The resemblance of the controversy between Melantius and Amintor to that of Brutus with Cassius has already been noticed; and everyone will acknowledge the resemblance of the "quizzical reserve" of his Scornful Lady to Olivia's, of Aspatia's melancholy in the Maides Tragedy to Ophelia's, and of Bellario's situation in Philaster to that of Viola in Twelfth Night.[77] This last play, indeed, acted, as we have seen, in the Middle Temple when Beaumont was a freshman in the Inns of Court, affects Beaumont's method and style, more than any other save the Pericles (1607, or January to May 1608), which prepared the way for the more important later romantic dramas of Shakespeare himself as well as for those of Beaumont and Fletcher.
During the years when Shakespeare's company was producing their romantic dramas, they were breathing, with Shakespeare, Burbadge, and Heming, the atmosphere of the Globe and Blackfriars; and, after Shakespeare had taken up a more continuous residence at Stratford, in 1611, Fletcher, at any rate, not only kept in touch with the remaining shareholders and actors of the Globe but with the Master himself, and conversed and wrote with him on various occasions. These may have fallen either at the New Place at Stratford, where the now wealthy country gentleman was wont to entertain his friends, or when Shakespeare came to town—as in May 1612. At that time his former host, Mountjoy's, son-in-law was suing the tiremaker for his wife's unpaid dower, and "William Shakespeare of Stratford upon Avon in the Countye of Warwicke, Gentleman" who had helped to make the marriage, was summoned as a witness.[78] Or between July and November of that year, when the "base fellow" Kirkham was bringing against Burbadge and Heming a suit concerning the profits of the Blackfriars theatre, in which as a shareholder Shakespeare, too, must have been interested; and when Christopher Brooke of the pastoral poets in Beaumont's Inns of Court was of the "councell" for Shakespeare's company.[79] Or in March 1613, when Shakespeare was negotiating for the house in Blackfriars which he bought that month from Henry Walker. In the latter year the King's Players performed two plays in the writing of which there is reason to believe that Shakespeare and Fletcher participated: The Two Noble Kinsmen, first published as "by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare, gentlemen," in a quarto of 1634; and a lost play licensed for publication as the "History of Cardenio by Fletcher and Shakespeare," in 1653. Of the former, critics are generally agreed that Fletcher wrote about a dozen scenes and that Shakespeare in all probability wrote others. Maybe, however, Fletcher, and perhaps later Massinger, merely revised and completed Shakespeare's original draft of the play left in the company's hands. That The Two Noble Kinsmen borrows its antimasque from our friend Beaumont's Maske of the Inner Temple, which was presented in February 1613, may be construed as indicating that he, too, still had some connection with Shakespeare's company. But it is more likely that he was now happily married and settled in Kent, and didn't care what they did with his plays. Probably the Shakespeare-Fletcher play was acted soon after Beaumont's, and in the same year. With regard to the authorship of the Cardenio we have nothing but the publisher's statement; but we know that the play was written after the appearance, in 1612, of the story upon which it is based, in Shelton's English translation of the first part of Don Quixote; and that it was acted at Court by Shakespeare's and Fletcher's company in May and June 1613.
The partnership of Fletcher and Shakespeare in the writing of these two plays has been questioned, but as to their collaboration in a third, Henry VIII, there is not much possibility of doubt. In the conception of the leading characters Shakespeare is present, and in many of their finest lines, and specifically in at least five scenes; while Fletcher appears in practically all the rest. The play was acted by the King's Men at the Globe on June 29, 1613, and was included as Shakespeare's by his judicious editors and intimate friends, Heming and Condell, in the folio of 1623.
BEN JONSON
From the miniature belonging to Mr. Evelyn Shirley
During these years of fruition the friendship with Jonson, who was writing at the time for both the companies to which our young dramatists gave their plays, continued apparently without interruption. It is attested by commendatory verses written by Beaumont for The Silent Woman, which was acted early in 1610, and by verses of both Fletcher and Beaumont prefixed to Jonson's tragedy of Catiline, published in 1611. On the latter occasion Beaumont commends Jonson's contempt for "the wild applause of common people," and declares that he is "three ages yet from understood;" while Fletcher even more enthusiastically avers,—
Thy labours shall outlive thee; and, like gold
Stampt for continuance, shall be current where
There is a sun, a people, or a year.
The generous and graceful response of Ben to the reverence of the younger of the twain appears in a tribute the date of which is uncertain, but which was included by the author among his Epigrams, entered in the Stationers' Registers, 1612.
To Francis Beaumont.
How I doe love thee, Beaumont and thy Muse,
That unto me dost such religion use!
How I doe feare my selfe, that am not worth
The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth!
At once thou mak'st me happie, and unmak'st;
And giving largely to me, more thou tak'st.
What fate is mine, that so it selfe bereaves?
What art is thine, that so thy friend deceives?
When even there, where most thou praisest mee,
For writing better, I must envie thee.