Francis Beaumont: Dramatist. Gayley Charles Mills

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СКАЧАТЬ To inquire too closely into gossip were folly; but it is only fair to recall that sixty years after Fletcher's death, popular tradition was content with conferring the "wench," exclusively upon him. Oldwit, in Shadwell's play of Bury-Fair (1689) says: "I myself, simple as I stand here, was a wit in the last age. I was created Ben Jonson's son, in the Apollo. I knew Fletcher, my friend Fletcher, and his maid Joan; well, I shall never forget him: I have supped with him at his house on the Banke-side; he loved a fat loin of pork of all things in the world; and Joan his maid had her beer-glass of sack; and we all kissed her, i' faith, and were as merry as passed."64 It is hardly necessary, in any case, to surmise with those who sniff up improprieties that the admirable services of the original "wench," whether Joan or another, far exceeded the roasting of pork and the burning of sack for her two "batchelors."

      To the years 1609 and 1610 may be assigned with some show of confidence Beaumont and Fletcher's first significant romantic dramas The Coxcombe and Philaster. The former was acted by the Children of her Majesty's Revels, I think before July 12, 1610. If at Blackfriars, before January 4, 1610; if at Whitefriars, after January 4. There are grounds for believing that it was the play upon which Fletcher and Beaumont were engaged in the country when Beaumont wrote a letter, justly famous, probably toward the end of 1609, to Ben Jonson; and, since the play was not well received, that it was one of the unsuccessful comedies which as Dryden says preceded Philaster. Philaster was acted at the Globe and Blackfriars by the King's Men, for the first time, it would appear, between December 7, 1609 and July 12, 1610. My reasons in detail for thus dating both of these dramas are given later. But a word about the Letter to Ben Jonson may be said here.

      It was first printed at the end of a play called The Nice Valour in the folio of 1647. Owing to a careless acceptance of the rubric prefixed to it by the publishers of that folio, historians have ordinarily dated its composition at too early a period. The poem itself mentions "Sutcliffe's wit," referring to three controversial tracts of the Dean of Exeter, printed in 1606; but Beaumont might jibe at the Dean's expense for years after 1606. The rubic inscribed a generation after the death of both our dramatists, and therefore of but secondary importance, tells us that the Letter was "written, before he [Beaumont] and Master Fletcher came to London, with two of the precedent comedies, then not finish'd, which deferr'd their merry meetings at the Mermaid." We know that the young men had been in London for years before 1606. If the rubric has any meaning whatever, it is merely that the customary convivialities at the Mermaid, as described in the Letter, had been interrupted by a visit to the country during which they were finishing two of the comedies which precede The Nice Valour in the folio; and it indicates a date not earlier than 1608, for the writing of the letter, and probably not later than July 1610. For only three of the fifteen plays which appear in the folio before The Nice Valour could have been completed during the career of Beaumont as a dramatist, and none of the three antedates 1608. In two of these Beaumont had no hand: The Captaine, which may have been composed as late as 1611, and Beggars' Bush,65 which shows the collaboration of Massinger, but Fletcher's part of which may have been written in 1608. The only one of the "precedent comedies" in which we may be sure that Beaumont collaborated is The Coxcombe. If, as I believe, it was acted first between December 1609 and July 161066 it may well have been written in the country during the latter half of 1609, while the plague rate was exceptionally high in London. Both Beggars' Bush and The Coxcombe abound in rural scenes; but the latter especially, in scenes that might have been suggested by Grace-Dieu and its neighborhood.

      The rubric prefixed to the Letter by the publishers is of negligible authority. The 'me' and 'us' of the Letter itself do not necessarily designate Fletcher as the companion of Beaumont's rustication: they stand at one time for country-folk; at another for the Mermaid circle, Jonson, Chapman, Fletcher, probably Shakespeare, Drayton, Cotton, Donne, Hugh Holland, Tom Coryate, Richard Martin, Selden (of Beaumont's Inner Temple), and other famous wits and poets; at another for Jonson and Beaumont alone. The date of the poem must be determined from internal evidence. It is written with the careless ease of long-standing intimacy. It is of a genial, jocose, and fairly mature, epistolary style. It betrays the literary assurance of one whose reputation is already established. Beaumont is in temporary banishment from London, for lack of funds – therefore, considerably later than 1606, when he was presumably well off; for in that year he had just come into a quarter of his brother, Sir Henry's, private estate. He longs now for the stimulus of the merry meetings in Bread-street, as one whose wit has been sharpened by them for a long time past:

      Methinks the little wit I had is lost

      Since I saw you; for Wit is like a Rest

      Held up at Tennis, which men do the best

      With the best gamesters; …

      up here in Leicestershire "The Countrey Gentlemen begin to allow My wit for dry bobs." "In this warm shine" of our hay-making season, soberly deferring to country knights, listening to hoary family-jests, drinking water mixed with claret-lees, "I lye and dream of your full Mermaid Wine":

      What things have we seen

      Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been

      So nimble, and so full of subtill flame,

      As if that every one from whence they came

      Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

      And had resolv'd to live a foole, the rest

      Of his dull life. Then, when there hath been thrown

      Wit able enough to justifie the Town

      For three daies past, – wit that might warrant be

      For the whole City to talk foolishly

      Till that were cancell'd, – and, when that was gone,

      We left an Aire behind us, which alone

      Was able to make the two next Companies

      Right witty; though but downright fooles, more wise.

      When he remembers all this, he "needs must cry," but one thought of Ben Jonson cheers him:

      Only strong Destiny, which all controuls,

      I hope hath left a better fate in store

      For me thy friend, than to live ever poore,

      Banisht unto this home. Fate once againe

      Bring me to thee, who canst make smooth and plaine

      The way of Knowledge for me, and then I,

      Who have no good but in thy company

      Protest it will my greatest comfort be

      To acknowledge all I have to flow from thee.

      Ben, when these Scaenes are perfect, we'll taste wine;

      I'll drink thy Muses health, thou shalt quaff mine.

      The Letter was written after Beaumont's Muse had produced something worthy of a toast from Jonson, – the Woman-Hater and the Knight, for instance (both marked by wit and by the discipline of Jonson); but not later than the end of 1612, for during most of 1613 Jonson was traveling in France as governor to Sir Walter Raleigh's "knavishly inclined" son; and after February of that year Beaumont wrote so far as I venture to conclude but one drama, The Scornful Ladie; and that does not precede this Letter in the folio of 1647; is not printed in that folio at all. Nor was this Letter of a disciple written later than the great Beaumont-Fletcher plays of 1610-1611, for then Jonson was praising Beaumont for "writing better" than he himself. If there is any truth at all in the rubric to the Letter, the "scenes" of which Beaumont speaks as not yet "perfect" were of The Coxcombe; and evidence which I shall, in the proper place, adduce convinces me that that was first acted before March 25, 1610, perhaps before January 4. The play would, then, have been written about the end of 1609.

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