5.—Evidence, both external and internal, points to the production of The Knight of the Burning Pestle between July 10, 1607 and some time in March 1608. Since the first quarto (1613) is anonymous, our earliest indication of authorship is that of the title-pages of the second and third (1635), which ascribe the play to Beaumont and Fletcher; and our next, the Cockpit list of 1639 where it is included in a sequence of five plays in which one or both had a hand.
The dedication of the first quarto speaks in one place of the "parents" of the play, and in others of its "father"; and the address prefixed to the second quarto speaks of the "author." Critics when relying upon verse-tests think that they trace the hand of Fletcher in several scenes.[190] But in those scenes, even when the double-endings might indicate Fletcher, the frequency of rhymes, masculine and feminine, is altogether above his usage; the number of end-stopped lines is ordinarily below it; and the diction, save in one or two brief passages,[191] is his neither in vocabulary nor rhetorical device. The verse is singularly free from alliteration; and the prose, in which over a third of the play is written, displays that characteristic of Fletcher in only one speech,[192] and, there, with ludicrous intent. Though, on the other hand, the verse is in many respects different from that which Beaumont employed in his more stereotyped drama, it displays in several passages his acknowledged peculiarity in conjunction with a diction and manner of thought undoubtedly his. The prose is generally of a piece with that of his other comic writing, as in The Woman-Hater more especially; and the scenes of low life and the conversation are coloured by his rhetoric as we know them in Philaster, A King and No King, and The Coxcombe. Of the portrayal of humours, mock-heroic and burlesque, the same statements hold true. The verse of Jasper's soliloquy:[193]
Now, Fortune, if thou beest not onely ill,
Shew me thy better face, and bring about
My desperate wheele, that I may clime at length
And stand,—
is in the usual manner of Beaumont. Luce's lament, beginning:[194]
Thou that art
The end of all, and the sweete rest of all
Come, come, ô, Death! bring me to thy peace,
And blot out all the memory I nourish
Both of my father and my cruell friend,—
and ending:
How happy had I bene, if, being borne,
My grave had bene my cradle!
has both the diction and the point of view of Beaumont; and its verse has not more of the double-endings than he sometimes uses. The subject and the mock-heroic purpose do not call for his usual dramatic vocabulary: but we recognize his 'dissemble,' his 'carduus' and 'phlebotomy' (compare Philaster), his 'eyes shoot me through,' his 'do's.' We recognize him in the frequent appeals to Chance and Fortune, in the sensational determination of Jasper to test Luce's devotion at the point of the sword, and in the series of sensational complications and dénouements which conclude the romantic plot. In short, I agree with the critics[195] who attribute the play, wholly or chiefly, to Beaumont. Fletcher may have inserted a few verses here and there; but there is nothing in sentiment, phrase, or artifice, to prove that he did.