The rest of this Dedication is of great interest as bearing upon the date of the composition of the play; but it has been entirely misconstrued or else it gives us false information. That matter I shall discuss in connection with the sources and composition of the play.[51]
Suffice it to say here that _The Knight_ followed _The Travails of Three English Brothers_, acted. June 29, 1607, and that the Robert Keysar who rescued the manuscript of _The Knight_ from oblivion had, only in 1606 or 1607, acquired a financial interest in the Queen's Revels' Children, and was backing them during the last year of their occupancy of Blackfriars when they presented the play, and where only it was presented.
In the same year, 1607, both young men are writing commendatory verses for the first quarto of Ben Jonson's _Volpone_, which had been acted in 1605. Beaumont, with the confidence of intimacy, addresses Jonson as "Dear Friend," praises his "even work," deplores its failure with the many who "nothing can digest, but what's obscene, or barks," and implies that he forbears to make them understand its merits purely in deference to Jonson's wiser judgment,--
I would have shewn To all the world the art which thou alone Hast taught our tongue, the rules of time, of place And other rites, deliver'd with the grace Of comic style, which only is far more Than any English stage hath known before.
But since our subtle gallants think it good To like of nought that may be understood ...
... let us desire They may continue, simply to admire Fine clothes and strange words,
and offensive personalities.
Fletcher in a more epigrammatic appeal to "The true master in his art, B. Jonson," prays him to forgive friends and foes alike, and then, those "who are nor worthy to be friends or foes."
Concerning Fletcher's beginnings in composition the earliest date is suggested by a line of D'Avenant's, written many years after Fletcher's death (1625), "full twenty years he wore the bays."[52] It has been conjectured by some that the elder of our dramatists was in the field as early as 1604, with his comedy of _The Woman's Prize_ or _The Tamer Tamed_,--a well contrived and witty continuation of Shakespeare's _Taming of the Shrew_,--in which Maria, a cousin of Shakespeare's Katherine, now deceased, marries the bereaved Petruchio and effectively turns the tables upon him. If acted before 1607, _The Woman's Prize_ was a Paul's Boys' or Queen's Revels' play. But while the upper limit of the play is fixed by the mention of the siege of Ostend, 1604, other references and the literary style point to 1610, even to 1614, as the date of composition or revision.[53]
It is likely that Fletcher was writing plays before 1608, but what we do not know. In that year was acted the pastoral drama of _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_, a composition entirely his own. This delicate confection of sensual desire, ideal love, translunar chastity, and subacid cynicism regarding "all ideas of chastity whatever,"[54] was an experiment; and a failure upon the stage. It has, as I shall later emphasize, lyric and descriptive charm of surpassing merit, but it lacks, as does most of Fletcher's work, moral depth and emotional reality; and following, as it did, a literary convention in design, it could not avail itself of the skill in dramatic device, and the racy flavour which a little later characterized his _Monsieur Thomas_. The date of its first performance is determined by the combined authority of the Stationers' Registers (from which we learn that the publishers of the first quarto, undated, but undoubtedly of 1609,[55] were in unassisted partnership only from December 22, 1608 to July 20, 1609), of a statement of Jonson to Drummond of Hawthornden that the play was written "ten years" before 1618, and of commendatory verses to the first quarto of 1609, by the young actor-dramatist, Nathaniel Field. If we may guide our calculations by the plague regulations of the time, it must have been acted before July 28, 1608.
On the appearance of the first quarto, in 1609, Jonson sympathizing with "the worthy author," on the ill reception of the pastoral when first performed, says:
I, that am glad thy innocence was their guilt,
for the rabble found not there the "vices, which they look'd for,"
I--
Do crown thy murder'd poem; which shall rise A glorified work to time, when fire Or moths shall eat what all these fools admire.
And Francis Beaumont writing to "my friend, Master John Fletcher" speaks of his "undoubted wit," and "art," and rejoices that, if they should condemn the play now that it is printed,
Your censurers must have the quality Of reading, which I am afraid is more Than half your shrewdest judges had before.
In the first quarto two commendatory poems are printed, the first by N.
F., the second by the Homeric scholar and well known dramatist, George Chapman. The latter writes "to his loving friend, Master John Fletcher,"
in terms of generous encouragement and glowing charm. Your pastoral, says he, is "a poem and a play, too,"--
But because Your poem only hath by us applause, Renews the golden world, and holds through all The holy laws of homely pastoral, Where flowers and founts, and nymphs and semi-gods, And all the Graces find their old abodes, Where forests flourish but in endless verse, And meadows nothing fit for purchasers; This iron age, that eats itself, will never Bite at your golden world; that other's ever Lov'd as itself. Then like your book, do you Live in old peace, and that for praise allow.
If Jonson, Chapman, and Beaumont suspected the undercurrent of satire in this Pastoral, and they surely were not obtuse, they concealed the suspicion admirably. As for Fletcher he continued to "live in old peace." "When his faire Shepheardesse on the guilty stage, Was martir'd between Ignorance and Rage.... Hee only as if unconcerned smil'd." An attitude toward the public that characterized him all through life.
The admiration of younger men is shown in the respectful commendation of N. F. This is Nathaniel Field. He was acting with the Blackfriars' Boys since the days when Jonson presented _Cynthia's Revels_, and, as one of the Queen's Revels' Children, he had probably taken part in _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ when the undiscerning public hissed it. Field came of good family, had been one of Mulcaster's pupils at the Merchant Taylors' School, and was beloved by Chapman and Jonson. He was then but twenty-two,--about three years younger than Fletcher's friend, Beaumont,--but for nine years gone he had been recognized as a genius among boy-actors. That the verses of so young a man should be accepted, and coupled with those of the thunder-girt Chapman, was to him a great and unexpected honour; and the youth expresses prettily his pride in being published by his "lov'd friend" in such distinguished literary company,--
Can my approovement, sir, be worth your thankes, Whose unknowne name, and Muse in swathing clowtes, Is not yet growne to strength, among these rankes To have a roome?
Now he is planning to write dramas himself; and it is pleasant to note with what modesty he touches upon the project:
But I must justifie what privately I censur'd to you, my ambition is (Even by my hopes and love to Poesie) To live to perfect such a worke as this, Clad in such elegant proprietie Of words, including a morallitie,[56]
So sweete and profitable.
He is alluding to his not yet finished comedy, _A Woman is a Weather-cocke_. The youth must have been close to Beaumont as well as to Fletcher; he soon afterwards, 1609-10, played the leading part in their _Coxcombe_,--which, I think, was the earliest work planned and written by them in collaboration; and when, a little later, his own first comedy was acted by the Queen's Revels' Children no auditor of literary ear could have failed to detect, amid the manifest echoes of Chapman, Jonson, and Shakespeare, the flattering resemblance in diction, rhythm, and poetic fancy to the most characteristic features of Beaumont's style. This is very interesting, because in another dramatic composition _Foure Playes in One_, written in part by Fletcher, certain portions have so close a likeness to Beaumont's work, that until lately they have been mistakenly attributed to that poet and assigned to this early period of his career. The portions of _The Foure Playes_ not written by Fletcher were written by no other than Nat. Field. And since in Field's _Address to the Reader_ of the _Weather-cocke_, licensed for publication November 23, 1611, he still speaks as if the _Weather-cocke_ were his only venture in play-writing, we may conclude that _The Foure Playes in One_ was not put together before the end of 1611, or the beginning of 1612. That series need not, therefore, be considered in the present place; all the more so, since Beaumont had in all probability nothing directly to do with its composition.[57]
Of the other dramas written by Fletcher alone and assigned by critics to his earlier period, that is to say before 1610, or even 1611, the only one beside _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ that may with any degree of safety be admitted to consideration is a comedy of romance, manners, and humours, _Monsieur Thomas_. The romance is a delightful story of self-abnegating love. The father, Valentine, and the son Francisco, supposed to have been drowned long ago, and now known (if the texts had only printed the play as Fletcher wrote it) as Callidon, a guest of Valentine, love the same girl, the father's ward. This part of the play is executed with captivating grace. It shows that Fletcher had, from the first, an instinct for the dramatic handling of a complicated story, an eye for delicate and surprising situations, an appreciation of chivalric honour and genuine passion, and a fancy fertile and playful. In the subplot the manners are such as would appeal to a Fletcher not yet thirty years of age; and the humours are those of a student of the earlier plays of Ben Jonson, and of Marston--who ceased writing in 1607.
It has indeed been asserted, but without much credibility, that "the notion of the panerotic Hylas," who must always "be courting wenches through key-holes," was taken from a character in Marston's _Parasitaster_, of 1606.[58] The name of this Captain, Hylas, was in the mouth of Fletcher in those early days; he uses it again in his part of the _Philaster_, written in 1609 or 1610, and elsewhere. The snatches of song and the names of ballads are those of contemporary popularity between 1606 and 1609; and in two instances they are those of which Beaumont makes use in his _Knight of the Burning Pestle_ of 1607. The play was acted, too, apparently by the same company, the Queen's Revels' Children, and in the same house as was Beaumont's. It could not have been played by them at "the Private House in Black Fryers" later than March 1608, unless they squeezed it into that last month of 1609 which serves as a telescope basket for so many of the plays which critics cannot satisfactorily date.
For my present purpose, which is to show how Fletcher, not assisted by Beaumont, wrote during his youth, it makes little difference whether _Monsieur Thomas_ was written as early as 1608 or only before 1611. The fact is, however, that a line in the last scene, "Take her, Francisco, now no more young Callidon," shows clearly that Callidon, a name not occurring elsewhere in the play, and necessary to the dramatic complication, had been used by Fletcher in his first version; and when we put the names Callidon and Cellidee together (she is Francisco's beloved) we are pointed at once to the source of the romantic plot--the _Histoire de Celidee, Thamyre, et Calidon_ at the beginning of the Second Part of the _Astree_ of the Marquis D'Urfe.[59] The First Part of this voluminous pastoral romance had been published, probably in 1609, in an edition which is lost; but a second edition, dedicated to Henri IV, who died May 14, 1610, appeared that year. Some of Fletcher's inspiration, as for the name and general characteristic of Hylas, was drawn from the First Part. The Second Part was not printed till later in 1610. It would, therefore, appear that Fletcher could not have written _Monsieur Thomas_ before the latter date. On the other hand, as Dr. Upham[60] has indicated, the _Astree_ had been read as early as February 12, 1607, by Ben Jonson's friend, William Drummond, who, on that day, writes about it critically to Sir George Keith. If the First Part had been circulated in manuscript, and read by an Englishman, in 1607, it is not at all unlikely that the Second Part, too, of this most leisurely published romance, which did not get itself all into covers till 1647, had been read in manuscript by many men, French and English, long before its appearance in print, 1610;--may be by Fletcher himself, as early as 1608. Or he may have heard the story, as early as that, from some one who had read it. The fact that he alters some of the names, follows the plot but loosely, characterizes the personages not at all as if he had the original before him, and uses none of their diction, would favour the supposition that he is writing from hearsay, or from some second hand and condensed version of the story.
No matter what the exact date of composition, _Monsieur Thomas_ is the one play beside _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ from which we may draw conclusions concerning the native tendencies of the young Fletcher. The subplot of Thomas, concocted with clever ease, and furnished with varied devices appropriate to comic effect--disguisings, mouse-traps, dupers duped, street-frolics and mock sentimental serenades, scaling-ladders, convents, and a blackamoor girl for a decoy-duck,--is conceived in a rollicking spirit and executed in sprightly conversational style. Sir Adolphus Ward says that "as a picture of manners it is excelled by few other Elizabethan comedies." I am sorry that I cannot agree; I call it low, or farcical comedy; and though the 'manners' be briskly and realistically imagined, I question their contemporary actuality,--even their dramatic probability. Amusing scapegraces like the hero of the title-part have existed in all periods of history; and fathers, who will not have their sons mollycoddles; and squires of dames, like the susceptible Hylas. But manners, to be dramatically probable, must reflect the contacts of possible characters in a definite period. And no one can maintain that the contact of these persons with the women of the play is characterized by possibility. Or that these manners could, even in the beginning of James I's reign, have characterized a perceptible percentage of actual Londoners. Thomas, whose humour it is to assume sanctimony for the purpose of vexing his father, and blasphemy for the purpose of teasing his sweetheart--racking that "maiden's tender ears with damns and devils,"--is no more grotesque than many a contemporary embodiment of 'humour.' But what of his contacts with the "charming"
Mary who "daily hopes his fair conversion," and has "a credit," and "loves where her modesty may live untainted"; and, then, that she may "laugh an hour" admits him to her bed-chamber, having substituted for herself a negro wench? And what of the contacts with his equally "modest" sister, Dorothy, who not only talks smut with him and with the "charming" Mary, but deems his fornication "fine sport" and would act it if she were a man? I fear that much reading of decadent drama sometimes impairs the critical perception. In making allowance for what masquerades as historical probability one frequently accepts human improbabilities, and condones what should be condemned--even from the dramatic point of view. I have found it so in my own case. With all its picaresque quality, its jovial 'humours' and its racy fun, this play is sheer stage-rubbish: it has no basis in the general life of the class it purports to represent, no basis in actual manners, nor in likelihood or poetry. Its basis is in the uncritical and, to say the least, irresponsible taste of a theatre-going Rump which enjoyed the spurious localization, and attribution to others, of the imaginings of its own heart.
The characters are well grouped; and the spirit of merriment prevails.
The reversals of motive and fortune, the recognitions and the denouement are as excellently and puerilely absurd as could be desired of such an amalgam of romance and farcical intrigue. Richard Brome, writing in praise of the author for the quarto of 1639, implies that the play was not well received at its "first presenting,"--"when Ignorance was judge, and but a few What was legitimate, what bastard knew." That first presenting was between 1608 and 1612; and the few might have cared more for Jonson's _Every Man in his Humour_ or _Volpone_, or something by Shakespeare, or soon afterwards for Beaumont and Fletcher's _Philaster_ or _A King and No King_. But, as Brome assures us, "the world's grown wiser now." That is to say, it had learned by 1639 "what was legitimate," and could believe that in Fletcher's _Monsieur Thomas_ and the like, "the Muses jointly did inspire His raptures only with their sacred fire." But even as transmogrified by D'Urfey and others the play did not survive its century.
No better example could be afforded of the kind of comedy that Fletcher was capable of producing in his earlier period. It shows us with what ability he could dramatize a romantic tale; with what license as a realist imagine and portray an unmoral, when not immoral, semblance of contemporary life. That was either before Beaumont had joined forces with him; or when Beaumont was not pruning his fancy; was not hanging "plummets" on his wit "to suppress Its too luxuriant-growing mightiness," nor persuading him that mirth might subsist "untainted with obscenity," and "strength and sweetness" and "high choice of brain" be "couched in every line." I am not claiming too much for Beaumont. In his later work as in his earlier there is the frank animalism, at times, of Elizabethan blood and humour; but one may search in vain his parts of the joint-plays as well as his youthful _Knight of the Burning Pestle_ and those portions of _The Woman-Hater_ which Fletcher did not touch, for the Jacobean salaciousness of Fletcher's _Monsieur Thomas_ and the carnal cynicism which lurks beneath the pastoral garb of innocence even in _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_;--characteristics that find utterance again, untrammeled, in the dramas written after the younger poet was dead,--and Fletcher could no longer, as in those earlier days,
wisely submit each birth To knowing Beaumont e're it did come forth, Working againe untill _he_ said 'twas fit; And make him the sobriety of his wit.[61]
During the years of Beaumont's apprenticeship to Poetry cloaked as Law things had changed but little in his world of the Inner Temple. In its parliament, Sir Edward Coke, judicial, intrepid, and devout is still most potent. The chamber, lodging, and rooms which his father, Mr.
Justice Beaumont, and his uncle Henry had built and occupied near to Ram Alley in the north end of Fuller's Rents are still held by Richard Daveys, who as Treasurer moved into them in 1601. Dr. Richard Masters is still Master of the Temple; and in the church, where Francis was obliged to receive the Sacrament at stated times, he, sitting perhaps by his uncle Henry's tomb, would hear the assistant ministers, Richard Evans and William Crashaw. The sacred place was still the refuge of outlaws from Whitefriars who claimed the privilege of sanctuary. If Beaumont wished to steal, after hours, into the Alsatia beyond Fuller's Rents, he must skirt or propitiate in 1607 as in 1602 the same Cerberus at the gates,--William Knight, the glover. Outside awaited him the hospitality of the Mitre Inn, or of Barrow at the "Cat and Fiddle," or of the slovenly Anthony Gibbes in his cook's shop of Ram Alley.[62]
FOOTNOTES:
[46] The King's letter to Salisbury (undated, but of 1608). Gardiner, _Hist. Engl._ 1603-1642, II, 43-45.
[47] This much more distinguished favour has been overlooked by Thorndike and other critics. But it is possible that Shaw, _Knights of England_, I, 154, may be confounding him with another Carr, a favourite of Queen Anne's.
[48] Dyce, _B. and F._, Vol. I, p. 53.
[49] Act IV, 14, 50-54.
[50] _Cf._, Lazarillo's _Farewells_, Act III, 3.
[51] See Chap. XXIV, below.
[52] Prologue, for a revival, in 1649, of _The Woman-Hater_, which D'Avenant mistakenly attributes to Fletcher.
[53] Reasons for dating an earlier version of the play about 1604 are given by Oliphant, _Engl. Studien_, XV, 338-339, and Thorndike, _Infl.
of B. and F._, 70-71. In its present form, however, the play dates later than Jonson's _Epicoene_, 1610. See Gayley, _Rep. Eng. Com._, III, _Introd._, -- 15.
[54] I heartily concur with W. W. Greg's interpretation, _Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama_, p. 274.
[55] See Fleay, _Chron. Eng. Dr._, I, 312, and Thorndike, _Infl. of B.
and F._, 64.
[56] Folio, 1647, 'mortallitie'; a misprint.
[57] See Chap. XXIII, below.
[58] See Guskar, _Anglia_, XXVIII, XXIX.