Francis Beaumont: Dramatist

Concerning the authorship of the successive scenes in a few of the plays undoubtedly written in partnership by Beaumont and Fletcher a consensus of opinion has practically been reached. Concerning others, especially those in which a third or fourth hand may be traced, the difference of opinion is still bewildering. This divergence is due, perhaps, to the proneness of the critic to emphasize one or more tests out of relation to the rest, or to forget that though individual scenes were undertaken now by one, now by the other of the colleagues, the play as a whole would be usually planned by both, but any individual scene or passage revised by either. The tests of external evidence have of course been applied by all critics, but as to events and dates there is still variety of opinion. Of the internal criteria, those based upon the peculiarities of each partner in respect of versification have been so carefully studied and applied that to repeat the operation seems like threshing very ancient straw; but to accept the winnowings of others, however careful, is unsatisfactory. Tests of rhetorical habit and tectonic preference have also been, in general, attempted; but not, I think, exhaustively. And, though much has been established, and availed of, in analysis, there remains yet something to desire in the application of the more subtle differentiæ yielded by such preliminary methods of investigation, – what these differentiæ teach us concerning the temperamental idiosyncrasies of each of the partners in scope and method of observation, in poetic imagery, in moral and emotional insight and elevation, intellectual outlook, philosophical and religious conviction.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DELIMITATION OF THE FIELD

The plays contained in the first folio of Beaumont and Fletcher's Comedies and Tragedies, 1647, are The Mad Lover, The Spanish Curate, The Little French Lawyer, The Custome of the Countrey, The Noble Gentleman, The Captaine, The Beggers Bush, The Coxcombe, The False One, The Chances, The Loyall Subject, The Lawes of Candy, The Lovers Progresse, The Island Princesse, The Humorous Lieutenant, The Nice Valour, The Maide in the Mill, The Prophetesse, The Tragedy of Bonduca, The Sea Voyage, The Double Marriage, The Pilgrim, The Knight of Malta, The Womans Prize or The Tamer Tamed, Loves Cure, The Honest Mans Fortune, The Queene of Corinth, Women Pleas'd, A Wife for a Moneth, Wit at Severall Weapons, The Tragedy of Valentinian, The Faire Maide of the Inne, Loves Pilgrimage, The Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne, and the Inner Temple, at the Marriage of the Prince and Princesse Palatine of Rhene written by Francis Beaumont, Gentleman, Foure Playes (or Moralle Representations) in One.

Of these thirty-five, which purport to be printed from "the authours originall copies," only one, as I have already said, The Maske, had been published before.

The second folio, entitled Fifty Comedies and Tragedies, 1679, contains, beside those above mentioned, eighteen others, one of which, The Wild-Goose Chase, had been published separately and in folio, 1652. The remaining seventeen said to be "published from the Authors' Original Copies," are printed from the quartos. They are The Maides Tragedy, Philaster, A King and No King, The Scornful Ladie, The Elder Brother, Wit Without Money, The Faithfull Shepheardesse, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, Monsieur Thomas, Rollo, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, The Night-Walker, The Coronation, Cupids Revenge, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Thierry and Theodoret, and The Woman-Hater.

In addition to these fifty-three plays, one, The Faithful Friends, entered on the Stationers' Registers in 1660, as by Beaumont and Fletcher, was held in manuscript until 1812, when it was purchased by Weber from "Mr. John Smith of Furnival's Inn into whose possession it came from Mr. Theobald, nephew to the editor of Shakespeare," and published.

According to the broadest possible sweep of modern opinion, the presence of Beaumont cannot by any tour de force be conjectured in more than twenty-three of the fifty-four productions listed above. The twenty-three are (exclusive of The Maske) The Woman-Hater, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Cupids Revenge, The Scornful Ladie, The Maides Tragedy, A King and No King, Philaster, Foure Playes in One, Loves Cure, The Coxcombe, The Captaine, Thierry and Theodoret, The Faithful Friends, Wit at Severall Weapons, Beggers Bush, Loves Pilgrimage, The Knight of Malta, The Lawes of Candy, The Nice Valour, The Noble Gentleman, The Faire Maide of the Inne, Bonduca, and The Honest Mans Fortune. With regard to the last twelve of these plays beginning with Thierry and Theodoret there is no convincing proof that more than the first four were written before February 1613, when after preparing the Maske for the Lady Elizabeth's marriage to the Elector Palatine, Beaumont seems (except for his share of The Scornful Ladie which I date about 1614) to have withdrawn from dramatic activity, – perhaps because of his own marriage about that time and withdrawal to the country, or because of failing health; and there is no generally accepted historical or textual evidence that Beaumont had any hand even in these four. Of the eight remaining at the end of the list, four may be dated before Beaumont's death in 1616: The Honest Mans Fortune, which is said on manuscript evidence to have been played in the year 1613, but probably later than August 5;148 Bonduca, which Oliphant asserts is an alteration by Fletcher of an old drama of Beaumont's, but which other authorities assign to Fletcher alone; and, on slighter evidence, Loves Pilgrimage, and The Nice Valour. The balance of proof with regard to the other four, The Knight of Malta, The Lawes of Candy, The Noble Gentleman, and The Faire Maide of the Inne, is altogether in favour of their composition after Beaumont's death.

In each of these twelve plays, however, beginning with Thierry and ending with The Honest Mans Fortune, an occasional expert thinks that he finds a speech or a scene in Beaumont's style, and concludes that the play in its present form is a revision of some early effort in which that dramatist had a hand. But where one critic surmises Beaumont, another detects Beaumont's imitators; and where one conjectures Fletcher and Beaumont conjoined, half a dozen assert Fletcher, assisted, or revised by anywhere from one to four contemporaries, – Field or Daborne or Massinger, Middleton or Rowley, or First and Second Unknown. I have examined these plays and the evidence, as carefully as I have those which have more claim to consideration among the Beaumont possibilities, and have applied to them all the tests which I shall presently describe; and have come to the conclusion that Beaumont had nothing to do with any of the twelve.

There remain, then, of the twenty-three plays enumerated above as Beaumont-Fletcher possibilities, only eleven of which I can, on the basis of external or internal evidence, or both, safely say that they were composed before Beaumont ceased writing for the stage, and that he had, or may have had, a hand in writing some of them. These are, in the order of their first appearance in print: The Woman-Hater, published without name of author in 1607; The Knight of the Burning Pestle, also anonymous, published in 1613; Cupids Revenge, published as Fletcher's in 1615; The Scornful Ladie, published in 1616, as Beaumont and Fletcher's, just after the death of the former; The Maides Tragedy, published, without names of authors, in 1619; A King and No King, published as Beaumont and Fletcher's in 1619; Philaster, published as Beaumont and Fletcher's in 1620; and Foure Playes in One, Loves Cure, The Coxcombe, and The Captaine, first published in the 1647 folio, without ascription of authorship on the title-page, but as of the "Comedies and Tragedies written by Beaumont and Fletcher," in general. In the case of Loves Cure the Epilogue mentions "our Author"; the Prologue, spoken "at the reviving of this play," attributes it to Beaumont and Fletcher. As for The Coxcombe, the Prologue for a revival speaks of "the makers that confest it for their own."

It is worthy of notice that three only of these eleven possible "Beaumont-Fletcher" plays were printed during Beaumont's lifetime, —The Woman-Hater, The Knight of the Burning Pestle and Cupids Revenge, and that on none of them does Beaumont's name appear as author. The last indeed was ascribed, wrongly, as I shall later show, to Fletcher alone. It should also be noted that four other of the plays, beginning with The Scornful Ladie and ending with Philaster, were published before the death of Fletcher in 1625; and that while three of them have title-page ascriptions to both authors, one, The Maides Tragedy, is anonymous.

To these eleven plays as a residuum I have given the preference in the application of tests deemed most likely to reveal the relative contribution and genius of the authors in partnership. Beside the seven published as stated above during Fletcher's life, two others appeared which I do not include in this residuum, —The Faithfull Shepheardesse and Thierry and Theodoret. The former, printed between December 22, 1608 and July 20, 1609, is of Fletcher's sole authorship, and will be employed as one of the clues to his early characteristics. The latter, attributed by some critics to both authors was published without ascription of authorship in a quarto of 1621. It does not appear in the folio of 1647, but was printed in second quarto as "by John Fletcher" in 1648, and again as "by F. Beaumont and J. Fletcher" in 1649; and was finally gathered up with the Comedies and Tragedies which compose the folio of 1679. Oliphant and Thorndike are of opinion that the play is a revision by Massinger of an original by Beaumont and Fletcher, but I cannot discover in the text evidence sufficient to warrant its inclusion in the list of plays worthy to be investigated as the possible product of the partnership.

The eleven Beaumont-Fletcher plays to which the criteria of internal evidence may be applied with some assurance of success, comprise in their number, fortunately for us, three of which we are informed by external evidence, – the contemporary testimony of John Earle, dated 1616-1617, – that Beaumont was concerned in their composition. These three, Philaster, The Maides Tragedy, and A King and No King, are a positive residuum to which as a model of the joint-work of our authors we may first, in the effort to discriminate their respective functions when working in partnership, apply the tests of style derived from a study of the plays and poems which each wrote alone.

With this delimitation of the field of inquiry, we are now ready for the consideration of the criteria by which the presence of either author may be detected. The criteria are primarily of versification; then, successively and cumulatively, of diction and mental habit. Ultimately, and by induction, they are of dramatic technique and creative genius.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE VERSIFICATION OF FLETCHER AND OF BEAUMONT

I. In Plays Individually Composed

The studies of the most experienced critics into the peculiarities of Fletcher's blank verse as displayed in productions of the popular dramatic kind, indubitably written by him alone,149 such as Monsieur Thomas of the earlier period, ending 1613, The Chances, The Loyall Subject, and The Humorous Lieutenant of the middle period, ending 1619, and Rule a Wife and Have a Wife of his latest period, indicate that he indulges in an excessive use of double endings, sometimes as many as seventy in every hundred lines, even in triple and quadruple endings; in an abundance of trisyllabic feet; and in a peculiar retention of the old end-stopped line, or final pause, – occasionally in as many as ninety out of a hundred lines. Attention has been directed also to the emphasis which he deliberately places upon the extra syllable of the blank verse, making it a substantive rather than a negligible factor: as in the "brains" and "too" of the following:

Or wander after that they know not whereTo find? or, if found how to enjoy? Are men's brainsMade nowadays of malt, that their affectionsAre never sober, but, like drunken peopleFounder at every new fame? I do believe, too,That men in love are ever drunk, as drunken menAre ever loving, —150

and to his fondness for appending words such as "first," "then," "there," "still," "sir," and even "lady" and "gentlemen" to lines which already possess their five feet. It has also been remarked that he makes but infrequent employment of rhyme.

Of this metrical style examples will be found on pages in Chapter XIX, Section 2, below; or on any page of Fletcher's Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, as for instance the following from Act III, Scene 1, 14-23:

Altea. My life|, an in|nocent|!Marg. That's it | I aim | at,That's it | I hope | too; ¦ then ¦ I am sure | I rule | him;For in|nocents | are like | obe|dient chil|drenBrought up | under a hard | ^ moth|er-in-law|, a cru|el,Who be|ing not us'd | to break|fasts and | colla|tions, ^ When | they have coarse | bread of|fer'd 'em | are thank|full,And take | it for | a fa|vour too|. Are the rooms |Made read|y to en|tertain | my friends|? I long | to dance now, ^ And | to be wan|ton. ¦ Let | me have | a song.Is the great | couch up | the Duke | of Medi|na sent?

Here the first half of v. 14 is also the last of the preceding line; seven out of ten verses have double endings; one has a triple ending. One, v. 21, has a quadruple ending; unless we rearrange by adding "made ready" to v. 20, so as to scan:

And take 't | for a fa|vour too|. Are the rooms | made read|yTo en|tertain | my friends|? I long | to dance | now. —

Trisyllabic feet occur in nine; final pauses in nine; stress-syllable openings and compensating anapæsts in two; the feminine cæsura (phrasal pause within the foot) in two. The pause in v. 15, after two strong monosyllables of which the first is stressed, produces a jolt, typically Fletcherian.

Now, these peculiarities of versification are not a habit acquired by Fletcher after Beaumont ceased to write with him. They are rife not only in the plays of his middle and later periods, but in those of the earlier period while Beaumont was still at his side. As for instance in Monsieur Thomas, entirely Fletcher's of 1607, or at the latest 1611. The reader may be interested to verify for himself by scanning the following passage from Act IV, 2 at which I open at random: Launcelot is speaking:

But to the silent streets we turn'd our furies:A sleeping watchman here we stole the shooes from,There made a noise, at which he wakes, and follows:The streets are durty, takes a Queen-hithe cold,Hard cheese, and that choaks him o' Munday next:Windows and signs we sent to Erebus;A crew of bawling curs we entertain'd last,When having let the pigs loose in out parishes,O, the brave cry we made as high as Algate!Down comes a Constable, and the Sow his SisterMost traiterously tramples upon Authority:There a whole stand of rug gowns rowted mainly,And the King's peace put to flight, a purblind pig hereRuns me his head into the Admirable Lanthorn, —Out goes the light and all turns to confusion.

No one, once acquainted with this style of blank verse, with its end-stopped lines, double endings, stress-syllable openings, feminine cæsuræ, trisyllabic feet, jolts, and heavy extra syllables, can ever turn it to confusion with the verse of any poet before Browning – certainly not with that of Beaumont.

Our materials for a study of Beaumont's individual characteristics in the composition of dramatic blank verse appear at the first sight to be very scanty; for the only example of which we have positive external evidence that it was written by Beaumont alone, is The Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne and the Inner Temple, and unfortunately some critics have excluded it from consideration because of its exceptionally formal and spectacular character and slight dramatic purpose. Written, however, at the beginning of 1613, when the author's metrical manner was a definitely confirmed habit, it affords, in my opinion, the best as well as the most natural approach to the investigation of Beaumont's versification. The following lines may be regarded as typical:

Is great Jove jealous that I am imploy'dOn her Love-errands? ¦ She did never yetClaspe weak mortality in her white arms,As he hath often done: I only comeTo celebrate the long-wish'd Nuptials ^ Here | in Olym|pia, ¦ which | are now | perform'd.Betwixt two goodly rivers, ¦ that have mixtTheir gentle, rising waves, and are to grow ^ In | to a thou|sand streams | ^ great | as themselves.

In these nine verses there are no Fletcherian jolts, no double endings. In only two lines trisyllabic feet occur; in only two, final pauses. There are stress-syllable openings in two, with the compensating anapæsts; feminine cæsuræ, in three (dotted); and a stress-syllable opening for the verse-section after the cæsura occurs in but one, whereas there are at least three such in the passage from Monsieur Thomas, quoted above.

Nothing could be more pronounced than the difference between the metrical style of Fletcher's Monsieur Thomas and Rule a Wife and that of Beaumont's Maske, as illustrated here. Fletcher abounds in double endings, trisyllabic feet, and end-stopped lines, and such conversational or lyrical cadences; Beaumont uses them much more sparingly. But while the difference between the genuinely dramatic blank verse of Fletcher and that of Beaumont is sometimes as pronounced as this, it would be unscientific to base the criterion upon comparison of a mature, conversationally dramatic, composition of the former with a stiffly rhetorical declamatory composition of the latter. For a more suitable comparison we must set Beaumont's Maske side by side with something of Fletcher's written in similar formal and declamatory style, —The Faithfull Shepheardesse, for instance, a youthful production in the pastoral spirit and form. Of this a small part, but sufficient for our purpose, is composed in blank verse; and I have cited in the next chapter with another end in view, the opening soliloquy, – to which the reader may turn. But as exemplifying certain of Fletcher's metrical peculiarities, in a style of verse suitable to be compared with Beaumont's in The Maske, the following lines from Act I, 1, are perhaps even more distinctive. "What greatness," says the Shepherdesse, —

What greatness, ¦ or what private hidden power, ^ Is | there in me, | to draw submissionFrom this rude man and beast? Sure I am mortal,The Daughter of a Shepherd; ¦ he was mortal,And she that bore me mortal: ¦ prick my hand,And it will bleed; a Feaver shakes me, andThe self-same wind that makes the young Lambs shrinkMakes me | a-cold; | my fear says I am mortal. ^ Yet have I heard | (my Mother told it me,And now I do believe it), ¦ if I keepMy Virgin Flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,No Goblin, ¦ Wood-god, Fairy, Elf, or Fiend, ^ Sa|tyr, or oth|er power that haunts the Groves,Shall hurt my body, ¦ or by vain illusion ^ Draw | me to wan|der ¦ after idle fires.

We have here, in fifteen lines, four double endings, nine final pauses (end-stopped verses), four stress-syllable openings with compensating anapæsts, and seven feminine cæsuræ. In every way this sample even of Fletcher's more formal style displays, in its salient characteristics, a much closer resemblance in kind to the sample of his later blank verse quoted from Rule a Wife, above, than to that quoted from Beaumont's Maske.

When we pass from samples to larger sections, and compare percentages in the one hundred and thirty-one blank verses of The Maske and the first one hundred and sixty-three of The Shepheardesse, we find that in respect of final pauses there is no great difference. There are, in the former, more than is usual with Beaumont – sixty per cent; in the latter, less than is usual with Fletcher – fifty per cent. But in other respects Beaumont's Maske reveals peculiarities of verse altogether different from those of Fletcher, even when he is writing in the declamatory pastoral vein. In the one hundred and thirty-one lines of the Maske we find but one double ending; whereas in the first one hundred and sixty-three blank verses of The Shepheardesse we count as many as fourteen. In these productions the proportion of feminine cæsuræ is practically uniform – about forty per cent. But when we come to examine the more subtle movement of the rhythm, we find that in The Maske not more than ten per cent of the lines open with the stress-syllable, while in the blank verse of the Shepheardesse fully thirty-five out of every hundred lines have that opening and, consequently, impart the lyrical cadence which pervades much of Fletcher's metrical composition. In the matter of anapæstic substitutions, and of stress-syllable openings for the verse-section after the cæsura, Beaumont is similarly inelastic; while the Fletcher of the Shepheardesse displays a marvellous freedom. It follows that in the Maske we encounter but rarely the rhetorical pause, within the verse, compensating for an absent thesis or arsis; while in the pastoral verse of Fletcher we find frequent instances of this delicate dramatic as well as metrical device, and an occasional jolting cæsura.

We are not limited, however, to the material afforded by the Maske in our attempt to discover Beaumont's metrical characteristics when writing alone. The Woman-Hater, included among the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher in the folio of 1679, and ascribed to both on the title-page of a quarto of 1649, is assigned by the Prologue of the first quarto, 1607, to a single author – "he that made this play." And, though there is no attribution of authorship on the title-page of the 1607 quarto, we know from the application of verse-tests and tests of diction that, in all but three scenes which have evidently been revised,151 the author was certainly not Fletcher. An examination of the inner structure of the verse of The Woman-Hater, reveals, except in those scenes, precisely the peculiarities that distinguish Beaumont's Maske: the same infrequency of stress-syllable openings, and of anapæstic substitutions and of suppressed syllables in metrical scheme. In respect of the more evident device of the run-on line The Woman-Hater reaches a percentage twice as high as that employed in Fletcher's unassisted popular dramas; and in respect of the double ending it has a percentage only one-quarter as high. We notice also in this play a much more frequent employment of rhyme than in any of Fletcher's stage plays, and a much larger proportion of prose both for dialogue and soliloquy.

We should have further basis for conclusion concerning Beaumont's metrical style in independent composition, if we could accept the general assumption that he was the author of the Induction to the Foure Playes in One, and of the first two plays, The Triumph of Honour and The Triumph of Love. But for reasons, later to be stated, I agree with Oliphant that the Induction and Honour are not by Beaumont; and I hold that he can not be traced with certainty even in the two or three scenes of Love that seem to be marked by some of his characteristics. The hand of a third writer, Field, is manifest in the non-Fletcherian plays of the series.