, 8i

In these two passages the main characteristics of the
two writers are by no means exaggerated, yet they are
clearly distinguishable, and in the latter the effect of the
parentheses should be especially remarked.

Perhaps about the same time may have been pro-
duced the Four Plays or Moral Representations in One^
of which the third has a killing scene closely resembling
that of The Maid's Tragedy, We have no external
evidence of its date, but it has been generally agreed by
critics that the first two " Triumphs " are to be assigned
to Beaumont, and the others to Fletcher. These minia-
ture dramas are necessarily short and slightly constructed,
and therefore not a sufficient basis for general observa-
tions on the style of the authors in larger works, but
those assigned to Beaumont are noteworthy for examples
of several of his chief characteristics. In both there is
a considerable amount of rhyme, and in the first there
is not a little of that burlesque vein which distinguishes
him from most writers of the age. At the same time
there is an obvious reminiscence of Ancient Pistol in the
expressions of Corporal Nicodemus —

" Till Atropos do cut this simple thread,"

and such like. To this feature, however, we shall have
occasion to refer again.

The Faithful Shepherdess was produced by Fletcher
alone in i6io, but the protest which its reception called
forth from Beaumont against submitting to the popular
judgment the products of unstained wit, was not followed

G

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82 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

by any remission of his own labours for the stage, of
which perhaps the year i6u was the culminating point.
In that year came forth two masterpieces of very oppo-
site kinds, T/ie Knight of the Burning Pestle and A King
and No King,

The former was published in 1613 without author's
name, by Walter Burre, who in the next year published
Raleigh's History of the World, In his dedication he
speaks of having kept the play for two years, and says
that it was the elder of Don Quixote by more than a
year, meaning apparently the English translation, pub-
lished in 161 2. As regards authorship, the publisher
speaks of it first as a child exposed " by its parents,"
because he was so unlike his brethren, but afterwards
more than once refers to its "father,** as if one person
only were concerned, eg, " If it be slighted or traduced
it hopes his father will beget him a younger brother who
shall revenge his quarrel," etc. The "Address to the
Reader" in the later edition of 1635 speaks of the "author,"
though the titlepage of that edition has both names.
The expression " authors intention," in the prologue, is
ambiguous for want of the apostrophe. From internal
evidence we should be disposed to attribute the play to
a single writer: and we can have little hesitation in
ascribing it to that one of our authors of whom the
mock-heroic style is characteristic. In The Woman
Hater and in the Four Plays in One Beaumont had
already written something in this vein : e,g, —

" Nie, How long shall patience thus securely snore?
Is it my fault, if these attractive eyes,

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 83

This budding chin, or rosy-coloured cheek,

This comely body, and this waxen 1^,

Have drawn her into a fool's paradise ?

By Cupid's godhead I do swear (no other),

She's chaster far than Lucrece, her grandmother ;

Pure as glass window, ere the rider dash it,

Whiter than lady's smock, when she did wash it, —

For well thou wott'st (tho' now my heart's commandress)

I once was free, and she but the camp's laundress,"

This IS from The Triumph of Honour ^ Beaumont's un-
disputed work, where more of the same kind may be
found, and these passages certainly cannot be dis-
tinguished in style from the utterances of Humphrey or
Ralph in the plays before us. As regards the occasion
of The Knight of the Burning Pestle^ which was written,
says the publisher, in eight days, and therefore probably
for a special purpose, something will be said hereafter.

None of the works which we have to examine pre-
sents us with more difficult questions in regard to the
authorship of its particular parts than A King and No
King, which was first acted in 161 1, but not printed
until 1 61 9. The difficulties are owing, perhaps, to the
following reasons: first, it may be suspected that it
has undergone a considerable amount of corruption ;
secondly, it is possible that in several scenes of this play
the two authors worked together; and thirdly, some
special characteristics of Beaumont are less marked now
than they have hitherto been, and the metre and syntac-
tical structure become our principal guides. This is du^
perhaps to the development of his dramatic faculty,
which has caused him to prune his exuberances of poetry

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84 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

and rhetoric, and so far to approximate to the style
of his fellow-worker. The play is skilfully constructed,
and though there are certainly reminiscences of Shakspere,
— for example in the part of Bessus, which is drawn after
Falstaff rather than Bobadil — ^yet on the whole it has
more originality than either Philaster or The Maid's
Tragedy. It must be understood that the separation of
authors in this play is not made with absolute confidence,
for the reasons stated above ; but we shall probably be
right in assigning to Beaumont, here as before, the first
three acts, unless indeed the disarming of Bessus by
Bacurius, in iii. 2, be Fletcher's, as suggested by the
parallel scene in Thierry and Theodoret^ ii. 3. Of the
fourth act the first three scenes are mainly Fletcher's ;
but whether they originally contained any prose, and if
so whether Fletcher was responsible for it, cannot easily
be decided ; in any case, the third scene is in verse
which by its colloquial ease is decidedly characteristic of
Fletcher. With the same reservations we may also assign
to Fletcher the first and third scenes of the fifth act

Cupid^s Revenge was first acted on the Sunday after
New-year's night, 1612. It was printed in 161 5 with
the name of Fletcher alone. This might, perhaps, have
been thought evidence enough of his sole authorship, see-
ing that both writers were then alive, but the editors are
unanimous in their opinion that it is a joint production,
and of this the internal evidence is no less than conclusive.

In the management of its opening scene it resembles
the other plays of the same class which preceded it ; and

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 85

the first scene, from the entrance to the exit of Leontius,
has evidently the style of versification which belongs to
Beaumont ; the concluding part, which is practically a
different scene, is Fletcher's, and also the second scene,
which contains two lyrical passages, of which the first
may be compared to the lyrics of The Faithful Shep-
herdess^ and the second to the love-songs in Valentinian,
In the remainder of the play we may assign to Beau-
mont Act i. scene 3, in which the speech of Hidaspes,
"If it be jest," etc., recalls that of Bellario, already
quoted from Philaster, " If it be love ; " and the pic-
turesque element appears in the descriptions of the
deformed dwarf transformed by the imagination of his
mistress, e.g, : —

"He is like

Nothing that we have seen, yet doth resemble

Apollo, as I oft have fancied him,

When rising from his bed he stirs himself,

And shakes day from his hair."

To him also belongs Act i. scene 4, from the entrance to
the exit of Hidaspes, and the first four scenes of the
second act

In the third, the first two scenes are Beaumont's:
the rest of the act is certainly by Fletcher. Of the
fourth act possibly the first scene, to the entrance of
Timantus, may be Beaumont's, but the rest of the act
must be attributed entirely, or almost entirely, to
Fletcher. The rising of the citizens is quite in his
style, but the lines in which Agenor describes the rescue
of the prince may probably have been interpolated by
his partner, of whom they are characteristic, both metri-

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a6 FJRANCIS BEAUMONT.

cally and also by the bold use of personification, which
Fletcher rarely employs : —

** His hour was come
To lose his life : he, ready for the stroke,
Nobly, and full of saintlike patience,
Went with his guard ; which when the people saw.
Compassion first went out, mingled with tears,
That bred desires and whispers to each other,
To do some worthy kindness for the prince ;
And ere they understood well how to do.
Fury stepped in, and taught them what to do.
Thrusting on every hand to rescue him.
As a white innocent : Then flew the roar,
Thro* all the streets, of * Save him, save him, save him ! '
And as they cried they did," etc. (iv. 4.)

The last act is also mainly Fletcher's ; possible ex-
ceptions are the first scene, and a portion of the fourth,
from the entrance of Timantus to that of Ismenus.

It will be noticed that in this tragedy for the first
time the worl^ is equally divided, or nearly so, between
the two authors. Hitherto the influence of one has
been distinctly predominant, for the portion contributed
by Fletcher to The Maid's Tragedy and A King and No
King is inferior, in quantity at least, to the remainder.
From this time, however, with some exceptions he in-
creasingly takes the lead, and Beaumont falls into the
background. Why, we can only guess. Possibly his
marriage may have taken place about this time; his
partner, moreover, had doubtless become a more impor-
tant person than formerly, and profiting both by his own
reputation and that of his friend, was independently
laying the foundation of that great popularity which
Beaumont did not live to share. It must be added.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 87

however, that the immediate result is a considerable loss
of power and unity in the productions of the transition
period. It seems, in short, to be in this instance a con-
dition of the highest success that the influence of a
single mind should decidedly predominate in each work.

There is, however, one more play. The Scornful Lady,
a comedy of the first rank, in which Beaumont was pro-
bably the principal author. This was printed in 161 6,
bearing upon the titlepage the names of both authors ; it
may probably have been produced as early as 161 2. The
first two acts are almost wholly in prose, and although
it is not proved that Fletcher wrote no prose in drama,
yet it certainly seems that he used it but little. That,
however, is not the only or the chief reason for attri-
buting these acts to Beaumont His style is visible also
in the periodic structure of speeches, in the burlesque
magniloquence of Sir Roger, of the roystering captain,
and of the Lady herself when she ironically describes
the dangers of her suitor's voyage, and finally in the
elaborate characterization of Mistress Younglove in the
conversation which opens the play, a mode of introduc-
tion which is much used by Beaumont for his minor per-
sonages : we may compare with this passage the descrip-
tion of the court ladies in the first scene of Philaster,

The third act presents greater difficulty. The first
scene is Fletchers and perhaps originally all in verse,
though it has not been commonly so written by the
editors. The second contains perhaps the work of both
authors.

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88 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

The fourth act apparently comes wholly from
Fletcher, unless an exception be made in reference to
the few lines of prose with which it begins ; and in the
fifth, the second scene only can with confidence be
attributed to Beaumont In the remaining scenes there
is prose, but of such a kind as to raise suspicion that it
may once have been verse; and in general, it may be
remarked that the text of this play seems to have under-
gone considerable corruption, notwithstanding that it
was printed in the lifetime of one of its authors. The
same remarks apply to this case which were made on
the first quarto of Philaster.

The ironical reference, in the prologue of Beaumont's
earliest comedy, to the almost universal practice of lay-
ing the scene abroad, and introducing persons of title,*
prepares us to find him soon breaking through the
fashion ; and The Scornful Lady, the only comedy of
which the plan can be assigned to him in his maturity,
stands in this respect in a somewhat peculiar position
among its fellows. It is not of course the only play of
this collection which lays its scene in England and pre-
sents untitled characters, but it conveys the reader more
than any other into the centre of English domestic life.
Fletcher excelled in the wit and repartee of fashionable
gentlemen, and in his work we shall find no such
characters as the domestic chaplain, the steward, and the
waiting-woman of this comedy. We seem to gain a
glimpse of a genuine English interior : the lady's house-

* " A duke there is, and the scene lies in Italy, as those two things
lightly we never miss." (Prologue to The Woman Hater,)

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 89

hold is evidently taken from life, perhaps from the family-
establishment of Grace Dieu ; " Sir, they are in tribes
like Jews : the kitchen and dairy make one tribe, . . .
the buttery and laundry are another, and there*s no love
lost." And the characters are all very realistically drawn,
from the chaplain who is sent on errands by all the rest,
and who takes the air " many mornings on foot, three or
four miles, for eggs," to the waiting-woman who alter-
nately scorns and adores him. The comedy is in short
a storehouse for the historian of domestic manners, and
we must lament that, owing to the early death of the
principal author, this style had for the present no further
development. Jonson, who might have excelled in it,
chose to waste strength on more worthless enterprises.

The Coxcomb was acted in the year 161 2 ; but not
printed except in the folio editions. For the construc-
tion Fletcher seems to be responsible, and he is the
author of considerably the larger part. The play is
marked by a singular want of unity, arising from the use
of two distinct plots, with no apparent connection be-
tween them except the occasional and accidental meet-
ing of the two sets of characters with one another in
general society. It is not difficult to effect a distribution
of shares between the two authors on metrical grounds,
which will correspond to a great extent with this
division of the plot. To Beaumont belong the cha-
racters of Viola and Ricardo, that is to say, he is the
author of most of the scenes in which they take the
leading part — Act i. scene 4, the soliloquy of Viola on

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90 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

leaving her father's house ; Act i. scene 6 ; Act ii. scene 4,
containing the repentance of Ricardo ; Act iii. scene 3,
and Act v. scene 2. Fletcher is the author of the whole
of what, to judge from the title, we must call the main
plot, as well as a certain amount of the other. The
main plot is an absurd and rather disgusting story, with
nothing to recommend it except the opportunities which
It occasionally affords for amusing situations. All that
is poetical and interesting in the play is contained in
the underplot of Viola and Ricardo. Viola herself is a
character of much delicacy and beauty, such as Fletcher,
who can represent female heroism but not maiden
modesty, was quite incapable of imagining. The cha-
racter is not unworthy of Shakspere himself, and the
rhythm of the verse in Beaumont's scenes is as Shak-
sperian as anything not written by Shakspere.

For comparison of the two styles in this play it will
suffice to quote the first words which by each author are
put into the mouth of Viola.

Act i. scene i (Fletcher) : —

'* Viol. Sweet speak softly ;

For tho' the venture of your love to me
Meets with a willing and a full return,
Should it arrive unto my father's knowledge,
This were our last discourse.

Hie. How shall he know it ?

Viol. His watching cares are such for my advancement,
That everywhere his eye is fixed upon me :
This night, that does afford us some small freedom,
At the request and much entreaty of
The mistress of the house, was hardly given me ;
For I am never suffered to stir out.
But he hath spies upon me. Yet, I know not, —

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 91

You have so won upon me, that, could I think
You would love faithfully (tho' to entertain
Another thought of you would be my death),
I would adventure on his utmost anger."

Act i. scene 4 (Beaumont) : —

**Viol. The night is terrible, and I enclosed
With that my virtue and myself hate most,
Darkness ; yet must I fear that which I wish,
Some company ; and every step I take
Sounds louder in my fearful ears to-night.
Than ever did the shrill and sacred bell
That rang me to my prayers. The house will rise
When I unlock the door. Were it by day,
I am bold enough, but then a thousand eyes
Warn me from going. Might not God have made
A time for envious prying folk to sleep,
Whilst lovers met, and yet the sun have shone ? "

The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn was
exhibited in February, 161 3, and printed probably in the
same year ; but the quarto edition has neither name of
author nor date. It is ascribed to Beaumont in the folio
editions. Unlike the masque in The Maid's Tragedy it
is written in blank verse, and that of a somewhat more
even and stately kind than we find in the dramas. It
was no doubt sufficient for its purpose, though somewhat
wanting in the commendations of the king and praise of
the assembly, which are elsewhere suggested by the
author as requisites of a masque.*

The Captain was acted certainly before May 20th,
161 3, when John Hemmings and his company were paid

♦ Maid's Tragedy^ i. I.

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92 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

for presenting this and five other plays at court But
Dyce remarks that the prologue, which seems to be
written for the first representation, speaks of "twelve-
pence" as admission-money, and therefore it was per-
haps first acted at a public theatre. This prologue also
speaks of a single author, and Dyce assigns the play to
Fletcher alone. It seems, however, from the evidence of
metre that one scene at least (Act iv. scene 5) is by a
second writer ; and, a co-operator being once admitted,
we might with probability also assign to him a share in
Act i. scene 2 ; Act ii. scene 2, which contains a song
partly borrowed from Tke Knight of the Burning Pestle ;
and Act v. scenes 4 and 5, though there is perhaps
nothing in these scenes which could not have been
written by Fletcher. The metrical peculiarities of them
are a scantiness of double endings, and a rather marked
tendency in using such words as " affections," " handling,"
"courtier," "surgeon," "Indies," "studied," "patience,"
etc., to make as many syllables of them as possible.
This IS opposed to Fletcher's practice, but it is not a
peculiarity which belongs to Beaumont, nor is there any-
thing in the play which is specially characteristic of him.
If, however, we assign to him the part which is not
Fletcher's, we shall probably at least conclude that he
had nothing to do with the construction. In this point
the play is defective, especially in regard to the looseness
with which the two plots hang together ; but that is
quite after the manner of Fletcher, and may be paralleled
from The Coxcomb^ written perhaps under similar circum-
stances, after the marriage of Beaumont, when the friends
had ceased to live together.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 93

. Several reminiscences of Shakspere occur in
Fletcher's part of it, but they are only superficial and do
not indicate an author penetrated with Shaksperian
influence ; the turn of the phrase is reproduced rather
than the thought ; e,g, : —
Act ii. scene i : —

" And how it was g^eat pity, that it was." *

Act iii. scene 5 : —

" This is somewhat
Too much, Fabricio, to your friend that loves you." f

Act iv. scene 2 : —

** I Boy. 'Faith, he lies drawing on apace.
2 Boy, That's an ill sign.

1 Boy, And fumbles with the pots too.

2 Boy, Then there's no way but one with him." J

This play then adds confirmation to the suggestion
already made that about this time Beaumont consider-
ably relaxed his eflTorts in connection with the stage ;
whether from ill-health or domestic concerns we can
only conjecture ; it is certain, however, that he died
within three years, having then been married for some
time.

To the tragedy of Thierry and Theodoret very various
dates have been assigned. We have no evidence as to
the time of its -production beyond the fact that it was
printed in 1621. This edition has no author's name. A
second, in 1648, assigns the play to Fletcher alone, but

* Cf. Henry IV,, pt. I, i. 3, 58. + Julius Ccesar^ i. 2, 33.

X Henry V., ii. 3. None of these paspa^es are included in the
interesting collection of Shakspere references published by the New Shak-
spere Society, Shakspere^ s Centurie of Prayse^ by C. M. Ingleby.

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94 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

the same republished in the next year with new title-
page, prologue, and epilogue adds the name of Beaumont,
and in this respect the play has precisely the same
history as The Woman Hater. The question of author-
ship is rather difficult The epilogue in the edition of
1649 speaks of "our poet," but it seems to be certain
that there are two authors, and equally certain that of
these Fletcher is one. To him belongs Act i. scene i ;
Act ii. scenes 2, 3, and 4, the whole of Act iv. and Act v.
scene 2. The rest may be Beaumont's, though his
characteristics are less visible here than in most of his
work. We see his hand most plainly in the conversation
of Thierry and Brunhalt, and afterwards with his brother
(Act ii. scene i), and in the scene between Thierry and
Ordella, with which the third act begins. His mark is
set upon the king's expressions of contempt for his sub-
jects' opinion (ii. i) : —

" How ! my subjects?
What do you make of me ? oh Heaven ! my subjects ?
How base should I esteem the name of prince.
If that poor dust were anything before
The whirlwind of my absolute command !" etc.*

and we seem to recognize him in the chaste and poetical
imaginings of Ordella, in the unconscious irony of "a
temperance beyond hers that rocked me," uttered by a
son of Brunhalt, and in the bold impersonations, e.g.
Act iii. scene 2) : —

" Despair, which only in his love saw life
Worthy of being, from a gardener's arms
Snatched this unlucky brat, and called it mine."

♦ Compare this and what follows with the temper of Arbaces in
A King and No King,

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 95

In the comedy of Wit at Several Weapons (for the
date of which there is no evidence), we have no reason
to doubt that Beaumont shared ; but it is not possible to
accept the opinion suggested by Mr. Fleay that his hand
is visible in combination with Fletcher's throughout the
play. In fact this theory of mixed work is but a loose
and slovenly way of escape from difficulties. The maxim
is first laid down that Fletcher has not less than a cer-
tain number of double endings, and if a scene falls below
the supposed minimum in this respect, it is inferred that
here he was in co-operation with another writer, though it
may possess all the other marks of Fletcher, and though
it may be impossible to draw a line of distinction between
the parts assigned in it to each of the supposed authors.
But it appears in fact that the scenes which we attribute
to Fletcher while working with Beaumont are often much
less marked by this wilful mannerism than his subsequent
single work, while they have in full force all the other
characteristics by which he is recognized. The following
passage is a specimen of those which Mr. Fleay calls
" mixed work," apparently because they have not their
due proportion of double endings, and yet who could
suppose that it was anything but pure Fletcher ?

" I am persuaded thou devour'st more flouts
Than all thy body's worth, and still a-hungered !
A mischief of that maw ! prithee, seek elsewhere ;
In troth I'm weary of abusing thee :
Get thee a fresh mistress, thou't make work enough :
I do not think there's scorn enough in town
To serve thy turn, take the court ladies in,
And all their women to 'em, that exceed 'em !
Greg, Is this in earnest, lady ?

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96 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Niece, Oh, unsatiable !

Dost thou count all this but an earnest yet ?
I'd thought I'd paid thee all the whole sum, trust me,
Thou't beggar my derision utterly.
If thou stay'st longer ; I shall want a laugh :
If I knew where to borrow a contempt

Would hold thee tack, stay and be hanged thou should'st then :
But thou hast no conscience now to extort hate from me.
When one has spent all she can make upon thee ;
Must I begin to pay thee hire again.
After I've rid thee twice? faith 'tis unreasonable." (iii. i.)

On the whole it is probable that the theory of mixed
work should be adopted very cautiously, if at all, and
only where it is possible to point out definitely the
elements of the combination. It is not lightly to be
supposed that such great and equal fellow-workers as
these patched and tinkered one another's work as a
Davenant or a Cibber improve Shakspere ; and though
doubtless we may find scenes in which both seem to
have a hand, yet in these their work will be found
separate, each to be traced by its own character, and not
conspiring together to produce a nondescript result which
has no character at all.

As regards this particular comedy the division of
authors is not perhaps very easy, but it may be accom-
plished with some degree of probability without recourse
to such a doubtful hypothesis as that of Mr. Fleay. To
Fletcher belongs Act i. scene i, and Act ii. scene i, as
well as the whole of Act iii. (which is nearly all in verse),
and Act iv. scenes 2 and 3. The rest is probably Beau-
mont's, and in his portion of the second act there are
passages which remind us of his former work. Pompey's
qualified voucher for the character of the lady to whom

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 97

he had been sent, is not unlike that of Bessus for the
virtuous behaviour of his charge, and the jest at the
expense of the devices had at the Red Bull may be
paralleled from The Knight of the Burning Pestle^ though
it is likely enough that this was a commonplace of wit
at the Blackfriars. The doubt which hangs over his
share in this play seems to affect chiefly the less serious
parts, and to be due to the limited means which we have
of judging of his style of versification in the ordinary
conversation of comedy. Hitherto he has generally
used prose as his vehicle for this kind of expression.
In this play, however, he seems to have partly fallen in
with the new rule that comedy should be written in
verse, and consequently writes in a style which is
somewhat unusual to him.

The Honest Man's Fortune seems also to have been
acted in 161 3. The fifth act only is by Fletcher; the
rest by another author, probably not Beaumont It has
none of the marked characteristics of his style ; and with
all its lofty sentiment and occasional vein of poetry the
play is too poor in construction and character to be
attributed mainly * to the author of Philaster and The
Maids Tragedy, while in the part of Veramour there is
even a quip aimed at the device of playwrights which
was made popular by the former play, of the poor dis-
guised lady that like a page follows her master "for
love God wot." %

♦ If we admitted Beaumont here as the other author, we should have
to assign to him no less than four acts out of five, a laiger proportion than
in any other Jointly written play.

H

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98 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

For The Knight of Malta there is no evidence of date
beyond the fact that Burbadge acted a part in it, and
consequently it must have been produced before March
13, 1619, It seems, however, to be a joint composition,
and one in which Beaumont had a considerable share.
Dyce, indeed, rejects this opinion, but without assigning
any reason — indeed, he nowhere states the critical grounds
upon which he proceeds in distinguishing the work of
either dramatist Evidently the first and the last acts
are by one author, and the second, third and fourth by
another, and it is not much less clear that the latter
is Fletcher and the former Beaumont. The first act has
all Beaumont's characteristics of versification and struc-
ture, the full flow of the lines and the periodic rounding
of the sentences, while in poetical qualities as well as
in dramatic force and interest it may be pronounced
fully worthy of him. If the play as a whole misses the
mark of highest excellence, this is certainly not the
fault of the introductory scenes. It is worthy of re-
mark, moreover, that the curious variation of name in
the case of the Moor Zanthia or Abdella, is coincident
with the division suggested by considerations of style :
for, setting aside stage directions which are probably not
original, the name used is Zanthia in the first act, and
AbdelU in the fourth. In the other acts neither name
occurs in the text*

• Mr. Fleay*s theories about this play are not very intelligible.. After
first assigning to Beaumont what is attributed to him above, with the addi-
tion of the greater part of the third act, he has changed his mind in a later
edition, and calls in Middleton to take Beaumont's place, apparently be-
cause he dared not after all attribute the third act to Beaumont, and he

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 99

We seem, then, to have found the hand of Beaumont
in thirteen plays, and we shall find it in no other ; nor are
there many more in which his co-operation has been
suggested by modern critics. Dyce assigns to him a
share in The Little French Lawyer ^ but as usual without

would not assign it to Fletcher ; while Middleton was regarded as a kind of
neutral nondescript. It is difficult to imagine any careful reader giving the
third and fourth acts to different writers, or the first and third to the same.
What does Mr. Fleay think of the metre of the following passage, which
he assigns to Middleton ?

** VeL By all goodness
You wrong my lady, and deserve her not,
When you are at your best. Repent your rashness ;
Twill shew well in you.

Abd. Do, and ask her pardon.
Ori, No ; I have lived too long, to have my faith,
Wy tried faith, called in question, and by him
That should know true affection is too tender
To suffer an unkind touch, without ruin.
Study ingratitude, all, from my example ;
For to be thankful now is to be false.
But be it so ; let me die ; I see you wish it ;
Yet dead, for truth and pity's sake, report
What weapon you made choice of when you killed me.
Vel She faints.
Abd, What have you done?
Ori, My last breath cannot
Be better spent than to say I forgive you," etc.

{^Knight of Malta, iii. 2. )
Does it not remind him of Fletcher ?

But this is not the only occasion on which Mr. Fleay has so misused
Middleton. In his Shakespeare Manual he discusses the authorship of
Macbeth^ and after mentioning the theoiy that some of the witch scenes
are by Middleton, he says, **The severely wounded captain, in i. 2, who
mangles his metre so painfully, I surrender at once to the Cambridge
editors as Middleton*s. " He seems to forget that Middleton also has a style
by which he may be recognized, and that not a trace of it appears in this
scene. Let any one who doubts this, read Middleton, as the present writer
has done, with this scene in his mind. No wonder that Mr. Fleay should
add, "the whole of this Middleton theory requires reconsideration."

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loo FRANCIS BEAUMONT,

giving any reason, except that the prologue and epilogue
speak of "writers" or "poets," and this argument is
sufficiently met by the probable supposition that it was
a joint production of Fletcher and Massinger. The
excellent character of La Writ would certainly have run
to burlesque in the hands of Beaumont, whose comedy
was not specially marked by that " infinite ease, smart-
ness and rapidity of dialogue " of which Dyce justly
makes mention in connection with this play. It would
be difficult, perhaps, to find in it a single characteristic
of Beaumont ; and the same may be said of The Laws of
Candy y which, according to Dyce, is " generally reckoned,
and perhaps rightly, among the joint compositions of
Beaumont and Fletcher," though it has attached to it a
list of the actors, in which Burbadge does not appear.
On the other hand Dyce is no doubt right in supposing
that Bonduca and Valentinian are the unassisted work of
Fletcher.*

It is perhaps worth while to remark before leaving
this subject, that of the thirteen plays in which Beau-
mont had a share only five were included in the so-called
first folio of Beaumont and Fletcher, which professed to
contain nothing that had been printed before.f This
fact fully justifies the complaint of Aston Cockaine, that
credit was assigned in that edition to Beaumont for work
in which for the most part he had no share, and also

* The Faithful Friends^ printed for the first time in the present century
and unacknowledged by the editors of the folio editions, need hardly be
considered a genuine work»

t As a matter of fact this boast was not entirely justified, for the
edition included Beaumont's Masque^ but in a rather incomplete form.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. lot

testifies to the much greater popularity of the plays in
which he assisted, as compared with the rest ; for of the
former class eight out of thirteen had been separately pub-
lished before 1647, of the latter eight out of nearly forty ;
and if we count the number of editions of the plays
which had been published separately, the disproportion
becomes even more striking. The total number of edi-
tions up to 1647 of plays in which Beaumont had a
share was twenty-six, of the rest only ten : Philaster,
The Maid's Tragedy, A King and No King, and The
Scornful Lady were reprinted again and again ; and the
judgment oi posterity will on the whole confirm that of
the reading public of their own age.

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IC2 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

The foregoing examination is a tedious but neces-
sary preliminary. It was necessary, before we could
estimate the character of Beaumont's genius, to deter-
mine what writings ought to be assigned to his pen.
We may now claim to have a solid foundation upon
which to build, and clearly defined limits of reference for
support of our estimate, an estimate which has to some
extent been already stated piecemeal as it was reached
in the foregoing investigation, where, as each point was
determined, it was necessarily adduced as evidence, con-
firming half-formed conclusions and indicating fresh lines
of discovery. It remains to sum up the characteristics
already pointed out, and to add those other criticisms
which may be suggested by a general survey of the field
which now lies open.

We have seen that as regards metre he is on the
whole a follower of the older school, whose blank verse
is stately and somewhat monotonous, confining itself as
far as possible within the limits of ten syllables and
avoiding redundancy both at the end of the verse and
elsewhere ; but that he had entirely broken away from
the habit of making the pauses mainly at the end of the

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J^RANCrS BEAUMONT. 103

lines, and runs on from verse to verse almost as freely
as Shakspere in his later period, though his pauses are
not so skilfully varied, and he avoids ending the line
upon a weak syllable. The structure both of his verse
and of his sentence is generally somewhat rhetorical, the
verse is smooth and rounded, and the sentence is in a
balanced or periodic form, suitable to the lofty tone
which he adopts in tragedy, and to the picturesque
descriptions in which he always delights. The style is
vigorous, and ornamented rather by metaphor than by
simile. In almost all these points he is the direct antithesis
of Fletcher. For ordinary comic dialogue he uses prose,
but he also employs his verse for purposes of burlesque,
in which case it often has double endings and sometimes
it rhymes. The tendency to burlesque is one of his most
certain characteristics. In construction he shows con-
siderable skill, more especially as regards the introduc-
tion of his characters and the preparation for situations ;
his plots were perhaps generally of his own invention, in
which respect he follows the newer school of dramatists,
which abandoned chronicles and sought for novelty of
incident : but in other respects he is an apt pupil of the
older dramatists, and especially of Shakspere, whom, not-
withstanding some indignities, such as the quotation from
Henry IV, in The Knight of the Burning Pestle y he seems
to have sincerely admired. His inferiority, as compared
with Fletcher, is in colloquial ease, and that readiness of
repartee which is thought to distinguish the conversation
of gentlemen ; his temperament must have been natu-
rally grave, and congenial rather to tragedy than comedy,

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104 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

but for wit he had humour, and contributed to the com-
mon stock many of the most amusing scenes. Compare
the wit of Mirabell, Monsieur Thomas, and Don John,
excellent of its kind, with the humour belonging to the
creator of Bessus, of the citizen spectator, and of the
Merrythoughts, wife and husband. The exhibition of
the temper of the latter — his refusal to consider his
estate if he thought it would spoil his singing, and
his philosophy of life based upon the principle that " use
makes perfectness," * in combination with the practical
comments of the citizen and his wife, is humorous in
the highest degree, and the perplexity and final dismay
of Bessus at the unexpected manner in which Arbaces

♦ ** Merrythought {within). Nose, nose, jolly red nose,
And who gave thee this jolly red nose ?
Mrs, Merrythought, Hark, my husband ! he's singing and hoiting, and
I am fain to cark and care, and all little enough. Husband ! Charles !
Charles Merrythought !

Enter Old Merrythought.

Mer. Nutmegs and ginger, cinnamon and cloves ;

And they gave me this jolly red nose.

Mrs, Mer, If you would consider your estate, you would have little
list to sing, I wis.

Mer, It should never be considered, while it were an estate, if I thought
it would spoil my singing.

Mrs, Mer, But how wilt thou do, Charles ? Thou art an old man, and
canst not work, and thou hast not forty shillings left, and thou eatest good
meat, and drinkest good drink, and laughest.

Mer, And will do.

Mrs, Mer, But how wilt thou come by it, Charles ?

Mer, How? Why, how have I done hitherto these forty years? I
never came into my dining-room, but at eleven and six o'clock I found
excellent meat and drink on the table ; my clothes were never worn out
but next morning a tailor brought me a new suit ; and without question it
will be so ever I use makes perfectness."

{Knight of the Burning Pestle, i. 4.)

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 105

receives his ready complaisance are evidently drawn by
a genius which could appreciate the contrasts presented
by human life, and the near neighbourhood everywhere
of tragedy and comedy.

As we have found our author's genius to be of the
graver kind which is more congenial to the tragid
aspects of life, it will not surprise us to discover that his
serious work is deeply tinged with the " irony " which is
characteristic of the graver and more thoughtful of the
world's dramatists. Nor is this a light and accidental
mark ; it belongs only to those who are penetrated with
a consciousness of the serious significance of human life,
and consequently also of its scenic representation, and
who aim constantly at the artistic unity of structure
which belongs to the best dramatic work. It is an
instrument most effective, but only to be used with
success by those who can both live in the characters
which they create, and at the same time keep their mind
steadily fixed upon the whole. The dramatic irony is
thought to be especially characteristic of the Greek
tragic poets, but it is no less so of Shakspere among the
English. Among Shakspere's contemporaries however
few will be found to use it in any marked degree, unless
it be the subject of the present essay, whose intensity of
feeling and artistic skill in construction was eminently
favourable to its effective display.

The dramatic irony is no mere playwright's device ;
it is the scenic representation of the practical contrast in
human life between the show and the reality ; and upon
the subject of the practical irony of life we cannot refrain

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io6 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

from quoting out of the fascinating essay of Thirlwall On
the Irony of Sophocles : " All who have lived long enough
in the world must be able to remember objects coveted
with impatient eagerness, and pursued with long and un-
remitting toil, which in possession have proved tasteless
and worthless : hours embittered with anxiety and dread
by the prospect of changes which brought with them the
fulfilment of the most ardent wishes : events anticipated
with trembling expectation which arrived, passed, and
left no sensible trace behind them ; while things of which
they scarcely heeded the existence, persons whom they
met with indifference, exerted the most important in-
fluence on their character and fortunes. When, at a
sufficient interval and with altered mood, we review such
instances of the mockery of fate, we can hardly refrain
from a melancholy smile. And such, we conceive,
though without any of the feelings that sometimes
sadden our retrospect, must have been the look which
a superior intelligence, exempt from our passions, and
capable of surveying all our relations, and foreseeing the
consequences of all our actions, would at that time
have cast upon the tumultuous workings of our blind
ambition and our groundless apprehensions, upon the
phantoms we raised to chase us, or to be chased, while
the substance of good and evil presented itself to our
view, and was utterly disregarded." * The place which
such a superior intelligence might hold in relation to
the actual world of human beings is occupied by the
dramatic poet in relation to the. creatures of his imagi-

* Thirhuairs Remains, vol. iii. p. 4.

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nation which he places before his spectators. He cannot
but feel the contrast between the show and the reality,
between the ends pursued and the ways followed by the
beings whose destiny he controls, and those which would
be suggested by a fuller knowledge of the plan to
which their action is to be subordinated. This very
subordination of their action to a plan of which they
can know nothing has in it all the elements of the
practical irony; and to bring this before the minds of
the spectators may add immensely to the dramatic force
of the situation. This can be done either simply by
the arrangements of the incidents, or more artificially
by the utterances of the characters concerned, which to
the mind of an attentive spectator of the whole action
may convey a meaning other than that of which the
speaker is supposed to be conscious. And such means
of heightening the tragic interest will be instinctively
used by the artist who has complete control over his
materials and rules really like a god in his little world.
Of such Shakspere is chief, and there are needed only
a few examples of his use of this delicate instrument to
make our meaning clear.

The tragedy of Julius CcBsar is saturated with it
throughout. Nothing in that magnificent drama is more
striking than the contrast between the apparent success
of the conspirators and the inevitable failure which is
involved in the accomplishment of their immediate object.

** We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar ;
And in the spirit of men there is no blood :
O that we then could come by Caesar's spirit,
And not dismember Caesar ! **

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io8 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

" In the spirit of men there is no blood " — yet these men
intend by shedding Caesar's blood to destroy his spirit.
The momentary flash of insight only makes the blind-
ness more apparent ; but the thought must already cross
the minds of those who have just seen Caesar's physical
infirmities contrasted with his spiritual mightiness, that
the conspirators will but set free that mighty spirit from
its body's prison, and send it forth to range mightier
than before. We are never allowed by the poet to lose
sight of this contrast between body and spirit It is
** Caesar's spirit ranging for revenge " which is destined
to " cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war " upon his
murderers, and upon the innocents to whom his mur-
derers desired to do good ; and Brutus too is at last
brought to confess the irresistible power : —

** O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet ;
Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords
In our own proper entrails."

This is the irony which colours the whole design, but
the details are full of ironical touches. In such a light
must appear the desperate eagerness of the faction to
win the support of the one man whose support is destined
to be their destruction ; and the irony reaches its climax
in the reflection of Cassius : —

" Therefore 'tis meet
That noble minds keep ever with their likes. "

For it is not. the noble mind alone which is to suffer by
contact with those of coarser metal, it is destined to
bring ruin quite as much on those who think to profit

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 109

by its fall, who seek its fellowship in order to give
a specious colour to their designs. In such a light
too, we must evidently regard the cry of the mob who
hears the justification of Brutus, " Let him be Caesar ! "
and the repeated undervaluing of the man who is
reserved after all to pronounce the epitaph of the con-
spirators.

But, in fact, all the greater Shaksperian dramas
abound with instances. Macbeth is full of them.

** He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust, "

says Duncan of the traitor Cawdor, and turns at once
to welcome the new Cawdor with all the assurances of
his gratitude and confidence. Deeply ironical to those
who know the welcome preparing for Duncan, is the
commendation of Macbeth's castle by his unconscious
victims, as the abode of cheerful peace, where, to their
ears at least, no raven croaks, but " the temple-haunting
martlet" securely builds her shelter. And terribly
fraught with meaning for those who have already seen
the doom of the family of Macduff, are the unconscious
words of Malcolm, " He hath not touched you yet." One
final example must be quoted from Hamlet^ — the tre-
mendous sentence of death passed upon himself by the
king in his admonition to Laertes : —

** No place indeed should murder sanctuarize :
Revenge should have no bounds."

But of this perhaps something too much ; let us return
to our author. To him, rather than to his fellow-worker,

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no FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

belong the instances which we meet with in their joint
work ; for Fletcher had hardly the perception of moral
unity, or the earnestness of character and genius, which
seek expression naturally under the form of dramatic
irony, and his genius is too free and unconfined to force
itself into any unnatural form.

In The MaicTs Tragedy it is mainly of the anti-
cipatory kind. We feel it in the wish of Melantius,
on hearing of the ill-fated marriage between his sister
and his friend, " Peace of mind betwixt them ; '* and
more strongly we find it in the innocent complaint
of the deserted Aspatia, which suggests reflections
and comparisons of a far different kind than she in-
tends : —

" This should have been
My rite ; and all your hands have been employed
In giving me a spotless offering
To young Amintor's bed, as we are now
For you. Pardon, Evadne ; would my worth
Were great as yours, or that the king, or he,
Thought so!" (ii. I.)

And again, where Amintor unconsciously touches the
root of the evil and passes it by : —

" Or by those hairs, which, if thou hadst a soul
Like to thy locks, were threads for kings to wear
About their arms** — (ii. i).

To speak generally, the situation of Amintor, most
miserable in the height of apparent happiness, and of
the king slain in his amorous security, are examples
of the contrast in which irony most delights.

In A King and No King, the groundwork of the

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. in

drama, suggesting always the contrast between the
absolute authority of the king over his subjects, and
the slavish subjection of the man to his passion, lends
itself obviously to the ironical treatment. The climax
is reached when to be dispossessed of his apparent
power is found the only way to secure the real object of
desire ; and at this point the effect is heightened by
the unconscious recurrence of Arbaces, in the moment
of his welcome humiliation, to the language of absolute
power : —

"Why, I will have 'em all that know it racked,
To get this from 'em."

** He shall have chariots easier than air.
That I will have invented ; and ne'er think
He shall pay any ransom ; "

while in the next moment after such speeches as these,
he is either calling in all to witness his abdication, or
kneeling to Panthea as the humblest of her subjects.
In every part of the play, the capricious violence of
Arbaces affords materials for the veiled contrasts of
which we speak. Arbaces hardly less frequently than
CEdipus innocently plays with his doom before it is
revealed. The pride which boasted of Panthea before
he had seen her, that Nature had made

** no man worthy for her taste
But me that am too near her, "

almost suggests already the scourge by which it is to be
chastised. Again, when he hears of his mother's plot
against his life —

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112 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

" What will the world
Conceive of me ? with what unnatural sins
Will they suppose me laden, when my life
Is sought by her that gave it to the world ?
But yet he writes me comfort here : my sister,
He says, is grown in beauty and in grace," etc. (i. I.)

As he utters the words, his thought is far indeed from the
truth that this very beauty and grace is destined to be to
him the greater curse, nay, to point the way even to the
act of those unnatural sins from the imagined imputation
of which he shrinks in horror. On the other hand the
loud " 'Tis false " with which he endeavours to silence
those who assure him that it is indeed his sister whom
he sees, foreshadows, however dimly, the final discovery,
though he speaks the words now against his own con-
viction. One more example may be taken from the
mouth of Panthea, where, speaking of Tigranes, she
says : —

" For if he were a thing 'twixt god and man,
I could gaze on him, — if I knew it sin
To love him, — without passion." (ii. i.)

And yet she was so soon to feel the rising of a passion
for one whom she believes to be her own brother.

To multiply instances of this kind and to examine
all the works of our author from this point of view,
would be tedious and unnecessary. Enough, if we have
established that a delicate and instinctive use of the
dramatic irony is a mark by which he may be dis-
tinguished from many of his contemporaries, and most
of all from Fletcher. And a certain tendency to fatalism,
which we should perhaps be justified in ascribing to

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him * would not be unfavourable to the development of
this power, by its suggestions of " the contrast between
man with his hopes, fears, wishes, and undertakings, and
a dark, inflexible fate." t

Closely connected with the subject just discussed is
the observance by our author of the essential rule of
unity of action. Many of the contemporary dramatists
are justly charged with failure to observe the due
measure which art requires, and to lay upon their some-
what chaotic materials the law which distinguishes a
work of art from a confused and tumultuous assemblage
of characters and piling together of incidents. We are
speaking of no mechanical unities, in which, as Dryden
observes, Fletcher and Shakspere are "both deficient,
but Shakspeare most/' The unity which is required to
constitute the work of art will be attained by the artist
instinctively and without the help of the critic. But the
so-called romantic drama of Shakspere and his contem-
poraries has dangers in this direction from which the
comparative simplicity of the Greek preserved it. As
is observed by a brilliant French critic, "Neither in

* PJiilastery i. 2 : —

" But spend not hasty time
In seeking how I came thus ; 'tis the gods,
The gods, that make me so ; "

and ii. 3 :—

" If Destiny (to whom we dare not say,
Why didst thou this ?) have not decreed it so
In lasting leaves (whose smallest characters
Were never altered), yet this match shall break."

t ThirlwaXCs Remains^ vol. iii. p. 2.

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114 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Greece, nor Italy, nor Spain, nor France has an art been
seen which tried so fully to express the soul, with the
soul's most intimate relations — ^the truth, and the whole
truth. How," he continues, "'did they succeed, and
what is this new art which confounds all ordinary rules ?
It is an art for all that, since it is natural ; a great art,
since it embraces more things and that more deeply
than others do, like the art of Rembrandt and Rubens ;
but like the art of Rembrandt and Rubens, it is a
Teutonic art, and one whose every step is in contrast
with those of classical art What the Greeks and
Romans, the originators of the latter, sought in every-
thing was propriety and order. Monuments, statues,
and paintings, the theatre, eloquence, and poetry, from
Sophocles to Racine, they shaped all their work in the
same mould, and attained beauty by the same method.
In the infinite entanglement and complexity of things,
they grasped a small number of simple ideas, which they
embrace in a small number of simple representations, so
that the vast confused vegetation of life is presented to
the mind from that time forth, pruned and reduced and
perhaps easily embraced by a single glance. ... In the
hands of Frenchmen, the last inheritors of the simple
art, these great legacies of antiquity undergo no change.
. . . Racine puts on the stage a single action, whose
details he proportions and whose course he regulates ;
no incident, nothing unforeseen, no appendices, or incon-
gruities, no secondary intrigue. ... In England all is
different : all that the French call proportion and fitness
is wanting. Englishmen do not trouble themselves about

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 115

them, they do not need them. There is no unity : they
leap suddenly over twenty years, or five hundred leagues.
There are twenty scenes in. an act — ^we stumble without
preparation from one to the other, from tragedy to
buffoonery; usually it appears as though the action
gained no ground ; the characters waste their time in
conversation, dreaming, expanding their parts. , , . And
the disorder is as great in general as in particular things.
They heap a whole reign, a complete war, an entire'
novel, into a drama ; they cut up into scenes an English
chronicle or an Italian novel : to this their art is
reduced ; the events matter little ; whatever they are
they accept them. They have no idea of progressive
and single action. Two or three actions connected
endwise or entangled one with another; two or three
incomplete endings badly contrived and opened up
again ; no machinery but death, scattered right and
left, and unforeseen ; such is the logic of their method." *
Such is the English drama as it appears to the classicist,
and it must be admitted that there is not a little truth
in the description. But, with all deference to the critic,
it must be observed that art is not art merely because
it is natural, and that if Shakspere has art, it must be
because his works have unity of their own in spite of the
•confusion which is so bewildering to the Latin mind.
To exhibit the laws of this unity in diversity is a task
which may reasonably be expected from the Teutonic
•genius to which the art belongs, and no one needs to be

* Taine, History of English Literature^ vol. L p. 246. Van Laun's
^anslation (corrected).

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Ii6 FRANCIS BEAUMONT,

reminded of Goethe's fruitful analysis which, while
dealing with one play only, suggested the manner in
which the principle of "Unity of Action" should be
applied to the whole romantic drama.

It is certain however that to this principle only the
highest artists have fully conformed. It was the practice
on the English and Spanish stage to use two stories — or^
at least, two sets of characters — in each play, and it was
Aot every dramatist who had the mastery of his craft
which was needed to make all incidents and characters
subordinate to a single end. Where the unity existed it
was too often produced as it were forcibly and by
mechanic rule. This is the impression made upon us by
Jonson's skilfully constructed comedies ; but such unity
as we find in As You Like it and Twelfth Nighty not to
mention Hamlet or Lear^ springs from the very artistic
instinct itself

We have hinted and maintain that, so far as regards
construction, Beaumont would endure the same treatment
which has been dealt out to Shakspere by Germans —
a statement which can only be verified or refuted by
trial. But before making the proof, it is perhaps neces-
sary to say something about his moral tendencies. It is
unfashionable no doubt to suppose that artists have moral
aims, and to regard works of art from an ethical stand-
point. But moral tendencies they must have, whether
desigtied or no, and it is legitimate, at least in the case
of the drama, to inquire with regard to each author
what the moral tendency actually is. The answer to
such questions, so far as our author is concerned, has

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 1 17

been rendered more difficult by the inextricable tangle
in which he has been hitherto involved with another who
stands on an entirely different level in this respect ; and
he has suffered also from the reproach which falls on all
who fearlessly present human nature as it is, showing
its strength always mingled with weakness and its virtue
with vice, nowhere exhibiting ideal purity and perfec-
tion. To some of the charges which are indiscriminately
levelled by Coleridge and others at the double person-
ality called " Beaumont and Fletcher," the latter alone
ought to plead guilty. To him belong Lucina and the
rest, who " value their chastity as a material thing — not
as an act and state [of being." * Female chastity is
hy Beaumont represented under more attractive forms :
Arethusa, Aspatia, Viola, these are among the most
beautiful and attractive of female characters, womanly
as well as chaste. But as to the charge brought equally
against both poets, of setting passion and impulse in
the place of moral principle and reason, it is one which
has been brought against almost every delineator
of human nature, from Shakspere to George Eliot,
from Moli^re to Balzac Listen for a moment to the
lively French critic from whom we have lately quoted, on
the morality of Shakspere : " His n;iaster-faculty is im-
passioned imagination, free from the fetters of reason
and morality." t "Reason tells us that our manners

* Coleridge, Uterary Remains. So far does he regard them as in-
separable, that he speaks of our three great tragedians, Shakspere, Beaumont
and Fletcher, and Massinger.

t Taine, History of English Literature^ vol, L p. 311. Van lAun's
itranslation.

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Ii8 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

should be measured ; this is why the manners whicfe
Shakspeare paints are not so." * " Ophelia becomes mad^
Juliet commits suicide ; no one but looks upon such mad.-
ness and death as necessary* You will not then discover
virtue in these souls, for by virtue is implied a con^
scientious desire to do good, a rational observance oT
duty. They are only pure through delicacy and love.
They recoil from vice as a gross thing, not as an imn
moral thing. What they feel is not respect for the
marriage vow but adoration of their husband. . • - If in
fact Shakspeare comes across a heroic character, worthy
of Comeille, a Roman, such as the mother of Coriolanus,
he will explain by passion what Corneille would have
explained by heroism." t " If Racine or Corneille had'
framed a psychology, they would have said with Des-
cartes : Man is an incorporeal soul, served by organs,
endowed with reason and will, living in palaces or
porticoes, made for conversation and society, whose har-
monious and ideal action is developed by discourse and
replies, in a world constructed by logic beyond the
realms of time and space. If Shakspeare had framed a
psychology, he would have said with Esquirol : Man is
a nervous machine, governed by a mood, disposed to
hallucinations, transported by unbridled passions, es-
sentially unreasoning, a mixture of animal and poet,
having fancy instead of mind, and emotion instead
of virtue, with imagination for prompter and guide,
and led at random, by the most determined and

♦ Taine, History of English Literature j vol. i., p. 312.
t Ibid., p. 328.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 119

complex circumstances, to pain, crime, madness, and
death."*

No one will deny that there is some truth in this
estimate, though it overlooks the intellectual element in
Shakspere's creations. But while granting, as of right,
to Shakspere the sovereignty over the whole field of
human nature, intellect and passion alike, we are not
therefore to reject utterly the art of his less gifted
fellows, which represents the same human nature within
narrower limits ; and, remembering how rare are Hamlets
in real life, we shall perhaps be inclined to think that
the less comprehensive view may nevertheless be in its
own sphere no very untrue or degraded representation ;
that, in short, man is for the most part under the in-
fluence of passion, even when he seems to himself and
to others to be for the time guided by reason, and that
when he does right it is more often by following his half-
rational impulses of various kinds than from the highest
and purest sense of duty.

Nor does this necessarily imply an immoral tendency
in the works of these authors. Shakspere's morality
is sound, not because his characters reason about the
principles of action, nor because a moral is drawn from
the contemplation of society by wearied libertines like
Jaques or ruined spendthrifts like Timon, but because
moral truth is kept before the mind of his reader, even
where poetical justice is not rendered to his characters :
the final impression produced is favourable and strongly
favourable to the moral law : we are seldom allowed to

• Taine, History of English Literature <, vol. i. p. 340. (In this passage
Van Laun*s translation has been necessarily much altered.)

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I20 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

lose sight of the great distinctions of right and wrong,
though the noble-natured Othello and the devilish lago,
the over-conscientious Hamlet and the adulterous assassin
Claudius be involved together in the same material ruin.
There is no tampering with the foundations of morality,
no perplexing of the boundaries of virtue and vice.

Can the same be said of his contemporaries? Of
Jonson, yes. Of Fletcher, no. Of Beaumont, on the
whole, yes. The exception in the latter case does not
consist in any grossness or licentiousness of expression,
from this none are free, but chiefly in the d^noiUment of
a single drama, where, for the sake of making the con-
clusion happy, he has marred with a grave artistic
and moral defect what is otherwise perhaps the most
powerful of his works. It is an error committed by
Shakspere himself in a lower degree, where in Measure
for Measure the deputy Angelo iS forgiven for his atro-
cious design, because by accident he has failed to do
what he thinks he has done ; and that most tragic drama
becomes a comedy after all. It is as if, in Othello^ Des-
demona had been but half strangled and had revived to
live happily with her husband to the end of their days ;
it is such a mangling of the design as Charles II. is said
to have required of his poet-laureate, before The Maid*s
Tragedy could be endured by the courtly morality of
the time. For the most part we may say that Beau-
mont's morality is as sound in essentials as Shakspere's.
It is natural, however, that the popular suspicion of im-
morality should concentrate itself upon " Beaumont and
Fletcher." [Shakspere repels the charge by essential

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 121

healthiness of sentiment combined with true spiritual
depth ; Jonson, even when at his coarsest, ostentatiously
parades a moral purpose ; and of the rest, " Beaumont
and Fletcher " is the most obvious representative name.
Moreover, as has been already stated, the suspicion is not
undeserved if the names be taken in this undistinguishable
combination. The impurity which deforms Fletcher's
graceful pastoral was, it may be feared, more deeply rooted
in his nature than any artistic ideal, and went far beyond
mere indecency of expression. The age was outspoken
on subjects about which we are reticent ; accordingly, a
line must be carefully drawn between what is actually
vicious, and what is merely, by the standard of our ideas
of refinement, coarse. The frank indecency which ex-
presses everything, and leaves nothing to the imagina-
tion, is generally less dangerous to morality than the
prurient suggestiveness which veils real grossness under
a fair external covering. To the former category belongs
the indecency of Shakspere : " In this age and on this
stage," says M. Taine, " decency was a thing unknown.
^ . . Shakspeare's words are too indecent to be trans-
lated. . . . The talk of ladies and gentlemen is full of
coarse allusions ; we should have to find out an alehouse
of the lowest description to hear the like words nowa-
days." * True enough, no doubt, but how much of this
coarseness is of such a kind as to corrupt one who is not
already corrupted ? Fletcher, on the other hand, while
sharing in the common indecency of expression, too
often suggests impure ideas in refined phrase, and is in

* History of English Literature^ vol. i. p. 313. Van Laun's translation.

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122 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

this respect, as in many others, the precursor of th^
really immoral comedy of the Restoration, to which
is owing so much of the prejudice which still in this
country attaches to the stage. But while we acquit the
younger and graver partner of the more serious charge,
yet we must admit also that in the plays produced by
the authors in common, for the construction of which
we hold him mainly responsible, there too often occurs
something essential to the plot, and not merely incidental
in the dialogue, which justly offends a refined delicacy.
Examples of this are afforded by the relations of Evadne
and Amintor in The Maid's Tragedy^ the incestuous
passion of Arbaces in A King and No Kingy and the love
of Leontius and Bacha in Cupid's Revenge, The situa-
tions are exceptional and unpleasant, and therefore
should have been instinctively avoided. The fact that
Shakspere hardly affords more than a single example of
this fault is certainly remarkable, and may be ascribed
partly to the delicacy of his artistic perception, but still
more to the width of the field over which he ranged,
rendering it unnecessary to create the sensations of
novelty by refining upon the emotion represented. In-
ferior writers, who harp too often upon a single string of
that instrument upon which Shakspere plays at will, are
apt in their strivings for variety to develop " le goiit de
Texception," which a French critic notes as a character-
istic of the modern drama, in contravention of the first
condition of dramatic emotion, " that the passions should
be true " — that is, common to humanity* And the emo-
tion of love, which is the principal theme of our authors^

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 123

can least of all endure to be treated thus without offence
to the delicate sensibility.

These various considerations, taken either separately
or together, will account both for the popular prejudice
and for the animadversions of critics. It is remarked
for example by William Hazlitt, that Beaumont and
Fletcher are apt to present us with " weakness of moral
constitution struggling with wilful and violent situations,"
that they " fondly and gratuitously cast the seeds of
crime into forbidden ground, to see how they will shoot
up and vegetate with luxuriance. They are not safe
teachers of morality : they tamper with it like an experi-
ment tried in corpore vili, and seem to regard the decom-
position of the common affections and the dissolution of
the strict bonds of society as an agreeable and careless
pastime." * This is evidently intended for censure, yet
fault is not found with Shakspere because in Hamlet he
has shown us a weak moral constitution struggling with
the violent situation into which it is thrown by the mere
will of the poet And the words " casting the seeds of
crime," and watching them " shoot up and vegetate with
luxuriance," seem to describe the workings of the imagi-
nation in every maker of tragedy from ^Eschylus down-
wards. Indeed, the luxuriant vegetation of crime is
almost a necessary condition of its tragic catastrophe ;
and the critic in his attack upon Beaumont and Fletcher
has clearly mistaken an offence against delicacy for an
offence against morality.

But it must not be supposed that their treatment of

* Lectures on the Elizabethan Dramatists.

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124 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

love is always thus offensive. Among the most pleasing
characteristics of Beaumont ought to be mentioned a
strong sense of the romance of lovers in its everyday
aspect, and apart from the tragic intensities of the loftiest
dramatic invention. We find in his lesser works domestic
idylls of such sweetness and beauty, that they are of
themselves sufficient, without mention of the highest
productions of his genius, to refute the charge brought
against him in combination with his partner, of pene-
trating no deeper than the fashion, of seeing nothing but
the superficial manners of men and women. His Viola
and his Violante are not indeed heroines, but they are
charming creatures, with all the woman's self-sacrificing
affection, and the maiden's purity of thought and feeling,
though one of them is indeed no maid ; while both
Ricardo and Gerrard are justly objects of our sympathy,
though the first has offended once in the madness of
drink, and the second has formally sinned against the
law of chastity. The interest in both cases is chiefly
of the idyllic kind : there is true pathos in the timidity of
Viola leaving her father's house to meet her lover ; in her
terror at his drunkenness and wild companions, and her
vain cries for admission to the house of her father's friend,
where she appears but as a piteous voice, easily repulsed
by a few rough words ; and finally in the gentleness of
her behaviour to the farmer's scolding wife her mistress,
though this last scene belongs rather to Fletcher, to
whom we have attributed also the admirable characteri-
zation of the vagabond tinker with his trull, and of the
milkmaids who take the unfortunate Viola home. Of

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 125

the other play, it may fairly be said that there is hardly
a prettier domestic scene in the English drama than the
conversation of Violante and her mother after the birth
of the child, which is quoted in Lamb's Specimens of the^
Dramatists,

^^VioL Mother, — I'd not offend you, — might not Gerrard
Steal in, and see me in the evening ?

Ang. WeU;

Bid him do so.

VioL Heaven's blessing o' your heart I —

Do you not call child-bearing travel^ mother ?

Ang. Yes.

VioL It well may be : the barefoot traveller

That's born a prince, and walks his pilgrimage,
Whose tender feet kiss the remorseless stones
Only, ne'er felt a travel like to it.
Alas, dear mother, you groaned thus for me ;
And yet how disobedient have I been !

Ang, Peace, Violante ; thou hast always been
Gentle and good.

Viol, Gerrard is better, mother :

Oh, if you knew the implicit innocency
Dwells in his breast, you'd love him like your prayers !
I see no reason but my father might
Be told the truth, being pleased for Ferdinand
To woo himself ; and Gerrard ever was
His full comparative : my uncle loves him
As he loves Ferdinand.

Ang, No, not for the world ! . . .

Viol. As you please, mother. I am now, methinks,.
Even in the land of ease ; I'll sleep.

Ang, Draw in

The bed nearer the fire. — Silken rest
Tie all thy cares up ! " ♦

Another type of female character which belongs
especially to Beaumont is that of the unhappy victim
* Four Plays in One : Triumph of Lave, scene iii.

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126 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

of unrequited love. Upon such he has expended some
of his loveliest verse. Euphrasia and Aspatia have this
in common with one another, that they find pretty and
fantastic ways of expressing their griefs and desires ;
their minds are not absolutely unhinged by their situa-
tion, but in a sense they may be said to **walk dis-
tracted." Quaint and picturesque imaginings occur to
them, and poetical language flows naturally from their
lips. While the one sits by the fountain side and
wreathes her garland in the mystic order which expresses
her sorrow, the other, when she sees a bank of flowers,
tells with a sigh what a pretty place it were to bury
lovers in, and bids her maidens pluck the flowers and
strew them over her body like a corse. The grief which
feeds itself by such ingenious torments must soon bring
the mind to madness or near it ; and this fanciful mood
of artificial sorrow, combined as it is in each case with
the masquerading in male attire, marks a mind shaken
though not overthrown ; the imagination is perfectly
sweet and pure still ; there is nothing of that drawing
aside of the veil of maiden modesty which so naturally
marks the real madness of Ophelia, and increases our
pity while it diminishes our respect ; the type, however,
is almost necessarily morbid in proportion as the situa-
tion is strained and unnatural, and if Euphrasia is saner
than Aspatia, it is chiefly because the former can satisfy
her affections in some degree by serving the object of
them, while the latter is left to indulge her imagination
in a hopeless desertion, and can see in herself only an
Ariadne with no consoling deity to make the wild island
less desolate.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT, 127

VI.

It is proposed to illustrate what has been said by
examination of three representative works, in each of
which our author had undoubtedly the principal share
-—a tragedy, a tragicomedy (so-called),* and a burlesque
— that so we may present him as far as possible in his
living personality, apart from questions of divided
authorship and discussion of literary characteristics.

The MaicPs Tragedy is probably better known to
the public than any other of the plays which pass under
the names Beaumont and Fletcher, for in some form it
still occasionally appears upon the stage, and indeed it
could hardly have been otherwise with a drama of such
remarkable acting merits. There is probably no tragedy
in the English language with equal capability for stage

* The term "tragicomedy" is used to designate many of the plays of
Beaumont and Fletcher, and Fletcher adopted for his Faithful Shepherdess
the name of " pastoral tragicomedy," reminding the reader in the preface
to the printed edition that **a tragicomedy is not so called in respect of
mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make
it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no
comedy, which must be a representation of familiar people, with such kind
of trouble as no life be questioned ; so that a god is as lawful in this as in
a tragedy, and mean people as in a comedy. Thus much I hope will serve
to justify my poem, and make you understand it ; to teach you more for
nothing, I do not know that I am in conscience bound."

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128 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

effects, or presenting at the same time situations so for-
cible and characters so easily rendered. Its inevitable
popularity has exposed it to the depreciation of the
more fastidious critics, amongst whom are William
Hazlitt and W. B. Donne. The former expresses his
censure, as might be expected, in the most extravagant
terms, and (among other things) condemns the plot as
grossly absurd and improbable. His questions : Why
does the king marry Evadne to any one ? why to Amin^
tor? are answered sufficiently in the play, but might
equally, though more prosaically, be answered by quo-
tation from the too realistic drama of the next age,*
which proves that such an incident was not so grossly
improbable but that it sometimes in real life occurred,
though doubtless the added injunction of fidelity to the
first lover belongs rather to the earlier period, which by
a coincidence that is sufficiently startling supplies a his-
torical parallel even to this part of the story.

Almost in the very same year f in which The Maid's
Tragedy was produced, a young girl, not more than
eighteen years old, a daughter of the proudest family of
the English nobility, formed the resolve so to live with
the husband to whom she was about to be married that
she might boast herself married to him only in name, and
reserve herself untainted by his embraces for a lover
who, worthless profligate as he was, had risen under his
contemptible sovereign to the highest place to which a.
subject could aspire. This resolution she actually carried

* e.g, Congreve, Way oftlu Worlds ii. 4.
t i,e, about the beginning of 1610.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 129

out, by the assistance of the vile instruments whom she
employed, for three years. " My father and mother are
angpry " (she wrote to one of these wretched accomplices),
"but I had rather die a thousand times over [than yield] ;
for besides the sufferings, I should lose his love." And
finally she succeeded in obtaining a decree which pro-
nounced her marriage with this husband null and void,
and married the lover to whom she had so disgracefully
attached herself. The first marriage had not indeed
been devised as a cloak for the intrigue, nor does the
intention seem to have been avowed with the unblushing
boldness which belongs to Evadne, but the feeling and
behaviour of the wife towards the husband must have
been in all essentials the same as in the play. Such is
the miserable story of Frances Howard, Countess of
Essex and then of Somerset, as it is obscurely but suf-
ficiently indicated in the records of State Trials, and in
the letters of contemporaries ; though the scandalous
tale would have been buried in silence so far at least as
posterity was concerned, if the unhallowed object had
not been attained by murder as well as by desecration
of the marriage bond. The historical criminal has in-
deed far less claim to our sympathy and interest, for
Evadne slew boldly and as performing an act of peni-
tence and vengeance, while the woman who played so
fearful a part in the tragedy of real life, descended to
the mean arts of the poisoner to gain her guilty ends,
and shed no tears of repentance until the shame of ex-
posure and the sentence of the law wrung them at length
from her eyes.

K

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i

130 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

This tale of vulgar crime is told from no idle
curiosity in remarking coincidences, though the coin-
cidence is remarkable enough ; nor simply to vindicate
the plot of TAe MaicTs Tragedy from the charge of gross
improbability — for on this it was hardly necessary to
bestow much pains, and to prove that a thing has
actually occurred is not the same thing as to prove that
it is natural in a dramatic sense : but rather as a sugges-
tion of the subtle links which may generally be found
between the real life of any age and its dramatic litera-
ture, consisting not so much of direct references (such
reference in this case at least is impossible), or vulgar
realism which is the vice of an unpoetical age, as in the
delicate harmonies of tone and manner which subsist
between the living dramatist and the living generation
to whom he spoke, who found such incidents incredible
neither within the walls of the theatre nor without them,
and to whom some of these plays must have given an
impression of living reality which in times of more
modestly veiled passion and more carefully cloaked
crime must almost necessarily be absent* And it has
been well observed of this period by one who was a
great dramatist though not in plays, that "the strong
contrast produced by the opposition of ancient manners
to those which are gradually subduing them, affords the
lights and shadows necessary to give effect to a fictitious
narrative ; and while such a period entitles the author

♦ The story of the alteration of this particular drama in order that its
conclusion might be more tolerable to the court of Charles II, is a further
illustration of this remark.

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j FRANCIS BEAUMONT. I3t

^^j to introduce incidents of a marvellous and improbable
" character, as arising out of the turbulent independence
*^ and ferocity belonging to old habits of violence, still
'-• influencing the manners of a people who had been so
t^ ktely in a barbarous state ; yet, on the other hand, the
^^ characters and sentiments of many of the actors may
'■ with the utmost probability be described with great
' variety of shading and delineation, which belongs to the
^ newer and more improved period of which the world
'^ has but lately received the light, The reign of James I.
- of England possessed this advantage in a peculiar
^ degree." * And although these remarks were not intended
^^ by the author to apply to the extraordinary develop-
^ ment of the drama at that period, but merely to justify
^ himself in his choice of time and place for a fictitious
^ narrative, yet they contain as near an approach to solu-
\ tion of some of the problems suggested by that develop-
^ ment as we are at present likely to reach. And if in
^ this case the deed upon which the plot turns is revolting,
^ both by the profligate selfishness of its design and by
the frontless impudence of its execution, it is not there-
* fore necessarily unfit for the purpose of the dramatist

The plot is, with one trifling exception, a model of
•^ simplicity. Each incident develops itself naturally out
of the preceding circumstances ; there is no secondary
intrigue, and the moral bearings are at no point uncer-
tain. A rapid outline will recall the main sequence of
events.

Amintor, betrothed to Aspatia, deserts her and
* Scott, Introduction to The Fortunes of NigeL

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132 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

marries Evadne at the king's command. She shame-
lessly avows upon the marriage night that she is the
mistress of the king, and will stoop no lower than the
highest She has been married only that she may have
one " to father children, and to bear the name of hus-
band." Amintor's first impulse to revenge is checked by
the sacred name oiKing, which for him has superstitious
terrors, and he asks only the secrecy by which his repu-
tation may be saved, while declaring that not the king's
crown shall buy him now to Evadne's bed. Melantius,
Evadne's brother and Amintor's friend, perceives his sad-
ness and newly put-on reserve, and having by reproaches
extorted the cause, is at first disposed to quarrel with
the supposed defamer of his sister's name, and then puts
back his sword with the thought that —

" The name of Friend is more than family,
Or all the world besides,"

and endeavours to enlist Amintor in a scheme for
revenge. But Amintor's scruples will not allow him to
participate in any such design, and Melantius has recourse
to other and more fit helpers. In an interview with his
sister he terrifies her into a wild repentance, and forces
her to swear to take revenge upon the king when called
upon by himself, and to keep secret the design from
Amintor, to whom however she manifests her repent-
ance, entreating his pardon, which he grants, though he
will never receive her to his embraces. Summoned by
the king to his chamber, Evadne resolutely consummates
her vengeance, rushes with hands yet bloody to Amintor,

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5:^B5

FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 133

to lay before him the sacrifice which she imagines will
wipe off her dishonour ; then finding that this is no way
to Amintor's love, she kills herself in his presence with
the same weapon with which she has slain the king.
The deserted Aspatia, whose wrongs ever disquiet the
conscience of Amintor, had meanwhile come in disguise
to provoke her death at his hand and dying makes her-
self known and receives his confession of love. Amintor
cannot remain in life when she is gone, and Melantius,
who by his skilfully concerted measures has forced the
new king into treaty with himself, arrives only in time to
receive into his bosom the departing soul of his friend.

The single exception to the general simplicity of the
plot is the manner of Aspatia's reappearance in the fifth
act, where, disguised as her own brother, she comes to
demand satisfaction of Amintor for the injuries she has
suffered at his hands. It may be true that the incident
is "artfully prepared" by the casual mention of this
brother and of their resemblance to one another, in the
first act,* but it cannot be said that the incident itself
is a natural one where it occurs, though some allowance
may be made for the necessity of combining Aspatia
and Amintor in the final catastrophe.

Because of the subordinate part played by Aspatia,
the name of the drama has been criticised as unsuitable.
But apart from the fact that the names of contemporary

* The mention in the same scene of the lady whom Melantius biings
with him is much more adapted to raise expectations, which however are
in no way fulfilled ; and the purpose of the rather marked introduction of
this character is by no means evident.

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134 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

plays often give little insight into their contents,* there is
in this case a perpetual undercurrent of reference to the
sorrows of the deserted maid, and to the injury inflicted
on her by Amintor, whence springs all the tragic com-
plication, which can only be loosed by the death of him
who has inflicted, and of her who has suffered the wrong.
A deeper meaning need not be suspected, though there
is indeed within this Maiden's Tragedy another of a more
terrible kind, which has as much claim to be regarded as
the central point of interest : —

" I was once fair.
Once I was lovely ; not a blowing rose
More chastely sweet, till thou, thou, thou foul canker,
(Stir not) didst poison me. I was a world of virtue.
Till your curst court and you (Hell bless you for it !),
With your temptations on temptations,
Made me give up mine honour."

Whether it was the intention of the author to convey
this suggestion also in the title of the play is a question
of small moment : t there is no doubt that the sugges-
tion is conveyed, and that the tragedies of Aspatia and
Evadne are inextricably knit together, not by external
circumstances alone, but by the closer entanglements
of artistic comparison and contrast Between the two
stands Amintor, who, if not the most interesting, is at
least the central figure of the play : and for this position

♦ As You Like II, Twelfth Ntght^ Every Man in his Humour, The
Chances^ etc.

+ Dyce suggests that the title was intended to refer to Evadne alone,
quoting from the Accounts of the Revels at Court the following entry i
** Shroue Teuesday : A play called the proud Maycts Tragedie,^^

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 135

his character is not ill suited, for he strongly engages
our sympathy, and makes shipwreck of his life through
weakness rather than crime. It is strange that the
opinion should be so often repeated which was expressed
first by Coleridge or Hazlitt, that Beaumont and Fletcher
were " servile jure divino royalists," in illustration of
which Coleridge, in his notes on Valentiniatiy remarks
upon the arrogance of their tyrants and the reptile
sentiments put into the mouth of their courtiers. It
is possible indeed that they may have had political
opinions, and it was natural to play-writers and play-
actors to be at least anti-puritan ; moreover it is true
that Arbaces is arrogance itself, and that Aecius in
Vcdentiniatiy and Amintor in The Maids Tragedy^ express
in an extreme form the doctrine of passive obedience ;
and it is upon these instances that the opinion of Cole-
ridge seems to be founded. But the opinion is derived
from very superficial observation. Surely if these
authors were such devoted royalists, and aimed so con-
stantly at exhibiting their loyalty on the stage, it is
strange and even unaccountable that so few sovereigns
are represented in their plays as a sovereign would desire
to be represented, and that so many are set up as objects
of contempt and hatred. Valentinian is a lustful and
bloodstained tyrant, RoUo is a treacherous murderer,
Ferrand is a monster of cruelty and a torturer of women,
the king in The Maids Tragedy is a heartless profligate ;
and all these perish miserably by the hands of those
whom they have injured. Arbaces is a slave to his
worst passions, and is only saved from crime by a dis-

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136 FRANCIS BEAUMONT,

covery which deprives him of his crown ; the king in
Philaster is a feeble coward, and Prince Pharamond is
drawn in the most unflattering colours ; the duke (or
king) in Cupid's Revenge is a contemptible fool and cox-
comb ; Antigonus, in The Humorotis Lieutenant^ is an
" old man with young desires ; " and neither Thierry nor
Theodoret can be envied in their lot. The arrogance of
these tyrants is usually the pride which goes before a
fall, and the loyal sentiments of an Amintor or an Aecius
serve as foil to the opposite feelings of a Melantius or a
Maximus. A survey of this kind may perhaps come
near to make us think that, at least in the earlier part of
their career and before the time when Fletcher became
a court poet, the vices of kings and the punishments
which followed were their favourite subjects of contem-
plation. The formal moral of Philaster is —

** Let princes learn
By this to rule the passions of their blood ;
For what Heaven wills can never be withstood."

and that of The Maid's Tragedy is set to the same
tune : —

" For on lustful kings
Unlooked-for sudden deaths from Heaven are sent ;
But cursed is he that is their instrument."

The last line, indeed, may seem to modify the effect of
the former, but it is not necessary to consecrate assassi-
nation in order to be thought no servile loyalist It is
certain that these poets were looked upon by the suc-
ceeding age as no safe teachers of submission. Incredible
as it may seem to those who regard them as " servile
jure divino royalists," it is nevertheless true that they

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 137

were taken to task by Dryden for their defect in this
direction. After observing that neither Arbaces nor the
king in The Maid's Tragedy has the virtues proper to
royalty, though the latter at least seems to be a lawful
prince (an admission which is qualified by the historical
doubt whether there was ever any king in Rhodes), he
proceeds, "Nor is Valentinian managed much better,
and though Fletcher has taken his picture truly and
drawn him as he was, an effeminate voluptuous man,
yet he has forgotten that he was an emperor, and has
given him none of those royal marks which ought to
appear in a lawful successor of the throne." * Certainly
sovereigns have much less reason to be obliged to Beau-
mont and Fletcher in this respect than to Shakspere.

The purpose of this digression is indicated by the
lines quoted above from the drama with which we are
concerned. Those lines express the moral which lies
upon the surface, but the interest is really concentrated
upon the opposition between the claims of loyalty and
the obligations of common morality. The superstitious
loyalty of Amintor is the amiable weakness which leads
him first to break troth, and then to connive at his own
dishonour ; and so far does it lead him, that when at the

* Introduction to Troilus and Cressida, The principle is thus stated
by Rymer : ** We are to presume the highest virtues where we find the
highest of rewards ; and though it is not necessary that all heroes should
be kings, yet undoubtedly all crowned heads by poetical right are heroes.
This character is a flower, a prerogative so certain, so inseparably annexed
to the crdwn, as by no poet, no parliament of poets, ever to be invaded."
iTragedies of the Last Age, etc, p. 61 : quoted by Scott on the passage of
Dryden), But this prerogative seems, according to Dryden, not to belong
to all crowned heads, but only to legitimate sovereigns.

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138 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

last he stands alone, and feels his earth, as it were, quak-
ing under his feet, we are conscious that for the man
who was too weak to keep his pure vows to Aspatia,
and yet too conscientious to accept the bloodstained
offering of Evadne, nothing remains but to follow those
who call him after them, and to dispossess his soul of
the house of which she grows weary.

Yet the man who is overtaken by this cureless ruin
has in him almost all the qualities which are fit to engage
our sympathy : —

" His worth is great ; valiant he is, and temperate ;
And one that never thinks his life his own,
If his friend need it." (i. I.)

And there must certainly have been a rare power of
fascination in the personality of him* for whom the
deserted maid so inconsolably sorrowed; whose white-
souled innocence could move the repentant Evadne to
so wild a longing for his forgiveness and favour; and
finally with whom, notwithstanding defect of years, the
brave Melantius was wont to change his soul in talk, to
whom he would have confessed his secret sins. Yet he
is sufficiently proved to be a fit person for dishonour by
the too ready consent to leave her who has his promise
and his love, at the mere command of a king, and to
accept instead of her a bride of the royal choosing.
Here is the test of his worth, the touchstone by which
his character is tried. The man who, because the king
commands, will give up his betrothed bride and marry
another in her stead, has thereby proved himself either
an apt instrument or an unresisting victim of tyranny.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 139

He hesitates indeed, and is conscience-stricken after a
fashion, even suspecting for a moment that the king has
not, after all, his subjects' willm keeping : but —

" I only brake a promise,
And 'twas the King enforced me," —

that is the balm for his wounded honour ; and when
he reflects on his over-sensitive conscience, it is not to
qualify the obligation of loyalty, but to excuse the guilt
of broken vows, — strange combination of self-knowledge
and self-deception* The punishment is terribly appro-
priate to the crime : the man who has sacrificed to the
royal will his plighted troth, finds a bride who on the
same altar has sacrificed her own virtue and his happi-
ness, not indeed from any over-scrupulous loyalty, but
none the less from regard to the place and not the
person : —

" I love with my ambition,
Not with my eyes."

And when he would make a violent way to revenge, he
is again checked by the name which caused him first to
sin : —

** In that sacred word,
' The King,' there lies a terror : What frdl man
Dares lift his hand against it ? Let the gods
Speak to him when they please ; till when, let us
Suffer and wait."

And he suffers accordingly, not the wrongs only, but
insulting questions and threats, to which he can reply
only with the passionate demand —

"Why did you choose out me
To make thus wretched ? there were a thousand fools
Easy to work on, and of state enough."

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I40 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Alas, the answer is too clear, that he has chosen out
himself to suffer this dishonour, by not scrupling at the
act of dishonour which was first demanded of him ; but
he is allowed to think for a time that he suffers for his
virtues rather : —

" You might have ta'en
Another.

King. No, for I believe thee honest,
As thou wert valiant.

Amin, All the happiness

Bestowed upon me turns into disgrace.
Gods, take your honesty again, for I
Am loaden with it" (iii. I.)

His own honesty has become a burden to him, and he
has been brought already to doubt whether there is any
such thing in other men : —

** I wonder much, Melantius,
To see those noble looks, that make me think
How virtuous thou art : and, on the sudden,
'Tis strange to me thou shouldst have worth and honour,
Or not be base, and false, and treacherous," (iii. I.)

He has come to "that dull calamity," "that strange
misbelief of all the world," that he half suspects that all
husbands are like himself, that every one he talks with—

" Is but a well dissembler of his woes.
As I am."

Of such misbelief concealment was the natural parent,
and he might have gone down to his grave bearing
about with him that blighting secret, but for one
influence which the tyrant and his paramour had not
taken into their account They had reckoned with the
character of Amintor, and their estimate had been
justified by the event ; but they had not reckoned with

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 141

the power of friendship, and on that rock they split.
The name of friend is for Amintor too powerful a word
to be resisted, and it is by this word that Melantius
conjures forth the fatal secret, which once given can
be won back neither by entreaties nor threats : —

** Thou hast wrought
A secret from me, under name of friend.
Which art could ne'er have found, nor torture wrung
From out my bosom. Give it me again ;
For I will find it, wheresoever it lies.
Hid in the mortal'st part : invent a way
To give it back.

Mel. Why would you have it back ?
I will to death pursue him with revenge.

Amin, Therefore I call it back from thee ; for I know
Thy blood so high, that thou wilt stir in this.
And shame me to posterity." (iii. 2.)

The secret cannot be given back, but Amintor may be
soothed and sent away smiling " to counterfeit again,"
nothing knowing or suspecting of the manner in which
his friend means to right himself, and to take revenge
for both. Such deeds may be entrusted to Evadne, but
not to Amintor, even when the rage for revenge seizes
him also and bears away with a rush his too scrupulous
loyalty. Nothing more strongly marks the essential
nobleness, and at the same time the characteristic weak-
ness of Amintor, than the scene in which he is at this
point played upon with the word which paralyzed his
hand before, by the friend who fears only to have his.
own cooler design overthrown by madness : —

"Amintor,
Think what thou dost : I dare as much as valour :
But 'tis the King, the King, the King, Amintor,
With whom thou fightest." (iv. I.)

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142 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

The sword is charmed in an instant from his hand, and
he is full of remorse for the imagined sin.

Not till the end is he thoroughly awakened from
reproaches against those who have wronged him, and
disbelief in human virtue and happiness, to a deep
sense of his own fault ; and he exclaims to the disguised
Aspatia —

" Leave me, for there is something in thy looks,
That calls my sins in a most hideous form
Into my mind 5 " (v. 4.)

When at last he stands between the dying and the dead,
his words move pity and terror, no longer contempt or
impatience : —

"This earth of mine doth tremble, and I feel
A stark affrighted motion in my blood ;
My soul grows weary of her house, and I
All over am a trouble to m3rself.
There is some hidden power in these dead things
That calls my flesh unto 'em." (v. 4.)

A noble and pure soul, which wrecked itself upon the
word "King," as that of Brutus upon the word "Free-
dom."

There could not be a contrast drawn with greater
force than the opposition of character between Amintor
and Evadne. For them there is no possible meeting-
ground, they can no more understand one another than
if they had been dwellers in different worlds. Evadne
is bold and sensual; she professes indeed to love only
with her ambition, yet " the hot and rising blood " in her
cheeks prove that passion is not wanting to that love.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 143

Conscience never crosses her path, and the scorn which
rises to her lips at the mention of female chastity —

" A maiden-head, Amintor,
At my years ! "

IS unapproachable in its effrontery, except by her own
shameless complaint of Amintor's baseness in "sowing
dissension amongst lovers " by his malicious falsehoods.
It has been justly remarked that in temperament she
has a strong family likeness to her brother, she is "a
female Melantius depraved by vicious love." The im-
pudent boldness with which she avows to Amintor her
purpose in making him her husband, is matched by
her brother's soliciting of Calianax in the royal presence
itself, and his brasen denials of the words which he
has just uttered and which he immediately repeats ;
and in the conclusion of this latter scene there is thrown
out a hint that this confidence is a quality which belongs
to the whole family. How was such a woman to be
brought to repentance ? Amintor knows no way; but to
Melantius from knowledge of himself comes an intuitive
knowledge of her. There is no way but the way of
violence and terror ; she may be terrified into a re-
pentance, which will be none the less sincere on that
account The interview between this brother and sister
begins on her side with light raillery ; she proceeds to
indignation and threatening, and then falls back to
hesitation and trifling, till Melantius, fairly roused to
anger by an undutiful jest, draws sword upon her, and
offers death if she speak less than the truth. Then at

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144 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

last, after one fruitless cry for help, the proud spirit
quails, and she reluctantly allows the truth to be dragged
from her word by word, realizing every moment with
more terrible clearness the depth of shame and misery
to which she has fallen, till, moved half by resentment
and half by terror, she takes the required oath to slay
the lustful thief who has stolen from her the wealth of
her maiden purity. Terrible pathos there is in the
exclamation, when she is left alone : —

*' Oh, where have I been all this time ? how friended.
That I should lose myself thus desperately.
And none for pity show me how I wandered ?" (iv. I.)

Fletcher has written no more powerful scene than this ;
and in such single scenes lies his strength. To develop
fully his tragic powers he needed a Beaumont always to
direct their employment, to construct in due proportions
the framework into which his work should be fitted.

Evadne is not less bold in her repentance than in her
sin. Her steps are as unfaltering, her scorn as bitter^
and her strokes as pitiless. With blood-stained hands
and blood-stained dagger she rushes into the presence
of Amintor, " loaden with events " and assured that this
offering will be a glorious amends for all his wrongs.
Bitterly she finds her error : —

"Amlnotfjaur?"
** Looks not Evadne beauteous, with these rites now ?
Were those hours half so lovely in thine eyes.
When our hands met before the holy man ?
I was too foul within to look fair then ;
Since I knew ill, I was not free till now.*' (v. 4.)

But in his eyes she is blacker now than ever before ; to

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 145

her cry of "Joy to Amintor, for the king is dead," he can
only reply :—

** Why, thou hast raised up mischief to his height,
And found one to outname thy other faults.
Thou hast no intermission of thy sins.
But all thy life is a continued ill :
Black is thy colour now, disease thy nature.
* Joy to Amintor ! * Thou hast touched a life.
The very name of which had power to chain
Up all my rage, and calm my wildest wrongs." (v. 4.)

Even yet she does not realize it, she still thinks that
this must be the way to his love, and therefore she can
never repent her act After all, it had been undertaken
not so much from desire to make amends for her wrong
as from passionate eagerness to regain her lost place in
his estimation. Incapable of a rational repentance, she
could feel the sting of her brother's contempt, and her
eyes had been opened to the nobleness and purity of
Amintor, while she was piqued by his indifference.
Slowly and reluctantly she realizes now that her sacrifice
is rejected, that the one act of her life which seemed to
herself supremely meritorious is set down as the crown
of her course of ills. Nothing remains then but hopeless
pleading to be forgiven, ended by a sudden stroke : —

" Amintor, thou shalt love me now again ;
Go ; I am calm. Farewell, and peace for ever !
Evadne, whom thou hat'st, will die for thee ; "

and with that she ends : but Amintor even then thinks
not of her ; his thoughts are on the woman whom he has
wronged. Every trace of love for Evadne has long ago
vanished from his heart, never to return.

L

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146 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

The character of Evadne attracts our interest at least,
if not our sympathy, in the most powerful manner. Of
her It may be said truly that she has no capacity for
virtue, and acts never from principle, always from passion
and impulse. She has no conception of sin as a leprosy
which clings ; she knows of no crime which cannot be
expiated by a heroic act of reparation. If she is to be
turned from her course it must be by no appeal to higher
principles, but by physical pain or physical terror,
striking at her lower nature, till one passion supplants
another and a violent impulse seizes her to recover her-
self in the estimation of brother or husband by some
glorious revenge. Under good guidance she might do
great things ; and she can hardly go so far wrong that
recovery is impossible, for force she has always, and
conscience she never had ; unlike those of weak impulses
under the control of virtuous principle, who, if they once
lose their virtue, can find no means of raising themselves
again to their former level. But alas, her fate is bound
up with one who can never be brought to an understand-
ing of this, who has little faith in any conversion from
such a course as hers, and no faith in a conversion which
seems to be only marked by fresh developments of crime ;
one to whom vice is utterly abhorrent, as a thing which
may possibly be repented of, but can never be entirely
purged out of the soul. Yet, notwithstanding the utter
contrast, there is a link between the situations of these
two. Both do evil that good may come, and both suffer
ruin in consequence. Amintor too easily persuades him-
self that the overstrained principle of loyalty ought to be

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. H7

obeyed in a case where loyalty in fact was not concerned,
rather than the plain obligation of fidelity- to his plighted
troth. Evadne, terrified by her brother's menaces, and
stung by her husband's indifference to her after her re-
pentance, is brought without difficulty to think that the
means which seem likely to win back Amintor are those
which are demanded for the expiation of her sin, and
expects to purge her guilt by treacherously murdering
her seducer. But neither Amintor nor justice could
accept such an offering from such hands ; she must die,
but she does not die alone ; there can be no nice distinc-
tions of the degrees of guilt — the white-souled Amintor
and the crime-loaden Evadne have alike sinned against
the eternal laws, and alike must suffer.

Finally about Aspatia it is excusable to quote the
remarks of Charles Lamb in those notes, too few, but all
full of admirable appreciation, which he appended to his
Specimens of the Dramatists : —

"One characteristic of the excellent old poets is
their being able to bestow grace on subjects which
naturally do not seem susceptible of any. I will mention
two instances : Zelmane in the Arcadia of Sidney, and
Helena in the AlVs Well that Ends Well of Shakspeare.
. . . Aspatia in this tragedy is a character equally
difficult with Helena. She too is a slighted woman,
refused by the man who had once engaged to marry her.
Yet it is artfully contrived that, while we pity her, we
respect her, and she descends without degradation. So
much true poetry and passion can. do to confer dignity
upon subjects which do not seem capable of it. But

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148 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

Aspatia must not be compared at all points with
Helena; she does not so absolutely predominate over
her situation, but she suffers some diminution, some
abatement of the full lustre of the female character,
which Helena never does; her character has many-
degrees of sweetness, some of delicacy, but it has weak-
ness, which, if we do not despise, we are sorry for ; after
all, Beaumont and Fletcher were but an inferior sort of
Shakspeares and Sidneys."

But in fact the difference between Aspatia and
Helena is that the latter is so absolutely sane and self-
possessed throughout her trial that we hardly regard
her as a sufferer. Weakness indeed she has none, but
neither can she be said to have delicacy. A girl who
entraps a man against his will to marry her, who gains
admission to his bed only by personating a woman
whom he intends to seduce, preserving throughout the
whole transaction a spirit of cold calculation which leaves
no room apparently for either love or grief, ought hardly
to be compared with this Aspatia. The skill of Shak-
spere in investing Helena with some degree of grace
may be admired the more because of the unpromising
material with which he chose to deal, but in natural
womanly feeling Helena is as deficient as she well can
be. Aspatia had the promise fairly, loved as maiden
betrothed is bound to love, and was broken-hearted when
the object of her love proved false. No tricks, no
devices, no plot —

"Which, if it speed,
Is wicked meaning in a lawful act ; "

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 149

nothing in her soul but grief, helpless and hopeless, yet
adorning itself with poetical and picturesque images of
love and desertion, till the mind seems almost to give
way, and she seeks death at the hand of the man who
still loved her while he married another. For in fact
her love was not unretumed : Amintor may have been
dazzled for a moment by the physical beauty of Evadne,
but in his heart he still loved Aspatia. We do not despise,
we are not even sorry for her weakness; we think it both
natural and beautiful, crowned as it is at last by his con-
fession of love.*

* Waller's alternative fifth act of The Mend's Tragedy y in which the king
is not killed, Evadne goes into a nunnery, and all ends happily, is
incredibly bad ; perhaps, considering its pretensions, the most ludicrous
failure ever made by a writer of respectable name in literature. He does
not seem to have had any suspicions of its inferiority to the rest ; indeed he
challenges comparison between the old and the new with not a little con-
fidence, distinguishing his own share by the use of rhyme, which to him
seems necessary to constitute " poetry." The author of the preface to the
early collected edition of Waller's works evidently had some qualms, for
while remarking that "it was agreeable to Mr. Waller's temper to soften
the rigour of the tragedy, as he expresses it,*' he raises the pertinent
question " whether it be agreeable to the nature of tragedy itself to make
everything come off so easily."

It is evident from the variety of epilogues provided, that not only this
version but several other variations were actually put on the stage, though
Ihere are indications here, as well as direct evidence elsewhere, that the
original play was not altogether driven thence; and Waller's prologue
mentions Tlu Maid's Tragedy and Philaster as the most popular old plays
of that time.

As regards the reason of the alterations. Gibber observes that it was
hardly likely that Charles II. feared the fate of the king in the tragedy, " it
being well known that the ladies then in favour were not so nice in their
notions as to think their preferment their dishonour, or their lover a tyrant.
Besides, that easy monarch loved his roses without thorns, nor do we hear
that he much chose to be himself the first gatherer of thenu" {Apology^
p. 282, ed. 1750 : quoted by Dyce.)

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VIL

The mock-heroic drama called T/ie Knight of the Burn-
tng Pestle is unquestionably a work of the very highest
merit in its own class. Probably no play of its time is
so genuinely humorous (in the modern sense of the word),
and the humour is surprisingly little dependent upon
temporary or local circumstances. Doubtless, in order to
appreciate it fully, it is necessary to be acquainted with
the class of writings which it is intended to ridicule, but
the satire is in reality, like that of Don Quixote^ aimed
less at accidental peculiarities and extravagances than at
follies which permanently exist in human nature, though
at times they may be concealed. At its first production
it was a failure, like The Faithful Shepherdess which
immediately preceded it, but for very different reasons.
Fletcher's "pastoral tragicomedy," with all its poetical
beauty, was evidently unsuited to the stage, and, in spite
of the abuse lavished by the author and his friends on the
vulgar audience for misliking it, we feel that the audience
judged more wisely than he. But no one will deny that
The Knight of the Burni7ig Pestle is admirably suited for
the stage, where it afterwards became a most popular
entertainment, and we cannot doubt that some special

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 151

cause led to its original rejection. "The world," says
the publisher, "for want of judgment, or not under-
standing the privy mark of irony about it (which showed
it was no offspring of any vulgar brain), utterly rejected
it." But the mark of irony is not so concealed that it
can easily pass unnoticed even by the grosser intelli-
gence, and it is far more likely that a keen perception
of the satire stung the citizens to resentment, than
that it altogether missed its mark. The following is the
account given of it by Schlegel, who, in this instance at
least, has shown a very just appreciation : —

" The Knight of the Burning Pestle of Beaumont and
Fletcher is an incomparable and singular work in its
kind. It is a parody of the chivalry romances ; the
thought is borrowed from Don Quixote, but the imitation
is handled with freedom, and so particularly applied to
Spenser's Faery Queen that it may pass for a second
invention. But the peculiarly ingenious novelty of the
piece consists in the combination of the irony of a
chimerical abuse of poetry with another irony exactly
the contrary, of the incapacity to comprehend any fable,
and the dramatic form more particularly. A grocer and
his wife come as spectators to the theatre : they are dis-
contented with the piece which has just been announced ;
they demand a play in honour of the corporation, and
Ralph, their apprentice, is to act a principal part in it
They are well received ; but still they are not satisfied,
make their observations on everything, and incessantly
address themselves to the players. Ben Jonson had
already exhibited imaginary spectators, but they were

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152 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

either benevolent expounders or awkward censurers of
the views of the poet: consequently they always con-
ducted his, the poet's, own cause. But the grocer and
his wife represent a whole genus, namely those un-
poetical spectators who are destitute of a feeling for art.
The illusion with them becomes a passive error; the
subject represented has all the effect of reality on them,
they therefore resign themselves to the impression of
each moment, and take part for or against the persons
of the drama. On the other hand, they show themselves
insensible to all genuine illusion, that is of entering
vividly into the spirit of the fable: Ralph, however
heroically and chivalrously he may conduct himself, is
always for them Ralph their apprentice ; and they take
upon them, in the whim of the moment, to demand
scenes which are quite inconsistent with the plan of the
piece that has been commenced. In short, the views and
demands with which poets are often oppressed by a
prosaical public are personified in the most ingenious
and amusing manner in these caricatures of spectators."*
It is a mistake to suppose that there is any special
reference to Spenser's Faery Queen, but it was not
perhaps to be expected that a foreign critic should be
acquainted with the class of literature at which it was
really aimed. It is surprising however that neither he
nor any other critic should have perceived the probability
that the satire of this play was the author's retort upon
the public for a special offence ; that it was in fact

* Schlegel, Lectures an Dramatic Art and Literature^ translated
by J. Black, vol. ii. p. 312.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 153

Beaumonfs revenge for the rejection of The Faithful
Shepherdess. We know how strongly he felt upon the
subject by his letter to Fletcher Upon his *' Faithful
Shepherdess ; " and what better occasion can be suggested
for this attack upon stupidity and want of poetical
imagination in the audience of the theatres than the
" murder '* of his friend's admirable poem ? As regards
the date, all that we positively know is that it was
published in 161 3, having been two years in the hands
of the publisher, to whom it was delivered originally
not by the author, but by Robert Keysar, who may have
had it for some time in his hands. The publisher states,
also, that it had been treated as a child abandoned by its
parents, and, moreover, that it was more than a year
older than Don Quixotey meaning no doubt Shelton's
translation, published in 161 2. The play, then, may
well have been acted in 16 10, and The Faithful
Shepherdess seems to have been produced in the early
part of that year. If the publisher is correct in his state-
ment that the burlesque was written in eight days, that
fact makes it still more probable that it was put forth for
a special occasion ; and the motto from Horace, prefixed
to the first edition,* seems to indicate clearly enough
that the satire is chiefly aimed, not at the authors of
absurd plays, but at the mechanic judgment of citizens,

* "Quodsi
Judicium subtile videndis artibus illud
Ad libros et ad haec Musarum dona vocares,
Boeotum in crasso jurares acre natum."
It is possible, no doubt, that this was prefixed by the publisher, and in-
tended to refer to the failure of The Knight of the Burning Pestle itself.

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154 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

who, acute enough in their own practical concerns, are
incapable of appreciating a literary masterpiece.

The satire is aimed certainly at the city, and the
special references are to a class of plays popular with
the citizens and provided for them chiefly at the Red
Bull* theatre, which either dealt with the exploits of
city worthies, such as Whitting^on and Gresham ; or,
more absurdly, like Heywood's Four Prentises of Londofr,
represented citizens or their apprentices in the guise of
knights of romance. Heywood's play, which is once
mentioned by name and constantly alluded to in The
Knight of the Burning Pestle^ is conducted with most
becoming gravity, and ought not to be suspected of any
" privy mark of irony," though some critics have called it
a comedy, and regarded it rather as the prototype than as
the victim of Beaumont's burlesque. Nor does it seem
to be true, as suggested by Dyce, that the author of it
repented in later days ; for though in the preface to the
printed edition of 1615 he apologizes for the short-
comings of his play, on the ground that it was written
many years since in his infancy of judgment, and that
" as plays were then, some fifteen or sixteen years ago,
it was in the fashion," yet these excuses seem to refer
only to the want of " that accurateness, both of plot and
style, that these more censorious days with greater
curiosity require," and he dedicates it with most compli-

♦ The Red Bull, in the neighbourhood of Tumball Street, was one of
the public theatres. It was not in very good repute, in which respect it
ranked with the Curtain in Shoreditch Fields, and the Cock-pit in Drury
Lane, on a distinctly lower level than the Globe and Blackfriars^ whert
Shakespere, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Jonson were acted*

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JFRANCIS BEAUMONT. 15S

mentary gravity "to the honest and high-spirited
Prentises, the readers." The absurdities of the play are
sufficiently striking. It is opened by the " Old Earl of
Boloign," who thus addresses his daughter : —

" Daughter, thou seest how Fortune turns her wheel :
We that but late were mounted up on high.
Lulled in the skirts of that inconstant dame.
Are now thrown headlong by her ruthless hand,
To kiss that earth whereon our feet should stand.

And I am forced to lose the name of Earl,
And live in London like a citizen ;
My four sons are bound prentice to four trades ;
Godfrey my eldest boy I have made a mercer ;
Guy my next son enrolled in goldsmith's trade ;
My third son Charles bound to a haberdasher ;
Young Eustace is a grocer ; all highborn,
Yet of the city-trades they have no scorn."

{Four Prentises of London^ i. i.)

The four youths, hb^wever, all leave their masters, to
join in the crusades, while avoiding all suspicion of
scorning their trades by bkzoning the arms of their re-
spective companies on their knightly shields. After a
considerable variety of adventures, in which the Soldan
and Sophy both play a part, the drama, if such it can be
called, concludes with the conquest of Jerusalem.

This play belongs to the closing years of the six-
teenth century, but it had continued popular, and was
the representative of a class. The same vices of the
public taste which encouraged these performances are
referred to long after by Ben Jonson, who doubtless
sympathized heartily with Beaumont's satire : " If a child
could be born in a play, and grow up to a man in the

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150 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

first scene before he went off the stage : and then after
to come forth as a squire, and be made a knight : and
that knight to travel between the acts, and do wonders
in the Holy Land or elsewhere : kill Paynims, wild boars,
dun cows, and other monsters ; beget him a reputation
and marry an emperor's daughter for his mistress ;
convert her father's country ; and at last come home
lame, and all-to-be laden with miracles." {Magnetic Lady ^
act i., end.)

Whether Heywood was actually the chief offender it
is difficult to say with certainty, but he was connected
with the company which usually performed at the Red
Bull ; and another of his plays. If You know not Me, You
know Nobody y seems to be alluded to by Beaumont There
may be references also to The Fair Maid of the Exchange^
in which the chivalrous rescue of distressed damsels
achieved at Mile End by the cripple of Fenchurch, and
the style generally, which is often on or over the boun-
daries of burlesque, while apparently meant to be serious,
remind us forcibly of the sayings and doings of Ralph.*

* e,g, " Then, Cripple, know I am not what I seem,
But took this habit to deceive my friend :
My friend indeed, but yet my cruel foe ;
Foe to my good, my friend in outward show :
I am no porter, as I seem to be.
But younger brother to that Anthony ;
And, to be brief, I am in love with Phillis,
Which my two elder brothers do affect ;

* * * Hi Hi

Cripple, thou once did^st promise me thy love
When I did rescue thee in Mile-end Green,
Now is the time, now let me have thy aid.
To gull my brothers of the beauteous maid."
The style which is satirized is not indeed that which is commonly

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. IS7

Another production of the same author, which is
possibly referred to in The Knight of the Burning Pestle^
is Edward IV. Taking into account the many allusions
to Heywood, we may perhaps suppose that this is the
play alluded to under the title of Jane Shore, among
those which were popular with the city. But there were
others on the same subject possibly before and certainly
shortly after Heywood's Edward IV, However the
first part of that play, with many excellences, contains
passages of 'prentice valour which may well have been
in our author's mind.* In company with Jane Shore
is mentioned The Bold BeauchampSy which was popularly
attributed to Heywood, though it seems to have been
in existence before he began writing for the stage.

The title was perhaps suggested by The Knight of
the Burning Rock, which may have been a play of the

thought characteristic of Heywood, who achieved his greatest excellence
in the kind of domestic drama which is represented by A Woman killed with
Kindness ; but Heywood was probably the most prolific writer of the day.
He speaks himself, twenty years before his death, 6f having had either an
entire hand or **a main-finger" in two hundred and twenty plays. Of
these only some five and twenty have survived with his name attached to
them, so that it is difficult to say to what extent the theatre may have been
supplied by him with plays of the type of the Four Prentises. He was
writing for the stage during nearly half a century ; he professes himself
careless of being read ; and we may well suppose that in very much of his
work he studied little beyond the satisfaction of the popular taste. That
he should be the principal mark of Beaumont's satire may well surprise any
one who knows him only by his better work.

• ** Nay, scorn us not that we are 'prentices ;
The Chronicles of England can report
What memorable actions we have done," etc.

{Edward I V» J pt. i. act i. scene 4.)
And the stage direction, " a very fierce assault on all sides, in which the
apprentices do great service."

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158 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

class which are satirized, but the title only has come

down to us. However this may be, it is certain that the

satire is not aimed only at such productions and the

grocer knight-errantry which was their subject, but also

at the general want of artistic piefception in the vulgar

audience, which led to the toleration and popularity of

such farragoes of disconnected and improbable incidents

of every kind as were current, under titles that might

serve as tables of contents,* plays which conformed to

rules ** neither of decent civility nor skilful poetry,"

mere medleys without even the respectable merit of

being true to nature. Against such, whether they dealt

with tales of chivalry or no, the satirist makes war, and

reasonably enough directs his attack against the public

which demanded rather than the author who supplied.

From this point of view the Knight of the Burning

Pestle may be regarded as expressing under the mask of

irony some of the author's strongest artistic convictions,

and as the prototype of The Rehearsal and The Critic^

both of which are far less skilfully constructed. These

later attempts exhibit the rehearsal of performances

which are gross caricatures of anything that could ever

* e.g. " A lamentable tragedy mixed full of pleasant mirth, conteyning
the Life of Cambises King of Percia, from the beginning of his kingdom,
unto his death, his one good deed of execution, after that many wicked
deeds and tirannous murders, committed by and through him, and last of
all his odious death by God's justice appointed, in such order as followeth;
by Thomas Preston." Or, **The first and second parts of King Edward
the Fourth, containing his merie pastime with the Tanner of Tamworth, as
also his love to fair Mistresse Shore ; her great promotion, fall and miserie,
and lastly the lamentable death of both her and her husband. Likewise
the besieging of London by the Bastard Falconbridge, and the valiant
defence of the same by the Lord Mayor and the citizens."

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 159

have been seriously put upon the stage, and the effect
depends upon the extravagance of the nonsense and
upon the personal allusions. This however conveys in
its very construction the desired impression, and indicates
at the same time the true source of the absurdities which
it attacks. We see the citizen spectators, who occupy
stools upon the stage, demand adventures without regard
to the plot of the play presented : —

" CiL Sirrah, boy ! come hither. Let Ralph come in and fight with
Jasper.

IVife, Ay, and beat him well ; he's an unhappy boy.

Boy, Sir, you must pardon us ; the plot of our play lies contrary, and
Hwill hazard the spoiling of our play.

Cit, Plot me no plots ! I'll ha' Ralph come out ; I'll make your house
too hot for you else.

Boy. Why, sir, he shall ; but if anything fall out of order, the gentlemen
must pardon us." (ii. 4.)

And we are to understand thereby that the public taste,
and not the theatres or those who write for them, is to
blame for the want of artistic construction which was
visible in the popular drama of the day. We are re-
minded of the temper of the audience which rejected
the Faithful Sliepherdess, how they expected it to be " a
play of country-hired shepherds in gray cloaks, with
curtailed dogs in strings, sometimes laughing together,
<Lnd sometimes killing one another ; and, missing Whit-
sun-ales, cream, wassail, and morris-dances, began to be
^ngry."* And there is a passage quoted by Collier
from Edmund Gayton's Festivous Notes on Don Quixote^
published in 1654, which proves that, on some occasions

X* Fletcher's Preface to The Faithful Shepherdess.

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i6o FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

at least, the audiences took the matter into their own
hands with as little ceremony as the worthy citizen of
Beaumont's burlesque : —

" Men come not to study at a playhouse, but love
such expressions and passages which with ease insinuate
themselves into their capacities. Linguay that learned
comedy of the contention betwixt five senses for the
superiority, is not to be prostituted to the common stage,,
but it is only proper for an academy : to bring them
yack Drum's Entertainment^ Greefis Tu QuoqiiCy Tfie
Devil of Edmonton, and the like ; or if it be on holidays,,
when Sailors, Watermen, Shoemakers, Butchers, and
Apprentices, are at leisure, then it is good policy to
amaze those violent spirits with some tearing tragedy
full of fights and skirmishes, as the Guelphs and Ghib-
belineSy Greeks and Trojans, or The three London Appren-
tices, which commonly ends in six acts, the spectators
frequently mounting the stage, and making a more
bloody catastrophe among themselves than the players
did. I have known upon, one of these festivals, but
especially at Shrovetide, when the players have been
appointed, notwithstanding their bills to the contrary, to
act what the major part of the company had a mind to ;.
sometimes Tamerlaine, sometimes Jtigurth, sometimes
The Jew of Malta, and sometimes parts of all these ;
and at the last, none of the three taking, they were
forced to undress and put off their tragic habits, and
conclude the day with The Merry Milkmaids, And un-
less this were done, and the popular humour satisfied, as
sometimes it so fortuned that the players were refractory,.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. i6i

the benches, the tiles, the laths, the stones, the oranges,
apples, nuts, flew about most liberally ; and as there were
mechanics of all professions, who fell every one to his
own trade, and dissolved a house in an instant, and
made a ruin of a stately fabric. It was not then the
most mimical nor fighting man. Fowler nor Andrew
Cane, could pacify : prologues nor epilogues would pre-
vail ; the devil and the fool were quite out of favour." *

A point worth observing in the present play is that,
in spite of the ironical character of the whole, and in
spite of the interpolation of Ralph and his chivalrous
adventures, there is worked out nevertheless from begin-
ning to end a little domestic drama possessing some
quiet interest of its own, of which the characters with
one exception are serious, and containing tender vows of
true love such as the author might have put into the
mouths of his Ricardo and Viola, and lyrics worthy of
the age to which they belong. This not only serves as
a foil to the windy knight-errantry by which it is sur-
rounded, but suggests the soundness and simplicity of
the groundwork on which the popular demand reared
such monstrous erections, while furnishing at the same
time interest to the audience and material for the honest
citizen and his spouse to exercise their criticism and
display their sympathies. In these they are naturally
somewhat narrow and unimaginative. They bring into
the theati;^ all their class prejudices and all their prudent
thriftiness. They are the natural enemies of romance.
They sympathize, not with the devoted lover who is pre-
• Collier, Annals of the Stage, iii. 417.

M

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i62 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

sumptuous enough to wish to marry his master's daugh-
ter, but with the wealthy suitor provided for the damsel
by her father ; and they soon become suspicious of the
intentions of the playwright in this respect " Well, I'll
be hanged for a halfpenny if there be not some abomi-
nation knavery in this play!" They take the side
naturally of the thrifty Mistress Merrythought against
her easy-tempered husband and her romantic son : —

** Wife. It's a foolish old man this ; is not he, George ?
Cit, Yes, cony.

Wife, Give me a penny i' the purse while I live, George.
Cit, Ay, by lady, cony, hold thee there ! " (L 4.)

And, when Jasper makes the most dutiful reply to his
mother's objurgations, the comment is : —

" Ungracious child, I warrant him ; hark how he chops logic with his
mother ! Thou hadst best tell her she lies ; do, tell her she lies."

The events upon the stage are as real to them as
anything in daily life : " truth is truth " to them whether
on the stage or off, and they are ready to bear witness
of the occurrences which they have seen, and expect the
gentlemen and musicians to come forward and corro-
borate their evidence : —

** Wife, No, indeed. Mistress Merrythought ; tho' he be a notable
gallows, yet I'll assure you his master did turn him away, even in this
place ; 'twas, i' faith, within this half-hour, about his daughter ; my hus-
band was by.

Cit, Hang him, rogue ! he served him well enough : love his master's
daughter ! By my troth, cony, if there were a thousand boys, thou
would'st spoil them all with taking their part ; let his mother alone with
him.

Wife, Ay, George, but yet truth is truth." (i. 4.)

It is chiefly the personal interest which they take in

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 163

their apprentice that carries them through the perform-
ance : —

" Sirrah, you scurvy boy, bid the players send Ralph ; or by God*s
[wounds], an they do not, I'll tear some of their perriwigs beside their
heads; this is all rifF-raif." (i. 4.)

And his sound protestantism delights them no less than
his chivalrous exploits : —

"Ralph, I am a knight of a religious order,
And will not wear the favour of a lady
That trusts in Antichrist and false traditions.

Cit, Well said, Ralph ! convert her if thou canst." (iv. 2.)

In short they are admirable impersonations of the taste
of the city ; and the garrulous egotism of the woman is
well matched with the self-sufficient and purse-proud
fault-finding of the man ; while at times they are made
the vehicle for satire against other classes than their own,
^ in the following passage : —

** Ralph. And certainly those knights are much to be commended, who,
neglecting their possessions, wander with a squire and a dwarf through the
■deserts to relieve poor ladies.

Wife, Ay, by my faith, are they, Ralph ; let 'em say what they will,
they are indeed. Our knights neglect their possessions well enough, but
they do not the rest." (i. 3.)

The burlesque of Ralph's part is admirable, but
hardly an exaggeration of the serious sayings and doings
of the " Four Prentises." The demand that he shall kill
a lion is connected with the boast of Charles (the haber-
^dasher) : —

" Since first I bore this shield I quartered it
With this Red Lion, whom I singly once
Slew in the forest"

{Fottr Prentises of Loncton.)

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i64 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

The design upon Ralph's shield in remembrance of his
former trade is suggested by that of Eustace (the
grocer) : —

** Upon this shield I bear the Grocers' arms.
Unto which trade I was enrolled and bound."*

And the demand that Ralph shall " come out on May-
day in the morning and speak upon a conduit " reminds-
us of the complaint of the same Eustace : —

" He will not let me see a mustering,
Nor in a May-day morning fetch in May."

Ralph is allowed to " fetch in May " with much dis*
tinction, and the speech delivered by him on that occa*
sion " upon a conduit " has graphic touches which con-
vince us of its truth, and as an illustrative document
deserves to be extracted : —

** London, to thee I do present the merry month of May ;
Let each true subject be content to hear me what I say.
For from the top of Conduit-Head, as plainly may appear,
I will both tell my name to you, and wherefore I am here.
My name is Ralph, by due descent, though not ignoble I,
Yet far inferior to the flock of gracious grocery :
And by the common counsel of my fellows in the Strand,
With gilded staff and crossed scarf the May-lord here I stand.
Rejoice, oh English hearts, rejoice, rejoice oh lovers dear ;
Rejoice, oh city, town and country, rejoice eke every shere !
For now the'fragrant flowers do spring and sprout in seemly sort.
The little birds do sit and sing, the lambs do make fine sport ;
And now the birchin tree doth bud, that makes the schoolboy cry ;
The morris rings, while hobby-horse doth foot it feateously ;
The lords and ladies now abroad, for their disport and play.
Do kiss sometimes upon the grass, and sometimes in the hay.

♦ The members of the Company of Grocers seem to have been much
attached to the device in question. LawTence Sheriffe for example, the
founder of Rugby School, ordered that it should be constantly used in
connexion with his ** charity."

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 165

^ow butter with a leaf of sage is good to purge the blood,
Fly Venus and phlebotomy, for they are neither good.
J^ow little fish on tender stone begin to cast their bellies,
And sluggish snails, that erst were mewed, do creep out of their shellies.
The rumbling rivers now do warm for little boys to paddle,
The sturdy steed now goes to grass, and up they hang his saddle.
The heavy hart, the bellowing buck, the rascal and the pricket
Are now among the yeoman's pease, and leave the fearful thicket,.
And be like them, oh you, I say, of this same noble town,
And lift aloft your velvet heads, and slipping off your gown.
With bells on legs, and napkins clean unto your shoulders tied.
With scarfs and garters as you please, and * hey for our town ' cried,
March out and shew your willing minds, by twenty and by twenty.
To Hogsdon or to Newington, where ale and cakes are plenty ;
And let it ne*er be said for shame, that we, the youths of London,
Lay thrumming of our caps at home, and left our custom undone.
Up then, I say, both young and old, both man and maid a-Maying,
With drums and guns that bounce aloud, and merry tabor playing !
Which to prolong, God save our king, and send his country peace.
And root out treason from the land ! and so, my friends, I cease."

(iv. 5.)

The character of old Merrythought and his relations
•with his wife are conceived in an excellent vein of
humour, and the effect is much heightened by the in-
genious manner in which the fragments of old ballads are
employed. On the whole, this play is one which may
be commended to the reader for its laughter-moving
power, whether we are inclined or not to assent to the
opinion of an accomplished editor of Beaumont and
Fletcher, who, after criticising " the five masterpieces " of
oijr authors, adds that, admirable as these are, " perhaps
The Knight of the Burning Pestle exceeds them in one
particular — dramatical (distinguished from theatrical)
merit. It is composed with an art almost equal to
Ben Jonson's; with nativer and mellower humour.

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i66 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

though less caustic. The characters are depicted forcibly
and naturally, and consistently from first to last : none
by Shakspere are better sustained than those of the
Citizen and his Wife, who patronize a play in the
plenitude of their purse-pride, and insist on their shop-
man Ralph being let to perform the chief part, to cut
every gordian knot like an Alexander the Great, and to
come forward as a *Dominus do-all' whenever they
please to see him. • . * Butler must have owed as much
to The Knight of the Burning Pestle as this did to Dotp
Quixote" * Apart from the question of its artistic merits-
it may be doubted whether any play of the period gives
a more vivid representation of citizen manners than we
have here in the worthy couple who occupy stools upon
the stage.

♦ Barley's Introduction to his edition, p. xlvii.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 167

VIIL

A King and No King vf^s first acted in the year 161 1, and
seems to have enjoyed very great popularity throughout
the century succeeding its production. Then it practi-
cally disappeared from the stage, though Garrick con-
templated a revival of it, and caused it to be several times
rehearsed by his company, and though it was afterwards
once acted at Covent Garden Theatre, January 14, 1788.
On this occasion it seems not to have been favourably
received, and perhaps if it were produced now it would
hardly be tolerated. Yet it is a work of startling power,
vigorous in conception and in delineation of character,
containing hardly a line which does not contribute to the
effect of the whole, and admirable for the skill with
which its various strands are twisted into a single cord.
Still more surprising is it as the work, for the most
part, of a writer who was even yet little more than a
youth, a man of five or six and twenty, an age at which
Shakspere had hardly begun to write independently for
the stage, at which Chapman, Fletcher, Massinger, and
Ford had, so far as we know, produced nothing dramatic*

* It is perhaps worth remarking that the dates on pp. 88-100 of Mr.
rieay's ShaJiespeare Manual are not wholly to be depended on. Chapman

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i€8 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

The nearest parallel among dramatists of the period to
such early maturity is afforded by Marlowe, who wrote
Tamburlane at twenty-one and Fausttis at twenty-
three.

Looking merely at the power with which the subject
is treated we should have no hesitation in calling this
the masterpiece of Beaumont and Fletcher ; but the
choice of subject itself is open to grave objections, and
the catastrophe is seriously defective. Seeing that much
of our criticism will have reference to this, it is perhaps
necessary first to follow the development of the plot up
to that point.

Arbaces, king of Iberia, a valiant but vain-glorious
monarch, has conquered his rival, Tigranes, and is
bringing him home with vaunts which the pride of his
noble captive can ill endure, and which provoke the
reproof of the honest Mardonius, companion in arms
to this arrogant sovereign. In his insolent generosity he
offers in marriage to Tigranes his sister, the Princess
Panthea, whom, owing to long wars abroad, he has for
years not seen : an offer which the proud prisoner rejects
with becoming disdain : —

** Perhaps I have a love, where I have fixed
Mine eyes, not to be moved, and she on me :
/ am not fickle."

Arbaces is nothing if not fickle, and displays a mar-
vellous alternation of humours, bursts of passion and arro-
gant bragging, followed rapidly by self-humiliation and

is there said to have been bom in 1589, and to have b^un work in 1597.
The date of Fletcher's birth is given as 1576, and of Beaumont's 1589.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT, 169

remorse. But we are to understand that this sovereign,
victorious abroad, has troubles at home. Aran^, the
queen-mother, has plotted repeatedly against the life of
the king, and repeatedly has been pardoned . On the
other hand, we hear that his sister Panthea, whom he
last saw as a child of nine years old before his wars
began, prays daily and nightly for his safe return, and

" stains her cheeks
With xnouming tears, to purge her mother's ill."

Of her beauty, grace and virtue the king receives the
most glowing reports from Gobrias, the lord-protector of
the kingdom during his absence, and he sets this com-
fort against his mother's hate. He returns to his king-
dom : Panthea comes forth to greet him, and kneels for
his favour and blessing. At first sight of her he is seized
by a passion for her which he struggles with but
cannot control, showing itself outwardly in violent
denials of the relationship, which are quite unaccount-
able to the bystanders and to her : —

** She is no kin to me, nor shall she be ;
If she were any, I create her none :
And which of you can question this ? My power
Is like the sea, that is to be obeyed,
And not disputed with : I have decreed her
As far from having part of blood with me
As the naked Indians. Come and answer me,
He that is boldest now; is that my sister?" (iii. i.)

The honourable entertainment of Tigranes is changed
to harsh confinement because he has shown himself
momentarily affected by the present charms of his
lately promised bride. Panthea, first cruelly denied by

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I70 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

her brother to her unspeakable distress, is suddenly-
adored by him as a goddess : —

** My hope, my only jewel of my life, *

The best of sisters,"

and then as abruptly ordered away to prison ; —

**Por she has given me poison in a kiss, —
She had it *twixt her lips."

Unable to conquer his guilty passion, he with difficulty

reveals it to Mardonius. That confidant however

indignantly refuses to have any part in the evil
business : —

" You must, understand, nothing that you can utter can remove my love
and service from my prince ; but otherwise, I think I shall not love you
more, for you are sinful ; and if you do this crime, you ought to have no
laws, for, after this, it will be great injustice in you to punish any offender
for any crime." (iii. 3.)

The king finds a very different hearer in the bragging
coward Bessus, whose too ready acquiescence however
causes him to see his own sin in a new light, and to
shrink back in horror from the flatterer who has with
complacency accepted his own evil suggestions : —

"Thou art too wicked for my company,
Though I have hell within me : Away, I say,
I will not do this sin." (iii. 3.)

The fourth act however contains a dangerous interview
between Arbaces and Panthea, to whom he confesses
his love, beseeching her not to encourage it, though the
penalty for refusal must be banishment for ever from
his sight She weeps and prays for him, wishing for his
sake and her own that he were no brother to her : —

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 171

** Is there no stop " (he cries)
** To our full happiness, but these mere sounds,
Brother and sister?

Fanth^ There is nothii^ else :

But these, alas, will separate us more
Than twenty worlds betwixt us !

Arb. I have lived

To conquer men, and now am overthrown
Only by words, brother and sister. Where
Have those words dwelling? I will find 'em out,
And utterly destroy 'em ; but they are
Not to be grasped : let them be men or beasts,
And I will cut them from the earth ; or towns.
And I will rase them and then blow them up ;
Let them be seas, and I will drink them off.
And yet have unquenched fire left in my breast —
Let 'em be anything but merely voice." (iv. 4.)

His passion grows in the presence of Panthea, while
even she is not quite unmoved, and crying for the mercy
of a prison or death for herself, urges him to escape by
flight

The passions have been wrought to the climax, and
the fifth act threatens ruin. Arbaces is desperate, and
resolved to batter down hell's gate,

**and find the place
Where the most damned have dwelling."

He will murder Gobrias first, as the cause of his trouble
by reason of those " witching letters " extolling the beauty
of Panthea, which he had sent to him while abroad, —

** So that I doted
Something before I saw her ; "

and then he will rush to "that incestuous ravishing,**
and end his life and sins by a forbidden blow upon
himself.

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172 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

The impending catastrophe is averted by a discovery
for which by hints in the earlier part of the play the atten-
tive spectator may have been in some degree prepared.
Aran^ is not after all his mother: Panthea is not his
sister : Gobrias was in the secret, and his letters had been
actually intended to produce the result which followed
from them. Panthea is the lawful sovereign and Arbaces
is proved " no king," a discovery which opens the way to
happiness for him and for her, and procures liberty for
Tigranes, whose true love has followed him in disguise
and secured him by her presence against the attractions
of Panthea The relations of these lovers form one of
the minor threads of the plot, while an underplot of
much humour is afforded by the character and exposure
of the coward-braggart Bessus, the comic masterpiece of
•our author.

Such are the rather unpromising materials from which
this striking play is constructed, and critics are certainly
to some extent justified in their complaint that there is a
deficiency of morality in the catastrophe. " The terrific
power of passion" which has been exhibited requires,
they say, a stern "vindication of law" instead of "the
healing power of an accident" In some of their stric-
tures the modem critics are anticipated more or less by
Rymer,* whose virulences of attack upon Shakspere
and our authors in the interests of the classical drama
remain a monument of perverse ingenuity, in which the
very wrongheadedness of the criticism sometimes suggests

♦ Tragedies of the Last Age considered ^ etc,^ by Thomas Rymer, pp.
56-103.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 175

to the reader previously unnoticed merits in the works
with which the critic deals. On A King and No King^
in company with Othello^ he bestows some of his most
violent animadversions. " The ancients," he says, " took
an incestuous love in the fall." " Arbaces should have
pined away without disclosure." "The ancients never
palliated a crime before it was committed." In most of
these points however his standard of reference, the
Hippolytus of Euripides, comes out as badly as the
" tragedies of the last age." Phaedra reveals herself, and
her conceived crime is palliated in advance to a far
greater extent than that of Arbaces, by the plea of the
anger of Aphroditd The crime of Arbaces is in fact not
palliated beforehand at all, but mitigated afterwards by
the discovery that he is the victim of a plot. Yet not-
withstanding his perverse method of criticism, perhaps
Rymer was after all right in his contention that the
modem drama differs materially from the ancient in its-
manner of treating this particular subject ; the complaint
indeed is repeated by a French critic of our own days,* wha
declares that our fiction is no longer content with simple
emotions, but delights in " amours singuliers et raffines,""
and that " passion boldly rebels against duty, and the
exception endeavours to substitute itself for the rule."
The suggestion of incest is in itself unpleasant, yet
it has undoubted attractions for the modem dramatist,,
and that on a very intelligible principle. The "an-
cients," with whom for obvious reasons love was not
one of the scenic emotions, resorted constantly to
♦ St. -Marc Girardin, Cours de Littirature Dramatique.

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174 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

murders committed among near relations, in order to
produce the degree of horror which was considered
essential to tragedy. Aristotle even reduced this prac-
tice to a rule : " If an enemy kills or purposes to kill
an enemy, in neither case is any commiseration raised in
us, beyond what necessarily arises from the nature of the
action itself The case is the same when the persons
are neither friends nor enemies. But when such disas-
ters happen between friends — ^when, for instance, the
brother kills or is going to kill his brother, the son his
father, the mother her son, or the reverse — these, and
others of a similar kind, are the proper incidents for the
poet's choice."* To produce the same circumstances
of horror where love is the motive of the drama, the
writer has recourse naturally and almost necessarily to
the parallel situation. Nothing supplies the necessary
strength of emotion combined with the necessary horror
of the crime so completely as an incestuous passion.
That the force of this combined fascination and repulsion
was not unfelt even by the Greeks, is manifest from the
treatment of the subject in the Hippolyttis ; and it may
plausibly be argued that this conflict of human passions
with the primary laws of society might conceivably be a
finer subject for tragedy than the struggles of youthful
love against accidental hindrances in a Romeo and yuliet ;
and that the humbling of the monarch whose power is as
the sea, to be obeyed not to be reasoned with, by the dis-
covery that he is the slave of his own passions, might be
as pathetic, and as legitimately brought about, as the fall

♦ Aristot, Poetics, Bk. ii. ch. xiv. (Twining's translation).

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 175

of an CEdipus by the overmastering power of fate. To
this it can only be replied that suggestions which are
unpleasant to the unsophisticated sense are not consis-
tent with artistic perfection, and ought to be avoided.
Whether they are pernicious as well as offensive depends
upon the method of treatment, which may easily be such
as to incur the censure above quoted upon exceptions
■which endeavour to substitute themselves for the rule.
Probably in this respect the nineteenth century ought to be
thought more guilty than the seventeenth, and the elegant
romance of Chateaubriand,* notwithstanding its edifying
purpose, may well seem more pernicious to the cause of
morality than the productions of the English stage.

We may however reasonably complain of a want of
poetical justice in the case of Arbaces. It is true that
those who cry out for poetical justice are often taking a
somewhat narrow view of the functions of the dramatic
^rt, as if it were bound always to provide judges and
hangmen for the criminals whom it exhibits. The best
art is moral, but in the same 'sense- as nature is moral ;
and nature, so far as man is concerned, is " moralized "
partly by the capacity of human beings for remorse, and
for its opposite, the calm of a good conscience. Killing is
a vulgar kind of justice compared with the misery of law-
less lust, and this, it may be said, is sufficiently displayed
in Arbaces. The meditated crime is not rendered attrac-
tive to the spectator or to the reader by the manner in
which it is treated ; and that is more than can be said of
the actually committed crime in Ford's tragedy which

* Ren^ in the Ghtie du Christianisme,

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176 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

deals with a partly similar subject, though that has poetical
justice enough of the killing kind. It may be argued that
if the moral sense is not shocked by CEdipus punished
for parricide and incest committed against his will and
without the knowledge of what he was doing, why should
it object to the escape from punishment of Arbaces on-
making the opposite discovery, that that to which he had
been tempted was not after all a crime. In the former
case the catastrophe is moralized by the inward peace or
the Coloneus ; in the latter, all that is required to balance
the unmerited happiness of the conclusion is found, it
may be argued, in the misery and self-abhorrence which
accompanied or followed the half-formed intention. And
this reasoning would be to some extent sound. If the
remorse of Arbaces had survived the discovery, we
might have accepted it as a sufficient retribution. The
defect from a moral point of view is that an accidental
discovery that the material conditions are not such as
had been supposed is taken by Arbaces as an absolution
from his guilt, with which in fact it has little or nothings
to do. The guilt consisted in the intention to commit
sin, and the character of this intention could not be
affected by any subsequent discovery. We have here in
fact an example of the material view of morality which
is occasionally taken by our authors, and from which
even Shakspere is not entirely free. The moral defect
of Measure for Measure seems to be the absolution
accorded to Angelo because he happens not to have
actually done the deed which he intended to do and
thought he had done ; the moral defect of All's WelC

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. ^ 177

that Ends Well, indicated even in its title, is the dismissal
of the profligate and ungenerous Bertram to happiness,
because he has in the dark mistaken one woman for
another. Something of the same feeling reversed there
is in the horror of an CEdipus or a Lucretia at deeds
which they have done either unwitting or enforced, and
it is the complaint of Coleridge against Hetcher's Lucina
that she regards her chastity as a material thing, which
can be taken from her by an act of violence ; but in these
latter cases we cannot but feel that the error is in the
right direction, and it attracts our sympathy. A similar
failure of moral perception disgusts us when it manifests
itself on the opposite side. We cannot feel that Arbaces
has earned his happy abdication, or expiated sufficiently
his contemplated crime, of which indeed he has not even
repented. One consideration alone saves this manage-
ment of the catastrophe from utter condemnation. The
fact that he has been really the victim of a plot may
in some degree justly palliate his offence in our eyes as
well as in his own.

But while allowing the criticism on the catastrophe,
we cannot admit what is alleged against the general
structure : — "We blunder along without the least streak
of light, till in the last act we stumble on the plot lying
all in a lump together." * It did not of course occur to
Rymer that the unexpectedness of the final discovery — so
far as it is unexpected, for several streaks of light have
been afforded to us before — may be rather a merit than a
defect. The " ancients," indeed, did not find it easy to

* Tragedies of the Last Age, etc, p. 59.

N

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178 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

conceal the catastrophe, for their plots were familiar to
the spectators beforehand : but in our times judicious con-
cealment is thought no blemish. A better critic, Dryden,
in his introduction to Troilus and Cressida^ calls this
play " the best of its authors* designs, the most approach-
ing to antiquity, and the most conducing to move pity,"
though how it comes to have this last merit he seems to
be at a loss to understand.

The character of Arbaces, " vainglorious and humble,
and angry and patient, and merry and dull, and joyful
and sorrowful in extremity in an hour," (thus he is
described by Mardonius), is the centre of interest, and
has not been allowed to run to extravagance, but pre-
serves always a consistency of inconsistency which
makes it both intelligible and interesting. A man natu-
rally of strong passions, but withal of a noble and
generous disposition, placed in a position where his
power is absolute, and surrounded by flatterers whose
praise he despises yet cannot dispense with, has become
by degrees an imperious egotist, who can hardly conceive
any greatness in the universe except his own, or any
possible restraint from without or from within upon any
one of his humours or passions. While boasting himself
over his conquered enemy he really imagines himself to
be acting with the utmost magnanimity, and with genuine
astonishment learns that his, as he thinks unparalleled,
generosity is received as an insult His own prowess is
to him so obvious a fact that to mention it is no boasting :

" Be you my witness, earth,
Need I to brag ? Doth not this captive prince

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 179

Speak me sufficiently, and all the acts

That I have wrought upon his suffering land ?

Should I then boast ? Where is that foot of ground

Within his whole realm, that I have not passed

Fighting and conquering ? Far, then, from me

Be ostentation. I could tell the world,

How I have laid his kingdom desolate

By this sole arm, propt by divinity ;

Stript him of all his glories ; and have sent

The pride of all his youth to people graves ;

And made his virgins languish for their loves ;

If I would brag. Should I, that have the power

To teach the neighbour- world humility,

Mix with vainglory ? " (i. i. )

His IS the very midsummer madness of vainglory, and
when it produces at length an impatient reply from Mar-
donius, passion succeeds, and he alternately rages against
those who would confine his words, and loses himself in
wonder at his own patience of such offences from his
subjects. Alone with his friend he shows the better side
of his nature, and after a single outbreak humbles him-
self to the confession : —

**I have been
Too passionate and idle ; thou shalt see
A swift amendment. But I want those parts
You praise me for : I fight for all the world !
Give thee a sword, and thou wilt go as far
Beyond me as thou art beyond in years." (i. i.)

And the change which follows from raging fury to the
bantering familiarity of comrades in arms is graceful
enough. Our sympathies are further drawn to him by .
his behaviour to his supposed mother, who is plotting
against his life because he is not really her son. Against
her he will use no force —

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i8o FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

" The hand of Heaven is on me : be it far
From me to struggle ! if my secret sins
Have pulled this curse upon me, lend me tears
Enow to wash me white, that I may feel
A childlike innocence within my breast : " (i. i.)

The prayer has a note of irony to the ears of those who
feel already how far he is destined to fall from childlike
innocence, and how soon.

When Panthea greets him on his return and he feels
the guilty passion rising in his breast, he endeavours to
deal with it as he would with his own subjects.
** I know thou fear'st my words ; away I "

is the impotent command of a tyrant who has yet to
learn that his passions are not his slaves, but he theirs ;
and then follow the struggles, magnificent even in their
impotence, against the stubborn fact which alone of all
things round will not obey him, and his moods change
abruptly from imperious harshness to the humblest self-
abasement, and back to harshness again.

The merits of the scene in which discovery is made
to Mardonius do not belong especially to the character
of Arbaces. Critics have expressed admiration of its
skilful development, as evidencing the " power of detain-
ing the spectator in that anxious suspense which creates
almost an actual illusion, and makes him tremble at
every word, lest the secret which he has learnt should
be imparted to the imaginary person on the stage," * a
power which is displayed by the Greek dramatists abun-
dantly, but rarely by Shakspere, except in Othello. We

* Hallam, Literature of Europe^ vol. iii. p. loi.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. i8i

must not omit to notice the conclusion of this scene,
a masterpiece of dramatic power. The character of
Arbaces, lawless but not ignoble, is revealed to us as by a
lightning flash, when we see him attempt to seduce others
to serve him in villany, and yet start back with abhor-
rence when the villany of his own suggestion stands before
him in concrete shape. The eagerness of his instrument
to perform his bidding brings to him such a revelation
of himself as Nathan's parable brought to David, and
for the first time he sees his sin as hideous as it really is.
Henceforth he fights against the passion as against a
deadly foe, a curse laid upon him to scourge his pride ;
and humbled he is at last, by the startling and terrible
discovery that the monarch whom all obey is not neces-
sarily master of himself This is the tragic moment of
the play ; already to himself he is proved no king. But
the ruin, if ruin there is to be, shall bring down all with
it ; he at least will not survive his defeat. Through such
wild resolves he passes to the discovery which sets all
things again in order ; and here too the alternations of
mood are both striking and true. At first he cannot
wait for the tale to be told out without turning on his
supposed mother with violent rage ; but when at last he
suffers himself to hear enough to understand his mistake,
when at last the thought occurs that perchance this sister
of his may prove no sister, a sudden violent patience
seizes upon him, as much overstrained as all his moods : —

** 1*11 lie, and listen here as reverentiy
As to an angel : if I breathe too loud,
Tell me ; for I would be as still as night.'*

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i82 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

And then, when it is over : —

" And have you made an end now ? Is this all ?
If not, I will be still till I be aged,
Till all my hairs be silver.

Gobr. This is all.

Arb, And is it true, say you too, madam ?

Aran, Yes ; Heaven knows it is most true.

Arb, Pantheay then, is not my sister.*^ (v. 4.)

That is the thought which has kept him still, though no
word of it has been said directly by any one ; and he
at once calls upon all the world to hear him proclaim
himself no king, and to see him act his part with an
exaggerated humility which is at once most genuine and
admirably characteristic : nor less so his forgetting his
place even before the new queen is brought in, to set
Tigranes free without ransom, and to promise unheard-
of magnificence for his home return*

The character of Mardonius is excellent as a foil to
that of his sovereign. He is a good example of a type
which was rather a favourite with our authors and their
contemporaries, the blunt soldier who is loyal but cannot
tune his tongue to flattery. Of this type is Aecius in
Valentiniatiy but Mardonius has a well-marked indivi-
duality of his own. Combined with genuine admiration
of the many good points in his master, he has a humorous
appreciation of his defects of temper : — " If this hold, it
will be an ill world for chambermaids and postboys. I
thank heaven I have none but his letters patent, things
of his own inditing." And he meets threats with the
most absolute indifference, merely warning his sovereign
that in putting him to death he would be destroying the

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 183

only man who would dare to tell him of his follies and
to draw forth his virtues from the " flood of humours "
in which they were drowned :—

" No, cut my head off:
Then you may talk, and be believed, and grow worse,
And have your too self-glorious temper rocked
Into a deep sleep, and the kingdom with you,
Till foreign swords be in your throats, and slaughter
Be everywhere about you, like your flatterers.
Do, kill me." (iv. 2.)

We are reminded of Kent's exhortation —

" Kill your physician and the fee bestow
Upon the sore disease.'*

But Lear is a more intractable master than even Arbaces.
The apology —

** But I am racked clean from myself: bear with me,
Wo't thou bear with me, good Mardonius ? "

shows US the king in his better mood, but it is neverthe-
less the appeal of the weaker and more passionate nature
to the stronger and calmer.

It remains only to bestow a passing notice on the
humorous elements of the play. The connection between
these and the main plot, between the character of
Arbaces and that of Bessus, does not seem to have been
remarked, but it is in its way admirable and artistic.
The relation of the characters is one both of likeness
and of contrast. Both are consummate braggarts ; one,
it is true, with some reason, and the other with less than
none ; for while Arbaces has his head turned by the
real greatness of his position and achievements, Bessus

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1 84 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

has done nothing except by accident, and is in fact the
rankest of cowards. But as an egotist he is really a
parallel to his sovereign, his boasting is a comic counter-
part to that of Arbaces : and while he helps to exhibit
the extravagant self-laudation of the king in a more
ridiculous light, he is employed also by the dramatist as
an instrument to reveal by his moral insensibility the
enormity of the course on which Arbaces is resolved.
Boastful without valour, and ready to commit crime
without passion, he has some of the vices of the king's
character in their most contemptible form, and materially
conduces to the due moral appreciation of them. But
apart from this, Bessus is the most amusing coward-
braggart on the stage, for Falstaff will not properly
come under this category. That inimitable character, so
admirable in the variety and depth of its humour, is no
mere boasting coward, nay, we are tempted to deny the
cowardice altogether ; such as it is, it carries with it our
sympathy as no vulgar cowardice ever can. Bessus is
no Falstaff, but it would be almost equally unjust in
another direction to set him on a level with Parolles.
Parolles is amusing (we may venture to say so much in
spite of Charles Lamb), and his exposure is satisfactorily
complete, but the humour of Bessus is certainly far
superior, from " Bessus* Desperate Redemption " to " a
little butter, friend, a little butter ; butter and parsley is
a sovereign matter." Every reader will remember the
report of the king's exploits with the king's part left out,
or taken rather by the valiant captain Bessus ; and his
voucher for the character of his charge, " Your grace shall

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 185

understand I am secret in these businesses, and know
how to defend a lady's honour." Leigh Hunt, who was
capable of appreciating the humorous parts of the play,
though apparently he could not see its serious merits,
extracts the conversation between Bessus and the swords-
men for his book of selections from Beaumont and
Fletcher, and it is worth while to quote from his Wit
and Humour the passage which refers to this scene:*
" The pretended self-deception with which a coward lies
to his own thoughts, the necessity for support, which
induces him to apply to others as cowardly as himself
for the warrant of their good opinion, and the fascina-
tions of vanity which impel such men to the exposure
which they fancy they have taken the subtlest steps to
guard against, are most entertainingly set forth in the
interview of Bessus with the two bullies, and the subse-
quent catastrophe at the hand of Bacurius. The nice
balance of distinction and difference in which the bullies
pretend to weigh the merits of kicks and beatings, and
the impossibility which they affect of a shadow of impu-
tation against their valour, or even of the power to
assume it hypothetically, are masterly plays of wit of
the first order."

♦ Wit and Humour i p. 174.

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i86 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

IX.

In the work which has just been criticised, though the
power is undiminished, perhaps even increased, we have
been compelled to observe some unmistakable signs
of decadence; and it is commonly thought that our
authors especially represent the decline of the great
dramatic age. This opinion is no doubt to some extent
justifiable, but it must not be accepted without drawing
one distinction. Fletcher, though the older of the two,
had his period of greatest activity later, and fairly enough
represents the generation of dramatists which succeeded
to that of Shakspere ; but Beaumont, whose life lies
entirely within that of Shakspere, and who, like Shak-
spere, seems to have produced little or nothing for the
stage during two or three years before his death, belonged
by the natural bent of his genius to the older school,
and all his works lie within what we must perforce call
the great age, for we can hardly deny that title to the
years which saw the production of Cymbeline^ The
Tempest, and A Winter's Tale, But the younger drama-
tist, who had never felt the force of the first wave of
national enthusiasm, was naturally most easily influenced
by the first beginnings of decline, and we have already

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 187

seen how accurately in his most celebrated work he
reflected the social conditions of his time. He is the
representative, in short, not of the decadence itself, but of
the transition to decadence, and herein lies the key to his
position : he was the religious admirer of Shakspere and
Jonson, yet the intimate associate of Fletcher, bound by
strong ties both to the old and to the new. It is certain,
that after the first few years of the reign of James I.
a decline of the drama did set in, and the years 161 1-
161 3 seem to be a critical point in its history. During
these years Shakspere practically retired from the stage,
and after them very little of importance was written by
Chapman, Dekker, or Webster, * though they all lived
many years longer, f while Ben Jonson from this time
forward occupied himself mainly in masques. In fact
the impulse which had moved the older generation was
by that time almost exhausted. This, as we have already
seen, came in the form of an enthusiastic patriotism,
ennobling human life, so far at least as Englishmen
were concerned in it, and producing a united and national
interest in the representation of its problems and destiny.
But everything had been done by the first Stuart king
to cool down patriotism, and to diminish the self-respect
and pride of Englishmen ; while at the same time by his
insolent, hitherto unheard-of divine-right pretensions, he
alarmed them for their political liberties, and by his
ecclesiastical policy he exasperated theological contro-
versy ; thus contriving, both in politics and in religion,

* Except The Duchess of Maify, 1616.

t Chapman died 1634, Dekker 1641, Webster 165a.

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1 88 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

to destroy unity and foster party spirit to an extent
which had been unknown for nearly half a century.
This condition of things was unfavourable to everything
national, and above all things to the national drama,
which became rather the amusement of the idle, than
the embodiment of a popular enthusiasm ; and the more
so, perhaps, because the sovereign took it under his
patronage. The change was marked more especially
by the increasing favour of masques and such forms
of entertainment as involved pageantry and mag-
nificence, and by the closer relations of the leading
dramatists to the court As t;he stage became more
and more attached to the court, the Puritan opposition
became more and more hostile to the stage, the morals
of which did not improve by contact with the profligacy
of good society ; and meanwhile the writers for it were
driven to the expedient of sensationalism, in order to
attract attention. "In the commencement of a de-
generacy in the dramatic art," observes Schlegel, ** the
spectators first lose the capability of judging of a play
as a whole," hence " the harmony of the composition,
and the due proportion between all the various parts,"
is apt to be neglected, and the flagging interest is stimu-
lated by scenes of horror or strange and startling inci-
dents. This tendency is already visible, as we have
seen, in the transition period, and to appreciate the
tendency it is necessary to cast a glance at its further
development

The chief representatives of the new school are
Fletcher, Massinger, and Ford ; of whom the first domin-

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT, 189

ated the stage from about 161 5 to his death in 1625, and
the second carried on the tradition thence almost until
the closing of the theatres, while the third occasionally
startled audiences at the Pkcenix or at the Blackfriars
by a note of deeper tragedy than could be heard in those
times from any other author. Several representatives
of the older generation were still alive, notably Ben
Jonson, but he remained only as a survival of an epoch
which had passed away ; from 1616 to 1625 he wrote
nothing but masques, and when he again ventured on
the public stage with an unfortunate New Inn or
Magnetic Lady^ he could do little but rail upon the
times which failed to appreciate his genius : the new
(or middle) comedy of the day was of a very different
type from those broad delineations of every variety of
English life and character which he had presented in
Bartholomew Fair ; but he could not, like Webster and
Dekker, consent to be altogether pushed aside.

The history of the latest development of the romantic
drama in England has yet to be written, and that is not
the task which the present writer has proposed to himself.
Yet it is easy to distinguish the general characteristics
of the new race, and they are such as might have been
expected from the character of the times. The age of
lofty imagination and enthusiastic patriotism has passed
away ; the age of seriousness and sense of duty has
not yet fully established itself. There is room for the
drama yet, but it has been shorn in a great degree of its
poetical beauty, and deprived altogether of those spon-
taneously upspringing sources of life which made it

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190 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

once not the amusement of a court but the passionate
interest of a people. The people now are becoming less
and less interested in that direction, nay more and more
interested in the opposite, in "Players* Scourges," and
the like, which prove the unlawfulness for godly persons
of all stage diversions whatever, and in pelting the
women actors in lewd French plays, which unsuspect-
ingly and perhaps under royal encouragement. Queen
Henrietta Maria being theatrically inclined, show them-
selves sometimes at the London theatres. Accordingly,
the stage is becoming, as before said, more and more an
entertainment for the court, and for dissolute idlers of
the Humphrey Mildmay type, and has more and more
lost elevation or betaken itself to illegitimate sources of
interest The first and most obvious result is the grow-
ing importance of comedy, not of that romantic and
poetical type which was perhaps Shakspere*s most original
achievement, nor of the farcical kind which had served
formerly as interlude and relief to tragic matter, but
the comedy of fashionable daily life, in which the gentle-
men who sat upon the stage could recognize themselves
represented to the life, and in which the morals were
those of the court of James I. Let it be without ques-
tion admitted that " the conversation of gentlemen " was
better understood by this generation of dramatists than
by the former ; and let it be added that Fletcher (with
poetry in him too of true quality) was the master of
this essentially prosaic invention. Great as are the
merits of The Chances and The Wild-Goose Chase, this
is no national comedy ; the native humanity is overlaid

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 191

with a veneer of fashion, it is already a comedy of
manners.

Massinger was not a court poet, and his comedy is
of a different type ; but the fact that it was in realistic
comedy that he achieved his highest excellence indicates
again the tendency of the time, the descent from the
high cloudland of poetical imagination to the terra firma
of prosaic fact. Even the tragedy of this age is more
and more apt to run to tragicomedy, and the interest in
great characters and tragic catastrophes is no longer
sufficient of itself, but needs to be helped out from other
sources. The tendency to rhetorical declamation already
appears in Fletcher's Bonduca, and is reproduced in the
popular form of religious eloquence for the conversion
of the infidel in his Island Princess^ and in Massinger's
Renegado, Stage effect began to be studied in the way
of pictorial pageantry and grouping,* and the theatres
took advantage of the inventions of Inigo Jones, and the
introduction of movable scenes. Complaint has been
made that this elaboration of scenery was fatal to the

* The concluding scene of Ford's Broken Heart affords an illustration
which is quite in modern taste. This is the stage directions : —

** Scene, A Temple. An Altar covered with white : two lights of virgin
wax upon it. Recorders^ during which enter, Attendantiy bearing Ithocles
upon a Hearse, in a rich robe, with a crown on his head ; and place him
on the one side of the Altar, After which, enter Calantha in white, crowned,
attended by Euphranea^ etc., also in white : Nearchus, Armostes^ etc.
Calantha kneels before the Altar, the Ladies kneeling behind her, the rest
stand off. The Recorders cqz&q during her devotions. Soft Music, Calantha
and the rest rise, doing obeisance to the Altar.'*

Yet Ford might safely rely upon other resources, and this very scene is
called by Charles Lamb with pardonable exaggeration the most affecting
upon the stage.

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192 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

picturesque and poetical character of the drama itself,
but in fg.ct it was the decline of poetry which led to the
demand for pageants. Those ten years of Jonson's life
during which he devoted himself to masques are deeply
significant of the change that had come about since the
days when the audience were told to "suppose a Temple"
in the absence of any means of representing it ; and it
is certain that the masques of the day tended to be
rather " daubed with cost," than " graced with elegancy." *
Further, the interest of a jaded audience has to be
roused by startling novelties of incident and plot, sur-
prising catastrophes and unexpected developments of
horror by means of incest or murder; the ordinary
relation of the sexes is often inverted, great ladies put
off all womanly modesty in the wooing of their inferiors,
becoming more shameless in the drama of Massinger
than they have been heretofore upon the English stage.
His Honoria, in The Picture^ is certainly a marvel of
immodesty, a queen and the wife of a devoted husband,
who calls upon the ever-shining lamps of heaven and
their Maker, as witnesses of the purity of her affection
for the man whom she addresses thus : —

** You have, sir,
A jewel of such matchless worth and lustre,
As does disdain comparison, and darkens
All that is rare in other men ; and that
I must or win or lessen . . . 'tis your loyalty
And constancy to your wife ; 'tis that I dote on.
And does deserve my envy ; and that jewel,
Or by fair play or foul, I must win from you."

* The cost of the great Masque of the Inns of Court in 1634 was jf 21,000
for a single performance.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT. 193

Incestuous passions such as those of Malefort or of
Giovanni and Annabella; violent and surprising inci-
dents and turns of the plot, as in The Duke of Milan^
The Bondman (" strange meanders " indeed !), or The
Broken Hearty — to these the dramatist of the later years
is driven that he may at least startle the audience whom
he cannot carry with him. Not that there is any ex-
travagance of incident or any horror of crime which
might not be paralleled from the Elizabethans, but it
was not on these that the interest of the older plays
depended ; those ruder spectators surfeited in true bar-
barian fashion, but the appetite which they indulged was
healthy if coarse ; the taste for substantial food plainly
dressed is now gone, all dishes must be seasoned to
pungency if they are to tickle these more courtier-like
palates.

Finally, one at least of our authors had recourse
habitually to means of awakening interest which are
still less legitimate from an artistic point of view, though
liable enough always to appear upon an English stage.
It needed not the historical learning of Professor
Gardiner to prove that Massinger's plays abound in
political references. No reader of them who is in
the least acquainted with the history of the times can
fail to observe the general fact, though doubtless there
are many allusions which only the expert can trace.
The Maid of Honour is little else than a thinly veiled
political satire, and into its reflections upon the peace
policy of James and Charles as contrasted with glorious
elder time we may read more than a mere political

O

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194 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

reference. Unconscious as the writer may have been of
this, it is certain that the degenerate condition of his
own art was closely connected with that ebbing away
of national pride and adventurous patriotism, which the
poet of the opposition would attribute doubtless to the
character of the sovereign, but which really sprang from
causes lying far deeper, from rifts in the national unity
showing themselves almost as soon as the common
enemy had disappeared, and was only encouraged, not
produced, by the pacific temperament of the first Stuart
king. Certain it is that the crisis in the history of the
stage was also a crisis in the history of the nation. In
1611 James first applied to a foreign power (and that
the power of Spain) for help in his difficulties with his
own subjects; in 16 18 the last great Elizabethan died
on the scaffold because he could not conform to the
conditions of peaceful and, as it seemed to him, pusillani-
mous times. If religion had been the root of the drama,
it should have flourished in these times the more, and
grown more instead of less national ; for whatever the
court might be, the people were becoming more deeply
religious than ever before. The history of the English
drama from 161 1 to 1642 may serve, when it is written,
to illustrate the statement that, so far as this great
national product had any single source» it sprang origin-
ally from the spirit of united patriotism ; and the claim
of Francis Beaumont to consideration in such a history
would be partly at least the fact that he was more than
any other man the link between the earlier and the later
generation.

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FRANCIS BEAUMONT, iQS

TABLE OF THE PLAYS

IN WHICH BEAUMONT HAD A SHARE, WITH A SUMMARY OF
THE DISTRIBUTION PROPOSED IN THE PRECEDING ESSAY,
AND THE MOST PROBABLE DATES OF THEIR FIRST PRO-
DUCTION.

For convenience an opinion is here expressed about
every scene without the qualifications which will be
found elsewhere ; and while the probability amounts in
some cases to practical certainty, in others it is the result
of a very doubtful balancing of evidence, upon which
strong conviction is unattainable.

The Woman Hater ^ 1607, by Beaumont alone.

Philaster, 1608, by Beaumont alone.

7^he MaicCs Tragedy, 1609 ; Act i., ii., iii., iv. 2, v. 4., by Beaumont.

Act iv. I, V. I, 2, 3, by Fletcher.
Four Plays in One, date uncertain ; the induction and first two Triumphs
by Beaumont.
The rest by Fletcher.
The Knight of the Burning Pestle, 1 6 10, by Beaumont alone.
A King and No King, 161 1 ; Act i., ii., iii., iv. 4, v. 2, 4, by Beaumont.

Act iv. I, 2, 3, v. I, 3, by Fletcher.
Cupid's Revenge, 161 2 ; Act i. i (first part), 3, 4 (first part), ii. i, 2, 3, 4,
iii. I, 2, iv. I (first part), by Beaumont.
Act i. I (second part), 2, 4 (second part), ii. 5, 6, iii. 3, 4, iv. i
(second part), 2, 3, 4, v., by Fletcher.
The Scornful Lady, date uncertain; Act i., ii., iii. 2 (part), v. 2, by
Beaumont.
Act iii. I, 2 (part), iv., v. I, 3, 4, by Fletcher.

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196 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

The Coxcomb^ 1612 ; Act i. 4, 6, ii. 4, iii. 3, v. 2, by Beaumont.

Act i. I, 2, 3, 5, ii. I, 2, 3, iii. i, 2, iv., v. I, 3, by Fletcher.
Masque of the Inner Temple and Grays Inn, 161 3, by Beaumont alone.
The Captain, 1613 ; Act i. 2, ii. 2, iv. 5, v. 4, 5, possibly by Beaumont

Act i. I, 3, ii. I, iii., iv. I, 2, 3, 4, v. I, 2, 3, by Fletcher.
Thierry and Theodoret, date uncertain ; Act i. 2, ii. i, iii., v. i, by Beau-
mont.

Act i. I, ii. 2, 3, 4, iv., v. 2, by Fletcher.
Wit at Several Weapons, date uncertain ; Act i. 2, ii. 2, 3, 4, iv. I, v., by
Beaumont.

Act i. I, ii. I, iii., iv. 2, 3, by Fletcher.
The Knight of Malta, date uncertain ; Act i., v., by Beaumont

Act ii., iii., iv., by Fletcher.

The gradually increasing importance of the share
taken by Fletcher, so far at least as the order of succes-
sion is fixed, deserves remark.

Digitized byCaOOQlC

APPENDIX.

ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF "SALMACIS AND
HERMAPHRODITUS."

It is of some little importance to determine the question
whether the poem of ScUmacis * and Hermaphroditus is rightly
attributed to Beaumont or no ; for it is so entirely different in
character from his other works, that our estimate of his mental
tendencies must be affected by acceptance or rejection of this
otherwise rather unimportant poem. The internal evidence is
clearly against it ; and the external may be briefly stated thus :
The poem, published anonymously in 1602, appears to have
been first ascribed to Beaumont by the bookseller Lawrence
Blaikelocke, no very reputable person if Wood may be believed,
who in 1640 published in a book which he called Poems by
Francis Beaumont^ Gent, this piece and the Remedie of Love ^
with Beaumont's Elegy on Lady Markham, Earle's com-
mendatory verses on Beaumont, and several miscellaneous
poems, of which four at least have been identified as the work
of other authors, and the rest are doubtful The poem of
Salmacis and Hermaphroditus is preceded by several copies of
verses addressed to the author, one of which has in this edition
the signature "J. F." (suggesting John Fletcher), f and also by an

* So it is written in the first edition, not Sctlmasis as given by Collier,
and after him by Dyce.

t Seward's note on this copy of verses is singularly unhappy, and may
serve as a specimen of eighteenth century editing. ** That Beaumont wrote

Digitized byCaOOQlC

198 FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

invocation to Calliope, signed in this edition "F. B.'* But in the
edition of 1602, the signature of the first is " A. F.," and that of
the second is altogether wanting.* This collection was re-
something in the Ovidian manner seems evident from these lines ; but the
Hermaphrodite, which is printed as his and supposed to be the thing
referred to in this ode, is claimed by Cleveland as a conjunct performance
between himself and Randolph." Now first we may remark that "this
ode " can refer to nothing except the poem of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus
to which it is prefixed ; secondly, that poem was printed (with these lines
prefixed) in the year 1602, while Randolph was bom in 1605, and Cleve-
land in 1613 ; thirdly, Cleveland, who did long afterwards write some very
trivial verses Upon a Hermaphrodite, does not claim even these "as a con-
junct performance," but expressly says that they were written after
Randolph's death. The stupidity which confused Salmacis and Hermaphro-
ditus with Cleveland's poem is only matched by the carelessness with which
Cleveland is cited as authority for the statement which he took pains to
deny. The main source of Seward's error will be seen presently.

* J. P. Collier's Bibliographical Account of the Rarest Books in the
English Language, vol. i. pp. 60-62. The statement of Collier about the
signatures has been kindly verified for me by Mr. E. B. Nicholson,
Librarian of the Bodleian Library, which possesses one of the two copies
known to exist of the edition of 1602. By his courtesy I am able also to
supply a correction in the copy of verses "To the Authour" referred to
above. The first line of this, which in all other editions, including Dyce's,
is given —

" The matchless lust of a fair poesy,"
is in the Bodleian copy —

" The matchlesse lustre of faire poesie," —

obviously the true reading.

It may be observed also that in the last line of the last introductory
poem the reading of the Oxford copy is **halfe-mayd." In all other
editions (including Dyce's) it is "half-mad," a ridiculous alteration which
just destroys the point of the lines. Collier has here supplied the correc-
tion though not careful to preserve the original spelling, which in the case
of a disputed reading might have been important.

Dyce states that he never saw a copy of the edition of 1602. Re-
membering the many emendations which he has made in the plays by
reference to the authority of early quartos, one is inclined to ask why this
was neglected.

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APPENDIX, 199

published in 1653 * with additions, many of which can be
attributed to other authors, as John Beaumont, Ben Jonson,
Fletcher, Randolph, Carew, Shirley, Cleveland, Waller, and
Harington, besides others which cannot be so definitely
assigned, but are certainly not by the author to whom they are
here ascribed — as for example the epitaph on Ben Jonson, who
died more than twenty years later than Beaumont There
were also a few genuine additions; the folio of 1647 supplied
the publisher with Beaumont's Masque and his letter to Ben
Jonson, as well as Fletcher's verses on An Honest Maris Fortune ;
and a considerable part of the additional matter is a miscella-
neous collection of prologues, epilogues and songs, chiefly from
the plays of Fletcher. Evidently there is thrown in everything
on which the publisher could lay hands which seemed to have
even the remotest connection with Beaumont, including
Shirley's epitaph on Charles Beaumont, Basse's epitaph on
Shakspere, and, strange to say, the verses Upon a Hermaphrodite
by Cleveland, ascribed here to Randolph f and inserted
apparently because of its partial similarity of title with the
poem ascribed to Beaumont4

This miscellany was re-issued in 1660, with merely a new
titlepage, upon which it is called The Golden Remains of those
so much admired dramatick poets Francis Beaumont and John
Fletcher,

* It does not seem to have been noticed that there are two editions of
this book dated 1653. They are from the same types, but one has ** William
Hope " on the titlepage instead of " L. B.," and is rather more correctly
printed.

t Cleveland's claim to the sole authorship of them is printed imme-
diately after.

X The lines On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey, published in
Palgrave's Golden Treasury, and there attributed to Beaumont, were
among the additions made in 1653. There is no external evidence of
authorship except their appearance in Blaikelocke's collection ; judging by
internal evidence we might perhaps be disposed to think them genuine.

Digitized by VjOOQIC

200 FRANCIS BEAUMONT,

On the whole there seems to be absolutely no reason to
trust the publisher's assertion as regards the authorship of any
poem in any one of these volumes. He seems simply to have
been bent upon making a book with an attractive name upon
the titlepage, and to have swept into it everything which he
could safely appropriate, not hesitating to tamper with signa-
tures, that his case might be made more plausible. To con-
jecture that Salmacis and Hermaphroditus may have been by
some other member of the Beaumont family, several of whom
were verse writers and have been confused with the dramatist,
is quite superfluous. Enough for Blaikelocke that the poem
was anonymous and unlikely to be claimed by a living author.

One addition to this evidence, of a rather doubtful kind,
is supplied by Dyce. A poem called The Metamorphosis of
Tobacco^ also printed anonymously in 1602, has been ascribed
to John Beaumont.* To this is prefixed a few commendatory
verses signed F. B., which may have been written by his
brother Francis. The author of these speaks of himself as a
hitherto quite untried writer, intimates in fact that this is his
first attempt at verse-making : —

**My new-bome Muse assaies her tender wing," etc.

The author of these lines could hardly have been one who
either had already pubUshed or was just about to publish so
considerable a poem as Salmacis and Hermaphroditus,

* Mr. Grosart, who has admitted it into his edition of Sir John Beau-,
mont's poems, thinks it unquestionably his. To the present writer the
evidence seems less convincing.

THE END.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BBCCLES.

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