FOOTNOTES:

Renownèd Spencer, lye a thought more nyeTo learnèd Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lyeA little neerer Spencer, to make roomeFor Shakespeare in your threefold, fowerfold Tombe.To lodge all foure in one bed make a shiftUntill Doomesdaye, for hardly will a fift,Betwixt this day and that, by Fate be slayneFor whom your Curtaines may be drawn againe.

The date of the sonnet of which these are the opening lines can be only approximately determined. It must be earlier, however, than 1623; for in that year Jonson alludes to it in verses presently to be quoted. And it must be later than the erection of the monument to Shakespeare's memory in Trinity Church, Stratford, in or soon after 1618, for in the lines which follow those given above the writer apostrophizes Shakespeare as sleeping "Under this carvèd marble of thine owne." The sonnet contemplates the removal of Shakespeare's remains to Westminster, andarranges the poets already lying there not in actual but chronological order.[132]

To these verses Jonson, as I have said, alludes in the series of stanzas prefixed to the Shakespeare folio of 1623,—To the memory of my beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare and what he hath left us.Ben Jonson intends, however, no slight to Beaumont and the other poets mentioned by Basse, when, in his rapturous eulogy, he declines to regard them as the peers of Shakespeare. On the contrary this lover at heart, and in his best moments, of Beaumont, bestows a meed of praise: they are "great Muses,"—Chaucer, Spenser, Beaumont,—but merely "disproportioned," if one judge critically, in the present comparison, as are, indeed, Lyly, Kyd, and Marlowe. Not these, but "thundering Æschylus," Euripides, and Sophocles, Pacuvius, Accius, "him of Cordova dead," must be summoned

To life againe to heare thy Buskin treadAnd shake a Stage.

Therefore it is, that Jonson calls—

My Shakespeare rise; I will not lodge thee byChaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lyeA little further to make thee a roome:Thou art a Moniment without a toombe,And art alive still, while thy Booke doth live,And we have wits to read, and praise to give.That I not mixe thee so, my braine excuses;I meane with great, but disproportion'd Muses.

That Beaumont was regarded by his immediate contemporaries not as a professional, but literary, dramatist,—a poet, and a person of social eminence,—appears from Drayton'sEpistle to Henery Reynolds, Esq., Of Poets and Poesy, published 1627, from which I have earlier quoted. Here the writer, appraising the poets "who have enrich'd our language with their rhymes" informs his "dearly loved friend" that he does not

meane to runIn quest of these that them applause have wonneUpon our Stages in these latter dayes,That are so many; let them have their bayes,That doe deserve it; let those wits that hauntThose publique circuits, let them freely chauntTheir fine Composures, and their praise pursue;

and thus, we may conjecture, he excuses the omission of such men as Middleton, Fletcher, and Massinger. Beginning with Chaucer, "the first of ours that ever brake Into the Muses' treasure, and first spake In weighty numbers," Drayton pays especial honour to "grave, morall Spencer," "noble Sidney ... heroe for numbers and for prose," Marlowe with his "brave translunary things," Shakespeare of "as smooth a comicke vaine ... as strong conception, and as cleere a rage, As any one that trafiqu'd with the Stage," "learn'd Johnson.... Who had drunke deepe ofthe Pierian spring," and "reverend Chapman" for his translations: then he passes to men of letters whom he had loved, Alexander and Drummond, and concludes the roll-call with his two Beaumonts and his Browne, his bosom friends, rightly born poets and "Men of much note, and no lesse nobler parts." This letter not only speaks the opinion of Drayton concerning the standing of the two Beaumonts in poetry, but incidentally asserts the popularity of their work, for the author informs his correspondents that he "ties himself here only to those few men"

Whose works oft printed, set on every post,To publique censure subject have bin most.

By 1627 all of the dramas in which Francis had an undoubted share, exceptThe Coxcombehad been printed; and some of his poems had appeared as early as 1618 in a little volume that included also Drayton's elegies on Lady Penelope Clifton and the three sons of Lord Sheffield, and Verses by 'N. H.'

MICHAEL DRAYTON From the portrait in the Dulwich GalleryMICHAEL DRAYTONFrom the portrait in the Dulwich Gallery

MICHAEL DRAYTONFrom the portrait in the Dulwich Gallery

This volume is Henry Fitzgeffrey'sCertayn elegies done by sundrie excellent wits(Fr. Beau., M. Dr., N. H.), withSatyres and Epigrames. Fitzgeffrey, by the way, was of Lincoln's Inn in Beaumont's time; and so were others connected with this volume, by dedications or commendatory verses: Fitzgeffrey's "chamber-fellow and nearest friend, Nat. Gurlin"; Thomas Fletcher, and John Stephens, the satirist, who had been entered member of the Inn in 1611. They must all have been known by Beaumont when he was writing his elegies. The 'N. H.' thus posthumously associated with our dramatist was, I think, the mathematician,philosopher, and poet, Nicholas Hill[133]Beaumont could not have failed to know him. He was of St. John's College, Oxford; he wrote and published aPhilosophia Epicurea Democritianato which, mentioning him by name, Ben Jonson alludes in his epigram (CXXXIV)Of The Famous Voyageof the two wights who "At Bread-streetsMermaidhaving dined and merry, Propos'd to goe to Holborne in a wherry." He was the secretary and favourite of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, was a good deal of a wag, and well acquainted with our old friend Serjeant Hoskyns of theConvivium Philosophicum. He died in 1610.

Whether the anonymous writer onThe Time Poets[134]was a personal acquaintance of Beaumont we cannot tell. The definite qualities of the poet which he emphasizes are, however, as likely to be drawn from life and conversation as from the perusal of his dramas. The lines, apparently composed between 1620 and 1636, begin,

One night, the great Apollo, pleas'd with Ben,Made the odde number of the Muses ten;The fluent Fletcher, Beaumont rich in sense,In complement and courtship's quintessence;Ingenious Shakespeare, Massinger that knowsThe strength of plot to write in verse or prose,—

and continue with "cloud-grappling Chapman" and others, as of the ten Muses.

That Thomas Heywood, the dramatist, was a personal friend,—we may be sure,—the kind of friend who having a sense of humour did not resent Beaumont's genial satire inThe Knight of the Burning Pestleupon his bourgeois drama ofThe Foure Prentisesof London. Writing as late as 1635, he remembers Francis as a wit:

Excellent Bewmont, in the formost rankeOf the rarest Wits, was never more than Franck.—

The touch of familiarity with which Heywood[135]causes that whole row of poets, many of them then dead, Robin Green, Kit Marlowe, the Toms (Kyd, Watson and Nashe), mellifluous Will, Ben, and the rest, to live for posterity as human, and lovable, gracefully heightens the compliment for one and all.

We may surmise that one more eulogist of Beaumont, his kinsman,[136]Sir George Lisle, a marvellously gallant cavalier, who distinguished himself at Newberry, and was shot by order of Fairfax about the end of the Civil War, was old enough in 1616 to have known our poet. Though Sir George, in his verses for the Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647, lays special stress upon the close-woven fancy of the two playwrights, he seems to have a first-hand information, not common to the younger writers of these commendatory poems, concerning Beaumont's share in at least one of the tragedies. He ascribes to him, not to Fletcher,—as we know by modern textual tests,correctly,—the nobler scenes of "brave Mardonius" inA King and No King. One attaches, therefore, more than mere literary, or hearsay, significance to his selection for special praise of Beaumont's force, when he says,

Thou strik'st our sense so deep,At once thou mak'st us Blush, Rejoyce, and Weep.Great father Johnson bow'd himselfe when hee(Thou writ'st so nobly) vow'd he envy'd thee.

FOOTNOTES:[121]From the portrait at Knole Park.[122]Encyc. Brit., sub nomine.[123]By Cockerell, in theVariorum Edition of B. and F.'s Works, Vol. I, 1904. See Frontispiece to this volume.[124]Historical Portraits, Vol. II, 1600-1700, Oxford, 1911.[125]Not to the third Earl, Richard, as Cyril Brett,Drayton's Minor Poems, p. xix, has it.[126]Clark'sAubrey's Brief Lives, II, 175, 239. Not Mary (Curzon), the wife of the fourth Earl, as Professor Elton,Drayton(1895), p. 45, has it.[127]After the appearance of Montague's edition of King James'sWorks, and before the execution of Raleigh.[128]Save for non-dramatic productions such as Ben Jonson'sEpigrams, etc.[129]Grosart,D. N. B., art,Sir John Beaumont, andSir J. B.'s Poems, xxxvi.[130]B. and F., Vol. I, lii.[131]Revised by Earle for theCommendatory Verses, Folio 1647; but I have retained some of the readings of the 1640 copy included in Beaumont'sPoems.[132]The version given above is that of Brit. Mus.MS. Lansdowne777. Of other versions one is attributed to Donne; but the Lansdowne is the most authentic, and the evidence of authorship is all for Basse, whose name follows in the Lansdowne manuscript. So, Miss L. T. Smith inCenturie of Praise, p. 139.[133]Mr. Bullen,D. N. B., underFitzgeffrey, queries "Nathaniel Hooke." I have not been able to identify Hooke.[134]Choice Drollery, Songs, and Sonnets, 1656, in Sh. Soc. Pap., III, 172.[135]The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells.[136]Through the Villierses and therefore probably through the Coleorton Beaumonts.

[121]From the portrait at Knole Park.

[122]Encyc. Brit., sub nomine.

[123]By Cockerell, in theVariorum Edition of B. and F.'s Works, Vol. I, 1904. See Frontispiece to this volume.

[124]Historical Portraits, Vol. II, 1600-1700, Oxford, 1911.

[125]Not to the third Earl, Richard, as Cyril Brett,Drayton's Minor Poems, p. xix, has it.

[126]Clark'sAubrey's Brief Lives, II, 175, 239. Not Mary (Curzon), the wife of the fourth Earl, as Professor Elton,Drayton(1895), p. 45, has it.

[127]After the appearance of Montague's edition of King James'sWorks, and before the execution of Raleigh.

[128]Save for non-dramatic productions such as Ben Jonson'sEpigrams, etc.

[129]Grosart,D. N. B., art,Sir John Beaumont, andSir J. B.'s Poems, xxxvi.

[130]B. and F., Vol. I, lii.

[131]Revised by Earle for theCommendatory Verses, Folio 1647; but I have retained some of the readings of the 1640 copy included in Beaumont'sPoems.

[132]The version given above is that of Brit. Mus.MS. Lansdowne777. Of other versions one is attributed to Donne; but the Lansdowne is the most authentic, and the evidence of authorship is all for Basse, whose name follows in the Lansdowne manuscript. So, Miss L. T. Smith inCenturie of Praise, p. 139.

[133]Mr. Bullen,D. N. B., underFitzgeffrey, queries "Nathaniel Hooke." I have not been able to identify Hooke.

[134]Choice Drollery, Songs, and Sonnets, 1656, in Sh. Soc. Pap., III, 172.

[135]The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells.

[136]Through the Villierses and therefore probably through the Coleorton Beaumonts.

TRADITION, AND TRADITIONAL CRITICISM

What we learn from tradition, and from the criticism of the century following Beaumont's death, adds little to what we already have observed concerning his life and personality. Concerning his share in the joint-plays, it adds much, mostly wrong; but of that, later. Mosely, in his address ofThe Stationer to the Readersprefixed to the folio of 1647, announces that knowing persons had generally assured him "that these Authors were the most unquestionable Wits this Kingdome hath afforded. Mr. Beaumont was ever acknowledged a man of a most strong and searching braine; and (his yeares considered) the most Judicious Wit these later Ages have produced. He dyed young, for (which was an invaluable losse to this Nation) he left the world when hee was not full thirty yeares old. Mr. Fletcher survived, and lived till almost fifty; whereof the World now enjoyes the benefit." The dramatist, Shirley, in his addressTo the Readerof the folio, says "It is not so remote in Time, but very many Gentlemen may remember these Authors; and some familiar in their conversation deliver them upon every pleasant occasion so fluent, to talke a Comedy. He must be a bold man," continues he, with a prophetic commonsense, "thatdares undertake to write their Lives. What I have to say is, we have the precious Remaines; and as the wisest contemporaries acknowledge they Lived a Miracle, I am very confident this volume cannot die without one." Shirley also reminds the Reader that but to mention Beaumont and Fletcher "is to throw a cloude upon all former names and benight Posterity." "This Book being, without flattery, the greatest Monument of the Scene that Time and Humanity have produced, and must Live, not only the Crowne and sole Reputation of our owne, but the stayne of all other Nations and Languages." To such a pitch had the vogue of our dramatists risen in the thirty years after Beaumont's death! Not only Shakespeare and learnèd Ben, but Sophocles and Euripides may vail to them. "This being,"—and here we catch a vision from life itself,—"this being the Authentick witt that made Blackfriars an Academy, where the three howers spectacle while Beaumont and Fletcher were presented, were usually of more advantage to the hopefull young Heire, than a costly, dangerous, forraigne Travell, with the assistance of a governing Mounsieur, or Signior, to boote. And it cannot be denied but that the spirits of the Time, whose Birth and Qualitie made them impatient of the sowrer ways of education, have from the attentive hearing these pieces, got ground in point of wit and carriage of the most severely employed Students, while these Recreations were digested into Rules, and the very pleasure did edifie."

So far as the plays printed in this folio are concerned, not much of this praise belongs to Beaumont; for, as we now know, not more than two of them,The Coxcombeand theMasque of the Inner Temple, bear his impress. But Shirley is thinking of the reputation of the authors in general; and he writes with an eye to the sale of the book.

Since we shall presently find opportunity to consider the trend of opinion during the seventeenth century regarding the respective shares of the dramatists in composition, but a word need be said here upon the subject,—and that as to the origin of a tradition speedily exaggerated into error: namely, that Beaumont's function in the partnership was purely of gravity and critical acumen. From the verses of John Berkenhead, an Oxford man, born in 1615, a writer of some lampooning ability and, in 1647 reader in moral philosophy at the University, we learn that, he, at least, thought it impossible to separate the faculties of the two dramatists, which "as two Voices in one Song embrace (Fletcher's keen Trebble, and deep Beaumont's Base"); that, however, there were some in his day who held "That One [Fletcher] the Sock, th' Other [Beaumont] the Buskin claim'd,"

That should the Stage embattaile all its Force,Fletcher would lead the Foot, Beaumont the Horse;

and that Beaumont's was "the understanding," Fletcher's "the quick free will." Such discrimination, as I have said, Berkenhead disavows; but he is of the opinion, nevertheless, that the rules by which their art was governed came from Beaumont:

So Beaumont dy'd; yet left in LegacyHis Rules and Standard-wit (Fletcher) to Thee.

And still another Oxford man, born four years before Beaumont's death, the Reverend Josias Howe, reasserting the essential unity of their compositions, concedes with regard to Fletcher,—

Perhaps his quill flew stronger, when'T was weavèd with his Beaumont's pen;And might with deeper wonder hit.

These and similar statements of 1647, essentially correct, concerning the force, depth, and critical acumen of Beaumont had been anticipated in the testimonials printed during his lifetime and down to 1640, especially in those of Jonson, Davies, Drayton, and Earle.

A verdict, much more dogmatic, and responsible for the erroneous tradition which long survived, proceeded from one of the "sons of Ben," William Cartwright, himself an author of dramas, junior proctor of the University of Oxford in 1643, and "the most florid and seraphical preacher in the university." He may have derived the germ of his information from Jonson himself, but he had developed it in a one-sided manner when, writing in 1643 "upon the report of the printing of the dramaticall poems of Master John Fletcher," he implied that the genius of "knowing Beaumont" was purely restrictive and critical,—telling us that Beaumont was fain to bid Fletcher "be more dull," to "write again," to "bate some of his fire"; and that even when Fletcher had "blunted and allayed" his genius according to the critic's command, the critic Beaumont, not yet satisfied,

Added his sober spunge, and did contractThy plenty to lesse wit to make 't exact.

This distorted image of Beaumont's artistic quality as merely critical lived, as we shall see, for many a year. We shall, also, see that it is not from any such secondary sources that supplementary information regarding the poet himself is to be derived, but from a scientific determination of his share in the dramas ordinarily and vaguely assigned to an undifferentiated Beaumont and Fletcher.

A FEW WORDS OF FLETCHER'S LATER YEARS

Beside the dramas which there is any meritorious reason for assigning to the joint-authorship of the two friends, some dozen plays were produced by Fletcher alone, or in collaboration with others, before the practical cessation, in 1613, or thereabout, of Beaumont's dramatic activity. After that time Fletcher's name was attached, either as sole author or as the associate of Massinger, Field, William Rowley, and perhaps others, to about thirty more. From 1614 on, he was the successor of Shakespeare as dramatic poet of the King's Players. Jonson's masques delighted the Court, but no writer of tragedy or comedy,—not Jonson, nor Philip Massinger, who was now Fletcher's closest associate, nor Middleton or Rowley, Dekker, Ford, or Webster,—compared with him in popularity at Court and in the City. He is not merely an illustrious personality, the principal author of harrowing tragedies such asValentinian, the sole author of tragicomedies such asThe Loyall Subject, and long-lived comedies—The Chances,Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, and several more,—he is a syndicate: he stands sponsor for plays likeThe Queene of CorinthandThe Knight of Maltain which others collaborated largely with him; and his name is occasionallystamped upon plays of associates, in which he had no hand whatever. "Thou grew'st," says his contemporary and admirer, John Harris,—

"Thou grew'st to govern the whole Stage alone:In which orbe thy throng'd light did make the star,Thou wert th' Intelligence did move that Sphear."

Dr. Harris, Professor of Greek at Oxford in the heyday of Fletcher's glory, and a most distinguished divine, writes, in 1647, as one who had known Fletcher, personally,—observes his careless ease in composing, his manner of conversation,

The Stage grew narrow while thou grew'st to beIn thy whole life an Exc'llent Comedie,—

and admires his behaviour:

To these a Virgin-modesty which first metApplause with blush and fear, as if he yetHad not deserv'd; till bold with constant praiseHis browes admitted the unsought-for Bayes.

So, addressing the public, concludes this panegyrist,—

Hee came to be sole Monarch, and did raignIn Wits great Empire, abs'lute Soveraign.

It is of these years of triumph that another of "the large train of Fletcher's friends," Richard Brome, Ben Jonson's faithful servant and loving friend, and his disciple in the drama, tells us:

His Works (says Momus) nay, his Plays you'd say:Thou hast said right, for that to him was PlayWhich was to others braines a toyle: with easeHe playd on Waves which were Their troubled Seas....But to the Man againe, of whom we write,The Writer that made Writing his Delight,Rather then Worke. He did not pumpe, nor drudge,To beget Wit, or manage it; nor trudgeTo Wit-conventions with Note-booke, to gleaneOr steale some Jests to foist into a Scene:He scorn'd those shifts. You that have known him, knowThe common talke that from his Lips did flow,And run at waste, did savour more of Wit,Then any of his time, or since have writ,(But few excepted) in the Stages way:His Scenes were Acts, and every Act a Play.I knew him in his strength; even then when He—That was the Master of his Art and Me—Most knowing Johnson (proud to call him Sonne)In friendly Envy swore, He had out-doneHis very Selfe. I knew him till he dyed;And at his dissolution, what a TideOf sorrow overwhelm'd the Stage; which gaveVolleys of sighes to send him to his grave;And grew distracted in most violent Fits(For She had lost the best part of her Wits) ...

"Others," concludes this old admirer unpretentiously,

Others may more in lofty Verses move;I onely, thus, expresse my Truth and Love.

No better testimony to the character of the man who, even though Jonson was still writing, becameabsolute sovereign of the stage after Shakespeare and Beaumont had ceased, can be found than such as the preceding. To Fletcher's innate modesty, other contemporaries, Lowin and Taylor, who acted in many of his plays, bear testimony in theDedicationofThe Wild-Goose Chase: "The Play was of so Generall a receiv'd Acceptance, that (he Himself a Spectator) we have known him unconcern'd, and to have wisht it had been none of His; He, as well as the throng'd Theatre (in despite of his innate Modesty) Applauding this rare issue of his Braine." He was the idol of his actors: "And now, Farewell, our Glory!" continue, in 1652, these victims of "a cruell Destinie"—the closing of the theatres at the outbreak of the Civil War,—"Farewell, your Choice Delight, most noble Gentlemen! Farewell, the grand Wheel that set Us Smaller Motions in Action!"—The wheel of Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger.—"Farewell, the Pride and Life o' the Stage! Nor can we (though in our Ruin) much repine that we are so little, since He that gave us being is no more."

Fletcher was beloved of great men, as they themselves have left their love on record, of Jonson, Beaumont, Chapman, Massinger. If Shakespeare collaborated with him, that speaks for itself. He was an inspiration to young pastoralists like Browne, and to aspiring dramatists like Field. He was a writer of sparkling genius and phenomenal facility. He was careless of myopic criticism, conscious of his dignity,—but unaffectedly simple,—averse to flattering his public or his patron for bread, or for acquaintance, or for the admiration of the indolent, or for "itch ofgreater fame."[137]If we may take him at his word, and estimate him by the noblest lines he ever wrote,—the verses affixed toThe Honest Man's Fortune(acted, 1613),—the keynote of his character as a man among men, was independence. To those "that can look through Heaven, and tell the stars," he says:

Man is his own Star, and the soul that canRender an honest and a perfect man,Commands all light, all influence, all fate;Nothing to him falls early, or too late.Our Acts our Angels are, or good or ill,Our fatal shadows that walk by us still;And when the Stars are labouring, we believeIt is not that they govern, but they grieveFor stubborn ignorance.

That star is in "the Image of thy Maker's good":

He is my Star, in him all truth I find,All influence, all fate;

and as for poverty, it is "the light to Heaven ... Nor want, the cause of man, shall make me groan"; for experience teaches us "all we can: To work ourselves into a glorious man." His mistress is not some star of Love, with the increase to wealth or honour she may bring, but of Knowledge and fair Truth:

So I enjoy all beauty and all youth,And though to time her Lights and Laws she lends,She knows no Age, that to corruption bends....

Perhaps through all this, there echoes the voice of thatpræsul splendidus, his father, the Bishop, the friend of Sir Francis Drake, of Burghley, and of the forceful Bishop Bancroft,—a father solicitous, at any rate before he fell into the hands of his fashionable second wife and lost favour with the Queen, for the "Chrystian and godlie education" of his children. However that may be,—whether the noble idea of this confession of faith is a projection from the discipline of youth or an induction from the experience of life, the utterance of Fletcher's inmost personality is here:

Man is his own Star, and that soul that canBe honest, is the only perfect man.

Though, in the plays where Beaumont does not control, Fletcher so freely reflects the loose morals of his age, the gross conventional misapprehension of woman's worth, even the cynicism regarding her essential purity,—though Fletcher reflects these conditions in his later plays as well as in his earlyFaithfull Shepheardesse,[138]and though he, for dramatic ends, accepts the material vulgarity of the lower classes and the perverted and decadent heroics of the upper, there still are "passages in his works where he recurs to a conception which undoubtedly had a very vital significance for him—that of a gentleman,"—to the "merit, manners, and inborn virtue" of the gentleman not conventional but genuine.[139]In Beaumont, that"man of a most strong and searching braine" whose writings and whose record speak the gentleman, he had had the example beside him in the flesh. What that meant is manifest in the encomium of Francis Palmer, written in 1647 from Christ Church, Oxford,

All commendations endIn saying only: Thou wert Beaumont's friend.

The engraving of Fletcher in the 1647 folio was "cut by severall Originall Pieces," says Mosely "which his friends lent me, but withall they tell me that his unimitable Soule did shine through his countenance in suchAyreandSpirit, that the Painters confessed it was not easie to expresse him: As much as could be, you have here, and the Graver hath done his part." The edition of 1711 is the first to publish "effigies" of both poets, "the Head of Mr. Beaumont, and that of Mr. Fletcher, through the favour of the present Earl of Dorset [the seventh Earl], being taken from Originals in the noble Collection his Lordship has at Knowles." The engravings in the Theobald, Seward and Sympson edition of 1742-1750 are by G. Vertue. The engravings in Colman's edition of 1778, are the same, debased. Those in Weber's edition of 1812, are done afresh,—of Beaumont by Evans, of Fletcher by Blood—apparently from the Knole originals. They are an improvement upon those of earlier editions. In Dyce's edition of 1843-1846, H. Robinson's engraving of Beaumont has nobility; his attempt at Fletcher does not improve upon Blood's. All these are in the reverse. The Variorum edition of 1904-1905gives the beautiful photogravure of Beaumont of which I have already spoken, by Walker and Cockerell, from the original at Knole Park; and an equally soft and expressive photogravure of Fletcher, by Emery Walker, from the painting in the National Portrait Gallery. For the first time the dramatists face as in the originals: Beaumont, toward your left, Fletcher, toward your right.

Fletcher's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery reveals a highbred, thoughtful countenance, large eyes unafraid, wide-awake and keen, the nose aquiline and sensitive, wavily curling hair, hastily combed back, or through which he has run his fingers, a careless, half-buttoned jerkin from which the shirt peeps forth,—all in all a man of more vivacious temper, ready and practical quality than Beaumont.

The authorities of the Gallery, especially through the kindness of Mr. J. D. Milner, who has been good enough to look up various particulars for me, inform me that this portrait of John Fletcher, No. 420, was purchased by the Trustees in March 1876, its previous history being unknown. The painting is by a contemporary but unknown artist, and is similar to the portrait at Knole Park. It was engraved in the reverse by G. Vertue in 1729. They also inform me that another portrait of a different type belongs to the Earl of Clarendon. This, I conjecture, must be that which John Evelyn, in a letter to Samuel Pepys, 12 August, 1689, says he has seen in the first Earl of Clarendon's collection—"most of which [portraits], if not all, are at the present at Cornebery in Oxfordshire." But Evelyn adds that "Beaumont andFletcher were both in one piece." Yet another portrait said to be of Fletcher, painted in 1625 by C. Janssen, belongs to the Duke of Portland. This Janssen is the Cornelius to whom the alleged portrait of Shakespeare, now at Bulstrode, is attributed. Cornelius did not come to England before Shakespeare's death; and, consequently, not before Beaumont's.

Fletcher died in August 1625. According to Aubrey, "In the great plague, 1625, a Knight of Norfolke (or Suffolke) invited him into the Countrey. He stayed but to make himselfe a suite of cloathes, and while it was makeing, fell sick of the plague and dyed. This I had [1668] from his tayler, who is now [1670] a very old man, and clarke of St. Mary Overy's." The dramatist was buried in St. Saviour's, Southwark, the twenty-ninth of that month. Sir Aston Cockayne's statement, in an epitaph on Fletcher and Massinger, that they lie in the same grave, is probably figurative. Aubrey tells us that Massinger, who died in March 1640, and whose burial is recorded in the register of St. Saviour's, was buried not in the church, but about the middle of one of its churchyards, the Bullhead, next the Bullhead tavern. There are memorials now to both poets in the church, as also to Shakespeare, and Beaumont, and to Edward Alleyn, the actor of the old Admiral's company.

It is generally supposed that Fletcher was never married. The name, John Fletcher, was not unusual in the parish of St. Saviour's, and the records of "John Fletcher" marriages may, therefore, not involve the dramatist. But two items communicated toDyce[140]by Collier, "more in jest than in earnest," from the Parish-registers, are suggestive, if we reflect that, about 1612 or 1613, theménage à trois, provided it continued so long, would have lapsed at the time of Beaumont's marriage; and if we can swallow the stage-fiction of Fletcher's "maid Joan" inBury-Fair(see page 96 above), whole and as something digestible.

These are Collier's cullings from the Registers:

1612. Nov. 3. John Fletcher and Jone Herring [were married].Reg. of St. Saviour's, Southwark.John, the son of John Fletcher and of Joan his wife was baptized 25 Feb., 1619.Reg. of St. Bartholomew the Great.

1612. Nov. 3. John Fletcher and Jone Herring [were married].Reg. of St. Saviour's, Southwark.

John, the son of John Fletcher and of Joan his wife was baptized 25 Feb., 1619.Reg. of St. Bartholomew the Great.

If this is our John Fletcher, his marriage would have been about the same time as Beaumont's, and he may have later taken up his residence in the parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, on the north side of the river, not far from Southwark. If Fletcher was married in 1612, we may be very sure that his wife was not a person of distinction. His versesUpon an Honest Man's Fortune, written the next year, give us the impression either that he is not married and not likely to be, or that he has married one of low estate and breeding, has concluded that the matrimonial game is not worth the candle, and rather defiantly has turned to a better mistress than mortal, who can compensate him for that which through love he has not attained, "Were I in love," he declares,—

Were I in love, and could that bright Star bringIncrease to Wealth, Honour, and everything:Were she as perfect good, as we can aim,The first was so, and yet she lost the Game.My Mistriss then be Knowledge and fair Truth;So I enjoy all beauty and all youth.

We may be sure that when Fletcher wrote this poem he had known poverty, sickness, and affliction, but not a consolation in wedded happiness:

Love's but an exhalation to best eyes;The matter spent, and then the fool's fire dies.

Since many of Collier's "earnests" turn out to be "jests," why not the other way round? That is my apology for according this "jest" a moment's whimsical consideration.

Such is an outline in broad sweep of the activities and common relations of our Castor and Pollux, and a preliminary sketch of the personality of each. With regard to the latter, who is our main concern, the vital record is yet more definitely to be discovered in the dramatic output distinctively his during the years of literary partnership; and to the consideration of his share in the joint-plays we may now turn.

FOOTNOTES:[137]See hisOde to Sir William Skipwith.[138]"Thou wert not meant, Sure, for a woman, thou art so innocent," philosophizes the Sullen Shepherd concerning Amoret;—and not only wanton nymphs but modest swains are of the same philosophy.[139]Ward,E. Dr. Lit., II, 649,—quoting, in the footnote, fromThe Nice Valour, V, 3.[140]Dyce,B. and F., I, lxxiii.

[137]See hisOde to Sir William Skipwith.

[138]"Thou wert not meant, Sure, for a woman, thou art so innocent," philosophizes the Sullen Shepherd concerning Amoret;—and not only wanton nymphs but modest swains are of the same philosophy.

[139]Ward,E. Dr. Lit., II, 649,—quoting, in the footnote, fromThe Nice Valour, V, 3.

[140]Dyce,B. and F., I, lxxiii.

THE COLLABORATION OF BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM; CRITICAL APPARATUS

Much of the confusion which existed in the minds of readers and critics during the period following the Restoration concerning the respective productivity of Beaumont and Fletcher is due to accident. The quartos (generally unauthorized) of individual plays in circulation were, as often as not, wrong in their ascriptions of authorship to one, or the other, or both of the dramatists; and the folio of 1647, which, long after both were dead, first presented what purported to be their collected works, lacked title-pages to the individual plays, and, save in one instance, prefixed no name of author to any play. The exception isThe Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes-Inne and the Inner Temple"written by Francis Beaumont, Gentleman," which had been performed, Feb. 20, 1612-13, and had appeared in quarto without date (but probably 1613) as "by Francis Beaumont, Gent." In seven instances, Fletcher is indicated in the 1647 folio by Prologue or Epilogue as author, or author revised, and in general correctly; but otherwise the thirty-four plays included (not counting theMaske) are introduced to the public merely by a general title-page as "written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. Never printed before, And nowpublished by the Authours Originall Copies." That the public should have been deceived into accepting most of them as the joint-product of the authors is not surprising. Though it is not the purpose of this discussion to consider plays in which Beaumont was not concerned, it may be said incidentally that of eleven of these productions Fletcher was sole author; Massinger of perhaps one, and with Fletcher of eight, and with Fletcher and others of five more; that in several plays four or five other authors had a hand, and that in at least five Fletcher had no share.[141]

Sir Aston Cockayne was, therefore, fully justified, when, some time between 1647 and 1658, he thus upbraided the publishers of the folio:

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