Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring
Their fiery torches his diurnal ring,
Ere twice in murk and accidental damp
Moist Hesperus hath quenched his sleepy lamp;
Or four and twenty times the pilot's glass
Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass,
What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly.
In terms strikingly reminiscent of this, Beaumont's courtier Valore instructs the gourmand of The Woman-Hater, how to address royalty:
You must not talk to him [the Duke]
As you doe to an ordinary man,
Honest plain sence, but you must wind about him.
For example: if he should aske you what o'clock it is,
You must not say, "If it please your grace, 'tis nine";
But thus, "Thrice three aclock, so please my Sovereign";
Or thus, "Look how many Muses there doth dwell
Upon the sweet banks of the learned Well,
And just so many stroaks the clock hath struck."
And when the Duke asks Lazarillo, thus instructed, "how old are you?" we can imagine with what mirth the graceless Beaumont puts into his mouth:
Full eight and twenty several Almanacks
Have been compiled all for several years,
Since first I drew this breath; four prentiships
Have I most truly served in this world;
And eight and twenty times hath Phoebus' car
Run out his yearly course since—.
Duke. I understand you, sir.
Lucio. How like an ignorant poet he talks!
Is it possible that associating with the literary school of the day, his brother John, Drayton, Chapman, and Ben Jonson, the young satirist, here vents something like spleen? Or is this purely dramatic utterance?
Like parodies of phrases in Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, and other Shakespearean plays ripple the stream of Beaumont's humour. They are, however, always good-natured. But if Beaumont laughs when Shakespeare exaggerates, he also pays him in his later plays the tribute of imitation in numerous poetic borrowings of serious lines and telling situations: as where the King in Philaster tries to pray but, like the kneeling Claudius, despairs—
How can I
Looke to be heard of gods that must be just,
Praying upon the ground I hold by wrong?—
or "in the Hamlet-like situation and character of Philaster" himself; as, for instance, when to the usurping King who has said of him, "Sure hees possest," Philaster retorts:
Yes, with my fathers spirit. Its here, O King,
A dangerous spirit! Now he tells me, King,
I was a Kings heire, bids me be a King,
And whispers to me, these are all my subjects.
Tis strange he will not let me sleepe, but dives
In to my fancy, and there gives me shapes
That kneele and doe me service, cry me king:
But I'le suppresse him: he's a factious spirit,
And will undoe me.