Francis Beaumont: Dramatist

Others may more in lofty Verses move;I onely, thus, expresse my Truth and Love.

No better testimony to the character of the man who, even though Jonson was still writing, became absolute sovereign of the stage after Shakespeare and Beaumont had ceased, can be found than such as the preceding. To Fletcher's innate modesty, other contemporaries, Lowin and Taylor, who acted in many of his plays, bear testimony in the Dedication of The Wild-Goose Chase: "The Play was of so Generall a receiv'd Acceptance, that (he Himself a Spectator) we have known him unconcern'd, and to have wisht it had been none of His; He, as well as the throng'd Theatre (in despite of his innate Modesty) Applauding this rare issue of his Braine." He was the idol of his actors: "And now, Farewell, our Glory!" continue, in 1652, these victims of "a cruell Destinie" – the closing of the theatres at the outbreak of the Civil War, – "Farewell, your Choice Delight, most noble Gentlemen! Farewell, the grand Wheel that set Us Smaller Motions in Action!" – The wheel of Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger. – "Farewell, the Pride and Life o' the Stage! Nor can we (though in our Ruin) much repine that we are so little, since He that gave us being is no more."

Fletcher was beloved of great men, as they themselves have left their love on record, of Jonson, Beaumont, Chapman, Massinger. If Shakespeare collaborated with him, that speaks for itself. He was an inspiration to young pastoralists like Browne, and to aspiring dramatists like Field. He was a writer of sparkling genius and phenomenal facility. He was careless of myopic criticism, conscious of his dignity, – but unaffectedly simple, – averse to flattering his public or his patron for bread, or for acquaintance, or for the admiration of the indolent, or for "itch of greater fame."137 If we may take him at his word, and estimate him by the noblest lines he ever wrote, – the verses affixed to The Honest Man's Fortune (acted, 1613), – the keynote of his character as a man among men, was independence. To those "that can look through Heaven, and tell the stars," he says:

Man is his own Star, and the soul that canRender an honest and a perfect man,Commands all light, all influence, all fate;Nothing to him falls early, or too late.Our Acts our Angels are, or good or ill,Our fatal shadows that walk by us still;And when the Stars are labouring, we believeIt is not that they govern, but they grieveFor stubborn ignorance.

That star is in "the Image of thy Maker's good":

He is my Star, in him all truth I find,All influence, all fate;

and as for poverty, it is "the light to Heaven … Nor want, the cause of man, shall make me groan"; for experience teaches us "all we can: To work ourselves into a glorious man." His mistress is not some star of Love, with the increase to wealth or honour she may bring, but of Knowledge and fair Truth:

So I enjoy all beauty and all youth,And though to time her Lights and Laws she lends,She knows no Age, that to corruption bends…

Perhaps through all this, there echoes the voice of that præsul splendidus, his father, the Bishop, the friend of Sir Francis Drake, of Burghley, and of the forceful Bishop Bancroft, – a father solicitous, at any rate before he fell into the hands of his fashionable second wife and lost favour with the Queen, for the "Chrystian and godlie education" of his children. However that may be, – whether the noble idea of this confession of faith is a projection from the discipline of youth or an induction from the experience of life, the utterance of Fletcher's inmost personality is here:

Man is his own Star, and that soul that canBe honest, is the only perfect man.

Though, in the plays where Beaumont does not control, Fletcher so freely reflects the loose morals of his age, the gross conventional misapprehension of woman's worth, even the cynicism regarding her essential purity, – though Fletcher reflects these conditions in his later plays as well as in his early Faithfull Shepheardesse,138 and though he, for dramatic ends, accepts the material vulgarity of the lower classes and the perverted and decadent heroics of the upper, there still are "passages in his works where he recurs to a conception which undoubtedly had a very vital significance for him – that of a gentleman," – to the "merit, manners, and inborn virtue" of the gentleman not conventional but genuine.139 In Beaumont, that "man of a most strong and searching braine" whose writings and whose record speak the gentleman, he had had the example beside him in the flesh. What that meant is manifest in the encomium of Francis Palmer, written in 1647 from Christ Church, Oxford,

All commendations endIn saying only: Thou wert Beaumont's friend.

The engraving of Fletcher in the 1647 folio was "cut by severall Originall Pieces," says Mosely "which his friends lent me, but withall they tell me that his unimitable Soule did shine through his countenance in such Ayre and Spirit, that the Painters confessed it was not easie to expresse him: As much as could be, you have here, and the Graver hath done his part." The edition of 1711 is the first to publish "effigies" of both poets, "the Head of Mr. Beaumont, and that of Mr. Fletcher, through the favour of the present Earl of Dorset [the seventh Earl], being taken from Originals in the noble Collection his Lordship has at Knowles." The engravings in the Theobald, Seward and Sympson edition of 1742-1750 are by G. Vertue. The engravings in Colman's edition of 1778, are the same, debased. Those in Weber's edition of 1812, are done afresh, – of Beaumont by Evans, of Fletcher by Blood – apparently from the Knole originals. They are an improvement upon those of earlier editions. In Dyce's edition of 1843-1846, H. Robinson's engraving of Beaumont has nobility; his attempt at Fletcher does not improve upon Blood's. All these are in the reverse. The Variorum edition of 1904-1905 gives the beautiful photogravure of Beaumont of which I have already spoken, by Walker and Cockerell, from the original at Knole Park; and an equally soft and expressive photogravure of Fletcher, by Emery Walker, from the painting in the National Portrait Gallery. For the first time the dramatists face as in the originals: Beaumont, toward your left, Fletcher, toward your right.

Fletcher's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery reveals a highbred, thoughtful countenance, large eyes unafraid, wide-awake and keen, the nose aquiline and sensitive, wavily curling hair, hastily combed back, or through which he has run his fingers, a careless, half-buttoned jerkin from which the shirt peeps forth, – all in all a man of more vivacious temper, ready and practical quality than Beaumont.

The authorities of the Gallery, especially through the kindness of Mr. J. D. Milner, who has been good enough to look up various particulars for me, inform me that this portrait of John Fletcher, No. 420, was purchased by the Trustees in March 1876, its previous history being unknown. The painting is by a contemporary but unknown artist, and is similar to the portrait at Knole Park. It was engraved in the reverse by G. Vertue in 1729. They also inform me that another portrait of a different type belongs to the Earl of Clarendon. This, I conjecture, must be that which John Evelyn, in a letter to Samuel Pepys, 12 August, 1689, says he has seen in the first Earl of Clarendon's collection – "most of which [portraits], if not all, are at the present at Cornebery in Oxfordshire." But Evelyn adds that "Beaumont and Fletcher were both in one piece." Yet another portrait said to be of Fletcher, painted in 1625 by C. Janssen, belongs to the Duke of Portland. This Janssen is the Cornelius to whom the alleged portrait of Shakespeare, now at Bulstrode, is attributed. Cornelius did not come to England before Shakespeare's death; and, consequently, not before Beaumont's.

Fletcher died in August 1625. According to Aubrey, "In the great plague, 1625, a Knight of Norfolke (or Suffolke) invited him into the Countrey. He stayed but to make himselfe a suite of cloathes, and while it was makeing, fell sick of the plague and dyed. This I had [1668] from his tayler, who is now [1670] a very old man, and clarke of St. Mary Overy's." The dramatist was buried in St. Saviour's, Southwark, the twenty-ninth of that month. Sir Aston Cockayne's statement, in an epitaph on Fletcher and Massinger, that they lie in the same grave, is probably figurative. Aubrey tells us that Massinger, who died in March 1640, and whose burial is recorded in the register of St. Saviour's, was buried not in the church, but about the middle of one of its churchyards, the Bullhead, next the Bullhead tavern. There are memorials now to both poets in the church, as also to Shakespeare, and Beaumont, and to Edward Alleyn, the actor of the old Admiral's company.

It is generally supposed that Fletcher was never married. The name, John Fletcher, was not unusual in the parish of St. Saviour's, and the records of "John Fletcher" marriages may, therefore, not involve the dramatist. But two items communicated to Dyce140 by Collier, "more in jest than in earnest," from the Parish-registers, are suggestive, if we reflect that, about 1612 or 1613, the ménage à trois, provided it continued so long, would have lapsed at the time of Beaumont's marriage; and if we can swallow the stage-fiction of Fletcher's "maid Joan" in Bury-Fair (see page 96 above), whole and as something digestible.

These are Collier's cullings from the Registers:

1612. Nov. 3. John Fletcher and Jone Herring [were married]. Reg. of St. Saviour's, Southwark.

John, the son of John Fletcher and of Joan his wife was baptized 25 Feb., 1619. Reg. of St. Bartholomew the Great.

If this is our John Fletcher, his marriage would have been about the same time as Beaumont's, and he may have later taken up his residence in the parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, on the north side of the river, not far from Southwark. If Fletcher was married in 1612, we may be very sure that his wife was not a person of distinction. His verses Upon an Honest Man's Fortune, written the next year, give us the impression either that he is not married and not likely to be, or that he has married one of low estate and breeding, has concluded that the matrimonial game is not worth the candle, and rather defiantly has turned to a better mistress than mortal, who can compensate him for that which through love he has not attained, "Were I in love," he declares, —

Were I in love, and could that bright Star bringIncrease to Wealth, Honour, and everything:Were she as perfect good, as we can aim,The first was so, and yet she lost the Game.My Mistriss then be Knowledge and fair Truth;So I enjoy all beauty and all youth.

We may be sure that when Fletcher wrote this poem he had known poverty, sickness, and affliction, but not a consolation in wedded happiness:

Love's but an exhalation to best eyes;The matter spent, and then the fool's fire dies.

Since many of Collier's "earnests" turn out to be "jests," why not the other way round? That is my apology for according this "jest" a moment's whimsical consideration.

Such is an outline in broad sweep of the activities and common relations of our Castor and Pollux, and a preliminary sketch of the personality of each. With regard to the latter, who is our main concern, the vital record is yet more definitely to be discovered in the dramatic output distinctively his during the years of literary partnership; and to the consideration of his share in the joint-plays we may now turn.

PART TWO

THE COLLABORATION OF BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER

CHAPTER XVI

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM; CRITICAL APPARATUS

Much of the confusion which existed in the minds of readers and critics during the period following the Restoration concerning the respective productivity of Beaumont and Fletcher is due to accident. The quartos (generally unauthorized) of individual plays in circulation were, as often as not, wrong in their ascriptions of authorship to one, or the other, or both of the dramatists; and the folio of 1647, which, long after both were dead, first presented what purported to be their collected works, lacked title-pages to the individual plays, and, save in one instance, prefixed no name of author to any play. The exception is The Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes-Inne and the Inner Temple "written by Francis Beaumont, Gentleman," which had been performed, Feb. 20, 1612-13, and had appeared in quarto without date (but probably 1613) as "by Francis Beaumont, Gent." In seven instances, Fletcher is indicated in the 1647 folio by Prologue or Epilogue as author, or author revised, and in general correctly; but otherwise the thirty-four plays included (not counting the Maske) are introduced to the public merely by a general title-page as "written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. Never printed before, And now published by the Authours Originall Copies." That the public should have been deceived into accepting most of them as the joint-product of the authors is not surprising. Though it is not the purpose of this discussion to consider plays in which Beaumont was not concerned, it may be said incidentally that of eleven of these productions Fletcher was sole author; Massinger of perhaps one, and with Fletcher of eight, and with Fletcher and others of five more; that in several plays four or five other authors had a hand, and that in at least five Fletcher had no share.141

Sir Aston Cockayne was, therefore, fully justified, when, some time between 1647 and 1658, he thus upbraided the publishers of the folio:

In the large book of Playes you late did printIn Beaumont's and in Fletcher's name, why in'tDid you not justice? Give to each his due?For Beaumont of those many writ in few,And Massinger in other few; the MainBeing sole Issues of sweet Fletcher's brain.But how came I (you ask) so much to know?Fletcher's chief bosome-friend informed me so.I' the next impression therefore justice do,And print their old ones in one volume too;For Beaumont's works and Fletcher's should come forth,With all the right belonging to their worth.

In still another poem, printed in 1662, but written not long after 1647, and addressed to his cousin, Charles Cotton, Sir Aston returns to the charge:

I wonder, Cousin, that you would permitSo great an Injury to Fletcher's wit,Your friend and old Companion, that his fameShould be divided to another's name.If Beaumont had writ those Plays, it had beenAgainst his merits a detracting Sin,Had they been attributed also toFletcher. They were two wits and friends, and whoRobs from the one to glorify the other,Of these great memories is a partial Lover.Had Beaumont liv'd when this Edition cameForth, and beheld his ever living nameBefore Plays that he never writ, how heHad frown'd and blush'd at such Impiety!His own Renown no such Addition needsTo have a Fame sprung from another's deedes:And my good friend Old Philip MassingerWith Fletcher writ in some that we see there.But you may blame the Printers: yet you mightPerhaps have won them to do Fletcher right,Would you have took the pains; for what a foulAnd unexcusable fault it is (that wholeVolume of plays being almost every oneAfter the death of Beaumont writ) that noneWould certifie them so much! I wish as freeY' had told the Printers this, as you did me.…… While they liv'd and writ together, weHad Plays exceeded what we hop'd to see.But they writ few; for youthful Beaumont soonBy death eclipsèd was at his high noon.

The statements especially to be noted in these poems are, first, that Fletcher is present in most of the work published in the earliest folio, that of 1647, Beaumont in but a few plays, Massinger in other few. This information Cockayne, who was but eight years of age when Beaumont died, and seventeen at Fletcher's death, had from Fletcher's chief bosom-friend, and it was probably corroborated by Massinger himself, with whom Cockayne and his family (as we know from other evidence) had long been acquainted. Second, that almost every play in the folio was written after Beaumont's death (1616). This information, also, Cockayne had from his own cousin who was a friend and old companion of Fletcher. This cousin, the chief bosom-friend, as I have shown elsewhere, was Charles Cotton, the elder, who died in 1658, not the younger Charles Cotton (the translator of Montaigne), – for he was not born till five years after Fletcher died. And, third, that not only is the title of the folio "Comedies and Tragedies written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen" a misnomer, but that the bulk of their joint-plays, "the old ones" (not here included) calls for a volume to itself. A very just verdict, indeed, – this of Cockayne, – for (if I may again anticipate conclusions later to be reached) the only indubitable contributions from Beaumont's hand to this folio are his Maske of the Gentleman of Grayes Inne and a portion of The Coxcombe.

The confusion concerning authorship was redoubled by the second folio, which appeared as "Fifty Comedies and Tragedies. Written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. Published by the Authors Original Copies (etc.)" in 1679. There are fifty-three plays in this volume; the thirty-five of the first folio, and eighteen previously printed but not before gathered together. Beside those in which Beaumont had, or could have had, a hand, the eighteen include five of Fletcher's authorship, five in which he collaborated with others than Beaumont; and one, The Coronation, principally, if not entirely, by Shirley.142 As in the 1647 folio, the only indication of respective authorship is to be found in occasional dedications, prefaces, prologues and epilogues. But, while in some half-dozen instances these name Fletcher correctly as author, and, in two or three, by implication correctly designate him or Beaumont, in other cases the indication is wrong or misleading. Where "our poets" are vaguely mentioned, or no hint whatever is given, the uncritical reader is led to ascribe the play to the joint composition of Beaumont and Fletcher. The lists of actors prefixed to several of the dramas afford valuable information concerning date and, sometimes, authorship to the student of stage-history; but the credulous would carry away the impression that Beaumont and Fletcher had collaborated equally in about forty of the fifty-three plays contained in the folio of 1679.

The uncertainty regarding the respective shares of the two authors in the production of this large number of dramas and, consequently, regarding the quality of the genius of each, commenced even during the life of Fletcher who survived his friend by nine years, and it has continued in some fashion down to the present time. Writing an elegy "on Master Beaumont, presently after his death,"143 that is to say, in 1616-17, John Earle, a precocious youth of sixteen, at Christ Church, Oxford, is so occupied with lament and praise for "the poet so quickly taken off" that he not only ascribes to him the whole of Philaster and The Maides Tragedy (in both of which it was always known that Fletcher had a share) but omits mention of Fletcher altogether. So far, however, as the estimate of the peculiar genius of Beaumont goes, the judgment of young Earle has rarely been surpassed.

Oh, when I read those excellent things of thine,Such Strength, such sweetnesse, coucht in every line,Such life of Fancy, such high choise of braine, —Nought of the Vulgar mint or borrow'd straine,Such Passion, such expressions meet my eye,Such Wit untainted with obscenity,And these so unaffectedly exprest,But all in a pure flowing language drest,So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon,And all so borne within thyself, thine owne,I grieve not now that old Menanders veineIs ruin'd, to survive in thee againe.

The succeeding exaltation of his idol above Plautus and Aristophanes, nay even Chaucer, is of a generous extravagance, but the lad lays his finger on the real Beaumont when he calls attention to "those excellent things;" and to the histrionic quality, the high seriousness, the "humours" and the perennial vitality of Beaumont's contribution to dramatic poetry.

A year or so later, and still during Fletcher's lifetime, we find Drummond of Hawthornden confusing in his turn the facts of authorship; for he "reports Jonson as saying that 'Flesher and Beaumont, ten years since, hath written The Faithfull Shipheardesse, a tragicomedie well done,' – whereas both Jonson and Beaumont had already addressed lines to Fletcher in commendation of his pastoral."144 By 1647, as Miss Hatcher has shown, the confusion had crystallized itself into three distinct opinions, equally false, concerning the respective contribution of the authors to the plays loosely accredited to their partnership. These opinions are represented in the commendatory verses prefixed to the first folio. One was that "they were equal geniuses fused into one by the force of perfect congeniality and not to be distinguished from each other in their work," – thus put into epigram by Sir George Lisle:

For still your fancies are so wov'n and knit,'T was Francis Fletcher or John Beaumont writ;

and repeated by Sir John Pettus:

How Angels (cloyster'd in our humane Cells)Maintaine their parley, Beaumont-Fletcher tels:Whose strange, unimitable IntercourseTranscends all Rules.

A second, the dominant view in 1647, was that "the plays were to be accredited to Fletcher alone, since Beaumont was not to be taken into serious account in explaining their production." This opinion is expressed by Waller, who, referring not only to the plays of that folio (in only two of which Beaumont appears) but to others like The Maides Tragedy and The Scornful Ladie in which, undoubtedly, Beaumont coöperated, says:

Fletcher, to thee wee do not only oweAll these good Playes, but those of others, too; …No Worthies form'd by any Muse but thine,Could purchase Robes to make themselves so fine;

and by Hills, who writes, – "upon the Ever-to-be-admired Mr. John Fletcher and his Playes," —

"Fletcher, the King of Poets! such was he,That earn'd all tribute, claim'd all soveraignty."

The third view was – still to follow Miss Hatcher – that "Fletcher was the genius and creator in the work, and Beaumont merely the judicial and regulative force." Cartwright in his two poems of 1647, as I have already pointed out, emphasizes this view:

Though when all Fletcher writ, and the entireMan was indulged unto that sacred fire,His thoughts and his thoughts dresse appeared both suchThat 't was his happy fault to do too much;Who therefore wisely did submit each birthTo knowing Beaumont ere it did come forth;Working againe, until he said 't was fitAnd made him the sobriety of his wit;Though thus he call'd his Judge into his fame,And for that aid allow'd him halfe the name,'T is knowne that sometimes he did stand alone,That both the Spunge and Pencill were his owne;That himselfe judged himselfe, could singly do,And was at last Beaumont and Fletcher too.

A similar view is implied by Dryden, when, in his Essay of Dramatick Poesie, 1668, he attributes the regularity of their joint-plots to Beaumont's influence; and reports that even "Ben Jonson while he lived submitted all his writings to his censure, and 'tis thought used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots."

This tradition of Fletcher as creator and Beaumont as critic continued for generations, only occasionally disturbed,145 in spite of the testimony of Cockayne to Fletcher's sole authorship of most of the plays in the first folio, to the coöperation of Massinger with Fletcher in some, and to the fact that there were enough plays not here included, written conjointly by Beaumont and Fletcher, to warrant the publication of a separate volume, properly ascribed to both. To the mistaken attributions of authorship by Dryden, Rymer, and others, I make reference in my forthcoming Essay on The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare, Part Two.146 The succeeding history of opinion through Langbaine, Collier, Theobald, Sympson and Seward, Chalmers, Brydges, The Biographia Dramatica, Cibber, Malone, Darley, Dyce, and the purely literary critics from Lamb to Swinburne, has been admirably outlined by Miss Hatcher in the first chapter of her dissertation on the Dramatic Method of John Fletcher.

With Fleay, in 1874, began the scientific analysis of the problem, based upon metrical tests as derived from the investigation of the individual verse of Fletcher, Massinger, and Beaumont. His method has been elaborated, corrected, and supplemented by additional rhetorical and literary tests, on the part of various critics, some of whom are mentioned below.147 The more detailed studies in metre and style are by R. Boyle, G. C. Macaulay, and E. H. Oliphant; and the best brief comparative view of their conclusions as regards Beaumont's contribution is to be found in R. M. Alden's edition of The Knight of the Burning Pestle and A King and No King. To the chronology of the plays serviceable introductions are afforded by Macaulay in the list appended to his chapter in the sixth volume of the Cambridge History of English Literature, and by A. H. Thorndike in his Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher upon Shakespeare.