From the nature of their material and treatment there is little difference between the tragedies and tragicomedies. Tragicomedy as a species had up to this time hardly been recognized in the English drama, although there are sporadic instances of the use of the term and although romantic comedy usually offered tragic elements. Fletcher's definition (borrowed from Guarini) in the preface to "The Faithful Shepherdess," may be taken as sufficiently distinguishing the form from other species,—"A tragicomedy is not so called in respect to mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy, which must be a representation of familiar people, with such kind of trouble as no life be questioned; so that a god is as lawful in this as in a tragedy, and mean people as in a comedy." The example of Beaumont and Fletcher, moreover, gave popularity and importance to this class of plays. Borrowing motives familiar in romantic narrative and the preceding drama, they yet created a departure from preceding romantic comedy, both in the constant emphasis which they place upon the contrast between the tragic and idyllic elements of their plots and in the especial attention they pay to surprising and complicated dénouements. They aim not merely at a mixture of the sentimental and tragic but at involving every one in a tangle of disastrous complications, resolved only by a series of final surprises. Although only two of the six romances are tragicomedies, the imitators of Beaumont and Fletcher most frequently adopted the form, realizing apparently the theatrical value of keeping the spectators thrilled and excited until the end and then relieving their sympathetic suspense by a happy solution.
The dramatis personae of the six plays belong to the impossible and romantic situations rather than to life, and are usually of certain types,—the sentimental or violent hero; his faithful friend, a blunt outspoken soldier; the sentimental heroine, often a love-lorn maiden disguised as a page in order that she may serve the hero; an evil woman defiant in her crimes; and the poltroon, usually a comic personage. With the addition of a king, some gentlemen and ladies of the court, and a few persons from the lower ranks, the cast is complete. The various persons introduce one another in long descriptions; and, after the introductory speech, the character remains fixed, except as the shifting situations demand some unexpected revolution. There is no shading or subtlety in the characterization, little discrimination or individuality in the different representatives of the favorite types, who, however, are by no means wanting in originality. They do not reveal the depths or complexities of human nature, but they exhibit fresh and ingenious variations of the old types, audacious humor and abundant spirit, and the power of their creators to rise to a situation and to express dramatic emotion. Thus, their type of evil woman acquires tremendous force in the scenes where Evadne plays her part; and their heroines suffer, serve, weep, love, forgive, and die, in lines that somehow preserve the grace of simplicity, though they wear all the jewels of allusion and imagery that the authors possess. Moreover, their men and women talk like real persons. Dryden declared that they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better than Shakespeare, a distinction that in some respects is clear to-day. The men of preceding tragedies had spoken a language elevated and removed from ordinary discourse, but in Beaumont and Fletcher the romantic scenes and impossible changes of character are made plausible by an absence of archaism and a directness and lucidity of speech.
In the main, what reality the characters retain in our memories is due to the power of the verse to reflect clearly the emotions of the moment. There is a notable absence of the merely sonorous, the turgid declamation, the mouthing of strange words, and an absence of over-crowding thought or fancy. Beaumont and Fletcher had no desire to make their style sententious, weighty, and philosophical. They knew what they wanted to say, and they said it clearly and rapidly. They had room for ornament and rhetorical device, but none for eccentricity or obscurity. Another remark of Dryden's, that they perfected the English language, deserves consideration as the view of a century later, and can be appreciated even now. The characteristics of their style, so far as it can be considered as a common property, seem due to an effort to make dialogue correspond as nearly as possible to natural speech. This is particularly true of Fletcher, who is the more revolutionary of the two and the more persistent in his mannerisms. His structure is loose and conversational, and his blank verse overruns the borders of the rigid pentameter and approaches the irregularity of prose. Numerous added syllables and a large percentage of feminine endings further mark his departures from past models, and, combined with his end-stopped lines, give his verse a peculiar monotony. Both writers rise now and then to an intensely imaginative phrase or a beautifully wrought description. The verse of neither is suggestive of the intricacies of human feeling or the splendor of human intellect, but the verse of both, of Fletcher preëminently, reveals a fertility of imagination and an extraordinary mobility of words.
These merits of style gave Beaumont and Fletcher their seventeenth century reputation and have continued to attract readers in the generations since. Ethical objections to their plays drove them from the stage in spite of their theatrical effectiveness. They wrote with little ethical intention. Unlike some of their contemporaries, they did not seek to discover the abodes of sin and to chastise the monster, nor did they study human nature in the light of moral law. They dealt with themes that would please their audience and would offer a sufficient range of emotions for the exhibition of their poetic powers. Without imaginations that touched spiritual heights or penetrated to the real significance of moral conflict, they entered unhesitatingly upon the task of holding up a mirror to a society loose in manners and unprincipled in morals. They were not so much guilty of intentional immorality as impotent to produce moral effect. If their imaginations kept too frequent company with the gross and the unhealthy, they also sought at times the sweeter and nobler aspects of life. What won for their ethics high laudation from their contemporaries was their rhetorical and dramatic exaltation of ideals of magnanimity and dreams of idyllic love and devoted friendship.
Their masterpieces, despite their limitations, must be given high rank in the English drama. Outside of Shakespeare it would be difficult to find in our language another tragedy that as an artistic achievement can be counted the superior of "The Maid's Tragedy." But the main contribution of their collaboration took the form of a type, limited in themes and characterization, brilliant often both in dramatic discovery and in execution, but tending toward artificiality and convention. Their most important innovations, the products of serious artistic effort as well as of cleverness and ingenuity, mark the acquirement by the drama of new habits of doubtful value. Their sacrifice of character to situation, their devotion to theatrical effectiveness, their lack of moral purpose, their dalliance with the artificial and abnormal aspects of passion, and their disregard for the limits of blank verse, all these characteristics furnished examples eagerly followed by the dramatists of the next generation, examples that did not promote in tragedy a true or comprehensive or noble reflection of life.
Immediately after Beaumont's retirement Fletcher probably collaborated with Shakespeare on "Henry VIII" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen," and possibly on a lost play, "Cardenio." The partnership resulted in no distinct departures from the methods of either dramatist, but it seems to have been full of incentive for the younger man, whose poetic gift nowhere displays itself more splendidly. From this time on he wrote constantly for the theatre, composing three or four plays a year, collaborating on many of these with Massinger, and maintaining his position as the most popular dramatist of the time until his death in 1625.
Perhaps if Beaumont had lived, the two might have advanced to maturer and worthier achievement, but Fletcher's work alone rather displays the superficialities and artificialities of the collaboration. His amazing cleverness appears in every scene, but he evidently wrote more and more for immediate success, and relied more and more on his readinesss of wit and invention to take the place of earnest and serious purpose. The long series of plays in which he had at least a considerable share, range in kind from comedies of manners to tragedies of blood and revenge, but practically all may be described as romantic drama, having, that is, strange improbable events, foreign and remote scenes, variety and surprise in action, and love as the central motive. His sense of dramatic value in theme or incident was constantly alert, and in Spanish stories, especially the "Novellas Exemplares" of Cervantes, he found mazes of complicated action which exactly suited his fancy, and which he managed with adroit dramaturgy. The Spanish influence is more noticeable in the comedies than in the more serious plays; but, whatever the theme or the source, Fletcher added bustle and excitement. The distinctions between tragedy, comedy, tragicomedy, and romantic comedy often become barely discernible. The material and treatment are similar. Tragic situations occur in comedies as well as tragedies, and in either case, though finely conceived and admirably expressed, are yet always directed by the desire for surprise and thrills. The tragicomedies conform most closely to the conventionalities and repetitions of the heroic romances, though they exhibit abundant originality of invention. Through their example, romantic and melodramatic tragicomedy became perhaps the most popular and characteristic dramatic species of the reign of Charles I, and a direct progenitor of the heroic plays of the Restoration.
In his tragedies Fletcher's prostitution to theatrical effectiveness admits a recognition of the literary tradition. At least, the two which are the result of his unaided efforts are composed with more care and with more evidence of artistic responsibility than his other dramas. In "Valentinian"[24] he turned from his usual sources and themes to those long approved in pure tragedy, and found in Roman history a story of revenge and lust. Though treating the material with great freedom, he unfortunately followed his source in continuing the action beyond the murder of Valentinian through the counter revenge on Maximus. The first two acts, that tell of the attempted seduction of Lucina and her final ruin, are among the best sustained tragic developments in Fletcher, and, in comparison with many similar scenes in contemporary drama, testify to his remarkable poetic gifts. But the later scheming and the overthrow of her husband involve a conversion of character and a descent into absurd improbability. In "Bonduca," Fletcher's invention moved unhampered. Historical sources are used merely as hints and incentives. The stories of Bonduca and Caratach are combined; and the interest in their tragic fates diversified by the stories of Bonduca's daughters and their Roman lovers, by the episode of the noble Poenius, by the pathos of the child Hengo, and also by some gross and brutal comedy. All these interests are skillfully interwoven and focused upon the great central scene of the battle. There is stirring presentation of camp life, and throughout the action moves with abounding spirit. The play is not tragedy at all if one judges it strictly by Aristotle's precepts or by Shakespeare's example, or even in comparison with the emotional tension of "The Maid's Tragedy." But it is an admirable example of the blending of the romantic, historical, heroic, pathetic, comic, and tragic, full of human nature as well as incident, conspicuous for poetic expression as well as theatrical ingenuity, one of the masterpieces of the romantic drama.
The tragedies in which Fletcher collaborated with Massinger or others offer few amendments of his usual dramatic habits. "The Queen of Corinth," "The False One," "The Double Marriage," and the spectacular "Prophetess" are all melodramas in which Massinger's moral earnestness and rhetorical seriousness contrast with Fletcher's vivacity, and in which clever stage-craft, noble poetry, and slipshod and hasty workmanship are indiscriminately manifest. "The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt" carries on the practice of treating contemporary foreign history, already exemplified by Marlowe and Chapman. Hurriedly written within a few months of Barnavelt's death, it can lay no claim to be a thorough or impartial study of historical events, but it affords a remarkable illustration of the readiness with which both authors could summon their talents to an occasion. Given a theme that had a current theatrical interest, and Massinger's declamation and Fletcher's pathos came nimbly to the task, and almost at their very best.
The most striking illustration, however, both of Fletcher's genius and its prostitution to theatrical effectiveness is to be found in "The Bloody Brother; or Rollo, Duke of Normandy." Here in collaboration with Massinger and possibly Jonson and Middleton, he returned to one of the stock themes of tragedy, the story of family feud and a bloody tyrant. In comparison, however, with any preceding dramas of this class, whether in early imitations of Seneca or later treatments of lust and revenge, the play shows the alteration that had come over dramatic ideals and methods. Its purpose is neither to follow literary tradition nor to expose the evil of tyranny, but to make some startling theatrical effects out of the familiar material. Fletcher accomplishes this purpose with his usual recklessness of talent. When the height of tragic passion is required he rises to it, or very nearly, in the scene where Edith pleads with the tyrant to spare her father's life, a scene which Dyce pronounced the most real in its passionate earnestness of anything in Beaumont and Fletcher's writings. But the most astounding display of his power comes where there is no genuine passion but only make-believe. It is the final scene of the play.