To this device, and to the intensive use of the pronominal "one" Fletcher is as closely wedded as to the repetition of "all,"—
They have a hand upon us,
A heavy and a hard one.[167]
To wear this jewel near thee; he is a tried one
And one that ... will yet stand by thee.[168]
Other plays conceded by the critics to Fletcher alone, and written in his distinctive blank verse, display the same characteristics of style: The Chances of about 1615, The Loyall Subject of 1618 (like The Humorous Lieutenant of the middle period), and Rule a Wife and Have a Wife of the last period, 1624. I quote at random for him who would apply the tests,—first from The Chances,[169] the following of the repeating revolver style:
Art thou not an Ass?
And modest as her blushes! what a blockhead
Would e're have popt out such a dry Apologie
For this dear friend? and to a Gentlewoman,
A woman of her youth and delicacy?
They are arguments to draw them to abhor us.
An honest moral man? 't is for a Constable:
A handsome man, a wholesome man, a tough man,
A liberal man, a likely man, a man
Made up by Hercules, unslaked with service:
The same to night, to morrow night, the next night,
And so to perpetuity of pleasures.
Now, from The Loyall Subject[170]—the farewell of Archas to his arms and colours. I wish I could quote it all as an example of noble noise, enumerative and penny-a-line rhetoric:
Farewell, my Eagle! when thou flew'st, whole Armies
Have stoopt below thee: at Passage I have seen thee
Ruffle the Tartars, as they fled thy furie,
And bang 'em up together, as a Tassel,
Upon the streach, a flock of fearfull Pigeons.
I yet remember when the Volga curl'd,
The agèd Volga, when he heav'd his head up,
And rais'd his waters high, to see the ruins,
The ruines our swords made, the bloudy ruins;
Then flew this Bird of honour bravely, Gentlemen;
But these must be forgotten: so must these too,
And all that tend to Arms, by me for ever.
And from Act II, Scene 1, pages 101-102, for triplets:
Fight hard, lye hard, feed hard, when they come home, sir....
To be respected, reckon'd well, and honour'd....