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 XVII

THE DELIMITATION OF THE FIELD

The plays contained in the first folio of Beaumont and Fletcher's Comedies and Tragedies, 1647, are The Mad Lover, The Spanish Curate, The Little French Lawyer, The Custome of the Countrey, The Noble Gentleman, The Captaine, The Beggers Bush, The Coxcombe, The False One, The Chances, The Loyall Subject, The Lawes of Candy, The Lovers Progresse, The Island Princesse, The Humorous Lieutenant, The Nice Valour, The Maide in the Mill, The Prophetesse, The Tragedy of Bonduca, The Sea Voyage, The Double Marriage, The Pilgrim, The Knight of Malta, The Womans Prize or The Tamer Tamed, Loves Cure, The Honest Mans Fortune, The Queene of Corinth, Women Pleas'd, A Wife for a Moneth, Wit at Severall Weapons, The Tragedy of Valentinian, The Faire Maide of the Inne, Loves Pilgrimage, The Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne, and the Inner Temple, at the Marriage of the Prince and Princesse Palatine of Rhene written by Francis Beaumont, Gentleman, Foure Playes (or Moralle Representations) in One.

Of these thirty-five, which purport to be printed from "the authours originall copies," only one, as I have already said, The Maske, had been published before.

The second folio, entitled Fifty Comedies and Tragedies, 1679, contains, beside those above mentioned, eighteen others, one of which, The Wild-Goose Chase, had been published separately and in folio, 1652. The remaining seventeen said to be "published from the Authors' Original Copies," are printed from the quartos. They are The Maides Tragedy, Philaster, A King and No King, The Scornful Ladie, The Elder Brother, Wit Without Money, The Faithfull Shepheardesse, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, Monsieur Thomas, Rollo, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, The Night-Walker, The Coronation, Cupids Revenge, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Thierry and Theodoret, and The Woman-Hater.

In addition to these fifty-three plays, one, The Faithful Friends, entered on the Stationers' Registers in 1660, as by Beaumont and Fletcher, was held in manuscript until 1812, when it was purchased by Weber from "Mr. John Smith of Furnival's Inn into whose possession it came from Mr. Theobald, nephew to the editor of Shakespeare," and published.

According to the broadest possible sweep of modern opinion, the presence of Beaumont cannot by any tour de force be conjectured in more than twenty-three of the fifty-four productions listed above. The twenty-three are (exclusive of The Maske) The Woman-Hater, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Cupids Revenge, The Scornful Ladie, The Maides Tragedy, A King and No King, Philaster, Foure Playes in One, Loves Cure, The Coxcombe, The Captaine, Thierry and Theodoret, The Faithful Friends, Wit at Severall Weapons, Beggers Bush, Loves Pilgrimage, The Knight of Malta, The Lawes of Candy, The Nice Valour, The Noble Gentleman, The Faire Maide of the Inne, Bonduca, and The Honest Mans Fortune. With regard to the last twelve of these plays beginning with Thierry and Theodoret there is no convincing proof that more than the first four were written before February 1613, when after preparing the Maske for the Lady Elizabeth's marriage to the Elector Palatine, Beaumont seems (except for his share of The Scornful Ladie which I date about 1614) to have withdrawn from dramatic activity,—perhaps because of his own marriage about that time and withdrawal to the country, or because of failing health; and there is no generally accepted historical or textual evidence that Beaumont had any hand even in these four. Of the eight remaining at the end of the list, four may be dated before Beaumont's death in 1616: The Honest Mans Fortune, which is said on manuscript evidence to have been played in the year 1613, but probably later than August 5;[148] Bonduca, which Oliphant asserts is an alteration by Fletcher of an old drama of Beaumont's, but which other authorities assign to Fletcher alone; and, on slighter evidence, Loves Pilgrimage, and The Nice Valour. The balance of proof with regard to the other four, The Knight of Malta, The Lawes of Candy, The Noble Gentleman, and The Faire Maide of the Inne, is altogether in favour of their composition after Beaumont's death.

In each of these twelve plays, however, beginning with Thierry and ending with The Honest Mans Fortune, an occasional expert thinks that he finds a speech or a scene in Beaumont's style, and concludes that the play in its present form is a revision of some early effort in which that dramatist had a hand. But where one critic surmises Beaumont, another detects Beaumont's imitators; and where one conjectures Fletcher and Beaumont conjoined, half a dozen assert Fletcher, assisted, or revised by anywhere from one to four contemporaries,—Field or Daborne or Massinger, Middleton or Rowley, or First and Second Unknown. I have examined these plays and the evidence, as carefully as I have those which have more claim to consideration among the Beaumont possibilities, and have applied to them all the tests which I shall presently describe; and have come to the conclusion that Beaumont had nothing to do with any of the twelve.

There remain, then, of the twenty-three plays enumerated above as Beaumont-Fletcher possibilities, only eleven of which I can, on the basis of external or internal evidence, or both, safely say that they were composed before Beaumont ceased writing for the stage, and that he had, or may have had, a hand in writing some of them. These are, in the order of their first appearance in print: The Woman-Hater, published without name of author in 1607; The Knight of the Burning Pestle, also anonymous, published in 1613; Cupids Revenge, published as Fletcher's in 1615; The Scornful Ladie, published in 1616, as Beaumont and Fletcher's, just after the death of the former; The Maides Tragedy, published, without names of authors, in 1619; A King and No King, published as Beaumont and Fletcher's in 1619; Philaster, published as Beaumont and Fletcher's in 1620; and Foure Playes in One, Loves Cure, The Coxcombe, and The Captaine, first published in the 1647 folio, without ascription of authorship on the title-page, but as of the "Comedies and Tragedies written by Beaumont and Fletcher," in general. In the case of Loves Cure the Epilogue mentions "our Author"; the Prologue, spoken "at the reviving of this play," attributes it to Beaumont and Fletcher. As for The Coxcombe, the Prologue for a revival speaks of "the makers that confest it for their own."

It is worthy of notice that three only of these eleven possible "Beaumont-Fletcher" plays were printed during Beaumont's lifetime,—The Woman-Hater, The Knight of the Burning Pestle and Cupids Revenge, and that on none of them does Beaumont's name appear as author. The last indeed was ascribed, wrongly, as I shall later show, to Fletcher alone. It should also be noted that four other of the plays, beginning with The Scornful Ladie and ending with Philaster, were published before the death of Fletcher in 1625; and that while three of them have title-page ascriptions to both authors, one, The Maides Tragedy, is anonymous.

To these eleven plays as a residuum I have given the preference in the application of tests deemed most likely to reveal the relative contribution and genius of the authors in partnership. Beside the seven published as stated above during Fletcher's life, two others appeared which I do not include in this residuum,—The Faithfull Shepheardesse and Thierry and Theodoret. The former, printed between December 22, 1608 and July 20, 1609, is of Fletcher's sole authorship, and will be employed as one of the clues to his early characteristics. The latter, attributed by some critics to both authors was published without ascription of authorship in a quarto of 1621. It does not appear in the folio of 1647, but was printed in second quarto as "by John Fletcher" in 1648, and again as "by F. Beaumont and J. Fletcher" in 1649; and was finally gathered up with the Comedies and Tragedies which compose the folio of 1679. Oliphant and Thorndike are of opinion that the play is a revision by Massinger of an original by Beaumont and Fletcher, but I cannot discover in the text evidence sufficient to warrant its inclusion in the list of plays worthy to be investigated as the possible product of the partnership.

The eleven Beaumont-Fletcher plays to which the criteria of internal evidence may be applied with some assurance of success, comprise in their number, fortunately for us, three of which we are informed by external evidence,—the contemporary testimony of John Earle, dated 1616-1617,—that Beaumont was concerned in their composition. These three, Philaster, The Maides Tragedy, and A King and No King, are a positive residuum to which as a model of the joint-work of our authors we may first, in the effort to discriminate their respective functions when working in partnership, apply the tests of style derived from a study of the plays and poems which each wrote alone.

With this delimitation of the field of inquiry, we are now ready for the consideration of the criteria by which the presence of either author may be detected. The criteria are primarily of versification; then, successively and cumulatively, of diction and mental habit. Ultimately, and by induction, they are of dramatic technique and creative genius.