Francis Beaumont: Dramatist. Gayley Charles Mills

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СКАЧАТЬ rejoices that, if they should condemn the play now that it is printed,

      Your censurers must have the quality

      Of reading, which I am afraid is more

      Than half your shrewdest judges had before.

      In the first quarto two commendatory poems are printed, the first by N. F., the second by the Homeric scholar and well known dramatist, George Chapman. The latter writes "to his loving friend, Master John Fletcher," in terms of generous encouragement and glowing charm. Your pastoral, says he, is "a poem and a play, too," —

      But because

      Your poem only hath by us applause,

      Renews the golden world, and holds through all

      The holy laws of homely pastoral,

      Where flowers and founts, and nymphs and semi-gods,

      And all the Graces find their old abodes,

      Where forests flourish but in endless verse,

      And meadows nothing fit for purchasers;

      This iron age, that eats itself, will never

      Bite at your golden world; that other's ever

      Lov'd as itself. Then like your book, do you

      Live in old peace, and that for praise allow.

      If Jonson, Chapman, and Beaumont suspected the undercurrent of satire in this Pastoral, and they surely were not obtuse, they concealed the suspicion admirably. As for Fletcher he continued to "live in old peace." "When his faire Shepheardesse on the guilty stage, Was martir'd between Ignorance and Rage… Hee only as if unconcernèd smil'd." An attitude toward the public that characterized him all through life.

      The admiration of younger men is shown in the respectful commendation of N. F. This is Nathaniel Field. He was acting with the Blackfriars' Boys since the days when Jonson presented Cynthia's Revels, and, as one of the Queen's Revels' Children, he had probably taken part in The Faithfull Shepheardesse when the undiscerning public hissed it. Field came of good family, had been one of Mulcaster's pupils at the Merchant Taylors' School, and was beloved by Chapman and Jonson. He was then but twenty-two, – about three years younger than Fletcher's friend, Beaumont, – but for nine years gone he had been recognized as a genius among boy-actors. That the verses of so young a man should be accepted, and coupled with those of the thunder-girt Chapman, was to him a great and unexpected honour; and the youth expresses prettily his pride in being published by his "lov'd friend" in such distinguished literary company, —

      Can my approovement, sir, be worth your thankes,

      Whose unknowne name, and Muse in swathing clowtes,

      Is not yet growne to strength, among these rankes

      To have a roome?

      Now he is planning to write dramas himself; and it is pleasant to note with what modesty he touches upon the project:

      But I must justifie what privately

      I censur'd to you, my ambition is

      (Even by my hopes and love to Poesie)

      To live to perfect such a worke as this,

      Clad in such elegant proprietie

      Of words, including a morallitie,56

      So sweete and profitable.

      He is alluding to his not yet finished comedy, A Woman is a Weather-cocke. The youth must have been close to Beaumont as well as to Fletcher; he soon afterwards, 1609-10, played the leading part in their Coxcombe, – which, I think, was the earliest work planned and written by them in collaboration; and when, a little later, his own first comedy was acted by the Queen's Revels' Children no auditor of literary ear could have failed to detect, amid the manifest echoes of Chapman, Jonson, and Shakespeare, the flattering resemblance in diction, rhythm, and poetic fancy to the most characteristic features of Beaumont's style. This is very interesting, because in another dramatic composition Foure Playes in One, written in part by Fletcher, certain portions have so close a likeness to Beaumont's work, that until lately they have been mistakenly attributed to that poet and assigned to this early period of his career. The portions of The Foure Playes not written by Fletcher were written by no other than Nat. Field. And since in Field's Address to the Reader of the Weather-cocke, licensed for publication November 23, 1611, he still speaks as if the Weather-cocke were his only venture in play-writing, we may conclude that The Foure Playes in One was not put together before the end of 1611, or the beginning of 1612. That series need not, therefore, be considered in the present place; all the more so, since Beaumont had in all probability nothing directly to do with its composition.57

      Of the other dramas written by Fletcher alone and assigned by critics to his earlier period, that is to say before 1610, or even 1611, the only one beside The Faithfull Shepheardesse that may with any degree of safety be admitted to consideration is a comedy of romance, manners, and humours, Monsieur Thomas. The romance is a delightful story of self-abnegating love. The father, Valentine, and the son Francisco, supposed to have been drowned long ago, and now known (if the texts had only printed the play as Fletcher wrote it) as Callidon, a guest of Valentine, love the same girl, the father's ward. This part of the play is executed with captivating grace. It shows that Fletcher had, from the first, an instinct for the dramatic handling of a complicated story, an eye for delicate and surprising situations, an appreciation of chivalric honour and genuine passion, and a fancy fertile and playful. In the subplot the manners are such as would appeal to a Fletcher not yet thirty years of age; and the humours are those of a student of the earlier plays of Ben Jonson, and of Marston – who ceased writing in 1607. It has indeed been asserted, but without much credibility, that "the notion of the panerotic Hylas," who must always "be courting wenches through key-holes," was taken from a character in Marston's Parasitaster, of 1606.58 The name of this Captain, Hylas, was in the mouth of Fletcher in those early days; he uses it again in his part of the Philaster, written in 1609 or 1610, and elsewhere. The snatches of song and the names of ballads are those of contemporary popularity between 1606 and 1609; and in two instances they are those of which Beaumont makes use in his Knight of the Burning Pestle of 1607. The play was acted, too, apparently by the same company, the Queen's Revels' Children, and in the same house as was Beaumont's. It could not have been played by them at "the Private House in Black Fryers" later than March 1608, unless they squeezed it into that last month of 1609 which serves as a telescope basket for so many of the plays which critics cannot satisfactorily date.

      For my present purpose, which is to show how Fletcher, not assisted by Beaumont, wrote during his youth, it makes little difference whether Monsieur Thomas was written as early as 1608 or only before 1611. The fact is, however, that a line in the last scene, "Take her, Francisco, now no more young Callidon," shows clearly that Callidon, a name not occurring elsewhere in the play, and necessary to the dramatic complication, had been used by Fletcher in his first version; and when we put the names Callidon and Cellidée together (she is Francisco's belovèd) we are pointed at once to the source of the romantic plot – the Histoire de Celidée, Thamyre, et Calidon at the beginning of the Second Part of the Astrée of the Marquis D'Urfé.59 The First Part of this voluminous pastoral romance had been published, probably in 1609, in an edition which is lost; but a second edition, dedicated to Henri IV, who died May 14, 1610, appeared that year. Some of Fletcher's inspiration, as for the name and general characteristic of Hylas, was drawn from the First Part. The Second Part was not printed till later in 1610. It would, therefore, appear that Fletcher could not have written Monsieur Thomas before the latter date. On the other hand, as Dr. Upham60 has indicated, the Astrée had been read as early as February 12, 1607, by Ben Jonson's СКАЧАТЬ