Francis Beaumont: Dramatist

be his club; and it may be presumed that up to 1606 or 1607, his residence alternated between the Temple and his brother's

ame 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 my

r 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

TE

s's Map of Lon

, 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

rd 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 alread

little wit

ou; for Wit i

nnis, which m

best game

warm shine" of our hay-making season, soberly deferring to country knights, listening to hoary f

ngs have

maid! heard wor

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ry one from wh

put his whole

'd to live a f

Then, when there

ugh to justi

past,-wit that

e City to ta

ancell'd,-and, w

ire behind u

ake the two n

gh but downright

"needs must cry," but one tho

estiny, which

eft a better

end, than to l

this home. Fa

, who canst make

owledge for m

good but i

ill my great

all I have to

aenes are perfect,

ses health, thou

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"

letcher, 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 Boccaccia

d 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 fr

-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

eeding, if it

t to show why

Subject (now),

te, Judgement,

e thee; and ca

re, as faithfull

hs by plague exceeded a certain limit per week. In and after 1608 this limit was set at forty; and it is probable that, in accordance with a still older regulation, the ban was not lifted until it was evident that the decrease in deaths was more than temporary.[69] That actors sometimes performed at Court while the plague rate was still prohibitive in and about the City, does not by any means justify us in assuming that they were ever allowed at such times to play in theatres thronged by the public.[70] Between August 8, 1608 and October 8, 1610, the only continuous period in w

, WITH ST. PAUL'S

s long view o

tly succeeding crises, bloodshed, riot, and surprising reversals of fortune, attaining both birth-right and love; the pathetic innocence and nobly futile devotion of his girl-page; the triangular affair of the affections; the humour of the secondary characters; the allurements of spectacle and masque; the atmosphere of the palace, heroic,-of the country, idyllic,-of Mile-end and its roarers of the borough, somewhat burlesque,-the diapason of the poetry from bourdon to flute,-all combined to win immediate and long continuing favour, both of the City and the Court. Beaumont had, here, become to some extent "the sobriety of Fletcher's wit"; he had restrained "his quick free will,"-not, however, so much by pruning what Fletcher wrote as by admitting him to but one-quarter of the composition. Something of the intrigue, the bustle

hero's deserted sweetheart, will be sufficiently discussed elsewhere. This was the highly seasoned fare that the Jacobean public desiderated, served in courses, if not more novel, at any rate of more startling variety than even Shakespeare had offered-whose devices, restrained within limit, these young dramatists were exaggerating to the n-th degree. As four-fifths of the composition of this tragedy was Beaumont's, so, too, we may be sure, four-fifths of the conception and invention of the plot.[72] I have remarked, incidentally, that none of the great Beaumont-Fletcher plots is borrowed. Nearly every play, on the other hand, which Fl

e in that one-fifth to which Fletcher was admitted. There Fletcher, in beauty and in tragic power, is giving us the best that he has so far produced: over-histrion

ner (though his Loyalty not to be blamed herein) he was accused of high Treason, till the mistake soon appearing, that the plot was only against a Drammatick and Scenical King, all wound off in merriment."[73] History and fable have fastened similar stories upon famous men; but if this one is authentic it undoubtedly refers to the writ

somewhat strained, it is surpassed by the Tragedy. Of its defects as well as merits, I have so much to say later, that I must refrain now. The plot is as striking an example of constructive invention as those that had preceded. Some of the names are to be found in Xenophon's Cyrop?deia (Books III-VI) and in Herodotus (Book VII); and hints for situation and characterization may have been derived from these sources, and the passion of Arbaces for his supposed sister from Fauchet's account of Thierry of France,-but such indebtedness is naught.[74] Three-quarters of the play is Beaumont's; and that large portion includes the majestic passion a

alatine, they presented before royalty all three of the great Beaumont-Fletcher plays. These were numbers in a series of thirteen that included, as well, the Much Ado, Tempest, Winter's Tale, Merry Wives, Othello, and Julius Caesar of Shakespeare. They also presented about the same

Children of the Queen's Revels, appears from the fact that during the same festivities a tragedy written by them about 1611, Cupid's Revenge, was played by the Children three times, and their romantic come

Cupid, and was consequently doomed to an infatuation for a base-born man,-and the painful career of Plangus (Leucippus in the play) who, having an intrigue "with a private man's wife" (the monstrous Bacha of the play) gave her up to his father, swearing to her virtue, only to find that she should attempt to renew her liaison with him and, failing, scheme hi

aracterization, easy dialogue, and clever device. The dramatists deserve all credit for the ingenious invention, for here again there is no known source. Beaumont's contribution, about one-third, is distinguished by the observation and the vis comica already displayed in the Woman-Hater and the Knight of the Burning Pestle and King and No King. But he is not dominating the details. When they wrote a comedy of intrigue, Fletcher sat at the head of the table. It is possible,

TNO

rief Lives, Ed.

B. and F.,

s Bellman of London, 16

Chapter X

in London, April 5, 1608, quoted by C

Kirkham's complaint, 1612, Greenstreet

, Eng. Dram. Co

B. and F. on Shakespeare, 16-18. See M

the Philaster date will be

Chapter X

above, B. an

Thorndike's citation of Fauchet, Les Antiquitez et Hist

below, Ch