Have no mark to know me but my blood,
may suppose Bellario to be the assailant of Arethusa! "Oh, my heart, what a varlet's this, to offer manslaughter upon the harmless gentlewoman," we may cry, with the grocers wife in "The Knight of the Burning Pestle". We "could hurl things at him," at Philaster: whose jealousy does not palliate his cruelty and treachery.
Through many complications the plot winds its way; Bellario, who is about to be tortured, proves to be a woman; both she and Arethusa survive; Philaster, of whom nobody thinks the worse, marries Arethusa; Pharamond is mobbed; all ends happily except for that most pathetic of patient Grizels, Bellario, who remains contented in the happiness of the others. The purity and sweetness of Arethusa, the loyalty of the loving Bellario, and her beautiful speeches, cannot enable this play to escape the blame of being unnatural and repulsive.
The naked analysis of the plays of this age, is, of course, no fair criterion of their merit. A bare exposure of the plot of "Cymbeline" would deter a man from reading it. The authors are protected by the magic of their poetry, which conveys them off in a golden cloud as Aphrodite saved Æneas. A bare analysis of "A King and No King" (1611), with the alternate valour and nobility, brag, and unintelligible clemencies and ferocities of Arbaces, King of Iberia, who has defeated and captured Tigranes, King of Armenia, would move the most austere to mirth. But there is a method in the apparent madness of Arbaces; and Bessus, the braggart poltroon, is an officer worthy to fight under the same standard as Parolles and Bobadil, while virtue and happiness are kept for Arbaces and Panthea, Tigranes and the faithful Spaconia, through the sudden revelation of Gobrias, the Lord Protector, that Arbaces is a warming-pan pretender, and neither son of Queen Arane (who unceasingly tries to have him stabbed or poisoned), nor the brother of Panthea.
The last tragedies are "The False One," and "Valentinian". Concerning "Thierry and Theodoret" it is not pleasant to speak out, and it is not honest to be silent. "Derived," we are told, "from the French chronicles of the reign of Clotaire the Second," the play is rancid with the humours of the lowest London haunts; marked by wild anachronisms—the Merovingian troops carry muskets,—and crammed with impossible crimes. For a contrast we have the eloquence of Thierry (poisoned by a handkerchief that robs him of sleep, after he has been drugged to deprive him of offspring), and the spotless virtues of his wife Ordella, whom Thierry has been on the point of sacrificing to the gods. The blank verse almost uniformly moves with a loose superfluous foot; as
The most remarkable thing in which kings differ,
From private men,
and so on, is a specimen. There is a pearl to be found on this dust-heap, the stainless Ordella, "the most perfect idea of the female heroic character," says Lamb; but she is found after we have passed through a malodorous labyrinth of "unnatural and violent situations".
Plays like this, or even like "The Spanish Comedy," which opens pleasantly and humorously, and in the cure and his sexton suggests the influence of Cervantes, but closes in a mist of evil passions, give some show of reason to the opinion of our French critic. "A friendly hand selecting with care" might give all of Beaumont and Fletcher's that can please readers not specially devoted to the study of the Drama. Even in the beautiful scenes of "The Faithful Shepherdess," in poetry worthy of Spenser's pastoral vein, the author, quite needlessly, introduces a shepherdess who resembles the Brunhault of "Thierry and Theodoret" as Brunhault may have been in girlhood.
"The Knight of the Burning Pestle," on the other hand, with the grocer-critic who insists on a play in which a grocer shall "do admirable things"; with the humours of the grocer's wife, and the Quixotic adventures of Ralph, the apprentice, is lively, and, says the Prologue, "has endeavoured, to be far from unseemly words to make your ears glow". Yet, in the jail delivery of the Barber, the authors go out of their way to find ugly ribaldries. Famous among the comedies are "The Scornful Lady," "The Humorous Lieutenant," "The Wild-goose Chase," and "The Little French Doctor". The lyrics and songs are especially beautiful, even in the Elizabethan wealth of song.
A peculiarity of Fletcher's blank verse is his fondness for redundant syllables at the close, and indeed anywhere in the line. This manner was gaining on Shakespeare in his latest plays, and, in authors after Fletcher, led to the decay, almost to the death, of blank verse. Yet Fletcher's lines, as before Marlowe and Shakespeare, were often "end-stopped": the sense closed with the close of each line; this is not the manner of Shakespeare, or of Beaumont. In his later days Fletcher went for his plots to Spanish tales and romances.