Francis Beaumont: Dramatist

visiting the Beaumonts at Grace-Dieu. In that year Jonson's Volpone was acted for the first time; and one may divine from the familiar and affectionate terms in which our two

very unsuccessfully." Philaster, as I shall presently show, was, in all probability, first acted between December 7, 1609 and July 12, 1610. Before 1609, however, each had written dramas independently, Beaumont The Woman-Hater and The Knight of the Burning Pestle; Fletcher, The Faithfull Shepheardesse, and maybe one or two other plays. Our first evidence of their association in dramatic activity is the presence of Fletcher's

men, "Why may not I be a favourite in the sudden?" may very well refer, as Fleay has maintained, to the restoration to favour of Robert Ker (or Carr) of Ferniehurst, afterwards Earl Somerset,-a page whom James had "brought with him from Scotland, and brought up of a child,"[46] but had dismissed soon after his accession. It was at a tilting match, March 24, 1607, that the youth "had the good fortune to break his leg in the presence of the King," and "by his personal activity, strong animal spirits," and beauty, to attract his majesty anew, and on the spot. The beauty, Beaumont emphasizes as a requisite for royal favour. "Why may not I be a favourite on the sudden?" says the bloated, hungry courtier, "I see nothing against it." "Not so, sir," replies Valore; "I know you have not the face to be a favourite on the sudden." The fact that James did not make a knight bachelor of Carr till December of that year, would in no way invalidate a fling at the favour bestowed

in that case that he stands peeping betwixt the curtains, so fearfully that a bottle of ale cannot be opened but he thinks somebody hisses), than I am at this instant." And again,-of the political spies, who had persecuted more than one of Beaumont's relatives and, according to tradition, trumped up momentary trouble for our young dramatists themselves, a few years later: "This fellow is a kind of informer, one that lives in ale-houses and taverns; and because he perceives some worthy men in this land, with much labour and great expense, to have discovered things dangerously hanging over the state, he thinks to discover as much out of the talk of drunkards in tap-houses. He brings me information, picked out of broken words in men's common talk, which with his malicious misapplication he hopes will seem dangerous; he doth, besides, bring me the names of all the young gentlemen in the city that use ordinaries or taverns, talking (to my thinking) only as the freedom of their youth teach them without any further ends, for dangerous and seditious spirits." Much more in this kind, of city ways known to Beaumont; and, also, something of country ways, the table of the Leicestershire squire-the Beaumonts of Coleorton and the Villierses of Brooksby,-and the hunting-breakfasts with which Grace-Dieu was familiar. The hungry courtier of the play vows to "keep a sumptuous house; a board groaning under the heavy burden of the beast that cheweth the cud, and the fowl that cutteth the air. It shall not, like the table of a country-justice, be sprinkled over with all manne

and versatile heroine who has, with maliciously genial pretense, assumed the r?le of man-hunter. And to the main plot is loosely, but not altogether ineffectually, attached a highly diverting story which Beaumont has taken from the Latin treatise of Paulus Jovius on Roman fishes, or from some intermediate source. Like the Tamisius of the original, his Lazarillo,-whose prayer to the Goddess of Plenty is ever, "fill me this day with some rare delicates,"-scours the city in fruitless quest of an umbrana's head. Finally, he is taken by intelligence

for

uch on flowers, w

ightly port make

Aeneas shal

aunt [of Elys

sion lest his love, his fish-he

rtunate, miserable, accursed, forsaken slave this province yields!

h, amidst the

t my lov

till May 20, 1608, but this passage shows that Be

tone and outlook upon the humours of life as The Woman-Hater, but it is incomparably more novel in conception, more varied in composition, and more effervescent in satire. It displays the Beaumont of twenty-two or -three as already an effective dramatist of contemporary manners and humours, a master of parody, side-long mirth, and ironic wit, before he joined forces with Fletcher and developed, in the treatment of more serious and romantic themes, the power of poetic characterization and the pathos that bespeak experience and reflection,-and, in the treatment of the comedy of life, the realism that proceeds from broad and sympathetic observation. The play, which as the publisher of the first quarto, in 1613, tell us was "begot and borne in eight daies," was not a success; evidently because the public did not like the sport that it made of dramas and dramatists then pop

he sources and composition of the play.[51] Suffice it to say here that The Knight followed The Travails of Three English Brothers, acted. June 29, 1607, and that the Robert Keysar who rescued the manuscript of The Knight from obli

mont, with the confidence of intimacy, addresses Jonson as "Dear Friend," praises his "even work," deplores its failure with the many who "nothing can

d have

rld the art w

ongue, the rules

es, deliver'd

le, which on

ish stage hat

subtle gallant

ght that may b

et us

ntinue, sim

es and str

sive pers

his art, B. Jonson," prays him to forgive friends and foes ali

as 1604, with his comedy of The Woman's Prize or The Tamer Tamed,-a well contrived and witty continuation of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew,-in which Maria, a cousin of Shakespeare's Katherine, now deceased, marries the bereaved Petruchio and effectively turns the tables upon him. I

surpassing merit, but it lacks, as does most of Fletcher's work, moral depth and emotional reality; and following, as it did, a literary convention in design, it could not avail itself of the skill in dramatic device, and the racy flavour which a little later characterized his Monsieur Thomas. The date of its first performance is determined by the combined authority of the Stationers' Registers (from which we learn that the publishers of the fir

on sympathizing with "the worthy author," on the ill

thy innocence

t there the "vices, whi

urder'd poem;

work to ti

eat what all th

cher" speaks of his "undoubted wit" and "art," and rejoices

rs must have

which I am a

shrewdest jud

ar and well known dramatist, George Chapman. The latter writes "to his loving friend, Master John Fletcher,

be

nly hath by

en world, and h

ws of homel

founts, and nymp

races find th

flourish but i

othing fit fo

that eats its

olden world; t

f. Then like y

ce, and that fo

e suspicion admirably. As for Fletcher he continued to "live in old peace." "When his faire Shepheardesse on the guilty stage, Was martir'

hen the undiscerning public hissed it. Field came of good family, had been one of Mulcaster's pupils at the Merchant Taylors' School, and was beloved by Chapman and Jonson. He was then but twenty-two,-about three years younger than Fletcher's friend, Beaumont,-but for nine years gone he had been recogni

ent, sir, be wor

ame, and Muse in

e to strength, a

ve a

elf; and it is pleasant to note with wh

justifie wh

to you, my

hopes and lo

rfect such a

ch elegant

cluding a mo

e and pr

peare, the flattering resemblance in diction, rhythm, and poetic fancy to the most characteristic features of Beaumont's style. This is very interesting, because in another dramatic composition Foure Playes in One, written in part by Fletcher, certain portions have so close a likeness to Beaumont's work, that until lately they have been mistakenly attributed to that poet and assigned to this early period of his career. The portions of The Foure Playes not written by Fletcher were written by no

st, 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

.[59] The First Part of this voluminous pastoral romance had been published, probably in 1609, in an edition which is lost; but a second edition, dedicated to Henri IV, who died May 14, 1610, appeared that year. Some of Fletcher's inspiration, as for the name and general characteristic of Hylas, was drawn from the First Part. The Second Part was not printed till later in 1610. It would, therefore, appear that Fletcher could not have written Monsieur Thomas before the latter date. On the other hand, as Dr. Upham[60] has indicated, the 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 circulat

l 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

t 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

it "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 youthf

ubmit ea

umont e're it

e untill he s

the sobriety

re 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 Whitefri

TNO

y (undated, but of 1608). Gardiner

and other critics. But it is possible that Shaw, Knights of England, I,

. and F., Vo

t IV, 1

rillo's Farewe

Chap. XXI

9, of The Woman-Hater, which D'Avena

Studien, XV, 338-339, and Thorndike, Infl. of B. and F., 70-71. In its present form, however, t

Greg's interpretation, Pastoral

. Dr., I, 312, and Thorndi

47, 'mortallit

Chap. XXI

kar, Anglia,

1898), 248; Engl. Stud., XXXVI; Hatcher, Angli

ce in English Liter

t in the Commendatory Poems

rwick, op. cit., Vol