Others may more in lofty Verses move;
I onely, thus, expresse my Truth and Love.
No better testimony to the character of the man who, even though Jonson was still writing, became absolute sovereign of the stage after Shakespeare and Beaumont had ceased, can be found than such as the preceding. To Fletcher's innate modesty, other contemporaries, Lowin and Taylor, who acted in many of his plays, bear testimony in the Dedication of The Wild-Goose Chase: "The Play was of so Generall a receiv'd Acceptance, that (he Himself a Spectator) we have known him unconcern'd, and to have wisht it had been none of His; He, as well as the throng'd Theatre (in despite of his innate Modesty) Applauding this rare issue of his Braine." He was the idol of his actors: "And now, Farewell, our Glory!" continue, in 1652, these victims of "a cruell Destinie"—the closing of the theatres at the outbreak of the Civil War,—"Farewell, your Choice Delight, most noble Gentlemen! Farewell, the grand Wheel that set Us Smaller Motions in Action!"—The wheel of Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger.—"Farewell, the Pride and Life o' the Stage! Nor can we (though in our Ruin) much repine that we are so little, since He that gave us being is no more."
Fletcher was beloved of great men, as they themselves have left their love on record, of Jonson, Beaumont, Chapman, Massinger. If Shakespeare collaborated with him, that speaks for itself. He was an inspiration to young pastoralists like Browne, and to aspiring dramatists like Field. He was a writer of sparkling genius and phenomenal facility. He was careless of myopic criticism, conscious of his dignity,—but unaffectedly simple,—averse to flattering his public or his patron for bread, or for acquaintance, or for the admiration of the indolent, or for "itch of greater fame."[137] If we may take him at his word, and estimate him by the noblest lines he ever wrote,—the verses affixed to The Honest Man's Fortune (acted, 1613),—the keynote of his character as a man among men, was independence. To those "that can look through Heaven, and tell the stars," he says:
Man is his own Star, and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our Acts our Angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still;
And when the Stars are labouring, we believe
It is not that they govern, but they grieve
For stubborn ignorance.
That star is in "the Image of thy Maker's good":
He is my Star, in him all truth I find,
All influence, all fate;
and as for poverty, it is "the light to Heaven ... Nor want, the cause of man, shall make me groan"; for experience teaches us "all we can: To work ourselves into a glorious man." His mistress is not some star of Love, with the increase to wealth or honour she may bring, but of Knowledge and fair Truth:
So I enjoy all beauty and all youth,
And though to time her Lights and Laws she lends,
She knows no Age, that to corruption bends....
Perhaps through all this, there echoes the voice of that præsul splendidus, his father, the Bishop, the friend of Sir Francis Drake, of Burghley, and of the forceful Bishop Bancroft,—a father solicitous, at any rate before he fell into the hands of his fashionable second wife and lost favour with the Queen, for the "Chrystian and godlie education" of his children. However that may be,—whether the noble idea of this confession of faith is a projection from the discipline of youth or an induction from the experience of life, the utterance of Fletcher's inmost personality is here:
Man is his own Star, and that soul that can
Be honest, is the only perfect man.