Francis Beaumont: Dramatist

Of the other dramas written by Fletcher alone and assigned by critics to his earlier period, that is to say before 1610, or even 1611, the only one beside The Faithfull Shepheardesse that may with any degree of safety be admitted to consideration is a comedy of romance, manners, and humours, Monsieur Thomas. The romance is a delightful story of self-abnegating love. The father, Valentine, and the son Francisco, supposed to have been drowned long ago, and now known (if the texts had only printed the play as Fletcher wrote it) as Callidon, a guest of Valentine, love the same girl, the father's ward. This part of the play is executed with captivating grace. It shows that Fletcher had, from the first, an instinct for the dramatic handling of a complicated story, an eye for delicate and surprising situations, an appreciation of chivalric honour and genuine passion, and a fancy fertile and playful. In the subplot the manners are such as would appeal to a Fletcher not yet thirty years of age; and the humours are those of a student of the earlier plays of Ben Jonson, and of Marston – who ceased writing in 1607. It has indeed been asserted, but without much credibility, that "the notion of the panerotic Hylas," who must always "be courting wenches through key-holes," was taken from a character in Marston's Parasitaster, of 1606.58 The name of this Captain, Hylas, was in the mouth of Fletcher in those early days; he uses it again in his part of the Philaster, written in 1609 or 1610, and elsewhere. The snatches of song and the names of ballads are those of contemporary popularity between 1606 and 1609; and in two instances they are those of which Beaumont makes use in his Knight of the Burning Pestle of 1607. The play was acted, too, apparently by the same company, the Queen's Revels' Children, and in the same house as was Beaumont's. It could not have been played by them at "the Private House in Black Fryers" later than March 1608, unless they squeezed it into that last month of 1609 which serves as a telescope basket for so many of the plays which critics cannot satisfactorily date.

For my present purpose, which is to show how Fletcher, not assisted by Beaumont, wrote during his youth, it makes little difference whether Monsieur Thomas was written as early as 1608 or only before 1611. The fact is, however, that a line in the last scene, "Take her, Francisco, now no more young Callidon," shows clearly that Callidon, a name not occurring elsewhere in the play, and necessary to the dramatic complication, had been used by Fletcher in his first version; and when we put the names Callidon and Cellidée together (she is Francisco's belovèd) we are pointed at once to the source of the romantic plot – the Histoire de Celidée, Thamyre, et Calidon at the beginning of the Second Part of the Astrée of the Marquis D'Urfé.59 The First Part of this voluminous pastoral romance had been published, probably in 1609, in an edition which is lost; but a second edition, dedicated to Henri IV, who died May 14, 1610, appeared that year. Some of Fletcher's inspiration, as for the name and general characteristic of Hylas, was drawn from the First Part. The Second Part was not printed till later in 1610. It would, therefore, appear that Fletcher could not have written Monsieur Thomas before the latter date. On the other hand, as Dr. Upham60 has indicated, the Astrée had been read as early as February 12, 1607, by Ben Jonson's friend, William Drummond, who, on that day, writes about it critically to Sir George Keith. If the First Part had been circulated in manuscript, and read by an Englishman, in 1607, it is not at all unlikely that the Second Part, too, of this most leisurely published romance, which did not get itself all into covers till 1647, had been read in manuscript by many men, French and English, long before its appearance in print, 1610; – may be by Fletcher himself, as early as 1608. Or he may have heard the story, as early as that, from some one who had read it. The fact that he alters some of the names, follows the plot but loosely, characterizes the personages not at all as if he had the original before him, and uses none of their diction, would favour the supposition that he is writing from hearsay, or from some second hand and condensed version of the story.

No matter what the exact date of composition, Monsieur Thomas is the one play beside The Faithfull Shepheardesse from which we may draw conclusions concerning the native tendencies of the young Fletcher. The subplot of Thomas, concocted with clever ease, and furnished with varied devices appropriate to comic effect – disguisings, mouse-traps, dupers duped, street-frolics and mock sentimental serenades, scaling-ladders, convents, and a blackamoor girl for a decoy-duck, – is conceived in a rollicking spirit and executed in sprightly conversational style. Sir Adolphus Ward says that "as a picture of manners it is excelled by few other Elizabethan comedies." I am sorry that I cannot agree; I call it low, or farcical comedy; and though the 'manners' be briskly and realistically imagined, I question their contemporary actuality, – even their dramatic probability. Amusing scapegraces like the hero of the title-part have existed in all periods of history; and fathers, who will not have their sons mollycoddles; and squires of dames, like the susceptible Hylas. But manners, to be dramatically probable, must reflect the contacts of possible characters in a definite period. And no one can maintain that the contact of these persons with the women of the play is characterized by possibility. Or that these manners could, even in the beginning of James I's reign, have characterized a perceptible percentage of actual Londoners. Thomas, whose humour it is to assume sanctimony for the purpose of vexing his father, and blasphemy for the purpose of teasing his sweetheart – racking that "maiden's tender ears with damns and devils," – is no more grotesque than many a contemporary embodiment of 'humour.' But what of his contacts with the "charming" Mary who "daily hopes his fair conversion" and has "a credit," and "loves where her modesty may live untainted"; and, then, that she may "laugh an hour" admits him to her bed-chamber, having substituted for herself a negro wench? And what of the contacts with his equally "modest" sister, Dorothy, who not only talks smut with him and with the "charming" Mary, but deems his fornication "fine sport" and would act it if she were a man? I fear that much reading of decadent drama sometimes impairs the critical perception. In making allowance for what masquerades as historical probability one frequently accepts human improbabilities, and condones what should be condemned – even from the dramatic point of view. I have found it so in my own case. With all its picaresque quality, its jovial 'humours' and its racy fun, this play is sheer stage-rubbish: it has no basis in the general life of the class it purports to represent, no basis in actual manners, nor in likelihood or poetry. Its basis is in the uncritical and, to say the least, irresponsible taste of a theatre-going Rump which enjoyed the spurious localization, and attribution to others, of the imaginings of its own heart.

The characters are well grouped; and the spirit of merriment prevails. The reversals of motive and fortune, the recognitions and the dénouement are as excellently and puerilely absurd as could be desired of such an amalgam of romance and farcical intrigue. Richard Brome, writing in praise of the author for the quarto of 1639, implies that the play was not well received at its "first presenting," – "when Ignorance was judge, and but a few What was legitimate, what bastard knew." That first presenting was between 1608 and 1612; and the few might have cared more for Jonson's Every Man in his Humour or Volpone, or something by Shakespeare, or soon afterwards for Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster or A King and No King. But, as Brome assures us, "the world's grown wiser now." That is to say, it had learned by 1639 "what was legitimate," and could believe that in Fletcher's Monsieur Thomas and the like, "the Muses jointly did inspire His raptures only with their sacred fire." But even as transmogrified by D'Urfey and others the play did not survive its century.

No better example could be afforded of the kind of comedy that Fletcher was capable of producing in his earlier period. It shows us with what ability he could dramatize a romantic tale; with what license as a realist imagine and portray an unmoral, when not immoral, semblance of contemporary life. That was either before Beaumont had joined forces with him; or when Beaumont was not pruning his fancy; was not hanging "plummets" on his wit "to suppress Its too luxuriant-growing mightiness," nor persuading him that mirth might subsist "untainted with obscenity," and "strength and sweetness" and "high choice of brain" be "couched in every line." I am not claiming too much for Beaumont. In his later work as in his earlier there is the frank animalism, at times, of Elizabethan blood and humour; but one may search in vain his parts of the joint-plays as well as his youthful Knight of the Burning Pestle and those portions of The Woman-Hater which Fletcher did not touch, for the Jacobean salaciousness of Fletcher's Monsieur Thomas and the carnal cynicism which lurks beneath the pastoral garb of innocence even in The Faithfull Shepheardesse; – characteristics that find utterance again, untrammeled, in the dramas written after the younger poet was dead, – and Fletcher could no longer, as in those earlier days,

wisely submit each birthTo knowing Beaumont e're it did come forth,Working againe untill he said 'twas fit;And make him the sobriety of his wit.61

During the years of Beaumont's apprenticeship to Poetry cloaked as Law things had changed but little in his world of the Inner Temple. In its parliament, Sir Edward Coke, judicial, intrepid, and devout is still most potent. The chamber, lodging, and rooms which his father, Mr. Justice Beaumont, and his uncle Henry had built and occupied near to Ram Alley in the north end of Fuller's Rents are still held by Richard Daveys, who as Treasurer moved into them in 1601. Dr. Richard Masters is still Master of the Temple; and in the church, where Francis was obliged to receive the Sacrament at stated times, he, sitting perhaps by his uncle Henry's tomb, would hear the assistant ministers, Richard Evans and William Crashaw. The sacred place was still the refuge of outlaws from Whitefriars who claimed the privilege of sanctuary. If Beaumont wished to steal, after hours, into the Alsatia beyond Fuller's Rents, he must skirt or propitiate in 1607 as in 1602 the same Cerberus at the gates, – William Knight, the glover. Outside awaited him the hospitality of the Mitre Inn, or of Barrow at the "Cat and Fiddle," or of the slovenly Anthony Gibbes in his cook's shop of Ram Alley.62

CHAPTER VII

THE "BANKE-SIDE" AND THE PERIOD OF THE PARTNERSHIP

As we shall presently see, Beaumont during his career in London retained his connection with the Inner Temple, which would be his club; and it may be presumed that up to 1606 or 1607, his residence alternated between the Temple and his brother's home of Grace-Dieu. About 1609, however, he was surely collaborating with his friend, Fletcher, in the composition of plays. And we may conjecture that, in that or the previous year, our Castor and Pollux were established in those historic lodgings in Southwark where, as Aubrey, writing more than half a century later, tells us, they lived in closest intimacy. That gossipy chronicler records the obvious in his "there was a wonderfull consimility of phansey between him [Beaumont] and Mr. Jo. Fletcher, which caused that dearnesse of friendship between them";63 but when he proceeds "They lived together on the Banke-side, not far from the Play-house, both batchelors; lay together (from Sir James Hales, etc.); had one wench in the house between them, which they did so admire, the same cloaths and cloake, etc., between them," we feel that so far as inferences are concerned the account is to be taken with at least a morsel of reserve. Aubrey was not born till after both Beaumont and Fletcher were dead; and, as Dyce pertinently remarks, "perhaps Aubrey's informant (Sir James Hales) knowing his ready credulity, purposely overcharged the picture of our poets' domestic establishment." To inquire too closely into gossip were folly; but it is only fair to recall that sixty years after Fletcher's death, popular tradition was content with conferring the "wench," exclusively upon him. Oldwit, in Shadwell's play of Bury-Fair (1689) says: "I myself, simple as I stand here, was a wit in the last age. I was created Ben Jonson's son, in the Apollo. I knew Fletcher, my friend Fletcher, and his maid Joan; well, I shall never forget him: I have supped with him at his house on the Banke-side; he loved a fat loin of pork of all things in the world; and Joan his maid had her beer-glass of sack; and we all kissed her, i' faith, and were as merry as passed."64 It is hardly necessary, in any case, to surmise with those who sniff up improprieties that the admirable services of the original "wench," whether Joan or another, far exceeded the roasting of pork and the burning of sack for her two "batchelors."

To the years 1609 and 1610 may be assigned with some show of confidence Beaumont and Fletcher's first significant romantic dramas The Coxcombe and Philaster. The former was acted by the Children of her Majesty's Revels, I think before July 12, 1610. If at Blackfriars, before January 4, 1610; if at Whitefriars, after January 4. There are grounds for believing that it was the play upon which Fletcher and Beaumont were engaged in the country when Beaumont wrote a letter, justly famous, probably toward the end of 1609, to Ben Jonson; and, since the play was not well received, that it was one of the unsuccessful comedies which as Dryden says preceded Philaster. Philaster was acted at the Globe and Blackfriars by the King's Men, for the first time, it would appear, between December 7, 1609 and July 12, 1610. My reasons in detail for thus dating both of these dramas are given later. But a word about the Letter to Ben Jonson may be said here.

It was first printed at the end of a play called The Nice Valour in the folio of 1647. Owing to a careless acceptance of the rubric prefixed to it by the publishers of that folio, historians have ordinarily dated its composition at too early a period. The poem itself mentions "Sutcliffe's wit," referring to three controversial tracts of the Dean of Exeter, printed in 1606; but Beaumont might jibe at the Dean's expense for years after 1606. The rubic inscribed a generation after the death of both our dramatists, and therefore of but secondary importance, tells us that the Letter was "written, before he [Beaumont] and Master Fletcher came to London, with two of the precedent comedies, then not finish'd, which deferr'd their merry meetings at the Mermaid." We know that the young men had been in London for years before 1606. If the rubric has any meaning whatever, it is merely that the customary convivialities at the Mermaid, as described in the Letter, had been interrupted by a visit to the country during which they were finishing two of the comedies which precede The Nice Valour in the folio; and it indicates a date not earlier than 1608, for the writing of the letter, and probably not later than July 1610. For only three of the fifteen plays which appear in the folio before The Nice Valour could have been completed during the career of Beaumont as a dramatist, and none of the three antedates 1608. In two of these Beaumont had no hand: The Captaine, which may have been composed as late as 1611, and Beggars' Bush,65 which shows the collaboration of Massinger, but Fletcher's part of which may have been written in 1608. The only one of the "precedent comedies" in which we may be sure that Beaumont collaborated is The Coxcombe. If, as I believe, it was acted first between December 1609 and July 161066 it may well have been written in the country during the latter half of 1609, while the plague rate was exceptionally high in London. Both Beggars' Bush and The Coxcombe abound in rural scenes; but the latter especially, in scenes that might have been suggested by Grace-Dieu and its neighborhood.

The rubric prefixed to the Letter by the publishers is of negligible authority. The 'me' and 'us' of the Letter itself do not necessarily designate Fletcher as the companion of Beaumont's rustication: they stand at one time for country-folk; at another for the Mermaid circle, Jonson, Chapman, Fletcher, probably Shakespeare, Drayton, Cotton, Donne, Hugh Holland, Tom Coryate, Richard Martin, Selden (of Beaumont's Inner Temple), and other famous wits and poets; at another for Jonson and Beaumont alone. The date of the poem must be determined from internal evidence. It is written with the careless ease of long-standing intimacy. It is of a genial, jocose, and fairly mature, epistolary style. It betrays the literary assurance of one whose reputation is already established. Beaumont is in temporary banishment from London, for lack of funds – therefore, considerably later than 1606, when he was presumably well off; for in that year he had just come into a quarter of his brother, Sir Henry's, private estate. He longs now for the stimulus of the merry meetings in Bread-street, as one whose wit has been sharpened by them for a long time past:

Methinks the little wit I had is lostSince I saw you; for Wit is like a RestHeld up at Tennis, which men do the bestWith the best gamesters; …

up here in Leicestershire "The Countrey Gentlemen begin to allow My wit for dry bobs." "In this warm shine" of our hay-making season, soberly deferring to country knights, listening to hoary family-jests, drinking water mixed with claret-lees, "I lye and dream of your full Mermaid Wine":

What things have we seenDone at the Mermaid! heard words that have beenSo nimble, and so full of subtill flame,As if that every one from whence they cameHad meant to put his whole wit in a jest,And had resolv'd to live a foole, the restOf his dull life. Then, when there hath been thrownWit able enough to justifie the TownFor three daies past, – wit that might warrant beFor the whole City to talk foolishlyTill that were cancell'd, – and, when that was gone,We left an Aire behind us, which aloneWas able to make the two next CompaniesRight witty; though but downright fooles, more wise.

When he remembers all this, he "needs must cry," but one thought of Ben Jonson cheers him:

Only strong Destiny, which all controuls,I hope hath left a better fate in storeFor me thy friend, than to live ever poore,Banisht unto this home. Fate once againeBring me to thee, who canst make smooth and plaineThe way of Knowledge for me, and then I,Who have no good but in thy companyProtest it will my greatest comfort beTo acknowledge all I have to flow from thee.Ben, when these Scaenes are perfect, we'll taste wine;I'll drink thy Muses health, thou shalt quaff mine.

The Letter was written after Beaumont's Muse had produced something worthy of a toast from Jonson, – the Woman-Hater and the Knight, for instance (both marked by wit and by the discipline of Jonson); but not later than the end of 1612, for during most of 1613 Jonson was traveling in France as governor to Sir Walter Raleigh's "knavishly inclined" son; and after February of that year Beaumont wrote so far as I venture to conclude but one drama, The Scornful Ladie; and that does not precede this Letter in the folio of 1647; is not printed in that folio at all. Nor was this Letter of a disciple written later than the great Beaumont-Fletcher plays of 1610-1611, for then Jonson was praising Beaumont for "writing better" than he himself. If there is any truth at all in the rubric to the Letter, the "scenes" of which Beaumont speaks as not yet "perfect" were of The Coxcombe; and evidence which I shall, in the proper place, adduce convinces me that that was first acted before March 25, 1610, perhaps before January 4. The play would, then, have been written about the end of 1609.

I do not wonder that, as the Prologue in the first folio tells us, it was "condemned by the ignorant multitude," not only because of its length, a fault removed in the editions which we possess, but because the larger part of the play is written by Fletcher, and in his most inartistic, and irrational, licentious vein. Beaumont, though admitted to the partnership, had not yet succeeded in hanging "plummets" on his friend's luxuriance. He contented himself with contributing to a theme of Boccaccian cuckoldry the subplot of how Ricardo, drunk, loses his betrothed, and finds her again and is forgiven, – a little story that contains all the poignancy of sorrow and poppy of romance and poetry of innocence that make the comedy readable and tolerable.

As to the first production of the Philaster a word must be said here, because the event marks the earliest association, concerning which we have any assurance, of the young dramatists with Shakespeare. Until about 1609 they appear to have written for the Paul's Boys, who acted, probably in their singing-school, until 1607; and for the Queen's Revels' Children who, under various managements, had been occupying Richard Burbadge's theatre of Blackfriars since 1597. Their association with the Paul's Boys would of itself have brought them into touch with other Paul's dramatists, Dekker, Webster, Middleton, and Chapman. In their association with the Queen's Revels' Children they had been thrown closely together with Chapman again, with Jonson, and with John Day, all of whom wrote for Blackfriars; and with Marston, who not only wrote plays for the Children but had a financial interest in the company. Some of these dramatists, – Jonson, for instance, and Webster, – had occasionally written for Shakespeare's company during these years; but we have no proof that Beaumont and Fletcher had any connection with the King's Players of Shakespeare's company, as long as the Children's companies continued in their usual course at St. Paul's singing-school and Blackfriars. After 1606, however, the Paul's Boys were on the wane. Perhaps they are to be indentified with the new Children of the King's Revels, and an occupancy of Whitefriars, in 1607; but that clue soon disappears. And as to the Queen's Revels' Children, we find that in April 1608 they were suppressed for ridiculing royalty upon the stage.67 Their manager, Henry Evans, to whom with three others Richard Burbadge had let Blackfriars in 1600, now sought to be set free from the contract; and in August 1608, the Burbadges (Richard and Cuthbert), Shakespeare, Heming, Condell, and Slye of the King's Company, took over the lease which still had many years to run.68 Shakespeare's company had been acting at the Burbadges' theatre of the Globe since 1599, – as the Lord Chamberlain's till 1603; after that, as his Majesty's Servants. Now Shakespeare's company took charge of Blackfriars, as well; and, under their management, for about a month between December 7, 1609 and January 4, 1610 the Queen's Revels' Children, being reinstated in royal favour, resumed their acting at Blackfriars. On the latter date, the Children as reorganized, opened at Whitefriars under the management of Philip Rossiter and others; and among the first plays presented by them, there, were Jonson's Epicoene and, I believe, Beaumont and Fletcher's The Coxcombe.

But, in the process of readjustment at Blackfriars, our young partners in dramatic production must have been drawn into professional relationship with the members of Shakespeare's company and undoubtedly with Shakespeare himself. From the first quarto of Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding, published in 1620, we learn that this, the earliest of their great tragicomedies, was acted not by the Queen's Revels' Children, but by the King's Players, and at the Globe. From the second quarto, of 1622, we learn that it was acted also at Blackfriars: it may indeed have been first presented there. Our earliest record of the play shows that it was in existence before October 8, 1610. The Scourge of Folly by John Davies of Hereford, entered for publication on that date, contains an epigram to "the well deserving Mr. John Fletcher," which runs —