Though, in the plays where Beaumont does not control, Fletcher so freely reflects the loose morals of his age, the gross conventional misapprehension of woman's worth, even the cynicism regarding her essential purity,—though Fletcher reflects these conditions in his later plays as well as in his early Faithfull Shepheardesse,[138] and though he, for dramatic ends, accepts the material vulgarity of the lower classes and the perverted and decadent heroics of the upper, there still are "passages in his works where he recurs to a conception which undoubtedly had a very vital significance for him—that of a gentleman,"—to the "merit, manners, and inborn virtue" of the gentleman not conventional but genuine.[139] In Beaumont, that "man of a most strong and searching braine" whose writings and whose record speak the gentleman, he had had the example beside him in the flesh. What that meant is manifest in the encomium of Francis Palmer, written in 1647 from Christ Church, Oxford,
All commendations end
In saying only: Thou wert Beaumont's friend.
The engraving of Fletcher in the 1647 folio was "cut by severall Originall Pieces," says Mosely "which his friends lent me, but withall they tell me that his unimitable Soule did shine through his countenance in such Ayre and Spirit, that the Painters confessed it was not easie to expresse him: As much as could be, you have here, and the Graver hath done his part." The edition of 1711 is the first to publish "effigies" of both poets, "the Head of Mr. Beaumont, and that of Mr. Fletcher, through the favour of the present Earl of Dorset [the seventh Earl], being taken from Originals in the noble Collection his Lordship has at Knowles." The engravings in the Theobald, Seward and Sympson edition of 1742-1750 are by G. Vertue. The engravings in Colman's edition of 1778, are the same, debased. Those in Weber's edition of 1812, are done afresh,—of Beaumont by Evans, of Fletcher by Blood—apparently from the Knole originals. They are an improvement upon those of earlier editions. In Dyce's edition of 1843-1846, H. Robinson's engraving of Beaumont has nobility; his attempt at Fletcher does not improve upon Blood's. All these are in the reverse. The Variorum edition of 1904-1905 gives the beautiful photogravure of Beaumont of which I have already spoken, by Walker and Cockerell, from the original at Knole Park; and an equally soft and expressive photogravure of Fletcher, by Emery Walker, from the painting in the National Portrait Gallery. For the first time the dramatists face as in the originals: Beaumont, toward your left, Fletcher, toward your right.
Fletcher's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery reveals a highbred, thoughtful countenance, large eyes unafraid, wide-awake and keen, the nose aquiline and sensitive, wavily curling hair, hastily combed back, or through which he has run his fingers, a careless, half-buttoned jerkin from which the shirt peeps forth,—all in all a man of more vivacious temper, ready and practical quality than Beaumont.
The authorities of the Gallery, especially through the kindness of Mr. J. D. Milner, who has been good enough to look up various particulars for me, inform me that this portrait of John Fletcher, No. 420, was purchased by the Trustees in March 1876, its previous history being unknown. The painting is by a contemporary but unknown artist, and is similar to the portrait at Knole Park. It was engraved in the reverse by G. Vertue in 1729. They also inform me that another portrait of a different type belongs to the Earl of Clarendon. This, I conjecture, must be that which John Evelyn, in a letter to Samuel Pepys, 12 August, 1689, says he has seen in the first Earl of Clarendon's collection—"most of which [portraits], if not all, are at the present at Cornebery in Oxfordshire." But Evelyn adds that "Beaumont and Fletcher were both in one piece." Yet another portrait said to be of Fletcher, painted in 1625 by C. Janssen, belongs to the Duke of Portland. This Janssen is the Cornelius to whom the alleged portrait of Shakespeare, now at Bulstrode, is attributed. Cornelius did not come to England before Shakespeare's death; and, consequently, not before Beaumont's.
Fletcher died in August 1625. According to Aubrey, "In the great plague, 1625, a Knight of Norfolke (or Suffolke) invited him into the Countrey. He stayed but to make himselfe a suite of cloathes, and while it was makeing, fell sick of the plague and dyed. This I had [1668] from his tayler, who is now [1670] a very old man, and clarke of St. Mary Overy's." The dramatist was buried in St. Saviour's, Southwark, the twenty-ninth of that month. Sir Aston Cockayne's statement, in an epitaph on Fletcher and Massinger, that they lie in the same grave, is probably figurative. Aubrey tells us that Massinger, who died in March 1640, and whose burial is recorded in the register of St. Saviour's, was buried not in the church, but about the middle of one of its churchyards, the Bullhead, next the Bullhead tavern. There are memorials now to both poets in the church, as also to Shakespeare, and Beaumont, and to Edward Alleyn, the actor of the old Admiral's company.
It is generally supposed that Fletcher was never married. The name, John Fletcher, was not unusual in the parish of St. Saviour's, and the records of "John Fletcher" marriages may, therefore, not involve the dramatist. But two items communicated to Dyce[140] by Collier, "more in jest than in earnest," from the Parish-registers, are suggestive, if we reflect that, about 1612 or 1613, the ménage à trois, provided it continued so long, would have lapsed at the time of Beaumont's marriage; and if we can swallow the stage-fiction of Fletcher's "maid Joan" in Bury-Fair (see page 96 above), whole and as something digestible.
These are Collier's cullings from the Registers:
1612. Nov. 3. John Fletcher and Jone Herring [were married]. Reg. of St. Saviour's, Southwark.
John, the son of John Fletcher and of Joan his wife was baptized 25 Feb., 1619. Reg. of St. Bartholomew the Great.