Francis Beaumont: Dramatist / A Portrait, with Some Account of His Circle, Elizabethan and Jacobean, / And of His Association with John Fletcher

by Charles Mills Gayley

CHAPTER XVI

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 is The 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 the Maske) are introduced to the public merely by a general title-page as "written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. Never printed before, And now published 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:

In the large book of Playes you late did print
In Beaumont's and in Fletcher's name, why in't
Did you not justice? Give to each his due?
For Beaumont of those many writ in few,
And Massinger in other few; the Main
Being sole Issues of sweet Fletcher's brain.
But how came I (you ask) so much to know?
Fletcher's chief bosome-friend informed me so.
I' the next impression therefore justice do,
And print their old ones in one volume too;
For Beaumont's works and Fletcher's should come forth,
With all the right belonging to their worth.

JOHN FLETCHER
From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery
Painter unknown but contemporary

In still another poem, printed in 1662, but written not long after 1647, and addressed to his cousin, Charles Cotton, Sir Aston returns to the charge:

I wonder, Cousin, that you would permit
So great an Injury to Fletcher's wit,
Your friend and old Companion, that his fame
Should be divided to another's name.
If Beaumont had writ those Plays, it had been
Against his merits a detracting Sin,
Had they been attributed also to
Fletcher. They were two wits and friends, and who
Robs from the one to glorify the other,
Of these great memories is a partial Lover.
Had Beaumont liv'd when this Edition came
Forth, and beheld his ever living name
Before Plays that he never writ, how he
Had frown'd and blush'd at such Impiety!
His own Renown no such Addition needs
To have a Fame sprung from another's deedes:
And my good friend Old Philip Massinger
With Fletcher writ in some that we see there.
But you may blame the Printers: yet you might
Perhaps have won them to do Fletcher right,
Would you have took the pains; for what a foul
And unexcusable fault it is (that whole
Volume of plays being almost every one
After the death of Beaumont writ) that none
Would certifie them so much! I wish as free
Y' had told the Printers this, as you did me.
......
... While they liv'd and writ together, we
Had Plays exceeded what we hop'd to see.
But they writ few; for youthful Beaumont soon
By death eclipsèd was at his high noon.

The statements especially to be noted in these poems are, first, that Fletcher is present in most of the work published in the earliest folio, that of 1647, Beaumont in but a few plays, Massinger in other few. This information Cockayne, who was but eight years of age when Beaumont died, and seventeen at Fletcher's death, had from Fletcher's chief bosom-friend, and it was probably corroborated by Massinger himself, with whom Cockayne and his family (as we know from other evidence) had long been acquainted. Second, that almost every play in the folio was written after Beaumont's death (1616). This information, also, Cockayne had from his own cousin who was a friend and old companion of Fletcher. This cousin, the chief bosom-friend, as I have shown elsewhere, was Charles Cotton, the elder, who died in 1658, not the younger Charles Cotton (the translator of Montaigne),—for he was not born till five years after Fletcher died. And, third, that not only is the title of the folio "Comedies and Tragedies written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen" a misnomer, but that the bulk of their joint-plays, "the old ones" (not here included) calls for a volume to itself. A very just verdict, indeed,—this of Cockayne,—for (if I may again anticipate conclusions later to be reached) the only indubitable contributions from Beaumont's hand to this folio are his Maske of the Gentleman of Grayes Inne and a portion of The Coxcombe.

The confusion concerning authorship was redoubled by the second folio, which appeared as "Fifty Comedies and Tragedies. Written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. Published by the Authors Original Copies (etc.)" in 1679. There are fifty-three plays in this volume; the thirty-five of the first folio, and eighteen previously printed but not before gathered together. Beside those in which Beaumont had, or could have had, a hand, the eighteen include five of Fletcher's authorship, five in which he collaborated with others than Beaumont; and one, The Coronation, principally, if not entirely, by Shirley.[142] As in the 1647 folio, the only indication of respective authorship is to be found in occasional dedications, prefaces, prologues and epilogues. But, while in some half-dozen instances these name Fletcher correctly as author, and, in two or three, by implication correctly designate him or Beaumont, in other cases the indication is wrong or misleading. Where "our poets" are vaguely mentioned, or no hint whatever is given, the uncritical reader is led to ascribe the play to the joint composition of Beaumont and Fletcher. The lists of actors prefixed to several of the dramas afford valuable information concerning date and, sometimes, authorship to the student of stage-history; but the credulous would carry away the impression that Beaumont and Fletcher had collaborated equally in about forty of the fifty-three plays contained in the folio of 1679.

The uncertainty regarding the respective shares of the two authors in the production of this large number of dramas and, consequently, regarding the quality of the genius of each, commenced even during the life of Fletcher who survived his friend by nine years, and it has continued in some fashion down to the present time. Writing an elegy "on Master Beaumont, presently after his death,"[143] that is to say, in 1616-17, John Earle, a precocious youth of sixteen, at Christ Church, Oxford, is so occupied with lament and praise for "the poet so quickly taken off" that he not only ascribes to him the whole of Philaster and The Maides Tragedy (in both of which it was always known that Fletcher had a share) but omits mention of Fletcher altogether. So far, however, as the estimate of the peculiar genius of Beaumont goes, the judgment of young Earle has rarely been surpassed.

Oh, when I read those excellent things of thine,
Such Strength, such sweetnesse, coucht in every line,
Such life of Fancy, such high choise of braine,—
Nought of the Vulgar mint or borrow'd straine,
Such Passion, such expressions meet my eye,
Such Wit untainted with obscenity,
And these so unaffectedly exprest,
But all in a pure flowing language drest,
So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon,
And all so borne within thyself, thine owne,
I grieve not now that old Menanders veine
Is ruin'd, to survive in thee againe.

The succeeding exaltation of his idol above Plautus and Aristophanes, nay even Chaucer, is of a generous extravagance, but the lad lays his finger on the real Beaumont when he calls attention to "those excellent things;" and to the histrionic quality, the high seriousness, the "humours" and the perennial vitality of Beaumont's contribution to dramatic poetry.

A year or so later, and still during Fletcher's lifetime, we find Drummond of Hawthornden confusing in his turn the facts of authorship; for he "reports Jonson as saying that 'Flesher and Beaumont, ten years since, hath written The Faithfull Shipheardesse, a tragicomedie well done,'—whereas both Jonson and Beaumont had already addressed lines to Fletcher in commendation of his pastoral."[144] By 1647, as Miss Hatcher has shown, the confusion had crystallized itself into three distinct opinions, equally false, concerning the respective contribution of the authors to the plays loosely accredited to their partnership. These opinions are represented in the commendatory verses prefixed to the first folio. One was that "they were equal geniuses fused into one by the force of perfect congeniality and not to be distinguished from each other in their work,"—thus put into epigram by Sir George Lisle:

For still your fancies are so wov'n and knit,
'T was Francis Fletcher or John Beaumont writ;

and repeated by Sir John Pettus:

How Angels (cloyster'd in our humane Cells)
Maintaine their parley, Beaumont-Fletcher tels:
Whose strange, unimitable Intercourse
Transcends all Rules.

A second, the dominant view in 1647, was that "the plays were to be accredited to Fletcher alone, since Beaumont was not to be taken into serious account in explaining their production." This opinion is expressed by Waller, who, referring not only to the plays of that folio (in only two of which Beaumont appears) but to others like The Maides Tragedy and The Scornful Ladie in which, undoubtedly, Beaumont coöperated, says:

Fletcher, to thee wee do not only owe
All these good Playes, but those of others, too; ...
No Worthies form'd by any Muse but thine,
Could purchase Robes to make themselves so fine;

and by Hills, who writes,—"upon the Ever-to-be-admired Mr. John Fletcher and his Playes,"—

"Fletcher, the King of Poets! such was he,
That earn'd all tribute, claim'd all soveraignty."

The third view was—still to follow Miss Hatcher—that "Fletcher was the genius and creator in the work, and Beaumont merely the judicial and regulative force." Cartwright in his two poems of 1647, as I have already pointed out, emphasizes this view:

Though when all Fletcher writ, and the entire
Man was indulged unto that sacred fire,
His thoughts and his thoughts dresse appeared both such
That 't was his happy fault to do too much;
Who therefore wisely did submit each birth
To knowing Beaumont ere it did come forth;
Working againe, until he said 't was fit
And made him the sobriety of his wit;
Though thus he call'd his Judge into his fame,
And for that aid allow'd him halfe the name,
'T is knowne that sometimes he did stand alone,
That both the Spunge and Pencill were his owne;
That himselfe judged himselfe, could singly do,
And was at last Beaumont and Fletcher too.

A similar view is implied by Dryden, when, in his Essay of Dramatick Poesie, 1668, he attributes the regularity of their joint-plots to Beaumont's influence; and reports that even "Ben Jonson while he lived submitted all his writings to his censure, and 'tis thought used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots."

This tradition of Fletcher as creator and Beaumont as critic continued for generations, only occasionally disturbed,[145] in spite of the testimony of Cockayne to Fletcher's sole authorship of most of the plays in the first folio, to the coöperation of Massinger with Fletcher in some, and to the fact that there were enough plays not here included, written conjointly by Beaumont and Fletcher, to warrant the publication of a separate volume, properly ascribed to both. To the mistaken attributions of authorship by Dryden, Rymer, and others, I make reference in my forthcoming Essay on The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare, Part Two.[146] The succeeding history of opinion through Langbaine, Collier, Theobald, Sympson and Seward, Chalmers, Brydges, The Biographia Dramatica, Cibber, Malone, Darley, Dyce, and the purely literary critics from Lamb to Swinburne, has been admirably outlined by Miss Hatcher in the first chapter of her dissertation on the Dramatic Method of John Fletcher.

With Fleay, in 1874, began the scientific analysis of the problem, based upon metrical tests as derived from the investigation of the individual verse of Fletcher, Massinger, and Beaumont. His method has been elaborated, corrected, and supplemented by additional rhetorical and literary tests, on the part of various critics, some of whom are mentioned below.[147] The more detailed studies in metre and style are by R. Boyle, G. C. Macaulay, and E. H. Oliphant; and the best brief comparative view of their conclusions as regards Beaumont's contribution is to be found in R. M. Alden's edition of The Knight of the Burning Pestle and A King and No King. To the chronology of the plays serviceable introductions are afforded by Macaulay in the list appended to his chapter in the sixth volume of the Cambridge History of English Literature, and by A. H. Thorndike in his Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher upon Shakespeare.

Concerning the authorship of the successive scenes in a few of the plays undoubtedly written in partnership by Beaumont and Fletcher a consensus of opinion has practically been reached. Concerning others, especially those in which a third or fourth hand may be traced, the difference of opinion is still bewildering. This divergence is due, perhaps, to the proneness of the critic to emphasize one or more tests out of relation to the rest, or to forget that though individual scenes were undertaken now by one, now by the other of the colleagues, the play as a whole would be usually planned by both, but any individual scene or passage revised by either. The tests of external evidence have of course been applied by all critics, but as to events and dates there is still variety of opinion. Of the internal criteria, those based upon the peculiarities of each partner in respect of versification have been so carefully studied and applied that to repeat the operation seems like threshing very ancient straw; but to accept the winnowings of others, however careful, is unsatisfactory. Tests of rhetorical habit and tectonic preference have also been, in general, attempted; but not, I think, exhaustively. And, though much has been established, and availed of, in analysis, there remains yet something to desire in the application of the more subtle differentiæ yielded by such preliminary methods of investigation,—what these differentiæ teach us concerning the temperamental idiosyncrasies of each of the partners in scope and method of observation, in poetic imagery, in moral and emotional insight and elevation, intellectual outlook, philosophical and religious conviction.