FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[245]Murray,Eng. Dram. Comp., I, 153; Warwick Bond,Variorum Ed. of B. and F., I, 359.[246]Chr. Eng. Dr., I, 181.[247]See Bond,Variorum, B. and F., I, 417; and references as given there, and by Dyce, toThe Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt, The Captain, and other plays.[248]See S. R. Gardiner,History of England, Vol. II (1607-1616), pp. 165, 218, 225, 247, 255, 316, 321, 324, 327, 368, for this and the following concerning Sarmiento.[249]Gardiner,Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage, pp. 6, 7, 69.[250]All critics agree in assigning I, 1, to Beaumont. They differ concerning the rest of I and II.[251]So, also, Fleay, G. C. Macaulay, and Oliphant; Boyle,N. S. S. Trans., XXVI (1886), and Bond,u. s., p. 360.[252]Variorum, I, 360.[253]The best editions ofThe Scornful Ladiesince Dyce's time are that of R. Warwick Bond, in theVariorum, and of Glover and Waller in theCamb. Engl. Classics.

[245]Murray,Eng. Dram. Comp., I, 153; Warwick Bond,Variorum Ed. of B. and F., I, 359.

[246]Chr. Eng. Dr., I, 181.

[247]See Bond,Variorum, B. and F., I, 417; and references as given there, and by Dyce, toThe Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyatt, The Captain, and other plays.

[248]See S. R. Gardiner,History of England, Vol. II (1607-1616), pp. 165, 218, 225, 247, 255, 316, 321, 324, 327, 368, for this and the following concerning Sarmiento.

[249]Gardiner,Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage, pp. 6, 7, 69.

[250]All critics agree in assigning I, 1, to Beaumont. They differ concerning the rest of I and II.

[251]So, also, Fleay, G. C. Macaulay, and Oliphant; Boyle,N. S. S. Trans., XXVI (1886), and Bond,u. s., p. 360.

[252]Variorum, I, 360.

[253]The best editions ofThe Scornful Ladiesince Dyce's time are that of R. Warwick Bond, in theVariorum, and of Glover and Waller in theCamb. Engl. Classics.

THE DRAMATIC ART, PRINCIPALLY OF BEAUMONT

Of the eleven plays, then, from which one may try to draw conclusions concerning the respective dramatic qualities of Beaumont and Fletcher during the period of their collaboration, we have found that two,Loves CureandThe Captaine, do not definitely show the hand of Beaumont, and one,The Foure Playes, but the suspicion of a finger. Two,The Woman-HaterandThe Knight of the Burning Pestle, are wholly or essentially of his unaided authorship. The remaining six,The Coxcombe,Philaster,The Maides Tragedy,Cupids Revenge,A King and No King,The Scornful Ladie, are the Beaumont-Fletcher plays. Others in which some critics think that they have found traces of Beaumont, assuming that in their present form they are revisions of earlier work, areThierry and Theodoret,The Faithful Friends,Wit at Severall Weapons,Beggers Bush,Loves Pilgrimage,The Knight of Malta,The Lawes of Candy,The Honest Man's Fortune,Bonduca,Nice Valour,The Noble Gentleman,The Faire Maide of the Inne. These I have carefully examined, and can conscientiously state that in no instance is there for me satisfactory evidence of the qualities which mark his verse and style. When in any of the suspected passagesthe verse recalls Beaumont, the style is not his: I find none of his favourite words, phrases, figures, ideas. When in any such passage a Beaumontesque hyperbole appears, or an occasional word from his vocabulary, or a line of haunting beauty such as he might have written, his metre or rhythm is absent. On the other hand, such passages display traits never found in him but often found in some other collaborator with Fletcher, or in some reviser of Fletcher's plays, sometimes Massinger but more frequently Field. The latter dramatist modeled himself upon Beaumont, but though he caught, on occasion, something of the master's trick, no one steeped in the style of Beaumont can for a moment mistake for his even the most dramatic or poetic composition of Field. As to the scenes in prose supposed by some to have been written by Beaumont, there is not one that bears his distinctive impress, nor one that might not have been written by Daborne, Field, or Massinger, or by any of the half-dozen experts whose industry swelled the output of the Fletcherian syndicate. There being no evidence of Beaumont in any of these plays, it is unnecessary to investigate, here, the vexed question of the original date of each. Suffice it to repeat that concerning none is there definite or generally accepted information that it was written before Beaumont's retirement from dramatic activity.

Passing in review, the qualities of Beaumont as a dramatist we find that in characterization he is, when at his best, true to nature, gradual in his processes, and discriminating in delineation. He is melodramatic at times in sudden shifts of crisis; but he is uniformlysensitive to innocence, beauty, and pathos,—contemptuous of cowardice, braggadocio, and insincerity,—appreciative of fidelity, friendship, noble affection, womanly devotion, self-sacrifice, and mercy, of romantic enterprise, and of the virile defiance of calumny, evil soliciting, and tyranny. In the delineation of lust he is frankly Elizabethan rather than insidiously Jacobean. He portrays with special tenderness the maiden of pure heart whose love is unfortunately placed too high, a Bellario, Euphrasia, or Urania,—or crossed by circumstance, a Viola, Arethusa, Aspatia, Panthea. He distinctively appropriates Shakespeare's girl-page; under his touch her grace suffers but slight diminution, and that by excess of sentimentality rather than by lack of individual endowment. His love-lorn lasses are integral personalities. No one, not maintaining a thesis, could mistake Viola with her shrewd inventiveness and sense of humour for Arethusa, or Arethusa with her swift despairs for Bellario, or Bellario with her fearlessness and noble mendacity for the countrified Urania, or any of them for the lachrymose Aspatia, or the full-pulsed Panthea. I find them as different each from the other as all from the tormenting Oriana or that seventeenth century Lydia Languish, Jasper's mock-romantic Luce.

His most virile characters are not the tragic or romantic heroes of the plays, but the blunt soldier-friends. It has been said, to be sure, that "there is scarcely an individual peculiarity among them."[254]But Mardonius never deserts his King, Melantius does.And neither the Mardonius nor the Melantius of Beaumont has the waggish humour of Beaumont's Dion. His romantic heroes, on the other hand, are not so distinct in their several characteristics; Amintor, Philaster, Leucippus are generous, impulsive, poetic, readily deluded, undecided, and in action indecisive. The differentiation between them lies in the dramatic motive. Of Amintor the mainspring is the doctrine of the divinity of kings; he cannot be disloyal even to the king who has duped him and made of him a "fence" for his wife's adultery. Of Leucippus the mainspring is filial piety—disloyalty would mean surrendering his father to an incestuous and vengeful woman. Of Philaster the mainspring is the duty of revolt for the recovery of his ancestral throne. InPhilasterandCupid's RevengeBeaumont's tyrants are sonorific yet shadowy forms; but the king of theMaides Tragedyis a thoroughly visualized monster, and Arbaces inA King and No Kingstands as an epitome of progressively developed, concrete personality, absolutely distinct from any other figure on Beaumont's stage. In the construction of Evadne and Bacha a similar skill in evolution and individualization is displayed. The latter is an abnormality grown from lust to overweening ambition; the former never loses our sympathy: in her depravity there is the seed of conscience; through shame and love she wins a soul; the crime by which at last she would redeem herself leaves her no longer futile but half-way heroic; and her pleading for Amintor's love, her self-murder, fix her in memory among those squandered souls that have known no happiness—whose misery or whoseshame is merged and made beautiful in the pity of it all.

Of his braggarts and poltroons Beaumont is profuse: the best are Bessus and Calianax, so far as they have not been reduced to horse-play by another hand. For Pharamond we are indebted as much to Fletcher as to Beaumont. The Jonsonian humours of Beaumont's braggarts, excellent as they may be, are not more clearly marked nor better drawn than those of many of his other characters, the misogynist, the retributive Oriana, and the gourmand-parasite, in his youthful comedy ofThe Woman-Hater, or the devil-may-care Merrythought, Luce, the grocer and his wife, and in fact every convulsing caricature in his matchlessKnight of the Burning Pestle. Of Beaumont's effectiveness in satire and burlesque, enough has already been said. His laughter is genial but not uproarious: he chuckles; he lifts the eyebrow, but seldom sneers. With the Gascon he vapours; with the love-lorn languishing, simpers; with the heroic Captain of Mile End, whiffles and—tongue in cheek—struts and throws a turkey-step; with the jovial roisterer he hiccoughs and wipes his mouth. Homely wit, bathos, and the grotesque he fixes as on a film, and makes no comment; fustian he parodies; affectation he feeds with banter. For the inflated he cherishes a noiseless, most exiguous bodkin.

As to the matter of technique we have observed that the clear and comprehensive expositions of the joint-plays are generally Beaumont's,—for instance, those ofThe Maides Tragedy,Philaster,King and No King, andThe Scornful Ladie; that in the tragediesand tragicomedies the sensational reversals of fortune, as well as the cumulative suspenses and reliefs of the closing scenes, are in nearly all cases his; and that in the tragicomedies the shifting of interest from the strictly tragic and universal to the more individual—pathetic, romantic, and comic—emotions, is also his. The conviction of Evadne by her brother is an exception: that is the work of Fletcher; but her contrition in the presence of Amintor is again Beaumont's. What he was capable of in romantic comedy is shown by his 'Ricardo and Viola' episode. He cared much more for romance than for intrigue; and he found his romance in persons of common life as readily as among those of elevated station. In his share of the comedies of intrigue he shows, as elsewhere, that he was capable of Elizabethan bubukles, but ludicrous not lecherous. Above all, he delighted in interweaving with the romantic and sentimental that which partook of the pastoral, the pathetic, and the heroic. And we have noticed that, through the heroic and melodramatic, his more serious plays pass into the atmosphere of court life and spectacular display.

As for Fletcher's share in the dramas written in partnership with Beaumont, little need be said by way of summary. He bulks large in the comedies of intrigue,The Scornful LadieandThe Coxcombe; and especially in the sections of plot that are carnal, trivial, or unnatural. He is in them just what he is in his ownMonsieur Thomasand his pornographicCaptaine—in the latter of which, if Beaumont had any share at all it is unconvincing to me, save possibly as regards the one appalling scene of which I havespoken some five chapters back. To the tragedies and "dramatic romances" or tragicomedies Fletcher did not contribute one-third as much as his co-worker. As in the murder-scene ofThe Maides Tragedyhe displays the dramaturgy of spectacular violence, so in the scene between Melantius and Evadne, the power of dramatic invective. But his aim is not the furtherance of interest by the dynamic unfolding of personality, or by the propulsion of plot through interplay of complicated motives or emotions, it is the immediate captivation of the spectator by rapidity and variety: by brisk, lucid, and witty dialogue, by bustle of action and multiplicity of conventional device, as inCupids Revenge. Few of his scenes are vital; most are clever histrionic inlays, subsidiary to the main action, or complementary and explanatory, as inPhilasterandA King and No King. His characters move with all the ease of perfect mechanism; but they are made, not born. It follows that, in the more serious of the joint-dramas, the principal personages are much less indebted to his invention than has ordinarily been supposed. In the comedies of intrigue, on the other hand, conventional types of the stage or of the theatre-going London world, especially the fashionable and the Bohemian provinces thereof, owe their existence chiefly to him. Blackguards, wittols, colourless tricksters, roaring captains, gallants, debauchees, lechers, bawds, libidinous wives, sophisticated maidens who preen themselves with meticulous virtue but not with virtuous thoughts, all these people the scenes which Fletcher contributed to the joint-comedies. And some of them thrust their faces intothe romantic plays and tragedies as well. Fletcher's most important contribution to the drama, his masterly and vital contribution, is to be found in his later work; and of that I have elsewhere treated,[255]and shall have yet a word to say here.

Of the Beaumont-Fletcher plays the distinctive dramaturgy as well as the essential poetry are Beaumont's, and these are worthy of the praise bestowed by his youthful contemporary, John Earle:

So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon,And all so born within thyself, thine own.

The Maske,The Woman-Hater, andThe Knight of the Burning Pestleshould appear in a volume bearing Beaumont's name. And for the partnership of Beaumont and Fletcher, perhaps, some day,

Some publisher will further justice doAnd print theirsixplays in one volume too.

FOOTNOTES:[254]Thorndike,Influence of B. and F., p. 123.[255]The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare, Part Two, inRepresentative English Comedies, Vol. III, now in press.

[254]Thorndike,Influence of B. and F., p. 123.

[255]The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare, Part Two, inRepresentative English Comedies, Vol. III, now in press.

DID THE BEAUMONT 'ROMANCE' INFLUENCE SHAKESPEARE?

Richard Flecknoe, in hisDiscourse of the English Stage, 1664, thinking rather of the romantic and ornamented quality of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, "full of fine flowers," than of any anticipation in them of the love and honour of plays of the Restoration, says that they were the first to write "in the Heroick way." Symonds calls them the "inventors of the heroical romance." And lately Professor Thorndike[256]and others have conjectured that the Shakespeare ofCymbeline,Winter's Tale, andThe Tempestwas following the lead of the two younger dramatists in what is attributed to them as a new style of 'dramatic romance' in his dramas. The argument is thatPhilaster(acted before October 8, 1610) precededCymbeline(acted between April 20, 1610 and May 15, 1611), and suggested to Shakespeare a radical change of dramatic method, first manifest inCymbeline. And that five other "romances by Beaumont and Fletcher,"Foure Playes in One,Thierry and Theodoret,The Maides Tragedy,Cupid's RevengeandA King and No King, constituting withPhilastera distinctly new type of drama, were in all probability acted before the close of 1611, and similarly influenced the method ofThe Winter's TaleandThe Tempest, also of 1611.

Before discussing the theory of Shakespeare's indebtedness toPhilasterand its "Beaumont-Fletcher" successors, I should like to file a two-fold protest; first, against the use of the word 'romance' for any kind of dramatic production, whatever. 'Romance' applies to narrative of heroic, marvellous, and imaginative content, not to drama.The Maides TragedyandCupid's Revengeare not romances; they are romantic tragedies.Philaster,A King and No King, andCymbelineare, of course, romantic; but specifically they are melodramatic tragicomedies of heroic cast.Pericles,The Winter's Tale, andThe Tempestare romantic comedies of marvel or adventure. Nothing is gained in criticism by giving them a name which applies, in English, strictly to narrative, or by regarding them as of a different dramatic species from the romantic dramas of Greene and Shakespeare that preceded them. I object, in the second place, to the grouping of the six plays said to constitute "a distinctly new type of drama" under the denomination "dramatic romances of BeaumontandFletcher"; for in some of them Beaumont had no hand, and in others, the most important, Fletcher's contribution of romantic novelty is altogether secondary, mostly immaterial. WithThierry and Theodoret, for instance, thus loosely called a "Beaumont-Fletcher romance," it is not proved that Beaumont had anything to do. The drama displays nothing of his vocabulary, rhetoricor poetry. It is a later production by Fletcher, Massinger, and probably one other; and is the only play of this tragic-idyllic-romantic type attempted by Fletcher after Beaumont had ceased writing. In three of theFoure Playes in One, Beaumont does not appear. He may possibly be traced in three scenes ofThe Triumph of Love; but with no certainty. Fletcher, on the other hand, had very little to do with the three great dramas of sensational romance which form the core of the group in question,Philaster,The Maides Tragedy, andA King and No King. As I have shown, he contributed not more than four scenes toPhilaster, four toThe Maides Tragedy, and five toA King and No King. And, with the exception of two spectacularly violent scenes inThe Maides Tragedy, his contribution, so far as writing goes, is supplementary dialogue and histrionic by-play. Whatever is essentially novel, vital, and distinctive is by Beaumont. ToCupid's RevengeBeaumont's contribution was slighter in volume, but without it the play would lack its distinctive quality. If we must cling to the misnomer 'romance' for any group of plays which may have influenced Shakespeare's later comedies, let us limit the group to its Beaumont core, and speak of the 'Beaumont romance.'

The express novelty in technique of the six arbitrarily selected, so-called 'Beaumont-Fletcher romances' is supposed to lie in the dramatic adaptation of certain sensational properties more suitable to narrative fiction; especially in the attempt to heighten interest by adding to the legitimate portrayal of character under stress and strain (as in tragedy), or of character inamusing maladjustment with social convention (as in comedy), the portrayal of vicissitudes of fortune; and in the attempt to enhance the thrills appropriate to tragic and comic appeal by such an amalgamation of the two as shall cause the spectator to run up and down the whole gamut of emotional sensibility. In the realm of tragedy the accentuation of the possibilities of suspense, whether by Beaumont or any other, would be a novelty merely of degree.Cupid's Revenge, andThe Triumph of Death(in theFoure Playes in One) could hardly have impressed the author ofRomeo and JulietandHamletas in this respect astounding innovations; andThe Maides Tragedydoes not, so far as I can determine, sacrifice the unities of interest and effect for enhancement and variety of emotional thrill. In any case, it would be necessary to dateTimon,Antony, andCoriolanus, two or three years later than the fact, if one desired to prove that any Shakespearian tragedy was influenced by a Beaumont-Fletcher exaggeration of suspense. Whatever exaggeration may exist had already been practised by Shakespeare himself. If a Beaumont-Fletcher novelty influenced Shakespeare, that novelty must have lain in the transference of tragic suspense to the realm of romantic comedy with all its minor aesthetic appeals, and it would consequently be limited to their tragicomedies,PhilasterandA King and No King. The tragicomic masques in theFoure Playes in One, that ofHonourand that ofDeath, are too insignificant to warrant consideration; and Beaumont had nothing to do with them.

In determining the indebtedness, if any, ofCymbelinetoPhilasterwe lack the assistance of authentic dates of composition. The plays were acted about the same time,—Philastercertainly,Cymbelineperhaps, before October 8, 1610. Beaumont and Fletcher's play may have been written as early as 1609; Shakespeare's also as early as 1609 or 1608: in fact, there are critics who assign parts of it to 1606. With regard to the relative priority ofCymbelineandA King and No King, we are more fortunate in our knowledge. The former had certainly been acted by May 15, 1611; the latter was not even licensed until that year, and was not performed at Court till December 26. The probabilities are altogether in favour of a date of composition later than that ofCymbeline.

But that Shakespeare'sCymbelineand his later romantic dramas betray any consciousness of the existence ofPhilasterand its succeedingKing and No Kinghas not been proved. Save for the more emphatic employment of the masque and its accessories of dress and scenic display, of the combination of idyllic, romantic, and sensational elements of material, and the heightened uncertainty of dénouement, all naturally suggested by the demands of Jacobean taste, no variation is discoverable in the course of Shakespeare's dramatic art. And in these respects I find no extrinsic novelty, no momentous change—nothing inPhilasterandA King and No Kingthat had not been anticipated by Shakespeare.Cymbeline,The Winter's Tale, andThe Tempestare but the flowering of potentialities latent in theTwo Gentlemen of VeronaandAs You Like It,Much Ado About NothingandTwelfth Night,All's Well That Ends WellandMeasure for Measure—latent in the story of Apollonius of Tyre, and unavoidable in its dramatization asPericles, a play that was certainly not influenced by the methods ofPhilaster. If in his later romantic dramas Shakespeare borrowed any hint of technique from the Beaumont contribution to the 'romances,' he was but borrowing back what Beaumont had borrowed from him or from sources with which Shakespeare was familiar when Beaumont was still playing nursery miracles of the Passion with his brothers in the Gethsemane garden at Grace-Dieu. Shakespeare's later comedies are a legitimate development of his peculiar dramatic art. Beaumont's tragicomedies, with all their poetic and idyllic beauty and dramatic individuality, are novel, so far as construction goes, only in their emphasized employment of the sensational properties and methods mentioned above. Their characteristic, when compared with that of Shakespeare's last group of comedies, is melodramatic rather than romantic. They set, in fine, as did Chapman'sGentleman Usher, and Shakespeare'sMeasure for MeasureandAll's Well that Ends Well, an example which, abused, led to the decadence of Elizabethan romantic comedy.

The resemblance betweenPhilasterandCymbeline, such as it is, is closer than that betweenPhilasterand the Shakespearian successors ofCymbeline,—The Winter's TaleandThe Tempest. But the common features of all these plays, the juxtaposition of idyllic scenes and interest with those of royalty, the combination of sentimental, tragic, and comic incentives to emotion, the false accusations of unchastity and theresulting jealousy, intrigue, and crime, the wanderings of an innocent and distressed woman in boy's clothing, the romantic localization, did not appear first in eitherPhilasterorCymbeline.PhilasterandCymbelinefollow numerous clues in the idyllic-comic ofLove's Labour's LostandMidsummer-Night's Dream; in the idyllic-romantic-pathetic ofTwo Gentlemen of Verona,As You Like It, andTwelfth Night; and for that matter in the materials furnished by Greene, Lodge, Sidney, Sannazzaro, Montemayor, Bandello, Cinthio and Boccaccio; and in the romantic and tragicomic fusion already attempted inMuch Ado,All's Well, andMeasure for Measure. For the character and the trials of Imogen, Shakespeare did not require the inspiration of a Beaumont. He had been busied with the figure of Innogen (as he then called her) as early as 1599; for in the 1600 quarto ofMuch Adoshe appears by sheer accident in a stage direction as the wife of the Leonato of that play. He had been using the sources from whichCymbelineis drawn,—Holinshed and Boccaccio, and that early romantic drama,Fidele and Fortunio,—beforePhilasterwas written. And it is much more likely that the Belarius of Shakespeare and the Bellario of Beaumont were both suggested by the Bellaria of Greene'sPandosto, than that Shakespeare borrowed from Beaumont. Nor is Shakespeare likely to have been indebted to Beaumont's example for the sensational manner of the dénouement inCymbeline—the succession of fresh complications and false starts by which suspense is sustained. These are precisely the features that distinguish those scenes ofPericleswhich by the consensus of critics are assigned to Shakespeare; andPericleswas written by 1608, at least as early asPhilaster, and in all probability earlier. In his story of Marina, Shakespeare is merely pursuing the sensational methods ofMeasure for Measureand anticipating those ofThe Winter's Tale. In general, the plot lies half-way between the tragicomic possibilities of theComedy of Errors,Twelfth Night,All's Well, andMeasure for Measure, and the romantic manipulation ofCymbelineand the later plays.

In fine, there is closer resemblance betweenCymbelineand half a dozen of Shakespeare's earlier comedies, than betweenCymbelineandPhilaster; and it might more readily be shown that the author ofPhilasterwas indebted to those half-dozen plays, than Shakespeare toPhilaster. The differences between the Beaumont 'romances' and Shakespeare's later romantic comedies are in fact more vital than the similarities. InPhilaster,The Maides Tragedy, andA King and No Kingthe central idea is of contrast between sentimental love and unbridled lust, and this gives rise to misunderstanding, intrigue, and violence. In Shakespeare's later comedies the central motive is altogether different: it is of disappearance and discovery. The disappearance is occasioned by false accusation or conspiracy. InPericles,Cymbeline, andThe Winter's Tale, the dramatic interest revolves about the pursuit of a lost wife or child, the wanderings and trials of the heroine, and her recovery;[257]inThe Tempest, about the disappearance and discovery of the ousted Duke and his daughter. There is noresemblance between Beaumont's love-lorn maidens in page's garb pursuing the unconscious objects of their affection and Shakespeare's joyous girls and traduced wives. Nor is there in Shakespeare's later comedies any analogue to the sensual passion of the 'Beaumont and Fletcher romances,' to their Bachas, Megras, and Evadnes, their ultra-sentimental Philasters, their blunt soldier-counselors and boastful poltroons. Pisanio and Cloten have respectively no kinship with Dion and Pharamond. What appears to be novel inPericlesand its Shakespearian successors, the somewhat melodramatic dénouement, is, as I have said, but the modification of the playwright's well-known methods in conformity with the contemporary demand for more highly seasoned fare. But, in essence, the dramatic careers of Imogen and Hermione, are no more sensational than those of their older sisters, Hero, Helena, and Isabella. And what is most evidently not novel with Shakespeare in his later romantic comedies,—the consistent dramatic interaction between crisis and character,—is precisely what the 'Beaumont-Fletcher romances' do not always possess. Beaumont's characterization at its best, with all its naturalness, compelling pathos, poignancy, and abandon is lyrical or idyllic rather than dramatic; Fletcher's is expository and histrionic—of manners rather than the man.

Beaumont did not influence Shakespeare. And if not Beaumont, then certainly not Fletcher; for in the actual composition of the core of the so-called 'Beaumont-Fletcher romances' Fletcher's share was altogether subordinate; and since after the dissolution ofthe partnership he attempted but one romantic tragic drama of that particular kind,Thierry and Theodoret,—and that a clumsy failure,—it must be concluded that in the designing of those 'romances' his share was even less significant. But to appreciate the contribution of Beaumont to Elizabethan drama, and his place in literary history, it is fortunately not necessary to assume that he diverted from its natural course the dramatic technique of a master, twenty years his senior and for twenty years before Beaumont began to write, intimately acquainted with the conditions of the stage,—the acknowledged playwright of the most successful of theatrical companies and, in spite of changing fashions, the most steadily progressive and popular dramatic artist of the early Jacobean period. With regard to Beaumont it is marvel sufficient, that between his twenty-fifth and his twenty-eighth year of age he should have elaborated in dramatic art, even with the help of Fletcher, so striking a combination of preceding models, and have infused into the resulting heroic-romantic type such fresh poetic vigour and verve of movement.

FOOTNOTES:[256]The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare, 1901. See M. W. Sampson's critique inJ. Ger. Phil., II, 241.[257]See Morton Luce,Hand Book to Shakespeare's Works, p. 338.

[256]The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare, 1901. See M. W. Sampson's critique inJ. Ger. Phil., II, 241.

[257]See Morton Luce,Hand Book to Shakespeare's Works, p. 338.

CONCLUSION

Beaumont's poetic virtues are his peculiar treasure; but the dramatic method of his heroic-romantic plays lent itself lightly to imitation and debasement. Not so muchThe Maides TragedyandA King and No King, which respect the unities of interest and effect, asPhilaster,The Coxcombe, andCupid's Revenge, to which Fletcher's contribution of captivating theatrical 'business' and device was more considerable. Some of these plays, and some of Shakespeare's, too, and of Marston's, and Chapman's, and Webster's, paved the way for the heroic play of the Restoration—a melodramatic development of tragicomedy and sentimental tragedy, in which philandering sentiment, strained and histrionic passion, took the place of romantic love and virile conflict,—a drama in which an affected view of life tinged crisis and character alike, an unreasoning devotion to royalty or some other chivalric ideal obscured personal dignity and moral responsibility, and the thrill of surprise dissipated the catharsis, proper to art, whether tragic or comic.

Upon the future of the comedy of intrigue and manners, Beaumont exercised no distinctive influence. In plays likeThe CoxcombeandThe Scornful Ladie,the genius of Fletcher dominated the scenes of lighter dialogue and comic complication. And it is through comedies of intrigue and manners written by Fletcher alone or in company with others, especially Massinger, that Fletcher's individual genius exercised most influence on the subsequent history of the drama. The characteristics which won theatrical preëminence for his romantic comedies, heroic tragicomedies and tragedies, written after the cessation of Beaumont's activity, were a Fletcherian vivacity of dialogue, a Fletcherian perfection of 'business,' and a Fletcherian exaggeration of the tragicomic spirit and technique of which, in the days of the Beaumont-Fletcher partnership, Beaumont had availed himself but which he, still, by virtue of his critical faculty, had held somewhat in restraint.

From the time of Prynne'sHistriomastix, 1633, there have been critics who have pointed to the gradual deterioration of the stage which, beginning, say some, with plays of Shakespeare himself, continued through Beaumont and Fletcher to the drama of the Restoration. Flecknoe, Rymer, Coleridge, Lamb, Swinburne, Ward, have commented upon phases of the phenomenon. And, recently, one of our most judicious contemporary essayists has in a series of articles developed the theme.[258]I heartily concur with the scholarly and well-languaged editor ofThe Nation, in many of his conclusions concerning the general history of this decline; and I have already in this book availed myself with profit of some of his suggestions.I agree with him that the downfall of tragedy began when "the theme was altered from a single master passion to a number of loosely coördinated passions, thus relaxing the rigidity of tragic structure and permitting the fancy to play more intimately through all the emotions"; that this degeneration may be traced to the time "when ecclesiastical authority was broken by scepticism and knowledge, and the soul was left with all its riches of imagination and emotion, but with the principle of individual responsibility discredited and the fibre of self-government relaxed"; that "the consequences may be seen in the Italy of the sixteenth century"; and that "the result is that drama of the court which, besides its frequent actual indecency, is at heart so often non-moral and in the higher artistic sense incomprehensible." But when he ascribes this alteration of the theme of tragedy from a single master passion to a number of "loosely coördinated passions" to our "twin dramatists," and cites as his exampleThe Maides Tragedyin which, as he sees it, we have "but a succession of womanly passions, each indeed cunningly conceived and expressed, but giving us in the end nothing we can grasp as a whole and comprehend";—and says that Evadne is "no woman at all, unless mere random passionateness can be accounted such," I shake my head in sad demurrer. First, because, as I have tried to show above, Evadne is anything but an incomprehensible embodiment of unmotived passions, andThe Maides Tragedyanything but a "loosely coördinated" concern, and secondly, because I disfavour this attribution of the decadence oftragedy, or of comedy, for that matter, to ourtwindramatists. To substantiate such a charge it would be incumbent upon the critic to prove not only that the decadence is indubitably visible in the joint-work of Beaumont and Fletcher, but that it is specifically visible in Beaumont's, as in Fletcher's, contribution to that work, and also, that it was not already patent in the dramatic productions of their seniors; that it was not patent in Heywood'sRoyall King and Loyall Subject, for instance; in the "glaring colours" of Chapman'sBussy D'Ambois, and in hisGentleman Usherwith its artificial atmosphere of courtly romance, its melodramatic reverses and surprises, its huddling up of poetic justice; in the sensational devices, passionate unrealities and sepulchral action of Marston'sMalcontent, the sophistical theme and callous pornography of hisDutch Courtezan, and in the inhuman imaginings of hisInsatiate Countess; that it was not patent in the heartless irresponsibility and indecency of Middleton, and in the inartistic warping of tragic situations to comic solutions that characterize his early romantic plays; that it was not patent in the poisonous exhalations, the wildering of sympathy, and the disproportioned art that characterize theWhite Devilof their immediate contemporary, John Webster.

The decadence was hastened by Fletcher; but not in any distinctive degree by Beaumont. I second Mr. More's commendation of Prynne's "philosophic criticism of 1632 that 'men in theatres are so far from sinne-lamenting sorrow, that they even delight themselves with the representations of those wickednesses,'"but I deplore the application of that criticism toBeaumontand Fletcher, as that "theyloosed the bonds of conduct and left human nature as a mere bundle of irresponsibilities."

Many of Fletcher's excesses and defects not only in the plays written with Beaumont, but in plays written after his death, have been conferred from the day of Flecknoe to the present upon Beaumont. There is very little "sinne-lamenting sorrow" in theValentinianof Fletcher, or of Fletcher and Massinger, and very little in Fletcher'sWife for a Month; but in many of Beaumont's scenes inThe Maides Tragedy, andA King and No King, andThe Coxcombethe genuine accents of "sinne-lamenting sorrow" are heard. Fletcher certainly "loosed the bonds of conduct and left human nature as a mere bundle of irresponsibilities," but not Beaumont. Let the reader turn to that poet's scenes in the joint-plays (two-thirds of the great ones) as I have indicated them, or to what I have unrolled of Beaumont's mental habit, and judge for himself.[259]

The concession of the essayist from whom, as a representative of enlightened modern opinion upon the subject, I have been quoting,—that "as Fletcher's work stands, he may appear utterly devoid of conscience, a man to whom our human destinies were mere toys," I hail with delight, although I think that Fletcher the man had more honest ideals than Fletcher the dramatist. But, as a critic, I resent the surmise that Fletcher "was by nature of a manlier, sounder fibre than Beaumont." In the heroic-romantic comedy,The Humorous Lieutenant, Fletcher displays, indeed, as Mr. More says, "a strain almost like that of Shakespeare, upon whom he manifestly modelled himself in everything except Shakespeare's serious insight into human motives." But does that play reveal anything of manlier, sounder fibre than Beaumont'sA King and No King?

Written in 1619The Humorous Lieutenanthas enduring vitality, though not because of its tragicomic presupposition; for the wars and rumours of war are rhetorical or humorous, the devilish design of the King upon the chastity of the heroine is predestined to failure,—and the announcement of her death, but a dramatic device which may impose upon the credulity of her noble lover but not upon the audience. In the MS. of 1625 it is styled "a pleasant comedie"; and such it is, of 'humour' and romantic love, upon a background of the heroic. It is Fletcher's best comedy of the kind; one of the best of the later Shakespearian age. The conception of the Lieutenant, whose humour is to fight when he is plagued by loathsome disease and to wench when he is well, is not original, nor is the character of the hero Demetrius; but in the elaboration Fletcher has created these characters anew, has surrounded them with half a dozen other figures no less life-like, and has set them in a plot, cunningly welded of comic, sentimental, and martial elements, and captivatingly original. Though the interest is partly in a wanton intrigue, and the mirth grossly carnal even when not bawdy, I think that the objectionable qualities are, for almost the only time in Fletcher's career in comedy, not ineradicable.The wondrous charm, "matchless spirit," vivacity, and constancy of Celia render the machinations of the procuress, Leucippe, and her "office of concealments" futile,—so much dramatic realism to be accentuated or mitigated at the will of the stage manager;—and the alluring offers of the king are but so many weapons for his own defeat. If the Lieutenant were not an indissoluble compound of hero, swashbuckler, shirker, and "stinkard," I fear, indeed, that he would lose his savour. But the love of Rabelaisian humour is, after all, ingrained in the male of the species, and if the license be not nauseating it is not necessarily damnable. This boisterous, pocky rascal who "never had but two hours yet of happiness," and who courts the battlefield to save him "from the surgeon's miseries," held the stage from the time of Condel, Taylor, and Lowin, to that of Macready and Liston, and there is no reason why his vitality should not be perennial. There are few more laughable scenes in farcical literature than those in which, having drained a philtre intended to make Celia dote upon the King, the Lieutenant imagines himself to be a handsome wench of fifteen, wooes the King most fatuously, even kisses the royal horses as they pass by. The meeting and the parting, the trials and the reunion, of Celia and Demetrius constitute the most convincing and attractive romantic-pathetic love-affairs in Jacobean drama since Shakespeare had ceased to write. Indeed, this "perilous crafty," spirited, "angel-eyed" girl "too honest for them all" who so ingeniously and modestly shames the lustful monarch and wins her affianced prince isnot unworthy of the master. Nor is Demetrius. The play contains many genuinely poetic passages, and some of those lines of meteoric beauty—"our lives are but our marches to the grave"—in which Beaumont abounded, and that Fletcher too rarely coined. With all the rankness of its humour, the play has such literary and dramatic excellence that one cannot but regret the infrequency with which Fletcher produced that of which he was capable.

But even this best of Fletcher's heroic-dramatic plays contains, as Mr. More has observed, "one of those sudden conversions which make us wonder whether in his heart he felt any difference between a satyr-like lust and a chaste love—the conversion of the lecherous old king." I grant Fletcher's surpassing excellence in comedy, especially the comedy of manners and intrigue as, for instance,The Chancesand theRule a Wife and Have a Wife, and I have elsewhere acknowledged his supremacy after Shakespeare in that realm. But we are now considering not that kind of composition or its technique, but the fibre which might be expected to show itself in compositions involving the element of seriousness.The Humorous Lieutenantis of that kind,—it is called a tragicomedy by some. Has it one tithe of the serious insight into human life of any of Beaumont's plays involving ethical conflict?

Inquiring further into the fibre of Fletcher, let us pass in brief review another play, a genuine tragicomedy this time,A Wife for a Month, written the year before he died, of whose heroine Mr. More says that "from every point of view, ethical and artistic,she is one of the most finely drawn and truest women in the whole range of English drama." The complication, here, assuredly affords opportunity for the display of sound and manly fibre; and the tragicomedy is instructive in more ways than one: it illustrates Fletcher's skill in construction and his disregard of probability; his sense of moral conflict and his insensibility to moral beauty; his power to conceive characteristic situations and his impotence to construct natural characters; his capability of noble sentiment and poetic expression and his beastly perverseness of fancy, his prostitution of art to sordid sensationalism. The story of the cumulative torments to which a lustful usurper subjects the maiden, Evanthe, whom he desires, and Valerio whom she loves, is graphically estimated by one of thedramatis personae,—"This tyranny could never be invented But in the school of Hell: earth is too innocent." Beside it Zola'sL'Assommoirsmells sweet, and a nightmare lacks nothing of probability. Ugly, however, as the fundamental assumption is: namely, that the tyrant should permit a wedding on condition that at the end of a month the husband shall suffer death,—and with provision that meanwhile the honeymoon shall be surrounded with restriction more intolerable than death itself; and incredible as is the contrivance of the sequel,—kept a-going by the suppression of instinct and commonsense on the part of the hero, and withheld from its proper tragic conclusion by miraculous cure, an impossible conversion, and an unnatural clemency,—the plot is after all deftly knit, and the interest sustained with baleful fascination. But it would bedifficult to instance in Jacobean drama a more incongruous juxtaposition of complication morally conceived, and execution callously vulgarized, than that offered by the scene between Valerio and Evanthe on their wedding-night. In the corresponding scene ofThe Maides Tragedy(II, 1), Beaumont had created a model: Amintor bears himself with dignity toward his shameless and contemptuous bride. But in Fletcher's play it is this "most finely drawn and truest woman" that makes the advances; and she makes them not only without dignity, but with an unmaidenly persistence and persuasiveness of which any abandoned 'baggage' or Russian actress of to-day might be ashamed. And, still, the dramatist is never weary of assuring us that she is the soul of "honour mingled with noble chastity," and clad in "all the graces" that Nature can give. In the various other trying situations in which Evanthe is placed it is requisite to our conviction of reality that she be the "virtuous bud of beauty": but the tongue of this "bud" blossoms into billingsgate, she swears "something awful," and she displays an acquaintance with sexual pathology that would delight the heart even of the most rabid twentieth-century advocate of sex-hygiene for boys and girls in coëducational public schools.

Two or three of the characters are nobly conceived and, on occasion, contrive to utter themselves with nobility. Valerio achieves a poetry infrequent in Fletcher's plays when he says of the shortness of his prospective joys:

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