The commonly accepted date, 1608, for the composition of the Foure Playes in One is derived from Fleay, who mistakenly quotes a reference in the 1619 quarto of The Yorkshire Tragedy to the Foure Playes as if it were of the 1608 quarto where the reference does not appear.[181] While Fletcher may have written the first draft of his contribution before the middle of 1610, it is evident from Field's Address To the Reader in the first quarto of the Woman is a Weather-cocke (entered S. R., November 23, 1611), that Field's contribution was made after November 23, 1611. In that Address he makes it plain that this is his first dramatic effort: "I have been vexed with vile plays myself a great while, hearing many; now I thought to be even with some, and they should hear mine too." We have already noticed[182] that Field had not written even his Weather-cocke, still less anything in collaboration with Fletcher, at the time of the publication of The Faithfull Shepheardesse (between January and July, 1609); for in his complimentary poem for the quarto of that "Pastorall," Field acknowledges his unknown name and his Muse in swaddling clouts, and timidly confesses his ambition to write something like The Shepheardesse, "including a Morallitie, Sweete and profitable." That Field's contribution to the Foure Playes was not made before the date of the first performance of The Weather-cocke by the Revels' Children at Whitefriars, i. e., January 4, 1610 to Christmas 1610-11 (when its presentation before the King at Whitehall probably took place), further appears from his dedication To Any Woman that hath been no Weather-cocke (quarto, 1611) in which he alludes not to The Triumph of Honour, or of Love, but to Amends for Ladies, as his "next play," then on the stocks, and, he thought, soon to be printed.[183] The evidence, external and internal, amply presented by Oliphant, Thorndike, and others, but with a view to conclusions different from mine as to date and authorship, confirms me in the belief that Fletcher's Time and Death, though written at least two years earlier, were not gathered up with Field's Induction, Honour, and Love, into the Foure Playes in One until about 1612; and that the series was performed at Whitefriars by Field's company of the Queen's Revels' Children, shortly after they had first acted Cupid's Revenge at the same theatre.
2.—Of the remaining ten plays in which, according to the historical evidence adduced by various critics, Beaumont could have collaborated, at least two furnish no material that can be of service for the estimation of his qualities. If Love's Cure was written as early as the date of certain references in the story, viz., 1605-1609, it is so overlaid by later alteration that whether, as the textual experts guess, it be Beaumont's revised by Massinger, or Fletcher's revised by Massinger and others, or Massinger and Middleton's, or Beaumont's with the assistance of Fletcher and revised by Massinger, Beaumont for us is indeterminate. Fleay, Oliphant, and others trace him in a few prose scenes, and in two or three of verse.[184] But where the rhetorical and dramatic manner occasionally suggest him, or the metre has somewhat of his stamp, words abound that I find in no work of his undisputed composition. The servant, Lazarillo, like him of Beaumont's Woman-Hater, is a glutton, but he does not speak Beaumont's language. The scenes ascribed to Beaumont reek with an excremental and sexual vulgarity to which Beaumont never condescended, unless for brief space, and when absolutely necessary for characterization. And there is little, indeed, that bespeaks Fletcher. Love's Cure was first attributed to Beaumont and Fletcher at a "reviving of the play" after they were both dead; and it was not printed till 1647. It is not unlikely, as G. C. Macaulay holds, that the play was written by Massinger, in or after 1622.
3.—As to that comedy of prostitution, with occasional essays on the special charms of cuckoldry, The Captaine (acted in 1613, maybe as early as 1611, and by the King's Company) there is no convincing external proof of Beaumont's authorship. It is, on the contrary, assigned to Fletcher by one of his younger contemporaries, Hills, whose attributions of such authorship are frequently correct; and its accent throughout is more clearly that of Fletcher than of any other dramatist. The critics are agreed that it is not wholly his, however; and G. C. Macaulay in especial conjectures the presence of Massinger. The verse and prose of a few scenes[185] do not preclude the possibility of Beaumont's coöperation; but I find in them no vestige of his faith in sweet innocence; and in only one,—the awful episode (IV, 5), in which the Father seeks his wanton daughter in a house of shame and would kill her,—his imaginative elevation or his dramatic creativity.
FOOTNOTES:
[180] To employ in this process of separation the characteristics of Fletcher's later dramatic technique as a criterion does not appear to me permissible. For these, however, the reader may consult Miss Hatcher's John Fletcher, A Study on Dramatic Method, and sections 15 and 16 of my essay on The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare, Part Two, Rep. Eng. Com., Vol. III, now in press. The technique is more likely to change than the versification, the style, the mental habit. Its later characteristics may, some of them, have been derived from the association with Beaumont; or they may be of Fletcher's maturer development under different influences and conditions. It is fair to cite them as corroborative evidence in the process of separation, only when they are in continuance of Fletcher's earlier idiosyncrasy. I have, also, refrained from complicating the present discussion by analysis of the style of Massinger, for which see Fleay, N. S. S. Trans., 1874, Shakesp. Manual, 1876, Engl. Studien, 1885-1886, and Chron. Eng. Dram., 1891; Boyle, Engl. Studien, 1881-1887, and N. S. S. Trans., 1886; Macaulay, Francis Beaumont, 1883; Oliphant, Engl. Studien, 1890-1892; Thorndike, Infl. of B. and F., 1901; and section 16 of my essay mentioned above. There is no proof of Massinger's dramatic activity before July 1613, nor of his coöperation with Fletcher until after that date, i. e., after Beaumont's virtual cessation. He may have revised some of Beaumont's lines and scenes; but Beaumont's style is too well defined to be confused with that of Massinger or of any other reviser; or of an imitator, such as Field.
[181] See Thorndike, Infl. of B. and F., p. 85, for discussion and authorities.
[182] Chapter VI.
[183] It was not printed till 1618; but had been acted long before.
[184] II, 1, 2; III, 1, 3, 5; V, 3.
[185] IV, 5; V, 2, 4, 5.