No one, once acquainted with this style of blank verse, with its end-stopped lines, double endings, stress-syllable openings, feminine caesurae, trisyllabic feet, jolts, and heavy extra syllables, can ever turn it to confusion with the verse of any poet before Browning--certainly not with that of Beaumont.
Our materials for a study of Beaumont's individual characteristics in the composition of dramatic blank verse appear at the first sight to be very scanty; for the only example of which we have positive external evidence that it was written by Beaumont alone, is _The Maske of the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne and the Inner Temple_, and unfortunately some critics have excluded it from consideration because of its exceptionally formal and spectacular character and slight dramatic purpose. Written, however, at the beginning of 1613, when the author's metrical manner was a definitely confirmed habit, it affords, in my opinion, the best as well as the most natural approach to the investigation of Beaumont's versification. The following lines may be regarded as typical:
Is great Jove jealous that I am imploy'd On her Love-errands? She did never yet Claspe weak mortality in her white arms, As he hath often done: I only come To celebrate the long-wish'd Nuptials [+!] Here in Olym pia, which are now perform'd.
Betwixt two goodly rivers, that have mixt Their gentle, rising waves, and are to grow [+!] In to a thou sand streams [+!] great as themselves.
In these nine verses there are no Fletcherian jolts, no double endings.
In only two lines trisyllabic feet occur; in only two, final pauses.
There are stress-syllable openings in two, with the compensating anapaests; feminine caesurae, in three (dotted); and a stress-syllable opening for the verse-section after the caesura occurs in but one, whereas there are at least three such in the passage from _Monsieur Thomas_, quoted above.
Nothing could be more pronounced than the difference between the metrical style of Fletcher's _Monsieur Thomas_ and _Rule a Wife_ and that of Beaumont's _Maske_, as illustrated here. Fletcher abounds in double endings, trisyllabic feet, and end-stopped lines, and such conversational or lyrical cadences; Beaumont uses them much more sparingly. But while the difference between the genuinely dramatic blank verse of Fletcher and that of Beaumont is sometimes as pronounced as this, it would be unscientific to base the criterion upon comparison of a mature, conversationally dramatic, composition of the former with a stiffly rhetorical declamatory composition of the latter. For a more suitable comparison we must set Beaumont's _Maske_ side by side with something of Fletcher's written in similar formal and declamatory style,--_The Faithfull Shepheardesse_, for instance, a youthful production in the pastoral spirit and form. Of this a small part, but sufficient for our purpose, is composed in blank verse; and I have cited in the next chapter with another end in view, the opening soliloquy,--to which the reader may turn. But as exemplifying certain of Fletcher's metrical peculiarities, in a style of verse suitable to be compared with Beaumont's in _The Maske_, the following lines from Act I, 1, are perhaps even more distinctive. "What greatness," says the Shepherdesse,--
What greatness, or what private hidden power, [+!] Is there in me, to draw submission From this rude man and beast? Sure I am mortal, 105 The Daughter of a Shepherd; he was mortal, And she that bore me mortal: prick my hand, And it will bleed; a Feaver shakes me, and The self-same wind that makes the young Lambs shrink
Makes me a-cold; my fear says I am mortal. 110 [+!] Yet have I heard (my Mother told it me, And now I do believe it), if I keep My Virgin Flower uncropt, pure, chaste, and fair, No Goblin, Wood-god, Fairy, Elf, or Fiend, [+!] Sa tyr, or oth er power that haunts the Groves, 115 Shall hurt my body, or by vain illusion [+!] Draw me to wan der after idle fires.
We have here, in fifteen lines, four double endings, nine final pauses (end-stopped verses), four stress-syllable openings with compensating anapaests, and seven feminine caesurae. In every way this sample even of Fletcher's more formal style displays, in its salient characteristics, a much closer resemblance in kind to the sample of his later blank verse quoted from _Rule a Wife_, above, than to that quoted from Beaumont's _Maske_.
When we pass from samples to larger sections, and compare percentages in the one hundred and thirty-one blank verses of _The Maske_ and the first one hundred and sixty-three of _The Shepheardesse_, we find that in respect of final pauses there is no great difference. There are, in the former, more than is usual with Beaumont--sixty per cent; in the latter, less than is usual with Fletcher--fifty per cent. But in other respects Beaumont's _Maske_ reveals peculiarities of verse altogether different from those of Fletcher, even when he is writing in the declamatory pastoral vein. In the one hundred and thirty-one lines of the _Maske_ we find but one double ending; whereas in the first one hundred and sixty-three blank verses of _The Shepheardesse_ we count as many as fourteen. In these productions the proportion of feminine caesurae is practically uniform--about forty per cent. But when we come to examine the more subtle movement of the rhythm, we find that in _The Maske_ not more than ten per cent of the lines open with the stress-syllable, while in the blank verse of the _Shepheardesse_ fully thirty-five out of every hundred lines have that opening and, consequently, impart the lyrical cadence which pervades much of Fletcher's metrical composition. In the matter of anapaestic substitutions, and of stress-syllable openings for the verse-section after the caesura, Beaumont is similarly inelastic; while the Fletcher of the _Shepheardesse_ displays a marvellous freedom.
It follows that in the _Maske_ we encounter but rarely the rhetorical pause, within the verse, compensating for an absent thesis or arsis; while in the pastoral verse of Fletcher we find frequent instances of this delicate dramatic as well as metrical device, and an occasional jolting caesura.
We are not limited, however, to the material afforded by the _Maske_ in our attempt to discover Beaumont's metrical characteristics when writing alone. _The Woman-Hater_, included among the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher in the folio of 1679, and ascribed to both on the title-page of a quarto of 1649, is assigned by the Prologue of the first quarto, 1607, to a single author--"he that made this play." And, though there is no attribution of authorship on the title-page of the 1607 quarto, we know from the application of verse-tests and tests of diction that, in all but three scenes which have evidently been revised,[151] the author was certainly not Fletcher. An examination of the inner structure of the verse of _The Woman-Hater_, reveals, except in those scenes, precisely the peculiarities that distinguish Beaumont's _Maske_: the same infrequency of stress-syllable openings, and of anapaestic substitutions and of suppressed syllables in metrical scheme. In respect of the more evident device of the run-on line _The Woman-Hater_ reaches a percentage twice as high as that employed in Fletcher's unassisted popular dramas; and in respect of the double ending it has a percentage only one-quarter as high. We notice also in this play a much more frequent employment of rhyme than in any of Fletcher's stage plays, and a much larger proportion of prose both for dialogue and soliloquy.
We should have further basis for conclusion concerning Beaumont's metrical style in independent composition, if we could accept the general assumption that he was the author of the _Induction_ to the _Foure Playes in One_, and of the first two plays, _The Triumph of Honour_ and _The Triumph of Love_. But for reasons, later to be stated, I agree with Oliphant that the _Induction_ and _Honour_ are not by Beaumont; and I hold that he can not be traced with certainty even in the two or three scenes of _Love_ that seem to be marked by some of his characteristics. The hand of a third writer, Field, is manifest in the non-Fletcherian plays of the series.
But though we can not draw for our purpose upon other plays as his unassisted work, we may derive help from the consideration of two at least of Beaumont's poems,--poems that have something of a dramatic flavour. Though they are in rhyming couplets, they display many of the characteristics of the author's blank verse. In the _Letter to Ben Jonson_, which is conversational, I count of run-on lines, thirty-eight in eighty, almost fifty per cent, as compared with Fletcher's sometimes ten or twenty per cent, in spite of the superior elasticity of blank verse; and of stress-syllable openings in the same letter twenty-four per cent as compared with the thirty-five per cent of Fletcher's more highly cadenced rhythm in the _Shepheardesse_. In Beaumont's _Elegy on the Countess of Rutland_, the last forty-four lines afford a fine example of dramatic fervour--the indictment of the physicians. Here the run-on lines again abound, almost fifty per cent; while the stress-syllable openings are but sixteen per cent--much lower than one may find in many rhymed portions of the _Shepheardesse_. With regard to all other tests except that of double ending (which does not apply in this kind of heroic couplet), we find that these poems of Beaumont are of a metrical style distinguished by the same characteristics as his blank verse.[152]
2. In Certain Joint-Plays.
If we turn now to a second class of material available,--the three plays indubitably produced in partnership,--and eliminate the portions written in the metrical style of Fletcher, as already ascertained, we may safely attribute the remainder to the junior member of the firm; and so arrive at a final determination of his manner in verse composition.
The three plays, as I have said before, are _Philaster_, _The Maides Tragedy_ and _A King and No King_. A passage, which in the opinion of nearly all critics[153] is by all tests distinctively Fletcherian, may be cited from the first of these as an example of that which we eliminate when we look for Beaumont. It is from the beginning of Act V, 4, where the Captain enters:
"Philaster, brave Philaster!" Let Philas ter Be deeper in request, my ding [a] dongs, My paires of deere Indentures, Kings of Clubs, [+!] Than your cold wa ter-cham blets or your paint ings [+!] Spit ted with cop per, Let not your has ty Silkes, 10 [+!] Or your branch'd cloth of bod kin, or your ti shues,-- [+!] Deare ly belov'd of spi ced cake and cus tards,-- Your Rob in-hoods, [+!] Scar lets and Johns, [+!] tye your affec tions In darknesse to your Shops. No, dainty duc kers, [+!] Up with your three -piled spi rits, your wrought va lors. 15 And let your un cut col lers make the King feele The measure of your mightinesse, Philas ter![154]
Note the double endings, the end-stopped lines, the stress-syllable openings, the anapaests, the feminine caesurae (dotted), the two omissions of the light syllable after the caesural pause and the following accent at the beginning of the verse section, and the six feet of line 13.
Of the non-Fletcherian part of _Philaster_, a typical example is the following from Act I, Scene 2, where Philaster replies to Arethusa's request that he look away from her:
I can indure it: Turne away my face?
I never yet saw enemy that lookt So dreadfully but that I thought my selfe As great a Basiliske as he; or spake So horrible but that I thought my tongue Bore thunder underneath, as much as his, Nor beast that I could turne from: shall I then Beginne to feare sweete sounds? a ladies voyce, Whom I doe love? Say, you would have my life; Why, I will give it you; for it is of me A thing so loath'd, and unto you that aske Of so poore use, that I shall make no price.
If you intreate, I will unmov'dly heare.
Or the famous description of Bellario, beginning:
I have a boy, Sent by the gods, I hope to this intent, Not yet seen in the court--
from the same scene.
Or the King's soliloquy in Act II, Scene 4, containing the lines:
You gods, I see that who unrighteously Holds wealth or state from others shall be curst In that which meaner men are blest withall: Ages to come shall know no male of him Left to inherit, and his name shall be Blotted from earth.
The reader will at once be impressed with the regularity of the masculine ending. Beaumont does not, of course, eschew the double ending; but, as Boyle has computed, the percentage in this play is but fifteen in the non-Fletcherian passages, whereas the percentage in Fletcher's contribution is thirty-five. The prevalence of run-on lines is also noteworthy; and the infrequency of the stress-syllable openings, anapaests, and feminine caesurae by which Fletcher achieves now conversational abruptness, now lyrical lilt.
In _The Maides Tragedy_, such soliloquies as that of Aspatia in Act V, Scene 4, with its mixture of blank verse and rhyme:
This is my fatal hour; heaven may forgive My rash attempt, that causelessly hath laid Griefs on me that will never let me rest, And put a Woman's heart into my brest.
It is more honour for you that I die; For she that can endure the misery That I have on me, and be patient too, May live, and laugh at all that you can do--
are marked by characteristics utterly unlike those of Fletcher's dramatic verse. Also unlike Fletcher are the scenes which abound in lines of weak and light ending, and lines where the lighter syllables of every word must be counted to make full measure. Fletcher did not write:
Alas, Amintor, thinkst thou I forbear To sleep with thee because I have put on A maidens strictness;
or
As mine own conscience too sensible;--
I must live scorned, or be a murderer;--
That trust out all our reputation.
Nor did Fletcher write, with any frequency, improper run-on lines, such as III, 2, 135 (one of his collaborator's scenes):
Speak yet again, before mine anger grow Up beyond throwing down.
In this play the percentage of run-on lines in Fletcher's scenes is about nineteen; in the scenes not written by him, almost twenty-seven.
Fletcher's double endings are over forty per cent; his collaborator's barely ten.
In _A King and No King_ similar Beaumontesque characteristics distinguish the major portion of the play from the few scenes generally acknowledged to be written by Fletcher. In Fletcher's scenes[155] one notes the high proportion of stress-syllable openings, and, consequently, of anapaestic substitutions, the subtle omission occasionally of the arsis, and not infrequently of the thesis (or light syllable) after the pause, and the use of the accented syllable at the beginning of the verse-section. While sometimes these characteristics appear in the other parts of the play, their relative infrequency is a distinctive feature of the non-Fletcherian rhythm. A comparison of the verse of Fletcher's Act IV, Scene 2, with that of his collaborator in Act I, Scene 1, well illustrates this difference. The recurrence of the feminine caesura measures fairly the relative elasticity of the versifiers. It regulates two-thirds of Fletcher's lines; but of his collaborator's not quite one half. Fletcher, for instance, wrote the speech of Tigranes, beginning the second scene of Act IV:
[+!] Fool that I am, I have undone myself, [+!] And with mine own hand turn'd my for tune round, That was a fair one: I have child ishly [+!] Plaid with my hope so long, till I have broke it, And now too late I mourn for 't, O Spaco nia, Thou hast found an e ven way to thy revenge now!
[+!] Why didst thou fol low me, [+!] like a faint shad ow, To wither my desires? But, wretched fool, [+!] Why did I plant thee 'twixt the sun and me, To make me freeze thus? Why did I prefer her [+!] To the fair Prin cess? O thou fool, thou fool, Thou family of fools, [+!] live like a slave still And in thee bear thine own [+!] hell and thy tor ment,--
where, beside the frequent double endings and end-stopped lines, already emphasized in preceding examples, we observe in the run of thirteen lines, six stress-syllable openings with their anapaestic sequences, three omissions of the light syllable after the caesural pause with the consequent accent at the beginning of the verse-section, and no fewer than six feminine caesurae (or pauses after an unaccented syllable) of which three at least (vv. 2, 5, 10) are exaggerated jolts.
Beaumont is capable in occasional passages, as, for instance, Arbaces'
speech beginning Act I, 1, 105, of lines rippling with as many feminine caesurae. But, utterly unlike Fletcher, he employs in the first thirteen of those lines no double endings, no jolts, only two stress-syllable openings, only four anapaests, one omitted thesis after the caesural pause, four end-stopped lines. He is more frequently capable, as in the passage beginning l. 129, of a sequence without a single feminine caesura, but with several feminine (or double) endings:
_Tigranes._ Is it the course of Iberia, to use their prisoners thus?
Had Fortune throwne my name above Arbaces, I should not thus have talkt; for in Armenia We hold it base. You should have kept your temper, Till you saw home agen, where 't is the fashion Perhaps to brag.
_Arbaces._ Bee you my witness, Earth, Need I to brag? Doth not this captive prince Speake me sufficiently, and all the acts That I have wrought upon his suffering land?
Should I then boast? Where lies that foot of ground Within his whole realme that I have not past Fighting and conquering?[156]
Up to the twelfth verse with its exceptional jolting pause the caesurae are masculine, and fall uncompromisingly at the end of the second and third feet.
In respect of the internal structure of the verse the tests for Beaumont are, then, as I have stated them above; in respect of double endings, Boyle and Oliphant have set the percentage in his verse at about twenty, and of run-on lines at thirty. Since the metrical characteristics of those parts of _Philaster_, _The Maides Tragedy_ and _A King and No King_ which do not bear the impress of Fletcher's versification, are well defined and practically uniform; since they are of a piece with the metrical manner of _The Woman-Hater_, which is originally, and in general, the work of one author--Beaumont; and since they are also of a piece with the versification of the _Maske_, which is certainly by Beaumont alone, and with that of his best poems,--at least one criterion has been established by means of which we may ascertain what other plays, ascribed to the two writers in common, but on less definite evidence, were written in partnership; and in these we may have a basis for determining the parts contributed by each of the authors.