FOOTNOTES:

Note the double endings, the end-stopped lines, the stress-syllable openings, the anapæsts, the feminine cæsuræ (dotted), the two omissions of the light syllable after the cæsural pause and the following accent at the beginning of the verse section, and the six feet of line 13.

Of the non-Fletcherian part ofPhilaster, a typical example is the following from Act I, Scene 2, where Philaster replies to Arethusa's request that he look away from her:

I can indure it: Turne away my face?I never yet saw enemy that looktSo dreadfully but that I thought my selfeAs great a Basiliske as he; or spakeSo horrible but that I thought my tongueBore thunder underneath, as much as his,Nor beast that I could turne from: shall I thenBeginne to feare sweete sounds? a ladies voyce,Whom I doe love? Say, you would have my life;Why, I will give it you; for it is of meA thing so loath'd, and unto you that askeOf so poore use, that I shall make no price.If you intreate, I will unmov'dly heare.

Or the famous description of Bellario, beginning:

I have a boy,Sent by the gods, I hope to this intent,Not yet seen in the court—

from the same scene.

Or the King's soliloquy in Act II, Scene 4, containing the lines:

You gods, I see that who unrighteouslyHolds wealth or state from others shall be curstIn that which meaner men are blest withall:Ages to come shall know no male of himLeft to inherit, and his name shall beBlotted from earth.

The reader will at once be impressed with the regularity of the masculine ending. Beaumont does not, of course, eschew the double ending; but, as Boyle has computed, the percentage in this play is but fifteen in the non-Fletcherian passages, whereas the percentage in Fletcher's contribution is thirty-five. The prevalence of run-on lines is also noteworthy; and the infrequency of the stress-syllable openings, anapæsts, and feminine cæsuræ by which Fletcher achieves now conversational abruptness, now lyrical lilt.

InThe Maides Tragedy, such soliloquies as that of Aspatia in Act V, Scene 4, with its mixture of blank verse and rhyme:

This is my fatal hour; heaven may forgiveMy rash attempt, that causelessly hath laidGriefs on me that will never let me rest,And put a Woman's heart into my brest.It is more honour for you that I die;For she that can endure the miseryThat I have on me, and be patient too,May live, and laugh at all that you can do—

are marked by characteristics utterly unlike those of Fletcher's dramatic verse. Also unlike Fletcher are the scenes which abound in lines of weak and light ending, and lines where the lighter syllables of every word must be counted to make full measure. Fletcher did not write:

Alas, Amintor, thinkst thou I forbearTo sleep with thee because I have put onA maidens strictness;

As mine own conscience too sensible;—I must live scorned, or be a murderer;—That trust out all our reputation.

As mine own conscience too sensible;—

I must live scorned, or be a murderer;—

That trust out all our reputation.

Nor did Fletcher write, with any frequency, improper run-on lines, such as III, 2, 135 (one of his collaborator's scenes):

Speak yet again, before mine anger growUp beyond throwing down.

In this play the percentage of run-on lines in Fletcher's scenes is about nineteen; in the scenes not written by him, almost twenty-seven. Fletcher's double endings are over forty per cent; his collaborator's barely ten.

InA King and No Kingsimilar Beaumontesque characteristics distinguish the major portion of the play from the few scenes generally acknowledged to be written by Fletcher. In Fletcher's scenes[155]one notes the high proportion of stress-syllable openings, and, consequently, of anapæstic substitutions, the subtle omission occasionally of the arsis, and not infrequently of the thesis (or light syllable) after the pause, and the use of the accented syllable at the beginning of the verse-section. While sometimes these characteristics appear in the other parts of the play, their relative infrequency is a distinctive feature of the non-Fletcherian rhythm. A comparison of the verse of Fletcher's Act IV, Scene 2, with that of his collaborator in Act I, Scene 1, well illustrates this difference. The recurrence of the feminine cæsura measures fairly the relative elasticity of the versifiers. It regulates two-thirds of Fletcher's lines; but of his collaborator's not quite one half. Fletcher, for instance, wrote the speech of Tigranes, beginning the second scene of Act IV:

where, beside the frequent double endings and end-stopped lines, already emphasized in preceding examples, we observe in the run of thirteen lines, six stress-syllable openings with their anapæstic sequences, three omissions of the light syllable after the cæsural pause with the consequent accent at the beginning of the verse-section, and no fewer than six feminine cæsuræ (or pauses after an unaccented syllable) of which three at least (vv. 2, 5, 10) are exaggerated jolts.

Beaumont is capable in occasional passages, as, for instance, Arbaces' speech beginning Act I, 1, 105, of lines rippling with as many feminine cæsuræ. But, utterly unlike Fletcher, he employs in the first thirteen of those lines no double endings, no jolts, only two stress-syllable openings, only four anapæsts, one omitted thesis after the cæsural pause, four end-stopped lines. He is more frequently capable, as inthe passage beginning l. 129, of a sequence without a single feminine cæsura, but with several feminine (or double) endings:

Tigranes.Is it the course ofIberia, to use their prisoners thus?Had Fortune throwne my name above Arbaces,I should not thus have talkt; for in ArmeniaWe hold it base. You should have kept your temper,Till you saw home agen, where 't is the fashionPerhaps to brag.Arbaces.Bee you my witness, Earth,Need I to brag? Doth not this captive princeSpeake me sufficiently, and all the actsThat I have wrought upon his suffering land?Should I then boast? Where lies that foot of groundWithin | his whole | realme ¦ that | I have | not pastFighting and conquering?[156]

Arbaces.Bee you my witness, Earth,Need I to brag? Doth not this captive princeSpeake me sufficiently, and all the actsThat I have wrought upon his suffering land?Should I then boast? Where lies that foot of groundWithin | his whole | realme ¦ that | I have | not pastFighting and conquering?[156]

Up to the twelfth verse with its exceptional jolting pause the cæsuræ are masculine, and fall uncompromisingly at the end of the second and third feet.

In respect of the internal structure of the verse the tests for Beaumont are, then, as I have stated them above; in respect of double endings, Boyle and Oliphant have set the percentage in his verse at about twenty, and of run-on lines at thirty. Since the metrical characteristics of those parts ofPhilaster,The Maides TragedyandA King and No Kingwhich do not bear the impress of Fletcher's versification, are well defined and practically uniform; since they are of a piece with the metrical manner ofThe Woman-Hater, which is originally, and in general, the workof one author—Beaumont; and since they are also of a piece with the versification of theMaske, which is certainly by Beaumont alone, and with that of his best poems,—at least one criterion has been established by means of which we may ascertain what other plays, ascribed to the two writers in common, but on less definite evidence, were written in partnership; and in these we may have a basis for determining the parts contributed by each of the authors.

Fleay and other scholars have grounded an additional criterion upon the fact that the unaided plays of Fletcher contain but an insignificant quantity of prose. They consequently have ascribed to Beaumont most of the prose passages in the joint-plays. But, because in his later development Fletcher found that conversational blank verse would answer all the purposes of prose, it does not follow that in his youthful collaboration with Beaumont he never wrote prose. We find, on the contrary, in the joint-plays that the prose passages in scenes otherwise marked by Fletcher's characteristics of verse, display precisely the rhetorical qualities of that verse. The prose of Mardonius in Act IV, Scene 2 ofA King and No King, and the prose of Act V, Scenes 1 and 3, which by metrical tests are Fletcher's, are precisely the prose of Fletcher's Dion in Act II, Scene 4 and Act V, Scene 3 ofPhilaster, and the tricks of alliteration, triplet, and iteration, are those of Fletcher's verse in the same scenes.

FOOTNOTES:[149]Some sixteen plays in all.[150]The Chances, I, 1, p. 222 (Dyce); but as a rule I use in this chapter the text of theCambridge English Classics.[151]For these scenes, and the reasons for asserting that Fletcher revised them, see Chapter XXIV below.[152]The reader may judge for himself by referring to the citation from theLetterand the poems to the Countess in Chapters VII and XI, above.[153]Fleay, Boyle, Oliphant, Alden. And even G. C. Macaulay, who once claimed the whole play for Beaumont, says now "perhaps Fletcher's."[154]Q 1622, slightly modernized.[155]IV, 1, 2, 3; V, 1, 3.[156]Quarto of 1619 as given by Alden.

[149]Some sixteen plays in all.

[150]The Chances, I, 1, p. 222 (Dyce); but as a rule I use in this chapter the text of theCambridge English Classics.

[151]For these scenes, and the reasons for asserting that Fletcher revised them, see Chapter XXIV below.

[152]The reader may judge for himself by referring to the citation from theLetterand the poems to the Countess in Chapters VII and XI, above.

[153]Fleay, Boyle, Oliphant, Alden. And even G. C. Macaulay, who once claimed the whole play for Beaumont, says now "perhaps Fletcher's."

[154]Q 1622, slightly modernized.

[155]IV, 1, 2, 3; V, 1, 3.

[156]Quarto of 1619 as given by Alden.

FLETCHER'S DICTION

The verse criterion is, however, not of itself a reagent sufficient to precipitate fully the Beaumont of the joint-plays. For there still exists the certainty that in plotting plays together, each of the collaborators was influenced by the opinion of the other; and the probability that, though one may have undertaken sundry scenes or divers characters in a play, the other would, in the course of general correction, insert lines in the parts written by his collaborator, and would convey to his own scenes the distinguishing rhythm, "humour," or diction of a definite character, created, or elaborated, by his colleague. It, therefore, follows that the assignment of a whole scene to either author on the basis alone of some recurring metrical peculiarity is not convincing. In the same section, even in the same speech, we may encounter insertions which bear the stamp of the revising colleague. For instance, the opening ofPhilasteris generally assigned to Beaumont: it has the characteristics of his prose. But with the entry of the King (line 89) we are launched upon a subscene in verse which, on the one hand, has a higher percentage of double endings (viz.38) than Beaumont ever used, but does not fully come up to Fletcher's usage;while on the other hand, it has a higher percentage of run-on lines[157](viz.44) than Fletcher ever used. The other verse tests leave us similarly in doubt. To any one, however, familiar with the diction and characterization of the two authors the suspicion occurs that the scene was written by Beaumont in the first instance; and then worked over and considerably enlarged by his associate. In the first hundred lines of Act II, Scene 4, similar insertions by Fletcher occur, and in Act III, 2.[158]

Such being the case we may expect that an inquiry into the rhetorical peculiarities and mental habit, first of Fletcher, then of Beaumont, will furnish tests corrective of the criterion based upon versification.

1. Fletcher's Diction inThe Faithfull Shepheardesse.

Though rather poetic than dramatic, and composed only partly in blank verse,The Faithfull Shepheardesseaffords the best approach to a study of Fletcher's rhetoric; for, written about 1608 and by Fletcher alone, it illustrates his youthful style in the period probably shortly before he collaborated with Beaumont in the composition ofPhilaster.

The soliloquy of Clorin, with whichThe Faithfull Shepheardesseopens, runs as follows:

Hail, holy Earth, whose cold Arms do imbraceThe truest man that ever fed his flocksBy the fat plains of fruitful Thessaly!Thus I salute thy Grave; thus do I payMy early vows and tribute of mine eyes5To thy still-loved ashes; thus I freeMyself from all insuing heats and firesOf love; all sports, delights, and [jolly] games,That shepherds hold full dear, thus put I off:Now no more shall these smooth brows be [be] girt10With youthful Coronals, and lead the Dance;No more the company of fresh fair MaidsAnd wanton Shepherds be to me delightful,Nor the shrill pleasing sound of merry pipesUnder some shady dell, when the cool wind15Plays on the leaves; all be far away,Since thou art far away, by whose dear sideHow often have I sat Crowned with fresh flowersFor summers Queen, whilst every Shepherds boyPuts on his lusty green, with gaudy hook20And hanging scrip of finest Cordovan.But thou art gone, and these are gone with theeAnd all are dead but thy dear memorie;That shall out-live thee, and shall ever spring,Whilst there are pipes or jolly Shepherds sing.25And here will I, in honour of thy love,Dwell by thy Grave, forgetting all those joys,That former times made precious to mine eyes;Only remembring what my youth did gainIn the dark, hidden vertuous use of Herbs:30That will I practise, and as freely giveAll my endeavours as I gained them free.Of all green wounds I know the remediesIn Men or Cattel, be they stung with Snakes,Or charmed with powerful words of wicked Art,35Or be they Love-sick, or through too much heatGrown wild or Lunatic, their eyes or earsThickened with misty filme of dulling Rheum;These I can Cure, such secret vertue liesIn herbs applyèd by a Virgins hand.40My meat shall be what these wild woods afford,Berries and Chestnuts, Plantanes, on whose CheeksThe Sun sits smiling.[159]

This passage, as we have observed in the preceding section, does not display in full proportion or untrammeled variety the metrical peculiarities of Fletcher's popular dramatic blank verse. The verse is lyric and declamatory: his purely dramatic verse whether in theMonsieur Thomasof his earlier period,The Chancesof the middle period, orA Wife for a MonthandRule a Wifeof his later years, has the feminine endings, redundant syllables, anapæstic substitutions, the end-stopped and sometimes fragmentary lines, the hurried and spasmodic utterance of conversational speech. But, from the rhetorical point of view, this soliloquy—in fact, the wholeFaithfull Shepheardesse—affords a basis for further discrimination between Fletcher and Beaumont in the joint-plays; for it displays idiosyncrasies of tone-quality and diction which persist, after Beaumont's death, in Fletcher's dramas of 1616 to 1625 as they were in 1607-1609: sometimes slightly modified, more often exaggerated, but in essence the same.

In Clorin's soliloquy, the reader cannot but notice, first, a tendency toward alliteration, thefedandflocks,fatandfruitful,freshandfair,pleasingandpipes,—alliteration palpable and somewhat crude, but not yet excessive; second, a balanced iteration of words,—"be far away, Since thou art far away" (ll. 16-17), and, five lines further down, "But thouart gone and these are gone with thee," and in lines 31 and 32 "as freely give ... as I gained them free"; and an iteration of phrases, rhetorical asseverations, negatives, alternatives, questions,—"Thus I salute thy grave; thus do I pay," "thus I free," "thus put I off" (lines 4, 6, 9); third, a preference for iteration in triplets,—"No more shall these smooth brows," "No more the company," "Nor the shrill ... sound" (lines 10-14), "Or charmed," "or love-sick," "or through too much heat" (lines 35 and 36); fourth, a fondness for certain sonorous words,—"all ensuing heats ... all sports" (lines 7-8), "all my endeavours ... all green wounds" (lines 32-33), and the "alls" of lines 16 and 23; fifth, a plethora of adjectives,—"holy earth," "cold arms," "truest man," "fat plains"—many of them pleonastic—"misty film," "dulling rheum"—some forty nouns buttressed by epithets to twenty standing in their own strength; and a plethora of nouns in apposition (preferably triplets),—"all sports, delights, and jolly games" (line 8), "Berries and Chestnuts, Plantanes" (line 42); sixth, an indulgence in conversational tautology: for Fletcher is rarely content with a simple statement,—he must be forever spinning out the categories of a concept; expounding his idea by what the rhetoricians call division; enumerating the attributes and species painstakingly lest any escape, or verbosely as a padding for verse or speech. Of this mannerism TheFaithfull Shepheardesseaffords many instances more typical than those contained in these forty-three lines; but even here Clorin salutes the grave of her lover in a dozen different periphrastic ways. To saythat "all are dead but thy dear memorie" is not enough; she must specify "thatshall outlive thee." To assert that she knows the remedies of "all green wounds" does not suffice: she must proceed to the enumeration of the wounds; nor to tell us that her meat shall be found in the woods: she must rehearse the varieties of meat. Her soliloquy in the last thirty lines of the scene, not here quoted, is of the same quality: it reminds one of a Henslowe list of stage properties, or of the auctioneer's catalogue that sprawls down Walt Whitman's pages.

And, last, we notice what has been emphasized by G. C. Macaulay and others, that much of this enumeration by division is by way of "parentheses hastily thrown in, or afterthoughts as they occur to the mind."[160]Even in the formalShepheardessethis characteristic lends a quality of naturalness and conversational spontaneity to the speech.

2. In the Later Plays.

If now we turn to one of Fletcher's plays written after Beaumont's death, and without the assistance of Massinger or any other,—say,The Humorous Lieutenantof about the year 1619,—we find on every page and passages like the following.[161]—The King Antigonus upon the entry of his son, Demetrius, addresses the ambassadors of threatening powers:

Do you see this Gent(leman),You that bring Thunders in your mouths, and Earthquakes,To shake and totter my designs? Can you imagine(You men of poor and common apprehensions)While I admit this man, my Son, this natureThat in one look carries more fire, and fierceness,Than all your Masters lives[162]; dare I admit him,Admit him thus, even to my side, my bosom,When he is fit to rule, when all men cry him,And all hopes hang about his head; thus place him,His weapon hatched in bloud; all these attendingWhen he shall make their fortunes, all as sudden,In any expedition he shall point 'em,As arrows from a Tartar's bow, and speeding,Dare I do this, and fear an enemy?Fear your great master? yours? or yours?

Here we have blank verse, distinctively Fletcherian with its feminine endings and its end-stopped lines. But, widely as this differs from the earlier rhythm ofThe Faithfull Shepheardesseand its more lyric precipitancy, the qualities of tone and diction are in the later play as in the earlier. The alliterations may not be so numerous, and are in general more cunningly concealed and interwoven, as in lines 2 to 4; but the cruder kind still appears as a mannerism, the "fire and fierceness," "hopes," "hang," and "head." The iterations of word, phrase, and rhetorical question, and of the resonant "all," the redundant nouns in apposition, the tautological enumeration of categories, proclaim the unaltered Fletcher. The adjectives are in this spot pruned, but they are luxuriant elsewhere in the play. The triplets,—"this man, my son, this nature,"—"admit," "admit," "admit," find compeers on nearly every page:

Shew where to lead, to lodge, to charge with safetie,—[163]Here's a strange fellow now, and a brave fellow,If we may say so of a pocky fellow.—[164]And now, 't is ev'n too true, I feel a pricking,A pricking, a strange pricking.—[165]With such a sadness on his face, as sorrow,Sorrow herself, but poorly imitates.Sorrow of sorrows on that heart that caus'd it![166]

Shew where to lead, to lodge, to charge with safetie,—[163]

Here's a strange fellow now, and a brave fellow,If we may say so of a pocky fellow.—[164]

And now, 't is ev'n too true, I feel a pricking,A pricking, a strange pricking.—[165]

With such a sadness on his face, as sorrow,Sorrow herself, but poorly imitates.Sorrow of sorrows on that heart that caus'd it![166]

In the passages cited above there happen to be, also, a few examples of the elocutionary afterthought:

You come with thunders in your mouthand earthquakes,—As arrows from a Tartar's bow,and speeding.—

You come with thunders in your mouthand earthquakes,—

As arrows from a Tartar's bow,and speeding.—

To this device, and to the intensive use of the pronominal "one" Fletcher is as closely wedded as to the repetition of "all,"—

They have a hand upon us,A heavy and a hard one.[167]To wear this jewel near thee; he is a tried oneAnd one that ... will yet stand by thee.[168]

They have a hand upon us,A heavy and a hard one.[167]

To wear this jewel near thee; he is a tried oneAnd one that ... will yet stand by thee.[168]

Other plays conceded by the critics to Fletcher alone, and written in his distinctive blank verse, display the same characteristics of style:The Chancesof about 1615,The Loyall Subjectof 1618 (likeThe Humorous Lieutenantof the middle period), andRule a Wife and Have a Wifeof the last period, 1624. I quote at random for him who would apply the tests,—first fromThe Chances,[169]the following of the repeating revolver style:

Art thou not an Ass?And modest as her blushes! what a blockheadWould e're have popt out such a dry ApologieFor this dear friend? and to a Gentlewoman,A woman of her youth and delicacy?They are arguments to draw them to abhor us.An honest moral man? 't is for a Constable:A handsome man, a wholesome man, a tough man,A liberal man, a likely man, a manMade up by Hercules, unslaked with service:The same to night, to morrow night, the next night,And so to perpetuity of pleasures.

Now, fromThe Loyall Subject[170]—the farewell ofArchasto his arms and colours. I wish I could quote it all as an example of noble noise, enumerative and penny-a-line rhetoric:

Farewell, my Eagle! when thou flew'st, whole ArmiesHave stoopt below thee: at Passage I have seen theeRuffle the Tartars, as they fled thy furie,And bang 'em up together, as a Tassel,Upon the streach, a flock of fearfull Pigeons.I yet remember when the Volga curl'd,The agèd Volga, when he heav'd his head up,And rais'd his waters high, to see the ruins,The ruines our swords made, the bloudy ruins;Then flew this Bird of honour bravely, Gentlemen;But these must be forgotten: so must these too,And all that tend to Arms, by me for ever.

And from Act II, Scene 1, pages 101-102, for triplets:

Fight hard, lye hard, feed hard, when they come home, sir....To be respected, reckon'd well, and honour'd....Where be the shouts, the Bells rung out, the people?...

Fight hard, lye hard, feed hard, when they come home, sir....

To be respected, reckon'd well, and honour'd....

Where be the shouts, the Bells rung out, the people?...

And, for "alls," and triplets:

And whose are all these glories? why their Princes,Their Countries and their Friends. Alas, of all these,And all the happy ends they bring, the blessings,They only share the labours!

Finally, fromRule a Wife, a few instances of the iterations, three-fold or multiple, and redundant expositions. In the first scene[171]Juan describes Leon:

Ask him a question,He blushes like a Girl, and answers little,To the point less; he wears a Sword, a good one,And good cloaths too; he is whole-skin'd, has no hurt yet,Good promising hopes;

and Perez describes the rest of the regiment,

That swear as valiantly as heart can wish,Their mouths charg'd with six oaths at once, and whole ones,That make the drunken Dutch creep into Mole-hills; ...

and he proceeds to Donna Margarita:

She is fair, and young, and wealthy,Infinite wealthy,etc.

And then to Estefania who has tautologized of her chastity, he tautologizes of his harmlessness:[172]

I am no blaster of a lady's beauty,Nor bold intruder on her special favours;I know how tender reputation is,And with what guards it ought to be preserv'd, lady.

As a fair example of this method of filling a page, I recommend the first scene of the third act; and of eloquence by rhetorical 'division,' Perez's description of his room in the next scene: all in terms of three times three.

If now the reader will turn, by way of confirmation, toThe Triumph of TimeandThe Triumph of Deathof which the metrical characteristics are admittedly Fletcher's, he will find that there, Fletcher, before Beaumont's retirement from the partnership, is already using in purely dramatic composition the rhetorical mannerisms which mark both the lyrically designedShepheardesseof his early years and the genuine dramas of the later.

3. Stock Words, Phrases, and Figures.

Beside the rhetorical mannerisms classified in the preceding paragraphs I might rehearse a long list of Fletcher's favourite expressions and figures of speech. Of the former Mr. Oliphant[173]has mentioned'plaguily,' 'claw'd,' 'slubber'd,' 'too,' 'shrewdly,' 'stuck with,' 'it shews,' 'dwell round about ye,' 'for ever,' 'no way,' (for 'not at all'). In addition I have noted the reiterated 'thus,' 'miracle,' 'prodigious' (in the sense of 'ominous')—'prodigious star,' 'prodigious meteor'—'bugs,' 'monsters,' and 'scorpions'; 'torments,' 'diseases,' 'imposthumes,' 'canker,' 'mischiefs,' 'ruins,' 'blasted,' 'rotten'; 'myrmidons'; 'monuments' (for 'tombs'), 'marble'; 'lustre,' 'crystal,' 'jewels,' 'picture,' 'painting,' 'counterfeit in arras'; 'blushes,' 'palates,' 'illusion,' 'abused' (for 'deceived'), 'blessed,' 'flung off,' 'cloister'd up,' 'fat earth,' 'turtle,' 'passion,' 'Paradise.' Oliphant assigns to Fletcher 'pulled on,' but I find that almost as frequently in Beaumont. 'Poison,' 'contagious' and 'loaden,' also abound in Fletcher, but are sometimes used by Beaumont. Fletcher affects alliterative epithets: 'prince of popinjays,' 'pernicious petticoat prince,' 'pretty prince of puppets,'—and antitheses such as 'prince of wax,' 'pelting prattling peace.' His characters talk much of 'silks' and 'satins,' 'branched velvets' and 'scarlet' clothes. They are said to speak in 'riddles'; they are threatened with 'ribald rhymes'; they shall be 'bawled in ballads,' or 'chronicled,' 'cut and chronicled.'

Another characteristic of Fletcher's diction is his preference for the pronounyeinstead ofyou. This was pointed out by Mr. R. B. McKerrow, who in his edition ofThe Spanish Curate[174]notes that in the scenes generally attributed, in accordance withother tests, to Fletcher,yeoccurs 271 times, while in the scenes attributed to Massinger it occurs but four. That is to say, for everyyein Fletcher's part there are but 0.65you's; for everyyein Massinger's part, 50you's. Mr. W. W. Greg, applying the test in his edition ofThe Elder Brother,[175]and counting they'are'sas instances ofye, finds that the percentage ofye'stoyou'sin Fletcher's part is almost three times as high as in Massinger's. In a recent article inThe Nation[176]Mr. Paul Elmer More communicates his independent observation of the same mannerism in Fletcher. Though he has been anticipated in part, his study adds to McKerrow's the valuable information that Fletcher uses theyeforyouin "both numbers and cases, and in both serious and comic scenes." Mr. More's statistics favour the conclusion that the test distinguishes Fletcher not only from Massinger, but from other collaborators: Middleton, Rowley, Field, Jonson, Tourneur. They do not carry conviction regarding Shakespeare, whose habit as Greg and others had already announced varies in a perplexing manner. Nor does Mr. More arrive at any definite result concerning the test "when applied to the mixed work of Beaumont and Fletcher." For though the high percentage ofye'sin the third and fourth of theFoure Playesconfirms the general attribution of those 'Triumphs' to Fletcher, the low percentage in the first two 'Triumphs' does not justify "the common opinion which attributes them to Beaumont." Their author, as I have elsewhere stated, was probably Field."In the plays which are units," continues Mr. More, "such asThe Maid's Tragedy,Philaster,A King and No King,The Knight of the Burning Pestle, andThe Coxcomb, this mark of Fletcher does not occur at all. It should seem that the writing here, at least in its final form, was almost entirely Beaumont's." I have gone through all the plays which have been ordinarily regarded as joint-productions of Beaumont and Fletcher, and find that in this surmise Mr. More is right.The Knight, to be sure, is Beaumont's alone; but with regard to the other four plays mentioned above, in which they undoubtedly coöperated, the suggestion that the writing, at least in its final form, was almost entirely Beaumont's, because of the practically complete absence ofye's, is justified by the facts. It is, also, helpful in the examination of plays not mentioned in this list. It has, in connection with other considerations, assisted me to the conclusion that Fletcher went over two or three scenes ofThe Woman-Hater, stamping them with hisye'safter Beaumont had finished it as a whole; and it has confirmed me in the belief thatThe Scornful Ladiewas one of the latest joint-plays, only partly revised by Beaumont,—and that, not long before his death. Fletcher's preference foryeis a distinctive mannerism. His usage varies from the employment of one-third as manyye'sto that of twice as manyye'sasyou's; whereas Beaumont rarely uses aye. Even more distinctive is Fletcher's use ofy'are, and ofyein the objective case. The latter, Beaumont does not tolerate.

For figurative purposes Fletcher finds materialmost frequently in the phenomena of winter and storm: 'frosts,' 'nipping frosts,' 'nipping winds,' 'hail,' 'cakes of ice,' 'icicles,' 'thaw,' 'tempests,' 'thunders,' 'billows,' 'mariners' and 'storm-tossed barks,' 'wild overflows' of waters in stream or torrent; in the phenomena of heat and light: 'suns,' the 'icy moon,' the 'Dog-star' or the 'Dog,' the 'Sirian star,' the 'cold Bear' and 'raging Lion,' 'Aetna,' 'fire and flames'; of trees: root and branch, foliage and fruit; of the oak and clinging vine; of the rose or blossom and the 'destroying canker'; of fever and ague; of youth and desire, and of Death 'beating larums to the blood,' of our days that are 'marches to the grave,' and of our lives 'tedious tales soon forgotten.' I have elsewhere called attention to the numerous variations which he plays upon the 'story of a woman.' His 'monuments' are in frequent requisition and, by preference, they 'sweat'; men pursued by widows fear to be 'buried alive in another man's cold monument.' Other common images are 'rock him to another world,' 'bestride a billow,' 'plough up the sea.' He indulges in extended mythological tropes as of the 'Carthage queen' and Ariadne; is especially attracted by Adonis, Hylas (whom he may have got either from Theocritus or the Marquis D'Urfé's Astræan character), and Hercules; and, in general, he levies more freely than Beaumont on commonplace classical material. In his unassisted dramas his fondness for personification seems to grow: many pages are thick with capitalized abstractions; and the poetry, then, is usually limited to the capitalization. The curious reader will find mostof Fletcher's predilections in image-making clustered in three or four typical passages of the later and unassisted plays, such as Alphonso's raving inA Wife for a Month, IV, 4; and in passages, undoubtedly of his verse and diction, in plays written conjointly with Beaumont, such as that of Spaconia's outburst inKing and No King, IV, 2, 45-62.

Fletcher abounds in optatives: 'Would Gods thou hadst been so blest!' 'Would there were any safety in thy sex!' and the like. He is also given to rhetorical interrogations and elaborate exclamations; more so than Beaumont. He affects the lighter kind of oath, the appeal to something sacred, in attestation—'Witness Heaven!' In entreaty—'High Heaven, defend us!' Or in mere ejaculation—'Equal Heavens!' He varies his asseverations so that they appear less bluntly profane: 'By my life!' 'By those lights, I vow!'—or more appropriate to the emergency: 'By all holy in Heaven and Earth!' He swears occasionally 'By the Gods,' but not so frequently as Beaumont, for there was a puritanical reaction after Beaumont's death. In the early joint-plays he affects particularly 'all the gods,' 'Byallthose gods, you swore by!' 'By more than all the gods!' In his imprecations he is even more sulphurous than Beaumont: 'Hell bless you for it!' 'Hell take me then!' 'Thou all-sin, all-hell, and last all-devils!'

In summary let us say of Fletcher's diction, that its vocabulary is repetitious; its sentence-structure, loose, cumulative, trailing: that its larger movement is, in general, dramatic, conversational, abrupt, rather than lyrical, declamatory, reflective. He writes for theplot—forward: not from the character—outward. When he bestows a lyrical or descriptive touch upon the narrative it is always incidental to conversation or stage business. When he indulges in a classical reminiscence he permits himself to embroider and bedizen; but usually his ribbons (from a scantly furnished, much-rummaged wardrobe) are carelessly pinned on. While capable, especially in tragedy, of occasional long speeches, he prefers the brief interchange of utterance, the rapid fire and spasm of dialogue.

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