CHAPTER XXIV
"THE WOMAN-HATER," AND "THE KNIGHT"
Four.—The Woman-Hater was entered in the Stationers' Registers, May 20, 1607, and published in quarto (twice, with but slight variation) the same year "as lately acted by the Children of Paules." Of the date of composition, probably the spring of 1607, I have written in Chapter VI, above. There is no indication of authorship in either quarto; but the Prologue assigns it to a single author—"he that made this play." The quarto of 1648 prints it as "by J. Fletcher Gent."; that of 1649, as by Beaumont and Fletcher. The Prologue of 1649, however, written by D'Avenant for an undated revival of the play and addressed to the Ladies, definitely ascribes the authorship to one "poet," who "to the stars your sex did raise; for which, full twenty years he wore the bays." The "twenty years" can apply only to Fletcher.
In the lines which follow, D'Avenant has been supposed to credit the same author with the whole of The Maides Tragedy, Philaster, and A King and No King as well:
'T was he reduc'd Evadne from her scorn,
And taught the sad Aspatia how to mourn;
Gave Arethusa's love a glad relief;
And made Panthea elegant in grief.
We now know, from the application of metrical and rhetorical tests, that but a small part of each of the plays here alluded to was written by Fletcher. If D'Avenant has attributed to Fletcher in these cases plays of which the larger part was written by Beaumont, he was but consistent in error when he ascribed to Fletcher The Woman-Hater, in which there is very little that betrays resemblance to Fletcher's style. If, on the other hand, D'Avenant in the verses quoted above intended to attribute to Fletcher merely individual scenes of The Maides Tragedy, etc., he must have had a knowledge of the respective authorship of the dramatists hardly to be reconciled with the palpable mistake of assigning The Woman-Hater to Fletcher. For, by an odd coincidence, he has indicated in the first and second verses two[186] of the five scenes of The Maides Tragedy, and in the third, two[187] of the five scenes of Philaster which our modern criticism has proved to be Fletcher's. The reference in the fourth line is more vague; but it has the merit of indicating the only scene of A King and No King[188] in which, according to our critical tests, Fletcher has contributed to the characterization of Panthea. With regard to The Woman-Hater, it would appear that D'Avenant was carelessly following the mistaken ascription of authorship on the title-page of the quarto of 1648.
Fleay, Boyle, Macaulay, and Ward, with but slight hesitation, pronounce The Woman-Hater to be an independent production of Beaumont, written while he was under the influence of Ben Jonson; but as I shall presently show, Fletcher has revised a few scenes. Oliphant feels inclined to join the critics mentioned above, but cannot blind himself "to the presence of Fletcher in a couple of scenes." One of these is III, 1.[189] In the quartos this scene is divided into two. By the ye test the first half-scene, running to Enter Duke, Etc., in which Oriana tempts Gondarino, would be Fletcher's (15 ye's to 9 you's); but the percentage of double endings is too low, and that of run-on lines too high for him. I think that he is revising Beaumont's original sketch. The second half-scene and the rest of the act are, by the ye test and all other criteria, Beaumont's. The metrical style of the act as a whole is Beaumont's; so also the enclitic 'do's' and 'did's,' the Beaumontesque 'basilisk,' 'dissemble,' the mock-heroic prayers, and mock-legal nicety of enumeration, the racy ironic prose, and the burlesque Shakespearian echoes—"That pleasing piece of frailty that we call woman," etc. The other passage doubtfully assigned to Fletcher, by Oliphant—forty lines following Enter Ladies in V, 5 (Dyce)—more closely resembles his manner of verse, but is not markedly of his rhetorical stamp. But by the ye test (24 ye's to 39 you's) the whole of that scene, opening Enter Arigo and Oriana is Fletcher's, or Fletcher's revision of Beaumont. So, also, by the ye test is another scene not before ascribed to Fletcher, IV, 2 (27 ye's to 25 you's), as far as Enter Oriana and her Waiting-woman. In this and the other ye scenes, the ye frequently occurs in the objective,—which is absolute Fletcher. The rest of this scene, constituting two in the quartos, is pure Beaumont.—The play is, so far as we can determine, Beaumont's earliest attempt at dramatic production. Fletcher touched it up, and his revision shows in the scenes mentioned above; that is to say, in about sixteen out of the seventy pages as printed in the Cambridge English Classics.
The manifestly exaggerated torments of Gondarino "who will be a scourge to all females in his life," the amorous affectation of Oriana, the "stratagems and ambuscadoes" of the hungry courtier in his pursuit of "the chaste virgin-head" of a fish, the zealous stupidity of the intelligencers are, as we have already noted, of the humours school; and the work is that of a beginner. But the "humours" are flavoured with Beaumont's humanity; the mirth is his, genuine and rollicking. The satire is concrete; and the play as a whole, a promising precursor of the purple-flowered prickly pear, next to be considered,—also undoubtedly Beaumont's.