So Beaumont dy'd; yet left in Legacy His Rules and Standard-wit (Fletcher) to Thee.
And still another Oxford man, born four years before Beaumont's death, the Reverend Josias Howe, reasserting the essential unity of their compositions, concedes with regard to Fletcher,--
Perhaps his quill flew stronger, when 'T was weaved with his Beaumont's pen; And might with deeper wonder hit.
These and similar statements of 1647, essentially correct, concerning the force, depth, and critical acumen of Beaumont had been anticipated in the testimonials printed during his lifetime and down to 1640, especially in those of Jonson, Davies, Drayton, and Earle.
A verdict, much more dogmatic, and responsible for the erroneous tradition which long survived, proceeded from one of the "sons of Ben,"
William Cartwright, himself an author of dramas, junior proctor of the University of Oxford in 1643, and "the most florid and seraphical preacher in the university." He may have derived the germ of his information from Jonson himself, but he had developed it in a one-sided manner when, writing in 1643 "upon the report of the printing of the dramaticall poems of Master John Fletcher," he implied that the genius of "knowing Beaumont" was purely restrictive and critical,--telling us that Beaumont was fain to bid Fletcher "be more dull," to "write again,"
to "bate some of his fire"; and that even when Fletcher had "blunted and allayed" his genius according to the critic's command, the critic Beaumont, not yet satisfied,
Added his sober spunge, and did contract Thy plenty to lesse wit to make 't exact.
This distorted image of Beaumont's artistic quality as merely critical lived, as we shall see, for many a year. We shall, also, see that it is not from any such secondary sources that supplementary information regarding the poet himself is to be derived, but from a scientific determination of his share in the dramas ordinarily and vaguely assigned to an undifferentiated Beaumont and Fletcher.
CHAPTER XV
A FEW WORDS OF FLETCHER'S LATER YEARS
Beside the dramas which there is any meritorious reason for assigning to the joint-authorship of the two friends, some dozen plays were produced by Fletcher alone, or in collaboration with others, before the practical cessation, in 1613, or thereabout, of Beaumont's dramatic activity.
After that time Fletcher's name was attached, either as sole author or as the associate of Massinger, Field, William Rowley, and perhaps others, to about thirty more. From 1614 on, he was the successor of Shakespeare as dramatic poet of the King's Players. Jonson's masques delighted the Court, but no writer of tragedy or comedy,--not Jonson, nor Philip Massinger, who was now Fletcher's closest associate, nor Middleton or Rowley, Dekker, Ford, or Webster,--compared with him in popularity at Court and in the City. He is not merely an illustrious personality, the principal author of harrowing tragedies such as _Valentinian_, the sole author of tragicomedies such as _The Loyall Subject_, and long-lived comedies--_The Chances_, _Rule a Wife and Have a Wife_, and several more,--he is a syndicate: he stands sponsor for plays like _The Queene of Corinth_ and _The Knight of Malta_ in which others collaborated largely with him; and his name is occasionally stamped upon plays of associates, in which he had no hand whatever.
"Thou grew'st," says his contemporary and admirer, John Harris,--
"Thou grew'st to govern the whole Stage alone: In which orbe thy throng'd light did make the star, Thou wert th' Intelligence did move that Sphear."
Dr. Harris, Professor of Greek at Oxford in the heyday of Fletcher's glory, and a most distinguished divine, writes, in 1647, as one who had known Fletcher, personally,--observes his careless ease in composing, his manner of conversation,
The Stage grew narrow while thou grew'st to be In thy whole life an Exc'llent Comedie,--
and admires his behaviour:
To these a Virgin-modesty which first met Applause with blush and fear, as if he yet Had not deserv'd; till bold with constant praise His browes admitted the unsought-for Bayes.
So, addressing the public, concludes this panegyrist,--
Hee came to be sole Monarch, and did raign In Wits great Empire, abs'lute Soveraign.
It is of these years of triumph that another of "the large train of Fletcher's friends," Richard Brome, Ben Jonson's faithful servant and loving friend, and his disciple in the drama, tells us:
His Works (says Momus) nay, his Plays you'd say: Thou hast said right, for that to him was Play Which was to others braines a toyle: with ease He playd on Waves which were Their troubled Seas....
But to the Man againe, of whom we write, The Writer that made Writing his Delight, Rather then Worke. He did not pumpe, nor drudge, To beget Wit, or manage it; nor trudge To Wit-conventions with Note-booke, to gleane Or steale some Jests to foist into a Scene: He scorn'd those shifts. You that have known him, know The common talke that from his Lips did flow, And run at waste, did savour more of Wit, Then any of his time, or since have writ, (But few excepted) in the Stages way: His Scenes were Acts, and every Act a Play.
I knew him in his strength; even then when He-- That was the Master of his Art and Me-- Most knowing Johnson (proud to call him Sonne) In friendly Envy swore, He had out-done His very Selfe. I knew him till he dyed; And at his dissolution, what a Tide Of sorrow overwhelm'd the Stage; which gave Volleys of sighes to send him to his grave; And grew distracted in most violent Fits (For She had lost the best part of her Wits) ...
"Others," concludes this old admirer unpretentiously,
Others may more in lofty Verses move; I onely, thus, expresse my Truth and Love.
No better testimony to the character of the man who, even though Jonson was still writing, became absolute sovereign of the stage after Shakespeare and Beaumont had ceased, can be found than such as the preceding. To Fletcher's innate modesty, other contemporaries, Lowin and Taylor, who acted in many of his plays, bear testimony in the _Dedication_ of _The Wild-Goose Chase_: "The Play was of so Generall a receiv'd Acceptance, that (he Himself a Spectator) we have known him unconcern'd, and to have wisht it had been none of His; He, as well as the throng'd Theatre (in despite of his innate Modesty) Applauding this rare issue of his Braine." He was the idol of his actors: "And now, Farewell, our Glory!" continue, in 1652, these victims of "a cruell Destinie"--the closing of the theatres at the outbreak of the Civil War,--"Farewell, your Choice Delight, most noble Gentlemen! Farewell, the grand Wheel that set Us Smaller Motions in Action!"--The wheel of Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger.--"Farewell, the Pride and Life o' the Stage! Nor can we (though in our Ruin) much repine that we are so little, since He that gave us being is no more."
Fletcher was beloved of great men, as they themselves have left their love on record, of Jonson, Beaumont, Chapman, Massinger. If Shakespeare collaborated with him, that speaks for itself. He was an inspiration to young pastoralists like Browne, and to aspiring dramatists like Field.
He was a writer of sparkling genius and phenomenal facility. He was careless of myopic criticism, conscious of his dignity,--but unaffectedly simple,--averse to flattering his public or his patron for bread, or for acquaintance, or for the admiration of the indolent, or for "itch of greater fame."[137] If we may take him at his word, and estimate him by the noblest lines he ever wrote,--the verses affixed to _The Honest Man's Fortune_ (acted, 1613),--the keynote of his character as a man among men, was independence. To those "that can look through Heaven, and tell the stars," he says:
Man is his own Star, and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate; Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our Acts our Angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still; And when the Stars are labouring, we believe It is not that they govern, but they grieve For stubborn ignorance.
That star is in "the Image of thy Maker's good":
He is my Star, in him all truth I find, All influence, all fate;
and as for poverty, it is "the light to Heaven ... Nor want, the cause of man, shall make me groan"; for experience teaches us "all we can: To work ourselves into a glorious man." His mistress is not some star of Love, with the increase to wealth or honour she may bring, but of Knowledge and fair Truth:
So I enjoy all beauty and all youth, And though to time her Lights and Laws she lends, She knows no Age, that to corruption bends....
Perhaps through all this, there echoes the voice of that _praesul splendidus_, his father, the Bishop, the friend of Sir Francis Drake, of Burghley, and of the forceful Bishop Bancroft,--a father solicitous, at any rate before he fell into the hands of his fashionable second wife and lost favour with the Queen, for the "Chrystian and godlie education"
of his children. However that may be,--whether the noble idea of this confession of faith is a projection from the discipline of youth or an induction from the experience of life, the utterance of Fletcher's inmost personality is here:
Man is his own Star, and that soul that can Be honest, is the only perfect man.
Though, in the plays where Beaumont does not control, Fletcher so freely reflects the loose morals of his age, the gross conventional misapprehension of woman's worth, even the cynicism regarding her essential purity,--though Fletcher reflects these conditions in his later plays as well as in his early _Faithfull Shepheardesse_,[138] and though he, for dramatic ends, accepts the material vulgarity of the lower classes and the perverted and decadent heroics of the upper, there still are "passages in his works where he recurs to a conception which undoubtedly had a very vital significance for him--that of a gentleman,"--to the "merit, manners, and inborn virtue" of the gentleman not conventional but genuine.[139] In Beaumont, that "man of a most strong and searching braine" whose writings and whose record speak the gentleman, he had had the example beside him in the flesh. What that meant is manifest in the encomium of Francis Palmer, written in 1647 from Christ Church, Oxford,
All commendations end In saying only: Thou wert Beaumont's friend.
The engraving of Fletcher in the 1647 folio was "cut by severall Originall Pieces," says Mosely "which his friends lent me, but withall they tell me that his unimitable Soule did shine through his countenance in such _Ayre_ and _Spirit_, that the Painters confessed it was not easie to expresse him: As much as could be, you have here, and the Graver hath done his part." The edition of 1711 is the first to publish "effigies" of both poets, "the Head of Mr. Beaumont, and that of Mr.
Fletcher, through the favour of the present Earl of Dorset [the seventh Earl], being taken from Originals in the noble Collection his Lordship has at Knowles." The engravings in the Theobald, Seward and Sympson edition of 1742-1750 are by G. Vertue. The engravings in Colman's edition of 1778, are the same, debased. Those in Weber's edition of 1812, are done afresh,--of Beaumont by Evans, of Fletcher by Blood--apparently from the Knole originals. They are an improvement upon those of earlier editions. In Dyce's edition of 1843-1846, H. Robinson's engraving of Beaumont has nobility; his attempt at Fletcher does not improve upon Blood's. All these are in the reverse. The Variorum edition of 1904-1905 gives the beautiful photogravure of Beaumont of which I have already spoken, by Walker and Cockerell, from the original at Knole Park; and an equally soft and expressive photogravure of Fletcher, by Emery Walker, from the painting in the National Portrait Gallery. For the first time the dramatists face as in the originals: Beaumont, toward your left, Fletcher, toward your right.
Fletcher's portrait in the National Portrait Gallery reveals a highbred, thoughtful countenance, large eyes unafraid, wide-awake and keen, the nose aquiline and sensitive, wavily curling hair, hastily combed back, or through which he has run his fingers, a careless, half-buttoned jerkin from which the shirt peeps forth,--all in all a man of more vivacious temper, ready and practical quality than Beaumont.
The authorities of the Gallery, especially through the kindness of Mr.
J. D. Milner, who has been good enough to look up various particulars for me, inform me that this portrait of John Fletcher, No. 420, was purchased by the Trustees in March 1876, its previous history being unknown. The painting is by a contemporary but unknown artist, and is similar to the portrait at Knole Park. It was engraved in the reverse by G. Vertue in 1729. They also inform me that another portrait of a different type belongs to the Earl of Clarendon. This, I conjecture, must be that which John Evelyn, in a letter to Samuel Pepys, 12 August, 1689, says he has seen in the first Earl of Clarendon's collection--"most of which [portraits], if not all, are at the present at Cornebery in Oxfordshire." But Evelyn adds that "Beaumont and Fletcher were both in one piece." Yet another portrait said to be of Fletcher, painted in 1625 by C. Janssen, belongs to the Duke of Portland. This Janssen is the Cornelius to whom the alleged portrait of Shakespeare, now at Bulstrode, is attributed. Cornelius did not come to England before Shakespeare's death; and, consequently, not before Beaumont's.
Fletcher died in August 1625. According to Aubrey, "In the great plague, 1625, a Knight of Norfolke (or Suffolke) invited him into the Countrey.
He stayed but to make himselfe a suite of cloathes, and while it was makeing, fell sick of the plague and dyed. This I had [1668] from his tayler, who is now [1670] a very old man, and clarke of St. Mary Overy's." The dramatist was buried in St. Saviour's, Southwark, the twenty-ninth of that month. Sir Aston Cockayne's statement, in an epitaph on Fletcher and Massinger, that they lie in the same grave, is probably figurative. Aubrey tells us that Massinger, who died in March 1640, and whose burial is recorded in the register of St. Saviour's, was buried not in the church, but about the middle of one of its churchyards, the Bullhead, next the Bullhead tavern. There are memorials now to both poets in the church, as also to Shakespeare, and Beaumont, and to Edward Alleyn, the actor of the old Admiral's company.
It is generally supposed that Fletcher was never married. The name, John Fletcher, was not unusual in the parish of St. Saviour's, and the records of "John Fletcher" marriages may, therefore, not involve the dramatist. But two items communicated to Dyce[140] by Collier, "more in jest than in earnest," from the Parish-registers, are suggestive, if we reflect that, about 1612 or 1613, the _menage a trois_, provided it continued so long, would have lapsed at the time of Beaumont's marriage; and if we can swallow the stage-fiction of Fletcher's "maid Joan" in _Bury-Fair_ (see page 96 above), whole and as something digestible.
These are Collier's cullings from the Registers:
1612. Nov. 3. John Fletcher and Jone Herring [were married].
_Reg. of St. Saviour's, Southwark._
John, the son of John Fletcher and of Joan his wife was baptized 25 Feb., 1619. _Reg. of St. Bartholomew the Great._
If this is our John Fletcher, his marriage would have been about the same time as Beaumont's, and he may have later taken up his residence in the parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, on the north side of the river, not far from Southwark. If Fletcher was married in 1612, we may be very sure that his wife was not a person of distinction. His verses _Upon an Honest Man's Fortune_, written the next year, give us the impression either that he is not married and not likely to be, or that he has married one of low estate and breeding, has concluded that the matrimonial game is not worth the candle, and rather defiantly has turned to a better mistress than mortal, who can compensate him for that which through love he has not attained, "Were I in love," he declares,--