[177] The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare (Part Two) in Representative English Comedies, Vol. III.
CHAPTER XXI
BEAUMONT'S DICTION
From a consideration of Beaumont's work in his poems, in his Maske and Woman-Hater, and such portions of the three unquestioned Beaumont-Fletcher plays as are marked by his idiosyncrasies of versification, we may arrive at conclusions concerning his diction, rhetorical and poetic.
1. Rhetorical Peculiarities in General.
Beaumont's frequent use in prose of the enclitics 'do' and 'did' has been observed by students of his style. The same peculiarity marks his verse, and occasionally enables the reader to determine the authorship of passages where the metrical tests are inconclusive. His rhetoric is sometimes of the repetitive order, but, as Oliphant has indicated, rather for ends of word-play and irony than for mere expansion as with Fletcher. Such, for instance, is the ironical repetition of a speaker's words by his interlocutor. I note also a tendency to purely dramatic quotation, not common in Fletcher's writing,—e. g., in The Woman-Hater: "Lisping cry 'Good Sir!' and he's thine own"; or "Every one that does not know, cries 'What nobleman is that?'"—and in A King and No King "That hand was never wont to draw a sword, But it cried 'Dead' to something." This test alone, if we had not others of rhetoric and metre, would go far to deciding the respective contributions of our authors to the personality of Captain Bessus in the latter play. The Bessus of the first three acts, undoubtedly Beaumont's, is resonant with such cries and conversational citations; the Bessus of the last two, in a rôle almost as extensive, uses the device but once. Beaumont sometimes indulges in enumerative sentences; but the enumerations are generally in prose and (it will be recalled that he was a member of the Inner Temple) of a mock-legal character, not mere redundancies of detail such as we find in Fletcher. Among other peculiarities of expression is his frequent employment of 'ha' as an interrogative interjection.
2. Stock Words, Phrases, and Figures.
Beaumont is especially fond of the following words and phrasal variations:—The 'basilisk' with his 'deaddoing eye,' 'venom,' 'infect,' 'infection' and 'infectious,' 'corrupt,' 'leprosy,' 'vild,' 'crosses' (for 'misfortunes'), 'crossed' and 'crossly matched,' 'perplex,' 'distracted,' 'starts' (for 'surprises' and 'fitful changes'), 'miseries,' 'griefs,' 'garlands,' 'cut,' 'shoot,' 'dissemble,' 'loathed,' 'salve' (as noun and verb), 'acquaint' and 'acquaintance,' to 'article,' 'pull,' 'piece,' 'frail' and 'frailty,' 'mortal' and 'mortality,' 'fate' and 'destiny,' to 'blot' from earth or memory, 'after-ages,' 'instruments' (for 'servants'). Of his repeated use of 'hills,' 'caves,' 'mines,' 'seas,' 'thunder,' 'beast,' 'bull,' we shall have further exemplification when we consider his figures of speech.