With the tests which have thus been described we are equipped for an examination of the plays written before 1616, which have, in these latter days, been with some show of evidence regarded as the joint-production of the "two wits and friends."[180] While attempting to separate the composition of one author from that of the other, we may determine the dramatic peculiarities of each during the course of the partnership, and obtain a fairly definite basis for an historical and literary appreciation of the plays, individually considered.
1.—Of the Foure Playes, or Morall Representations, in One (first published as by Beaumont and Fletcher in the folio of 1647, but without indication of first performance or of acting company), the last two, The Triumph of Death and The Triumph of Time, are, according to the verse tests, undoubtedly Fletcher's and have been assigned to him by all critics. The Triumph of Death is studded with alliterations and with repetitions of the effective word:
Oh I could curse
And crucify myself for childish doting
Upon a face that feeds not with fresh figures
Every fresh hour;
and with triplets:
What new body
And new face must I make me, with new manners;
and with the resonant "all":
Make her all thy heaven,
And all thy joy, for she is all thy happiness;
and with Fletcher's favourite words and his nouns in apposition, rhetorical questions, afterthoughts, verbal enumerations, and turgid exposition. The same may be said of The Triumph of Time. As there is less of the redundant epithet than in The Faithfull Shepheardesse (1609), but more than in Philaster (before July 12, 1610), I am of the opinion that Fletcher's contribution to the Triumphs falls chronologically between those plays. As Fletcher matures he prunes his adjectives.
The rest of these Morall Representations display neither the verse nor the rhetoric of Fletcher. On the basis of verse-tests Boyle assigns them to Beaumont. Macaulay says, "probably,"—and adds the Induction. But Oliphant, taking into consideration also the rhetorical and dramatic qualities, gives the Induction and The Triumph of Honour to a third author, Nathaniel Field, and only The Triumph of Love to Beaumont. As to the Induction and The Triumph of Honour I agree with Oliphant. They are full of polysyllabic Latinisms such as Field uses in his Woman is a Weather-cocke (entered for publication November 23, 1611) and Beaumont never uses: 'to participate affairs,' 'torturous engine,' etc.; and they are marked by simpler Fieldian expressions 'wale,' 'gyv'd,' 'blown man,' 'miskill,' 'vane,' 'lubbers,' 'urned,' and a score of others not found anywhere in Beaumont's undoubted writings. A few words, like 'basilisk' and 'loathed' suggest Beaumont, as does the verse; but this may be explained by vogue or imitation. Field was two or three years younger than Beaumont, and had played as a boy actor in one or more of the early Beaumont and Fletcher productions. His Woman is a Weather-cocke and his Amends for Ladies indicate the influence of Beaumont in matters of comic invention, poetic hyperbole, burlesque and pathos, as well as in metrical style. The Honour is a somewhat bombastic, puerile, magic-show written in manifest imitation of Beaumont's verse and rhetoric.
As to The Triumph of Love, I go further than Oliphant. I assign at least half of it, viz., scenes 1, 2, and 6, on the basis of diction, to Field. In scenes 3, 4, and 5, I find some trace of Beaumont's favourite expressions, of his thoughts of destiny and death and woman's tenderness, his poetic spontaneity, his sensational dramatic surprises; but I think these are an echo. The rural scene lacks his exquisite simplicity; and some of the words are not of his vocabulary. One is sorry to strike from the list of Beaumont's creations the pathetic and almost impressive figure of Violante. If it was originally Beaumont's, it is of his earlier work revamped by Field; if it is Field's, it is an echo simulating the voice, but missing the reality, of Beaumont's Aspatia, Bellario, Urania. This criticism holds true of both the Triumphs, Love and Honour.