I am no blaster of a lady's beauty,
Nor bold intruder on her special favours;
I know how tender reputation is,
And with what guards it ought to be preserv'd, lady.
As a fair example of this method of filling a page, I recommend the first scene of the third act; and of eloquence by rhetorical 'division,' Perez's description of his room in the next scene: all in terms of three times three.
If now the reader will turn, by way of confirmation, to The Triumph of Time and The Triumph of Death of which the metrical characteristics are admittedly Fletcher's, he will find that there, Fletcher, before Beaumont's retirement from the partnership, is already using in purely dramatic composition the rhetorical mannerisms which mark both the lyrically designed Shepheardesse of his early years and the genuine dramas of the later.
3. Stock Words, Phrases, and Figures.
Beside the rhetorical mannerisms classified in the preceding paragraphs I might rehearse a long list of Fletcher's favourite expressions and figures of speech. Of the former Mr. Oliphant[173] has mentioned 'plaguily,' 'claw'd,' 'slubber'd,' 'too,' 'shrewdly,' 'stuck with,' 'it shews,' 'dwell round about ye,' 'for ever,' 'no way,' (for 'not at all'). In addition I have noted the reiterated 'thus,' 'miracle,' 'prodigious' (in the sense of 'ominous')—'prodigious star,' 'prodigious meteor'—'bugs,' 'monsters,' and 'scorpions'; 'torments,' 'diseases,' 'imposthumes,' 'canker,' 'mischiefs,' 'ruins,' 'blasted,' 'rotten'; 'myrmidons'; 'monuments' (for 'tombs'), 'marble'; 'lustre,' 'crystal,' 'jewels,' 'picture,' 'painting,' 'counterfeit in arras'; 'blushes,' 'palates,' 'illusion,' 'abused' (for 'deceived'), 'blessed,' 'flung off,' 'cloister'd up,' 'fat earth,' 'turtle,' 'passion,' 'Paradise.' Oliphant assigns to Fletcher 'pulled on,' but I find that almost as frequently in Beaumont. 'Poison,' 'contagious' and 'loaden,' also abound in Fletcher, but are sometimes used by Beaumont. Fletcher affects alliterative epithets: 'prince of popinjays,' 'pernicious petticoat prince,' 'pretty prince of puppets,'—and antitheses such as 'prince of wax,' 'pelting prattling peace.' His characters talk much of 'silks' and 'satins,' 'branched velvets' and 'scarlet' clothes. They are said to speak in 'riddles'; they are threatened with 'ribald rhymes'; they shall be 'bawled in ballads,' or 'chronicled,' 'cut and chronicled.'
Another characteristic of Fletcher's diction is his preference for the pronoun ye instead of you. This was pointed out by Mr. R. B. McKerrow, who in his edition of The Spanish Curate[174] notes that in the scenes generally attributed, in accordance with other tests, to Fletcher, ye occurs 271 times, while in the scenes attributed to Massinger it occurs but four. That is to say, for every ye in Fletcher's part there are but 0.65 you's; for every ye in Massinger's part, 50 you's. Mr. W. W. Greg, applying the test in his edition of The Elder Brother,[175] and counting the y'are's as instances of ye, finds that the percentage of ye's to you's in Fletcher's part is almost three times as high as in Massinger's. In a recent article in The Nation[176] Mr. Paul Elmer More communicates his independent observation of the same mannerism in Fletcher. Though he has been anticipated in part, his study adds to McKerrow's the valuable information that Fletcher uses the ye for you in "both numbers and cases, and in both serious and comic scenes." Mr. More's statistics favour the conclusion that the test distinguishes Fletcher not only from Massinger, but from other collaborators: Middleton, Rowley, Field, Jonson, Tourneur. They do not carry conviction regarding Shakespeare, whose habit as Greg and others had already announced varies in a perplexing manner. Nor does Mr. More arrive at any definite result concerning the test "when applied to the mixed work of Beaumont and Fletcher." For though the high percentage of ye's in the third and fourth of the Foure Playes confirms the general attribution of those 'Triumphs' to Fletcher, the low percentage in the first two 'Triumphs' does not justify "the common opinion which attributes them to Beaumont." Their author, as I have elsewhere stated, was probably Field. "In the plays which are units," continues Mr. More, "such as The Maid's Tragedy, Philaster, A King and No King, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and The Coxcomb, this mark of Fletcher does not occur at all. It should seem that the writing here, at least in its final form, was almost entirely Beaumont's." I have gone through all the plays which have been ordinarily regarded as joint-productions of Beaumont and Fletcher, and find that in this surmise Mr. More is right. The Knight, to be sure, is Beaumont's alone; but with regard to the other four plays mentioned above, in which they undoubtedly coöperated, the suggestion that the writing, at least in its final form, was almost entirely Beaumont's, because of the practically complete absence of ye's, is justified by the facts. It is, also, helpful in the examination of plays not mentioned in this list. It has, in connection with other considerations, assisted me to the conclusion that Fletcher went over two or three scenes of The Woman-Hater, stamping them with his ye's after Beaumont had finished it as a whole; and it has confirmed me in the belief that The Scornful Ladie was one of the latest joint-plays, only partly revised by Beaumont,—and that, not long before his death. Fletcher's preference for ye is a distinctive mannerism. His usage varies from the employment of one-third as many ye's to that of twice as many ye's as you's; whereas Beaumont rarely uses a ye. Even more distinctive is Fletcher's use of y'are, and of ye in the objective case. The latter, Beaumont does not tolerate.
For figurative purposes Fletcher finds material most frequently in the phenomena of winter and storm: 'frosts,' 'nipping frosts,' 'nipping winds,' 'hail,' 'cakes of ice,' 'icicles,' 'thaw,' 'tempests,' 'thunders,' 'billows,' 'mariners' and 'storm-tossed barks,' 'wild overflows' of waters in stream or torrent; in the phenomena of heat and light: 'suns,' the 'icy moon,' the 'Dog-star' or the 'Dog,' the 'Sirian star,' the 'cold Bear' and 'raging Lion,' 'Aetna,' 'fire and flames'; of trees: root and branch, foliage and fruit; of the oak and clinging vine; of the rose or blossom and the 'destroying canker'; of fever and ague; of youth and desire, and of Death 'beating larums to the blood,' of our days that are 'marches to the grave,' and of our lives 'tedious tales soon forgotten.' I have elsewhere called attention to the numerous variations which he plays upon the 'story of a woman.' His 'monuments' are in frequent requisition and, by preference, they 'sweat'; men pursued by widows fear to be 'buried alive in another man's cold monument.' Other common images are 'rock him to another world,' 'bestride a billow,' 'plough up the sea.' He indulges in extended mythological tropes as of the 'Carthage queen' and Ariadne; is especially attracted by Adonis, Hylas (whom he may have got either from Theocritus or the Marquis D'Urfé's Astræan character), and Hercules; and, in general, he levies more freely than Beaumont on commonplace classical material. In his unassisted dramas his fondness for personification seems to grow: many pages are thick with capitalized abstractions; and the poetry, then, is usually limited to the capitalization. The curious reader will find most of Fletcher's predilections in image-making clustered in three or four typical passages of the later and unassisted plays, such as Alphonso's raving in A Wife for a Month, IV, 4; and in passages, undoubtedly of his verse and diction, in plays written conjointly with Beaumont, such as that of Spaconia's outburst in King and No King, IV, 2, 45-62.
Fletcher abounds in optatives: 'Would Gods thou hadst been so blest!' 'Would there were any safety in thy sex!' and the like. He is also given to rhetorical interrogations and elaborate exclamations; more so than Beaumont. He affects the lighter kind of oath, the appeal to something sacred, in attestation—'Witness Heaven!' In entreaty—'High Heaven, defend us!' Or in mere ejaculation—'Equal Heavens!' He varies his asseverations so that they appear less bluntly profane: 'By my life!' 'By those lights, I vow!'—or more appropriate to the emergency: 'By all holy in Heaven and Earth!' He swears occasionally 'By the Gods,' but not so frequently as Beaumont, for there was a puritanical reaction after Beaumont's death. In the early joint-plays he affects particularly 'all the gods,' 'By all those gods, you swore by!' 'By more than all the gods!' In his imprecations he is even more sulphurous than Beaumont: 'Hell bless you for it!' 'Hell take me then!' 'Thou all-sin, all-hell, and last all-devils!'
In summary let us say of Fletcher's diction, that its vocabulary is repetitious; its sentence-structure, loose, cumulative, trailing: that its larger movement is, in general, dramatic, conversational, abrupt, rather than lyrical, declamatory, reflective. He writes for the plot—forward: not from the character—outward. When he bestows a lyrical or descriptive touch upon the narrative it is always incidental to conversation or stage business. When he indulges in a classical reminiscence he permits himself to embroider and bedizen; but usually his ribbons (from a scantly furnished, much-rummaged wardrobe) are carelessly pinned on. While capable, especially in tragedy, of occasional long speeches, he prefers the brief interchange of utterance, the rapid fire and spasm of dialogue.