Francis Beaumont: Dramatist

letcher plays were presented at Court, by the King's Servants and the Queen's Revels' Children,-some of them two and even three times. Our poets are accor

en of Gray's Inn, to celebrate the marriage, February 14, 1613, of the Princess Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine, with a masque, they did not, like the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn, go out of their own

tributed in large measure: "You, Sir Francis Bacon, especially," says the author in his Dedication of the published copy, "as you did then by your countenance and loving affection advance it, so let your good word grace it and defend it, which is able to add value to the greatest and least matters." In a contemporary letter of John Chamberlain to Mistris Carleton, Bacon is called "the chief contriver" of the spectacle; an attribution which lead

pectation theyre was that they shold every way exceed theyre competitors that went before them both in devise daintines of apparell and above all in dauncing (wherein they are held excellent) and esteemed far the properer men: but by what yll planet yt fell out I know not, they came home as they went with out doing anything, the reason whereof I cannot yet learne thoroughly, so but only was that the hall was so full that yt was not possible to avoyde yt or make roome for them; besides that most of the Ladies were in the galleries to see them land, and could not get in, but the worst of all was that the king was so wearied and sleepie with sitting up almost two

junction of two such streames, he summoned from the four fountains, whence they spring and which are fed by rain, four nymphs who hid among the clouds and the stars that ought to bring rain. They then danced, but Iris said that a dance of one sex only was not a live dance. Then appeared four cupids, while from the Temple of Jove, came five idols and they danced with the stars and the nymphs. Then Iris, after delivering her speech, summoned Flora, caused a light rain to fall, and then came a dance of shepherds. Then in a moment the other half of the scene changed, and one saw a great plateau with two pavilions, and in them one hundred and fifty Knights of Olympus,-then more tents, like a host enc

, of the first antimasque occasioned great amusement, so that the King called for them again at the end-"but one of the Statuas by that time was undressed." And the May-dance of the second, with its rural characters-Pedant, Lord and Lady of the May, country clown and wench, host and hostess, he-baboon and she-baboon, he

your hea

p into

mortals u

ly for

for the Mo

he Stars

chief contriver"; and that he sat high at the "solemn supper in the new Marriage-room" which the King made them on the Sunday,-maybe "at the same board" with the King who doubtle

que goes without saying. This was an occasion of tremendous moment to the members of the allied Houses. They were conferring the highest honour upon their poet, and every man on the books of each Inn knew him by name and face. One of the Fellows, John, afterwards Sir John, Fenner provides a messenger "to fetch Mr Beaumont," and advances 10li. "toward the mask business." Another, Lewis Hele is twice paid 70li. toward the same business. From Chamberlain's letter, we learn that the passage by water to Whitehall "cost them better than three hundred pound,"-from two thousand to twenty-four hundred pounds, in the money of to-day. From the records of the Societies for "the 10th of King James," we find that "the charge in apparell of the Actors in that great Mask at White-hall was supported" by each Society; "the Readers at Gray's Inn being each man assessed at 4l., the Ancients, and such as at that time were to be called Ancients, at 2l.

ce about 1608, had migrated to the Inner Temple in November 1611, and had been admitted a member in March 1612. He was some five years younger than Beaumont, and, like Beaumont, was at just that time on intimate terms of friendship with the last of the Elizabethan pastoralists, Michael Drayton,-on terms of reciprocal admiration and friendship also with Beaumont's dramatic associates, Jonson and Chapman; and he had himself, in 1613, been engaged for three years upon the composition of the charming First Book

eaumonts and m

anions whom I

ds; and in thei

oets, and in th

e, and no lesse

eely tould to m

ve mine

erary disciple of Fletcher in pastoral poetry, between 1610 and 1616, and that he had Beaumont's masque and poetic fame in mind when, in the Dedication of his own Masque of Ulysses and Circe, presented by the

ary coterie of the Inns of Court. Browne and Beaumont had friends in common beside Drayton, Chapman, and Jonson. To, and of, Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Philip Sidney, Beaumont writes

h this sa

ubject of

ster, Pembr

thou hast s

earn'd, and

throw his d

tor to a wealthy ward, and later taking him into the service of his own family at Wilton. In 1614 John Davies of Hereford wrote the third eclogue appended to Browne's Shepherd's Pipe, in which he figures as old Wernock, and Browne as Wil

me abbreviate, c

ll, if they re

ne (that some foo

-reapers still

w for thee to

me it manna fo

Browne's poems,[86] "that Basse and Browne were kinsmen." It is certain that Basse was a retainer in the family of the poetic Thomas Wenman who was Browne's contemporary at the Inner Temple. Basse, himself, had published three pastoral elegies in 1602, and he was still writing pastorals half a century later. Another of this group, George Wither, had since 1606 been of one of the adjoining Inns of Chancery. He is the Roget, Thyrsis, Philarete of this pastoral field. In 1614, he wr

se that have th

ost to do your

ster of min

me with othe

those Heli

rains the court's

ral shepherd,

ep music on

ve repute among Beaumont's associates by 1615: no less

wasting

se a woma

a. Jonson later "personates" him as Chronomastix, or whipper of the times, in a masque at Court; and Beaumont's, and Fletcher's friend, Ma

te forsooth and

the ears of i

ing of great m

are and

a lovable and hearty friend, and a distinguished Bencher of Lincoln's Inn. That Brooke was intimate with Shakespeare's company of the King's Servants, at just the period that Beaumont and Fletcher were most closely associated with that company, we have already noticed. As o

of the gentlemen of London with whom Beaumont cannot have altogether failed to be acquainted. Browne succeeded B

en; and, we may be certain, of John Fletcher, too; for on his mother's side, Selden as his coat of arms and epitaph prove, and as Hasted tells us in his History of Kent, was of the "equestrian" family of Bakers to which Fletcher's stepsisters belonged. Selden was of Beaumont's age to a year, and had been of the Society since 1604. For Browne's book

met the

at the meetin

o see how they

, and he stood n

far off, which

admitted to the Middle Temple in 1610, and died young. He must have been a graceful and lovable youth, if we may judge from Wither's and Browne's tributes to him. Through his father, "an eminent London merchant, who was interested in the adventures of Hawkins, Drake, and Raleigh," Browne and Beaumont might, if in no other way, have met with Sir Richard and Sir Walter. There were, also, writing praises to Browne, the brothers Croke, sons of Sir John Croke of the King's Bench. They were both of Christ's Church, Oxford, Charles and Unton; and they became students of the Inner Temple in 1609. Charles was something of a poet. In 1613 he was Professor of

Records, and described by Mr. Gordon Goodwin in his edition of Browne's Poems, who set forth, ordered, and furnished Beaumont's Masque of the Inner Temple; and who, as gentlemen-masquers, sailed

Pastorals (Song 1, end; Song 2, beginning), borrowed the story of Marina and the River-God, as regards not only the main incident but also much of the poetic phrase, from the Faithfull Shepheardesse-the scene in which Fletcher's God of the River rescues Amoret and offers her his love. The borrowing is not at all a plagiarism, but an elaboration of the Amoret episode; and, as such, the imitati

mond, that full

ipe at Pan's b

mble leaping,

rland wore o

whose hand dam

his like nor co

hough the trail may run up a tree, it abounds in alluring scents. He will find that no sooner has Browne's Marina concluded the adventure borrowed from Fletch

ats h

be his partner

er; he with h

ept and sigh wh

at all necessary to the narrative, and in terms that more than echo the description of the beauty of Hermaph

there sate a

ure thought it

o through her his

with swaines, sinc

ke, and therefor

riours he shou

et quiresters" join in consort-"A musicke that would

ato did i' th'

s brought honey

they came; I

from his lips did

a master in

'd with silver)

he had got a

best upon th

rals, June 18, 1613, only three months after Beaumont's Masque upon the "revel da

is book, he notes that Doridon, overhearing the love-colloquy of Remond and Fida, can find no other trope to describe

y needs must ha

ct make one Her

hadow, or not?-when, having tracked the meandering Browne to the sec

rds on the s

ne the Ocea

faire Hitching hill" (Chapman), all loved Draiton, Jonson, well-la

skilful

Earth cannot

es and men that s

that age which so

ithout inte

ntest swains th

tendance on the

ridon, whose

m from their mor

the narrative here resumed, might they not have attended the Ocean's queen with the other poets of England,-all, but Sidney, his personal friends,-as Fletcher and Beaumont? This is precisely the way in which M

weary

spent in unfr

rs, vallies, h

yers and the

pry, if any

Sun might har

ould the bon

beasts, or h

quiry made in

ook for would b

rious man tha

rembling han

fe have wrong'

rment if he fi

e dramatized romances in which Beaumont and Fletcher's theatre of the Globe was indulging at the time. And I would ask him after he has read the sage advice of Remond to the disconsolate shepherd, some two hundred li

TNO

3, in State Papers (Domestic) James I, LXXII, No. 30. Quote

Papers, Venetian, XII, No. 832. Quot

pers (Domestic), 1611-

I, 453. Inderwick, op. cit., II, xxxix-xlii, 72, 77, etc. Douthwait

, in the volume entitl

, in The Muses' Lib

t Papers, VIII, Fle

. Past.,

id., II

Li. 4

d., I, 3

., II, 2,

., II, 2,

h Fletcher's defiance of poverty and independence of