he names of Beaumont and Fletcher," says Lowell, in his lectures on 'Old English Dramatists,' "are as inseparably linked together as those of Castor and Pollux. They are the double star of our poetical firmament, and their beams are so indissolubly mingled that it is vain to attempt any division of them that shall assign to each his rightful share." Theirs was not that dramatic collaboration all too common among the lesser Elizabethan dramatists, at a time when managers, eager to satisfy a restless public incessantly clamoring for novelty, parceled out single acts or even scenes of a play among two or three playwrights, to put together a more or less congruous piece of work. Beaumont and Fletcher joined partnership, not from any outward necessity, but inspired by a common love of their art and true congeniality of mind. Unlike many of their brother dramatists, whom the necessities of a lowly origin drove to seek a livelihood in writing for the theatres, Beaumont and Fletcher were of gentle birth, and sprung from families eminent at the bar and in the Church.
Francis Beaumont.
Beaumont was born at Grace-Dieu in Leicestershire, 1584, the son of a chief justice. His name is first mentioned as a gentleman commoner at Broadgate Hall, now Pembroke College, Oxford. At sixteen he was entered a member of the Inner Temple, but the dry facts of the law did not appeal to his romantic imagination. Nowhere in his work does he draw upon his barrister's experience to the extent that makes the plays of Middleton, who also knew the Inner Temple at first hand, a storehouse of information in things legal. His feet soon strayed, therefore, into the more congenial fields of dramatic invention.
Fletcher was born in Rye, Sussex, the son of a minister who later became Bishop of London. Giles Fletcher the Younger, and Phineas Fletcher, both well-known poets in their day, were his cousins. His early life is as little known as that of Beaumont, and indeed as the lives of most of the other Elizabethan dramatists. He was a pensioner at Benet College, now Corpus Christi, Cambridge, in 1591, and in 1593 he was "Bible-clerk" there. Then we hear nothing of him until 'The Woman Hater' was brought out in 1607. The play has been ascribed to Beaumont alone, to Fletcher alone, and to the two jointly. Whoever may be the author, it is the firstling of his dramatic muse, and worth merely a passing mention. How or when their literary friendship began is not known; but since both were friends of Jonson, both prefixing commendatory verses to the great realist's play of 'The Fox,' it is fair to assume that through him they were brought together, and that both belonged to that brilliant circle of wits, poets, and dramatists who made famous the gatherings at the Mermaid Inn.
They lived in the closest intimacy on the Bankside, near the Globe Theatre in Southwark, sharing everything in common, even the bed, and some say their clothing,--which is likely enough, as it can be paralleled without going back three centuries. It is certain that the more affluent circumstances of Beaumont tided his less fortunate friend over many a difficulty; and the astonishing dramatic productivity of Fletcher's later period was probably due to Beaumont's untimely death, making it necessary for Fletcher to rely on his pen for support.
In 1613 Beaumont's marriage to a Kentish heiress put an end to the communistic bachelor establishment. He died March 6th, 1616, not quite six weeks before Shakespeare, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Fletcher survived him nine years, dying of the plague in 1625. He was buried, not by the side of the poet with whose name his own is forever linked, but at St. Saviour's, Southwark.
"A student of physiognomy," says Swinburne, "will not fail to mark the points of likeness and of difference between the faces of the two friends; both models of noble manhood.... Beaumont the statelier and serener of the two, with clear, thoughtful eyes, full arched brows, and strong aquiline nose, with a little cleft at the tip; a grave and beautiful mouth, with full and finely curved lips; the form of face a very pure oval, and the imperial head, with its 'fair large front' and clustering hair, set firm and carried high with an aspect of quiet command and knightly observation. Fletcher with more keen and fervid face, sharper in outline every way, with an air of bright ardor and glad, fiery impatience; sanguine and nervous, suiting the complexion and color of hair; the expression of the eager eyes and lips almost rivaling that of a noble hound in act to break the leash it strains at;--two heads as lordly of feature and as expressive of aspect as any gallery of great men can show."
It may not be altogether fanciful to transfer this description of their physical bearing to their mental equipment, and draw some conclusions as to their several endowments and their respective share in the work that goes under their common name. Of course it is impossible to draw hard and fast lines of demarkation, and assign to each poet his own words. They, above all others, would probably have resented so dogmatic a procedure, and affirmed the dramas to be their joint offspring,--even as a child partakes of the nature of both its parents.
Their plays are organic structures, with well worked-out plots and for the most part well-sustained characters. They present a complete fusion of the different elements contributed by each author; never showing that agglomeration of incongruous matter so often found among the work of the lesser playwrights, where each hand can be singled out and held responsible for its share. Elaborate attempts, based on verse tests, have been made to disentangle the two threads of their poetic fabric. These attempts show much patient analysis, and are interesting as evidences of ingenuity; but they appeal more to the scholar than to the lover of poetry. Yet a sympathetic reading and a comparison of the plays professedly written by Fletcher alone, after Beaumont's death, with those jointly produced by them in the early part of Fletcher's career, shows the different qualities of mind that went to the making of the work, and the individual characteristics of the men that wrote it. Here Swinburne's eloquence gives concreteness to the picture.