We are not limited, however, to the material afforded by the Maske in our attempt to discover Beaumont's metrical characteristics when writing alone. The Woman-Hater, included among the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher in the folio of 1679, and ascribed to both on the title-page of a quarto of 1649, is assigned by the Prologue of the first quarto, 1607, to a single author—"he that made this play." And, though there is no attribution of authorship on the title-page of the 1607 quarto, we know from the application of verse-tests and tests of diction that, in all but three scenes which have evidently been revised,[151] the author was certainly not Fletcher. An examination of the inner structure of the verse of The Woman-Hater, reveals, except in those scenes, precisely the peculiarities that distinguish Beaumont's Maske: the same infrequency of stress-syllable openings, and of anapæstic substitutions and of suppressed syllables in metrical scheme. In respect of the more evident device of the run-on line The Woman-Hater reaches a percentage twice as high as that employed in Fletcher's unassisted popular dramas; and in respect of the double ending it has a percentage only one-quarter as high. We notice also in this play a much more frequent employment of rhyme than in any of Fletcher's stage plays, and a much larger proportion of prose both for dialogue and soliloquy.
We should have further basis for conclusion concerning Beaumont's metrical style in independent composition, if we could accept the general assumption that he was the author of the Induction to the Foure Playes in One, and of the first two plays, The Triumph of Honour and The Triumph of Love. But for reasons, later to be stated, I agree with Oliphant that the Induction and Honour are not by Beaumont; and I hold that he can not be traced with certainty even in the two or three scenes of Love that seem to be marked by some of his characteristics. The hand of a third writer, Field, is manifest in the non-Fletcherian plays of the series.
But though we can not draw for our purpose upon other plays as his unassisted work, we may derive help from the consideration of two at least of Beaumont's poems,—poems that have something of a dramatic flavour. Though they are in rhyming couplets, they display many of the characteristics of the author's blank verse. In the Letter to Ben Jonson, which is conversational, I count of run-on lines, thirty-eight in eighty, almost fifty per cent, as compared with Fletcher's sometimes ten or twenty per cent, in spite of the superior elasticity of blank verse; and of stress-syllable openings in the same letter twenty-four per cent as compared with the thirty-five per cent of Fletcher's more highly cadenced rhythm in the Shepheardesse. In Beaumont's Elegy on the Countess of Rutland, the last forty-four lines afford a fine example of dramatic fervour—the indictment of the physicians. Here the run-on lines again abound, almost fifty per cent; while the stress-syllable openings are but sixteen per cent—much lower than one may find in many rhymed portions of the Shepheardesse. With regard to all other tests except that of double ending (which does not apply in this kind of heroic couplet), we find that these poems of Beaumont are of a metrical style distinguished by the same characteristics as his blank verse.[152]
2. In Certain Joint-Plays.
If we turn now to a second class of material available,—the three plays indubitably produced in partnership,—and eliminate the portions written in the metrical style of Fletcher, as already ascertained, we may safely attribute the remainder to the junior member of the firm; and so arrive at a final determination of his manner in verse composition.
The three plays, as I have said before, are Philaster, The Maides Tragedy and A King and No King. A passage, which in the opinion of nearly all critics[153] is by all tests distinctively Fletcherian, may be cited from the first of these as an example of that which we eliminate when we look for Beaumont. It is from the beginning of Act V, 4, where the Captain enters:
"Philaster, brave Philaster!" Let Philas|ter
Be deeper in request, my ding [a] dongs,
My paires of deere Indentures, ¦ Kings of Clubs,
^ Than | your cold wa|ter-cham|blets ¦ or | your paint|ings
^ Spit|ted with cop|per, ¦ Let | not your has|ty Silkes,10
^ Or | your branch'd cloth | of bod|kin, ¦ or | your ti|shues,—
^ Deare|ly belov'd | of spi|cèd cake | and cus|tards,—
Your Rob|in-hoods, |^ Scar|lets and Johns, |^ tye | your affec|tions
In darknesse to your Shops. No, dainty duc|kers,
^ Up | with your three|-piled spi|rits, ¦ your | wrought va|lors.15
And let | your un|cut col|lers ¦ make | the King feele
The measure of your mightinesse, Philas|ter![154]
Note the double endings, the end-stopped lines, the stress-syllable openings, the anapæsts, the feminine cæsuræ (dotted), the two omissions of the light syllable after the cæsural pause and the following accent at the beginning of the verse section, and the six feet of line 13.
Of the non-Fletcherian part of Philaster, a typical example is the following from Act I, Scene 2, where Philaster replies to Arethusa's request that he look away from her:
I can indure it: Turne away my face?
I never yet saw enemy that lookt
So dreadfully but that I thought my selfe
As great a Basiliske as he; or spake
So horrible but that I thought my tongue
Bore thunder underneath, as much as his,
Nor beast that I could turne from: shall I then
Beginne to feare sweete sounds? a ladies voyce,
Whom I doe love? Say, you would have my life;
Why, I will give it you; for it is of me
A thing so loath'd, and unto you that aske
Of so poore use, that I shall make no price.
If you intreate, I will unmov'dly heare.