But to the silent streets we turn'd our furies:
A sleeping watchman here we stole the shooes from,
There made a noise, at which he wakes, and follows:
The streets are durty, takes a Queen-hithe cold,
Hard cheese, and that choaks him o' Munday next:
Windows and signs we sent to Erebus;
A crew of bawling curs we entertain'd last,
When having let the pigs loose in out parishes,
O, the brave cry we made as high as Algate!
Down comes a Constable, and the Sow his Sister
Most traiterously tramples upon Authority:
There a whole stand of rug gowns rowted mainly,
And the King's peace put to flight, a purblind pig here
Runs me his head into the Admirable Lanthorn,—
Out goes the light and all turns to confusion.
No one, once acquainted with this style of blank verse, with its end-stopped lines, double endings, stress-syllable openings, feminine cæsuræ, trisyllabic feet, jolts, and heavy extra syllables, can ever turn it to confusion with the verse of any poet before Browning—certainly not with that of Beaumont.
Our materials for a study of Beaumont's individual characteristics in the composition of dramatic blank verse appear at the first sight to be very scanty; for the only example of which we have positive external evidence that it was written by Beaumont alone, is The Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne and the Inner Temple, and unfortunately some critics have excluded it from consideration because of its exceptionally formal and spectacular character and slight dramatic purpose. Written, however, at the beginning of 1613, when the author's metrical manner was a definitely confirmed habit, it affords, in my opinion, the best as well as the most natural approach to the investigation of Beaumont's versification. The following lines may be regarded as typical:
Is great Jove jealous that I am imploy'd
On her Love-errands? ¦ She did never yet
Claspe weak mortality in her white arms,
As he hath often done: I only come
To celebrate the long-wish'd Nuptials
^ Here | in Olym|pia, ¦ which | are now | perform'd.
Betwixt two goodly rivers, ¦ that have mixt
Their gentle, rising waves, and are to grow
^ In | to a thou|sand streams | ^ great | as themselves.
In these nine verses there are no Fletcherian jolts, no double endings. In only two lines trisyllabic feet occur; in only two, final pauses. There are stress-syllable openings in two, with the compensating anapæsts; feminine cæsuræ, in three (dotted); and a stress-syllable opening for the verse-section after the cæsura occurs in but one, whereas there are at least three such in the passage from Monsieur Thomas, quoted above.
Nothing could be more pronounced than the difference between the metrical style of Fletcher's Monsieur Thomas and Rule a Wife and that of Beaumont's Maske, as illustrated here. Fletcher abounds in double endings, trisyllabic feet, and end-stopped lines, and such conversational or lyrical cadences; Beaumont uses them much more sparingly. But while the difference between the genuinely dramatic blank verse of Fletcher and that of Beaumont is sometimes as pronounced as this, it would be unscientific to base the criterion upon comparison of a mature, conversationally dramatic, composition of the former with a stiffly rhetorical declamatory composition of the latter. For a more suitable comparison we must set Beaumont's Maske side by side with something of Fletcher's written in similar formal and declamatory style,—The Faithfull Shepheardesse, for instance, a youthful production in the pastoral spirit and form. Of this a small part, but sufficient for our purpose, is composed in blank verse; and I have cited in the next chapter with another end in view, the opening soliloquy,—to which the reader may turn. But as exemplifying certain of Fletcher's metrical peculiarities, in a style of verse suitable to be compared with Beaumont's in The Maske, the following lines from Act I, 1, are perhaps even more distinctive. "What greatness," says the Shepherdesse,—
What greatness, ¦ or what private hidden power,
^ Is | there in me, | to draw submission
From this rude man and beast? Sure I am mortal,105
The Daughter of a Shepherd; ¦ he was mortal,
And she that bore me mortal: ¦ prick my hand,
And it will bleed; a Feaver shakes me, and
The self-same wind that makes the young Lambs shrink
Makes me | a-cold; | my fear says I am mortal.110
^ Yet have I heard | (my Mother told it me,
And now I do believe it), ¦ if I keep
My Virgin Flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair,
No Goblin, ¦ Wood-god, Fairy, Elf, or Fiend,
^ Sa|tyr, or oth|er power that haunts the Groves,115
Shall hurt my body, ¦ or by vain illusion
^ Draw | me to wan|der ¦ after idle fires.
We have here, in fifteen lines, four double endings, nine final pauses (end-stopped verses), four stress-syllable openings with compensating anapæsts, and seven feminine cæsuræ. In every way this sample even of Fletcher's more formal style displays, in its salient characteristics, a much closer resemblance in kind to the sample of his later blank verse quoted from Rule a Wife, above, than to that quoted from Beaumont's Maske.
When we pass from samples to larger sections, and compare percentages in the one hundred and thirty-one blank verses of The Maske and the first one hundred and sixty-three of The Shepheardesse, we find that in respect of final pauses there is no great difference. There are, in the former, more than is usual with Beaumont—sixty per cent; in the latter, less than is usual with Fletcher—fifty per cent. But in other respects Beaumont's Maske reveals peculiarities of verse altogether different from those of Fletcher, even when he is writing in the declamatory pastoral vein. In the one hundred and thirty-one lines of the Maske we find but one double ending; whereas in the first one hundred and sixty-three blank verses of The Shepheardesse we count as many as fourteen. In these productions the proportion of feminine cæsuræ is practically uniform—about forty per cent. But when we come to examine the more subtle movement of the rhythm, we find that in The Maske not more than ten per cent of the lines open with the stress-syllable, while in the blank verse of the Shepheardesse fully thirty-five out of every hundred lines have that opening and, consequently, impart the lyrical cadence which pervades much of Fletcher's metrical composition. In the matter of anapæstic substitutions, and of stress-syllable openings for the verse-section after the cæsura, Beaumont is similarly inelastic; while the Fletcher of the Shepheardesse displays a marvellous freedom. It follows that in the Maske we encounter but rarely the rhetorical pause, within the verse, compensating for an absent thesis or arsis; while in the pastoral verse of Fletcher we find frequent instances of this delicate dramatic as well as metrical device, and an occasional jolting cæsura.