The latter is an abnormality grown from lust to overweening ambition; the former never loses our sympathy: in her depravity there is the seed of conscience; through shame and love she wins a soul; the crime by which at last she would redeem herself leaves her no longer futile but half-way heroic; and her pleading for Amintor's love, her self-murder, fix her in memory among those squandered souls that have known no happiness--whose misery or whose shame is merged and made beautiful in the pity of it all.
Of his braggarts and poltroons Beaumont is profuse: the best are Bessus and Calianax, so far as they have not been reduced to horse-play by another hand. For Pharamond we are indebted as much to Fletcher as to Beaumont. The Jonsonian humours of Beaumont's braggarts, excellent as they may be, are not more clearly marked nor better drawn than those of many of his other characters, the misogynist, the retributive Oriana, and the gourmand-parasite, in his youthful comedy of _The Woman-Hater_, or the devil-may-care Merrythought, Luce, the grocer and his wife, and in fact every convulsing caricature in his matchless _Knight of the Burning Pestle_. Of Beaumont's effectiveness in satire and burlesque, enough has already been said. His laughter is genial but not uproarious: he chuckles; he lifts the eyebrow, but seldom sneers. With the Gascon he vapours; with the love-lorn languishing, simpers; with the heroic Captain of Mile End, whiffles and--tongue in cheek--struts and throws a turkey-step; with the jovial roisterer he hiccoughs and wipes his mouth.
Homely wit, bathos, and the grotesque he fixes as on a film, and makes no comment; fustian he parodies; affectation he feeds with banter. For the inflated he cherishes a noiseless, most exiguous bodkin.
As to the matter of technique we have observed that the clear and comprehensive expositions of the joint-plays are generally Beaumont's,--for instance, those of _The Maides Tragedy_, _Philaster_, _King and No King_, and _The Scornful Ladie_; that in the tragedies and tragicomedies the sensational reversals of fortune, as well as the cumulative suspenses and reliefs of the closing scenes, are in nearly all cases his; and that in the tragicomedies the shifting of interest from the strictly tragic and universal to the more individual--pathetic, romantic, and comic--emotions, is also his. The conviction of Evadne by her brother is an exception: that is the work of Fletcher; but her contrition in the presence of Amintor is again Beaumont's. What he was capable of in romantic comedy is shown by his '_Ricardo and Viola_'
episode. He cared much more for romance than for intrigue; and he found his romance in persons of common life as readily as among those of elevated station. In his share of the comedies of intrigue he shows, as elsewhere, that he was capable of Elizabethan bubukles, but ludicrous not lecherous. Above all, he delighted in interweaving with the romantic and sentimental that which partook of the pastoral, the pathetic, and the heroic. And we have noticed that, through the heroic and melodramatic, his more serious plays pass into the atmosphere of court life and spectacular display.
As for Fletcher's share in the dramas written in partnership with Beaumont, little need be said by way of summary. He bulks large in the comedies of intrigue, _The Scornful Ladie_ and _The Coxcombe_; and especially in the sections of plot that are carnal, trivial, or unnatural. He is in them just what he is in his own _Monsieur Thomas_ and his pornographic _Captaine_--in the latter of which, if Beaumont had any share at all it is unconvincing to me, save possibly as regards the one appalling scene of which I have spoken some five chapters back. To the tragedies and "dramatic romances" or tragicomedies Fletcher did not contribute one-third as much as his co-worker. As in the murder-scene of _The Maides Tragedy_ he displays the dramaturgy of spectacular violence, so in the scene between Melantius and Evadne, the power of dramatic invective. But his aim is not the furtherance of interest by the dynamic unfolding of personality, or by the propulsion of plot through interplay of complicated motives or emotions, it is the immediate captivation of the spectator by rapidity and variety: by brisk, lucid, and witty dialogue, by bustle of action and multiplicity of conventional device, as in _Cupids Revenge_. Few of his scenes are vital; most are clever histrionic inlays, subsidiary to the main action, or complementary and explanatory, as in _Philaster_ and _A King and No King_. His characters move with all the ease of perfect mechanism; but they are made, not born. It follows that, in the more serious of the joint-dramas, the principal personages are much less indebted to his invention than has ordinarily been supposed. In the comedies of intrigue, on the other hand, conventional types of the stage or of the theatre-going London world, especially the fashionable and the Bohemian provinces thereof, owe their existence chiefly to him. Blackguards, wittols, colourless tricksters, roaring captains, gallants, debauchees, lechers, bawds, libidinous wives, sophisticated maidens who preen themselves with meticulous virtue but not with virtuous thoughts, all these people the scenes which Fletcher contributed to the joint-comedies. And some of them thrust their faces into the romantic plays and tragedies as well.
Fletcher's most important contribution to the drama, his masterly and vital contribution, is to be found in his later work; and of that I have elsewhere treated,[255] and shall have yet a word to say here.
Of the Beaumont-Fletcher plays the distinctive dramaturgy as well as the essential poetry are Beaumont's, and these are worthy of the praise bestowed by his youthful contemporary, John Earle:
So new, so fresh, so nothing trod upon, And all so born within thyself, thine own.
_The Maske_, _The Woman-Hater_, and _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ should appear in a volume bearing Beaumont's name. And for the partnership of Beaumont and Fletcher, perhaps, some day,
Some publisher will further justice do And print their _six_ plays in one volume too.
FOOTNOTES:
[254] Thorndike, _Influence of B. and F._, p. 123.
[255] _The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare_, Part Two, in _Representative English Comedies_, Vol. III, now in press.
CHAPTER XXVIII
DID THE BEAUMONT 'ROMANCE' INFLUENCE SHAKESPEARE?
Richard Flecknoe, in his _Discourse of the English Stage_, 1664, thinking rather of the romantic and ornamented quality of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, "full of fine flowers," than of any anticipation in them of the love and honour of plays of the Restoration, says that they were the first to write "in the Heroick way." Symonds calls them the "inventors of the heroical romance." And lately Professor Thorndike[256]
and others have conjectured that the Shakespeare of _Cymbeline_, _Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_ was following the lead of the two younger dramatists in what is attributed to them as a new style of 'dramatic romance' in his dramas. The argument is that _Philaster_ (acted before October 8, 1610) preceded _Cymbeline_ (acted between April 20, 1610 and May 15, 1611), and suggested to Shakespeare a radical change of dramatic method, first manifest in _Cymbeline_. And that five other "romances by Beaumont and Fletcher," _Foure Playes in One_, _Thierry and Theodoret_, _The Maides Tragedy_, _Cupid's Revenge_ and _A King and No King_, constituting with _Philaster_ a distinctly new type of drama, were in all probability acted before the close of 1611, and similarly influenced the method of _The Winter's Tale_ and _The Tempest_, also of 1611.
Before discussing the theory of Shakespeare's indebtedness to _Philaster_ and its "Beaumont-Fletcher" successors, I should like to file a two-fold protest; first, against the use of the word 'romance'
for any kind of dramatic production, whatever. 'Romance' applies to narrative of heroic, marvellous, and imaginative content, not to drama.
_The Maides Tragedy_ and _Cupid's Revenge_ are not romances; they are romantic tragedies. _Philaster_, _A King and No King_, and _Cymbeline_ are, of course, romantic; but specifically they are melodramatic tragicomedies of heroic cast. _Pericles_, _The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_ are romantic comedies of marvel or adventure. Nothing is gained in criticism by giving them a name which applies, in English, strictly to narrative, or by regarding them as of a different dramatic species from the romantic dramas of Greene and Shakespeare that preceded them. I object, in the second place, to the grouping of the six plays said to constitute "a distinctly new type of drama" under the denomination "dramatic romances of Beaumont _and_ Fletcher"; for in some of them Beaumont had no hand, and in others, the most important, Fletcher's contribution of romantic novelty is altogether secondary, mostly immaterial. With _Thierry and Theodoret_, for instance, thus loosely called a "Beaumont-Fletcher romance," it is not proved that Beaumont had anything to do. The drama displays nothing of his vocabulary, rhetoric or poetry. It is a later production by Fletcher, Massinger, and probably one other; and is the only play of this tragic-idyllic-romantic type attempted by Fletcher after Beaumont had ceased writing. In three of the _Foure Playes in One_, Beaumont does not appear. He may possibly be traced in three scenes of _The Triumph of Love_; but with no certainty.
Fletcher, on the other hand, had very little to do with the three great dramas of sensational romance which form the core of the group in question, _Philaster_, _The Maides Tragedy_, and _A King and No King_.
As I have shown, he contributed not more than four scenes to _Philaster_, four to _The Maides Tragedy_, and five to _A King and No King_. And, with the exception of two spectacularly violent scenes in _The Maides Tragedy_, his contribution, so far as writing goes, is supplementary dialogue and histrionic by-play. Whatever is essentially novel, vital, and distinctive is by Beaumont. To _Cupid's Revenge_ Beaumont's contribution was slighter in volume, but without it the play would lack its distinctive quality. If we must cling to the misnomer 'romance' for any group of plays which may have influenced Shakespeare's later comedies, let us limit the group to its Beaumont core, and speak of the 'Beaumont romance.'
The express novelty in technique of the six arbitrarily selected, so-called 'Beaumont-Fletcher romances' is supposed to lie in the dramatic adaptation of certain sensational properties more suitable to narrative fiction; especially in the attempt to heighten interest by adding to the legitimate portrayal of character under stress and strain (as in tragedy), or of character in amusing maladjustment with social convention (as in comedy), the portrayal of vicissitudes of fortune; and in the attempt to enhance the thrills appropriate to tragic and comic appeal by such an amalgamation of the two as shall cause the spectator to run up and down the whole gamut of emotional sensibility. In the realm of tragedy the accentuation of the possibilities of suspense, whether by Beaumont or any other, would be a novelty merely of degree.
_Cupid's Revenge_, and _The Triumph of Death_ (in the _Foure Playes in One_) could hardly have impressed the author of _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Hamlet_ as in this respect astounding innovations; and _The Maides Tragedy_ does not, so far as I can determine, sacrifice the unities of interest and effect for enhancement and variety of emotional thrill. In any case, it would be necessary to date _Timon_, _Antony_, and _Coriolanus_, two or three years later than the fact, if one desired to prove that any Shakespearian tragedy was influenced by a Beaumont-Fletcher exaggeration of suspense. Whatever exaggeration may exist had already been practised by Shakespeare himself. If a Beaumont-Fletcher novelty influenced Shakespeare, that novelty must have lain in the transference of tragic suspense to the realm of romantic comedy with all its minor aesthetic appeals, and it would consequently be limited to their tragicomedies, _Philaster_ and _A King and No King_.
The tragicomic masques in the _Foure Playes in One_, that of _Honour_ and that of _Death_, are too insignificant to warrant consideration; and Beaumont had nothing to do with them.
In determining the indebtedness, if any, of _Cymbeline_ to _Philaster_ we lack the assistance of authentic dates of composition. The plays were acted about the same time,--_Philaster_ certainly, _Cymbeline_ perhaps, before October 8, 1610. Beaumont and Fletcher's play may have been written as early as 1609; Shakespeare's also as early as 1609 or 1608: in fact, there are critics who assign parts of it to 1606. With regard to the relative priority of _Cymbeline_ and _A King and No King_, we are more fortunate in our knowledge. The former had certainly been acted by May 15, 1611; the latter was not even licensed until that year, and was not performed at Court till December 26. The probabilities are altogether in favour of a date of composition later than that of _Cymbeline_.
But that Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_ and his later romantic dramas betray any consciousness of the existence of _Philaster_ and its succeeding _King and No King_ has not been proved. Save for the more emphatic employment of the masque and its accessories of dress and scenic display, of the combination of idyllic, romantic, and sensational elements of material, and the heightened uncertainty of denouement, all naturally suggested by the demands of Jacobean taste, no variation is discoverable in the course of Shakespeare's dramatic art. And in these respects I find no extrinsic novelty, no momentous change--nothing in _Philaster_ and _A King and No King_ that had not been anticipated by Shakespeare. _Cymbeline_, _The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_ are but the flowering of potentialities latent in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ and _As You Like It_, _Much Ado About Nothing_ and _Twelfth Night_, _All's Well That Ends Well_ and _Measure for Measure_--latent in the story of Apollonius of Tyre, and unavoidable in its dramatization as _Pericles_, a play that was certainly not influenced by the methods of _Philaster_. If in his later romantic dramas Shakespeare borrowed any hint of technique from the Beaumont contribution to the 'romances,' he was but borrowing back what Beaumont had borrowed from him or from sources with which Shakespeare was familiar when Beaumont was still playing nursery miracles of the Passion with his brothers in the Gethsemane garden at Grace-Dieu. Shakespeare's later comedies are a legitimate development of his peculiar dramatic art. Beaumont's tragicomedies, with all their poetic and idyllic beauty and dramatic individuality, are novel, so far as construction goes, only in their emphasized employment of the sensational properties and methods mentioned above. Their characteristic, when compared with that of Shakespeare's last group of comedies, is melodramatic rather than romantic. They set, in fine, as did Chapman's _Gentleman Usher_, and Shakespeare's _Measure for Measure_ and _All's Well that Ends Well_, an example which, abused, led to the decadence of Elizabethan romantic comedy.
The resemblance between _Philaster_ and _Cymbeline_, such as it is, is closer than that between _Philaster_ and the Shakespearian successors of _Cymbeline_,--_The Winter's Tale_ and _The Tempest_. But the common features of all these plays, the juxtaposition of idyllic scenes and interest with those of royalty, the combination of sentimental, tragic, and comic incentives to emotion, the false accusations of unchastity and the resulting jealousy, intrigue, and crime, the wanderings of an innocent and distressed woman in boy's clothing, the romantic localization, did not appear first in either _Philaster_ or _Cymbeline_.
_Philaster_ and _Cymbeline_ follow numerous clues in the idyllic-comic of _Love's Labour's Lost_ and _Midsummer-Night's Dream_; in the idyllic-romantic-pathetic of _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _As You Like It_, and _Twelfth Night_; and for that matter in the materials furnished by Greene, Lodge, Sidney, Sannazzaro, Montemayor, Bandello, Cinthio and Boccaccio; and in the romantic and tragicomic fusion already attempted in _Much Ado_, _All's Well_, and _Measure for Measure_. For the character and the trials of Imogen, Shakespeare did not require the inspiration of a Beaumont. He had been busied with the figure of Innogen (as he then called her) as early as 1599; for in the 1600 quarto of _Much Ado_ she appears by sheer accident in a stage direction as the wife of the Leonato of that play. He had been using the sources from which _Cymbeline_ is drawn,--Holinshed and Boccaccio, and that early romantic drama, _Fidele and Fortunio_,--before _Philaster_ was written.
And it is much more likely that the Belarius of Shakespeare and the Bellario of Beaumont were both suggested by the Bellaria of Greene's _Pandosto_, than that Shakespeare borrowed from Beaumont. Nor is Shakespeare likely to have been indebted to Beaumont's example for the sensational manner of the denouement in _Cymbeline_--the succession of fresh complications and false starts by which suspense is sustained.
These are precisely the features that distinguish those scenes of _Pericles_ which by the consensus of critics are assigned to Shakespeare; and _Pericles_ was written by 1608, at least as early as _Philaster_, and in all probability earlier. In his story of Marina, Shakespeare is merely pursuing the sensational methods of _Measure for Measure_ and anticipating those of _The Winter's Tale_. In general, the plot lies half-way between the tragicomic possibilities of the _Comedy of Errors_, _Twelfth Night_, _All's Well_, and _Measure for Measure_, and the romantic manipulation of _Cymbeline_ and the later plays.
In fine, there is closer resemblance between _Cymbeline_ and half a dozen of Shakespeare's earlier comedies, than between _Cymbeline_ and _Philaster_; and it might more readily be shown that the author of _Philaster_ was indebted to those half-dozen plays, than Shakespeare to _Philaster_. The differences between the Beaumont 'romances' and Shakespeare's later romantic comedies are in fact more vital than the similarities. In _Philaster_, _The Maides Tragedy_, and _A King and No King_ the central idea is of contrast between sentimental love and unbridled lust, and this gives rise to misunderstanding, intrigue, and violence. In Shakespeare's later comedies the central motive is altogether different: it is of disappearance and discovery. The disappearance is occasioned by false accusation or conspiracy. In _Pericles_, _Cymbeline_, and _The Winter's Tale_, the dramatic interest revolves about the pursuit of a lost wife or child, the wanderings and trials of the heroine, and her recovery;[257] in _The Tempest_, about the disappearance and discovery of the ousted Duke and his daughter.
There is no resemblance between Beaumont's love-lorn maidens in page's garb pursuing the unconscious objects of their affection and Shakespeare's joyous girls and traduced wives. Nor is there in Shakespeare's later comedies any analogue to the sensual passion of the 'Beaumont and Fletcher romances,' to their Bachas, Megras, and Evadnes, their ultra-sentimental Philasters, their blunt soldier-counselors and boastful poltroons. Pisanio and Cloten have respectively no kinship with Dion and Pharamond. What appears to be novel in _Pericles_ and its Shakespearian successors, the somewhat melodramatic denouement, is, as I have said, but the modification of the playwright's well-known methods in conformity with the contemporary demand for more highly seasoned fare. But, in essence, the dramatic careers of Imogen and Hermione, are no more sensational than those of their older sisters, Hero, Helena, and Isabella. And what is most evidently not novel with Shakespeare in his later romantic comedies,--the consistent dramatic interaction between crisis and character,--is precisely what the 'Beaumont-Fletcher romances' do not always possess. Beaumont's characterization at its best, with all its naturalness, compelling pathos, poignancy, and abandon is lyrical or idyllic rather than dramatic; Fletcher's is expository and histrionic--of manners rather than the man.
Beaumont did not influence Shakespeare. And if not Beaumont, then certainly not Fletcher; for in the actual composition of the core of the so-called 'Beaumont-Fletcher romances' Fletcher's share was altogether subordinate; and since after the dissolution of the partnership he attempted but one romantic tragic drama of that particular kind, _Thierry and Theodoret_,--and that a clumsy failure,--it must be concluded that in the designing of those 'romances' his share was even less significant. But to appreciate the contribution of Beaumont to Elizabethan drama, and his place in literary history, it is fortunately not necessary to assume that he diverted from its natural course the dramatic technique of a master, twenty years his senior and for twenty years before Beaumont began to write, intimately acquainted with the conditions of the stage,--the acknowledged playwright of the most successful of theatrical companies and, in spite of changing fashions, the most steadily progressive and popular dramatic artist of the early Jacobean period. With regard to Beaumont it is marvel sufficient, that between his twenty-fifth and his twenty-eighth year of age he should have elaborated in dramatic art, even with the help of Fletcher, so striking a combination of preceding models, and have infused into the resulting heroic-romantic type such fresh poetic vigour and verve of movement.
FOOTNOTES:
[256] _The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare_, 1901.
See M. W. Sampson's critique in _J. Ger. Phil._, II, 241.
[257] See Morton Luce, _Hand Book to Shakespeare's Works_, p. 338.
CHAPTER XXIX
CONCLUSION
Beaumont's poetic virtues are his peculiar treasure; but the dramatic method of his heroic-romantic plays lent itself lightly to imitation and debasement. Not so much _The Maides Tragedy_ and _A King and No King_, which respect the unities of interest and effect, as _Philaster_, _The Coxcombe_, and _Cupid's Revenge_, to which Fletcher's contribution of captivating theatrical 'business' and device was more considerable. Some of these plays, and some of Shakespeare's, too, and of Marston's, and Chapman's, and Webster's, paved the way for the heroic play of the Restoration--a melodramatic development of tragicomedy and sentimental tragedy, in which philandering sentiment, strained and histrionic passion, took the place of romantic love and virile conflict,--a drama in which an affected view of life tinged crisis and character alike, an unreasoning devotion to royalty or some other chivalric ideal obscured personal dignity and moral responsibility, and the thrill of surprise dissipated the catharsis, proper to art, whether tragic or comic.
Upon the future of the comedy of intrigue and manners, Beaumont exercised no distinctive influence. In plays like _The Coxcombe_ and _The Scornful Ladie_, the genius of Fletcher dominated the scenes of lighter dialogue and comic complication. And it is through comedies of intrigue and manners written by Fletcher alone or in company with others, especially Massinger, that Fletcher's individual genius exercised most influence on the subsequent history of the drama. The characteristics which won theatrical preeminence for his romantic comedies, heroic tragicomedies and tragedies, written after the cessation of Beaumont's activity, were a Fletcherian vivacity of dialogue, a Fletcherian perfection of 'business,' and a Fletcherian exaggeration of the tragicomic spirit and technique of which, in the days of the Beaumont-Fletcher partnership, Beaumont had availed himself but which he, still, by virtue of his critical faculty, had held somewhat in restraint.
From the time of Prynne's _Histriomastix_, 1633, there have been critics who have pointed to the gradual deterioration of the stage which, beginning, say some, with plays of Shakespeare himself, continued through Beaumont and Fletcher to the drama of the Restoration. Flecknoe, Rymer, Coleridge, Lamb, Swinburne, Ward, have commented upon phases of the phenomenon. And, recently, one of our most judicious contemporary essayists has in a series of articles developed the theme.[258] I heartily concur with the scholarly and well-languaged editor of _The Nation_, in many of his conclusions concerning the general history of this decline; and I have already in this book availed myself with profit of some of his suggestions. I agree with him that the downfall of tragedy began when "the theme was altered from a single master passion to a number of loosely coordinated passions, thus relaxing the rigidity of tragic structure and permitting the fancy to play more intimately through all the emotions"; that this degeneration may be traced to the time "when ecclesiastical authority was broken by scepticism and knowledge, and the soul was left with all its riches of imagination and emotion, but with the principle of individual responsibility discredited and the fibre of self-government relaxed"; that "the consequences may be seen in the Italy of the sixteenth century"; and that "the result is that drama of the court which, besides its frequent actual indecency, is at heart so often non-moral and in the higher artistic sense incomprehensible." But when he ascribes this alteration of the theme of tragedy from a single master passion to a number of "loosely coordinated passions" to our "twin dramatists," and cites as his example _The Maides Tragedy_ in which, as he sees it, we have "but a succession of womanly passions, each indeed cunningly conceived and expressed, but giving us in the end nothing we can grasp as a whole and comprehend";--and says that Evadne is "no woman at all, unless mere random passionateness can be accounted such," I shake my head in sad demurrer. First, because, as I have tried to show above, Evadne is anything but an incomprehensible embodiment of unmotived passions, and _The Maides Tragedy_ anything but a "loosely coordinated" concern, and secondly, because I disfavour this attribution of the decadence of tragedy, or of comedy, for that matter, to our _twin_ dramatists. To substantiate such a charge it would be incumbent upon the critic to prove not only that the decadence is indubitably visible in the joint-work of Beaumont and Fletcher, but that it is specifically visible in Beaumont's, as in Fletcher's, contribution to that work, and also, that it was not already patent in the dramatic productions of their seniors; that it was not patent in Heywood's _Royall King and Loyall Subject_, for instance; in the "glaring colours"
of Chapman's _Bussy D'Ambois_, and in his _Gentleman Usher_ with its artificial atmosphere of courtly romance, its melodramatic reverses and surprises, its huddling up of poetic justice; in the sensational devices, passionate unrealities and sepulchral action of Marston's _Malcontent_, the sophistical theme and callous pornography of his _Dutch Courtezan_, and in the inhuman imaginings of his _Insatiate Countess_; that it was not patent in the heartless irresponsibility and indecency of Middleton, and in the inartistic warping of tragic situations to comic solutions that characterize his early romantic plays; that it was not patent in the poisonous exhalations, the wildering of sympathy, and the disproportioned art that characterize the _White Devil_ of their immediate contemporary, John Webster.
The decadence was hastened by Fletcher; but not in any distinctive degree by Beaumont. I second Mr. More's commendation of Prynne's "philosophic criticism of 1632 that 'men in theatres are so far from sinne-lamenting sorrow, that they even delight themselves with the representations of those wickednesses,'" but I deplore the application of that criticism to _Beaumont_ and Fletcher, as that "_they_ loosed the bonds of conduct and left human nature as a mere bundle of irresponsibilities."
Many of Fletcher's excesses and defects not only in the plays written with Beaumont, but in plays written after his death, have been conferred from the day of Flecknoe to the present upon Beaumont. There is very little "sinne-lamenting sorrow" in the _Valentinian_ of Fletcher, or of Fletcher and Massinger, and very little in Fletcher's _Wife for a Month_; but in many of Beaumont's scenes in _The Maides Tragedy_, and _A King and No King_, and _The Coxcombe_ the genuine accents of "sinne-lamenting sorrow" are heard. Fletcher certainly "loosed the bonds of conduct and left human nature as a mere bundle of irresponsibilities," but not Beaumont. Let the reader turn to that poet's scenes in the joint-plays (two-thirds of the great ones) as I have indicated them, or to what I have unrolled of Beaumont's mental habit, and judge for himself.[259]
The concession of the essayist from whom, as a representative of enlightened modern opinion upon the subject, I have been quoting,--that "as Fletcher's work stands, he may appear utterly devoid of conscience, a man to whom our human destinies were mere toys," I hail with delight, although I think that Fletcher the man had more honest ideals than Fletcher the dramatist. But, as a critic, I resent the surmise that Fletcher "was by nature of a manlier, sounder fibre than Beaumont." In the heroic-romantic comedy, _The Humorous Lieutenant_, Fletcher displays, indeed, as Mr. More says, "a strain almost like that of Shakespeare, upon whom he manifestly modelled himself in everything except Shakespeare's serious insight into human motives." But does that play reveal anything of manlier, sounder fibre than Beaumont's _A King and No King_?
Written in 1619 _The Humorous Lieutenant_ has enduring vitality, though not because of its tragicomic presupposition; for the wars and rumours of war are rhetorical or humorous, the devilish design of the King upon the chastity of the heroine is predestined to failure,--and the announcement of her death, but a dramatic device which may impose upon the credulity of her noble lover but not upon the audience. In the MS.
of 1625 it is styled "a pleasant comedie"; and such it is, of 'humour'
and romantic love, upon a background of the heroic. It is Fletcher's best comedy of the kind; one of the best of the later Shakespearian age.
The conception of the Lieutenant, whose humour is to fight when he is plagued by loathsome disease and to wench when he is well, is not original, nor is the character of the hero Demetrius; but in the elaboration Fletcher has created these characters anew, has surrounded them with half a dozen other figures no less life-like, and has set them in a plot, cunningly welded of comic, sentimental, and martial elements, and captivatingly original. Though the interest is partly in a wanton intrigue, and the mirth grossly carnal even when not bawdy, I think that the objectionable qualities are, for almost the only time in Fletcher's career in comedy, not ineradicable. The wondrous charm, "matchless spirit," vivacity, and constancy of Celia render the machinations of the procuress, Leucippe, and her "office of concealments" futile,--so much dramatic realism to be accentuated or mitigated at the will of the stage manager;--and the alluring offers of the king are but so many weapons for his own defeat. If the Lieutenant were not an indissoluble compound of hero, swashbuckler, shirker, and "stinkard," I fear, indeed, that he would lose his savour. But the love of Rabelaisian humour is, after all, ingrained in the male of the species, and if the license be not nauseating it is not necessarily damnable. This boisterous, pocky rascal who "never had but two hours yet of happiness," and who courts the battlefield to save him "from the surgeon's miseries," held the stage from the time of Condel, Taylor, and Lowin, to that of Macready and Liston, and there is no reason why his vitality should not be perennial.
There are few more laughable scenes in farcical literature than those in which, having drained a philtre intended to make Celia dote upon the King, the Lieutenant imagines himself to be a handsome wench of fifteen, wooes the King most fatuously, even kisses the royal horses as they pass by. The meeting and the parting, the trials and the reunion, of Celia and Demetrius constitute the most convincing and attractive romantic-pathetic love-affairs in Jacobean drama since Shakespeare had ceased to write. Indeed, this "perilous crafty," spirited, "angel-eyed"
girl "too honest for them all" who so ingeniously and modestly shames the lustful monarch and wins her affianced prince is not unworthy of the master. Nor is Demetrius. The play contains many genuinely poetic passages, and some of those lines of meteoric beauty--"our lives are but our marches to the grave"--in which Beaumont abounded, and that Fletcher too rarely coined. With all the rankness of its humour, the play has such literary and dramatic excellence that one cannot but regret the infrequency with which Fletcher produced that of which he was capable.
But even this best of Fletcher's heroic-dramatic plays contains, as Mr.
More has observed, "one of those sudden conversions which make us wonder whether in his heart he felt any difference between a satyr-like lust and a chaste love--the conversion of the lecherous old king." I grant Fletcher's surpassing excellence in comedy, especially the comedy of manners and intrigue as, for instance, _The Chances_ and the _Rule a Wife and Have a Wife_, and I have elsewhere acknowledged his supremacy after Shakespeare in that realm. But we are now considering not that kind of composition or its technique, but the fibre which might be expected to show itself in compositions involving the element of seriousness. _The Humorous Lieutenant_ is of that kind,--it is called a tragicomedy by some. Has it one tithe of the serious insight into human life of any of Beaumont's plays involving ethical conflict?