Were I in love, and could that bright Star bring Increase to Wealth, Honour, and everything: Were she as perfect good, as we can aim, The first was so, and yet she lost the Game.
My Mistriss then be Knowledge and fair Truth; So I enjoy all beauty and all youth.
We may be sure that when Fletcher wrote this poem he had known poverty, sickness, and affliction, but not a consolation in wedded happiness:
Love's but an exhalation to best eyes; The matter spent, and then the fool's fire dies.
Since many of Collier's "earnests" turn out to be "jests," why not the other way round? That is my apology for according this "jest" a moment's whimsical consideration.
Such is an outline in broad sweep of the activities and common relations of our Castor and Pollux, and a preliminary sketch of the personality of each. With regard to the latter, who is our main concern, the vital record is yet more definitely to be discovered in the dramatic output distinctively his during the years of literary partnership; and to the consideration of his share in the joint-plays we may now turn.
FOOTNOTES:
[137] See his _Ode to Sir William Skipwith_.
[138] "Thou wert not meant, Sure, for a woman, thou art so innocent,"
philosophizes the Sullen Shepherd concerning Amoret;--and not only wanton nymphs but modest swains are of the same philosophy.
[139] Ward, _E. Dr. Lit._, II, 649,--quoting, in the footnote, from _The Nice Valour_, V, 3.
[140] Dyce, _B. and F._, I, lxxiii.
PART TWO
THE COLLABORATION OF BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER
CHAPTER XVI
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM; CRITICAL APPARATUS
Much of the confusion which existed in the minds of readers and critics during the period following the Restoration concerning the respective productivity of Beaumont and Fletcher is due to accident. The quartos (generally unauthorized) of individual plays in circulation were, as often as not, wrong in their ascriptions of authorship to one, or the other, or both of the dramatists; and the folio of 1647, which, long after both were dead, first presented what purported to be their collected works, lacked title-pages to the individual plays, and, save in one instance, prefixed no name of author to any play. The exception is _The Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes-Inne and the Inner Temple_ "written by Francis Beaumont, Gentleman," which had been performed, Feb.
20, 1612-13, and had appeared in quarto without date (but probably 1613) as "by Francis Beaumont, Gent." In seven instances, Fletcher is indicated in the 1647 folio by Prologue or Epilogue as author, or author revised, and in general correctly; but otherwise the thirty-four plays included (not counting the _Maske_) are introduced to the public merely by a general title-page as "written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. Never printed before, And now published by the Authours Originall Copies." That the public should have been deceived into accepting most of them as the joint-product of the authors is not surprising. Though it is not the purpose of this discussion to consider plays in which Beaumont was not concerned, it may be said incidentally that of eleven of these productions Fletcher was sole author; Massinger of perhaps one, and with Fletcher of eight, and with Fletcher and others of five more; that in several plays four or five other authors had a hand, and that in at least five Fletcher had no share.[141]
[Illustration: JOHN FLETCHER From the painting in the National Portrait Gallery Painter unknown but contemporary]
Sir Aston Cockayne was, therefore, fully justified, when, some time between 1647 and 1658, he thus upbraided the publishers of the folio:
In the large book of Playes you late did print In Beaumont's and in Fletcher's name, why in't Did you not justice? Give to each his due?
For Beaumont of those many writ in few, And Massinger in other few; the Main Being sole Issues of sweet Fletcher's brain.
But how came I (you ask) so much to know?
Fletcher's chief bosome-friend informed me so.
I' the next impression therefore justice do, And print their old ones in one volume too; For Beaumont's works and Fletcher's should come forth, With all the right belonging to their worth.
In still another poem, printed in 1662, but written not long after 1647, and addressed to his cousin, Charles Cotton, Sir Aston returns to the charge:
I wonder, Cousin, that you would permit So great an Injury to Fletcher's wit, Your friend and old Companion, that his fame Should be divided to another's name.
If Beaumont had writ those Plays, it had been Against his merits a detracting Sin, Had they been attributed also to Fletcher. They were two wits and friends, and who Robs from the one to glorify the other, Of these great memories is a partial Lover.
Had Beaumont liv'd when this Edition came Forth, and beheld his ever living name Before Plays that he never writ, how he Had frown'd and blush'd at such Impiety!
His own Renown no such Addition needs To have a Fame sprung from another's deedes: And my good friend Old Philip Massinger With Fletcher writ in some that we see there.
But you may blame the Printers: yet you might Perhaps have won them to do Fletcher right, Would you have took the pains; for what a foul And unexcusable fault it is (that whole Volume of plays being almost every one After the death of Beaumont writ) that none Would certifie them so much! I wish as free Y' had told the Printers this, as you did me.
... While they liv'd and writ together, we Had Plays exceeded what we hop'd to see.
But they writ few; for youthful Beaumont soon By death eclipsed was at his high noon.
The statements especially to be noted in these poems are, first, that Fletcher is present in most of the work published in the earliest folio, that of 1647, Beaumont in but a few plays, Massinger in other few. This information Cockayne, who was but eight years of age when Beaumont died, and seventeen at Fletcher's death, had from Fletcher's chief bosom-friend, and it was probably corroborated by Massinger himself, with whom Cockayne and his family (as we know from other evidence) had long been acquainted. Second, that _almost every play_ in the folio was written after Beaumont's death (1616). This information, also, Cockayne had from his own cousin who was a friend and old companion of Fletcher.
This cousin, the chief bosom-friend, as I have shown elsewhere, was Charles Cotton, the elder, who died in 1658, not the younger Charles Cotton (the translator of Montaigne),--for he was not born till five years after Fletcher died. And, third, that not only is the title of the folio "Comedies and Tragedies written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen" a misnomer, but that the bulk of their joint-plays, "the old ones" (not here included) calls for a volume to itself. A very just verdict, indeed,--this of Cockayne,--for (if I may again anticipate conclusions later to be reached) the only indubitable contributions from Beaumont's hand to this folio are his _Maske of the Gentleman of Grayes Inne_ and a portion of _The Coxcombe_.
The confusion concerning authorship was redoubled by the second folio, which appeared as "_Fifty Comedies and Tragedies_. Written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. Published by the Authors Original Copies (_etc._)" in 1679. There are fifty-three plays in this volume; the thirty-five of the first folio, and eighteen previously printed but not before gathered together. Beside those in which Beaumont had, or could have had, a hand, the eighteen include five of Fletcher's authorship, five in which he collaborated with others than Beaumont; and one, _The Coronation_, principally, if not entirely, by Shirley.[142] As in the 1647 folio, the only indication of respective authorship is to be found in occasional dedications, prefaces, prologues and epilogues. But, while in some half-dozen instances these name Fletcher correctly as author, and, in two or three, by implication correctly designate him or Beaumont, in other cases the indication is wrong or misleading. Where "our poets" are vaguely mentioned, or no hint whatever is given, the uncritical reader is led to ascribe the play to the joint composition of Beaumont and Fletcher. The lists of actors prefixed to several of the dramas afford valuable information concerning date and, sometimes, authorship to the student of stage-history; but the credulous would carry away the impression that Beaumont and Fletcher had collaborated equally in about forty of the fifty-three plays contained in the folio of 1679.
The uncertainty regarding the respective shares of the two authors in the production of this large number of dramas and, consequently, regarding the quality of the genius of each, commenced even during the life of Fletcher who survived his friend by nine years, and it has continued in some fashion down to the present time. Writing an elegy "on Master Beaumont, presently after his death,"[143] that is to say, in 1616-17, John Earle, a precocious youth of sixteen, at Christ Church, Oxford, is so occupied with lament and praise for "the poet so quickly taken off" that he not only ascribes to him the whole of _Philaster_ and _The Maides Tragedy_ (in both of which it was always known that Fletcher had a share) but omits mention of Fletcher altogether. So far, however, as the estimate of the peculiar genius of Beaumont goes, the judgment of young Earle has rarely been surpassed.
Oh, when I read those excellent things of thine, Such Strength, such sweetnesse, coucht in every line, Such life of Fancy, such high choise of braine,-- Nought of the Vulgar mint or borrow'd straine, Such Passion, such expressions meet my eye, Such Wit untainted with obscenity, And these so unaffectedly exprest, But all in a pure flowing language drest, So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon, And all so borne within thyself, thine owne, I grieve not now that old Menanders veine Is ruin'd, to survive in thee againe.
The succeeding exaltation of his idol above Plautus and Aristophanes, nay even Chaucer, is of a generous extravagance, but the lad lays his finger on the real Beaumont when he calls attention to "those excellent things;" and to the histrionic quality, the high seriousness, the "humours" and the perennial vitality of Beaumont's contribution to dramatic poetry.
A year or so later, and still during Fletcher's lifetime, we find Drummond of Hawthornden confusing in his turn the facts of authorship; for he "reports Jonson as saying that 'Flesher and Beaumont, ten years since, hath written _The Faithfull Shipheardesse_, a tragicomedie well done,'--whereas both Jonson and Beaumont had already addressed lines to Fletcher in commendation of his pastoral."[144] By 1647, as Miss Hatcher has shown, the confusion had crystallized itself into three distinct opinions, equally false, concerning the respective contribution of the authors to the plays loosely accredited to their partnership. These opinions are represented in the commendatory verses prefixed to the first folio. One was that "they were equal geniuses fused into one by the force of perfect congeniality and not to be distinguished from each other in their work,"--thus put into epigram by Sir George Lisle:
For still your fancies are so wov'n and knit, 'T was Francis Fletcher or John Beaumont writ;
and repeated by Sir John Pettus:
How Angels (cloyster'd in our humane Cells) Maintaine their parley, Beaumont-Fletcher tels: Whose strange, unimitable Intercourse Transcends all Rules.
A second, the dominant view in 1647, was that "the plays were to be accredited to Fletcher alone, since Beaumont was not to be taken into serious account in explaining their production." This opinion is expressed by Waller, who, referring not only to the plays of that folio (in only two of which Beaumont appears) but to others like _The Maides Tragedy_ and _The Scornful Ladie_ in which, undoubtedly, Beaumont cooperated, says:
Fletcher, to thee wee do not only owe All these good Playes, but those of others, too; ...
No Worthies form'd by any Muse but thine, Could purchase Robes to make themselves so fine;
and by Hills, who writes,--"upon the Ever-to-be-admired Mr. John Fletcher and his Playes,"--
"Fletcher, the King of Poets! such was he, That earn'd all tribute, claim'd all soveraignty."
The third view was--still to follow Miss Hatcher--that "Fletcher was the genius and creator in the work, and Beaumont merely the judicial and regulative force." Cartwright in his two poems of 1647, as I have already pointed out, emphasizes this view:
Though when all Fletcher writ, and the entire Man was indulged unto that sacred fire, His thoughts and his thoughts dresse appeared both such That 't was his happy fault to do too much; Who therefore wisely did submit each birth To knowing Beaumont ere it did come forth; Working againe, until he said 't was fit And made him the sobriety of his wit; Though thus he call'd his Judge into his fame, And for that aid allow'd him halfe the name, 'T is knowne that sometimes he did stand alone, That both the Spunge and Pencill were his owne; That himselfe judged himselfe, could singly do, And was at last Beaumont and Fletcher too.
A similar view is implied by Dryden, when, in his _Essay of Dramatick Poesie_, 1668, he attributes the regularity of their joint-plots to Beaumont's influence; and reports that even "Ben Jonson while he lived submitted all his writings to his censure, and 'tis thought used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots."
This tradition of Fletcher as creator and Beaumont as critic continued for generations, only occasionally disturbed,[145] in spite of the testimony of Cockayne to Fletcher's sole authorship of most of the plays in the first folio, to the cooperation of Massinger with Fletcher in some, and to the fact that there were enough plays not here included, written conjointly by Beaumont and Fletcher, to warrant the publication of a separate volume, properly ascribed to both. To the mistaken attributions of authorship by Dryden, Rymer, and others, I make reference in my forthcoming Essay on _The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare_, Part Two.[146] The succeeding history of opinion through Langbaine, Collier, Theobald, Sympson and Seward, Chalmers, Brydges, _The Biographia Dramatica_, Cibber, Malone, Darley, Dyce, and the purely literary critics from Lamb to Swinburne, has been admirably outlined by Miss Hatcher in the first chapter of her dissertation on the _Dramatic Method of John Fletcher_.