Over. Their flinty ribs; or as the moon is moved Steer on a constant course: with mine own sword, Or the least sting of conscience. The toughness of your nature. Over. I admire 'Tis for you, My lord, and for my daughter, I am marble; Nay more, if you will have my character In little, I enjoy more true delight In my arrival to my wealth these dark And crooked ways, than you shall e'er take pleasure From 'The City Madam.' Luke Frugal. No word, sir, I hope, shall give offence: nor let it relish I glory in the bravery of your mind, To which your wealth's a servant. Not that riches Is, or should be, contemned, it being a blessing Heaven keep me thankful for 't!) while they are cursed To hear this spoke to my face. That shall not grieve you. With a prodigal hand rewarded. Whereas, such In your unquestioned wisdom, I beseech you, The goods of this poor man sold at an outcry, For being defeated. Suppose this, it will not auction No, sir, but entreated Giovanni. There's no evasion, Lidia, I might, like such of your condition, sweetest, Or to lie grovelling on the earth, or raised Lidia. Your own goodness Giov. O Lidia! For had I been your equal, I might have seen and liked with mine own eyes, And not, as now, with others. I might still, And without observation or envy, As I have done, continued my delights Contemplate nature's workmanship and wonders: With what melodious harmony a quire One word more, And then I come. And after this, when, with I might have been your husband. Sir, I was, That may make it the study of her life, With all the obedience of a wife, to please you; Giov. I am dumb, and can make no reply. Song from 'The Emperor of the East.' Why art thou slow, thou rest of trouble, Death, To stop a wretch's breath, That calls on thee, and offers her sad heart I am nor young nor fair; be, therefore, bold: Deformed, and wrinkled; all that I can crave Such as live happy, hold long life a jewel ; If thou end not my tedious misery Strike, and strike home, then! Pity unto me, Dor. Thy voice sends forth such music, that I never Was ravished with a more celestial sound. Were every servant in the world like thee, Ang. No, my dear lady, I could weary stars, Therefore, my most loved mistress, do not bid Dor. Be nigh me still, then. My sweet-faced, godly beggar-boy, crave an alms, Dor. Ang. I am not I did never Know who my mother was; but, by yon palace, Filled with bright heavenly courtiers, I dare assure you, And pawn these eyes upon it, and this hand, My father is in heaven: and, pretty mistress, If your illustrious hour-glass spend his sand No worse, than yet it does, upon my life, You and I both shall meet my father there, And he shall bid you welcome. Dor. A blessed day! We all long to be there, but lose the way. There are editions of Massinger (none complete) by Gifford (1805; new ed. 1813), Hartley Coleridge (with Ford's works, 1840), Cunningham (1867), and Symons (1887-89). Beaumont and Fletcher, two of the greatest Elizabethan dramatists, left in their joint work the most memorable outcome of a literary partnership, of a 'mysterious double personality.' Heretofore dramatic collaboration had been generally brief and incidental, confined to a few scenes or a single play. But Beaumont and Fletcher lived together for ten years, and wrote a series of dramas, passionate, romantic, and comic, with such perfect co-operation that their names, their genius, and their fame have been inseparably conjoined or indissolubly blended. Shakespeare inspired these kindred souls. They appeared when his dramatic supremacy was undisputed, FRANCIS BEAUMONT. From an Engraving by P. Audinet in the British Museum. and, especially in the comedies, they could not but be touched by such a master-spirit. But Beaumont rendered enthusiastic homage to Ben Jonson, and several of his plays show abundant traces of Jonson's influence. Francis Beaumont was the younger by five years, and died nine years before his colleague. The son of a judge, a member of an ancient family settled at Gracedieu, in Leicestershire, he was born in 1584, and educated at Oxford. He became a student of the Inner Temple, probably to gratify his father, but does not seem to have prosecuted the study of the law. In 1602 he published a poetical expansion of a tale from Ovid, and became an intimate of Ben Jonson and the circle of wits who met at the Mermaid Tavern. He was buried on 9th March 1616, at the entrance to St Benedict's Chapel, Westminster Abbey. - John Fletcher was the son of that Dean of Peterborough who obtruded unwelcome ministrations on Mary Queen of Scots at the scaffold and died Bishop of London. He was born at Rye in 1579; was bred at Benet (Corpus), Cambridge; was left in poverty at his father's death; in 1607 produced the Woman Hater; and, dying of the plague in 1625, was buried in St Saviour's, Southwark. Hazlitt said of these premature deaths: 'The bees were said to have come and built their hive in the mouth of Plato when a child; and the fable might be transferred to the sweeter accents of Beaumont and Fletcher. . . . One of these writers makes Bellario, the page, say to Philaster, who threatens to take his life: ""Tis not a life, 'tis but a piece of childhood thrown away." But here was youth, genius, aspiring hope, growing reputation, cut off like a flower in its summer pride, or like "the lily on its stalk green," which makes us repine at fortune, and almost at nature, that seem to set so little store by their greatest favourites. The life of poets is, or ought to be -judging of it from the light it lends to ours-a golden dream, full of brightness and sweetness, lapt in Elysium; and it gives one a reluctant pang to see the splendid vision, by which they are attended in their path of glory, fade like a vapour, and their sacred heads laid low in ashes, before the sand of common mortals has run out.' Beaumont and Fletcher's works comprise in all fifty-two plays, a masque, and several minor poems; but it is difficult to allocate the authorship. Ward fails to trace any essential difference between the plays ascribed to both and those attributed to Fletcher alone, while he detects two styles in the plays written by Fletcher along with another than Beaumont. Beaumont's own verses are the more severe and regular in form. Dyce thus assigns the authorship of the plays, with very varying degrees of certainty by Beaumont and Fletcher, Four Plays in One, Wit at Several Weapons, Thierry and Theodoret, Maid's Tragedy, Philaster, King and no King, Cupid's Revenge, Little French Lawyer, Coxcomb, Laws of Candy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and The Scornful Lady; by Beaumont alone, the Masque; by Fletcher and Massinger, False One, Very Woman, The Lover's Progress; by Fletcher and Rowley, Queen of Corinth, Maid of the Mill, Bloody Brother; by Fletcher and Shirley, Noble Gentleman, Night Walker, Love's Pilgrimage; by Fletcher and Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen; the remaining plays, including The Faithful Shepherdess, The False One, Bonduca, and Wit without Money, by Fletcher alone. Fletcher's collaborator in some of the later plays is, however, entirely uncertain. His own versification has many peculiar features which make his verse distinguishable from that of his contemporary dramatists. Chief of these is the frequency of double or feminine endings, in which he exceeds any other writer of our old drama. A marked metrical peculiarity was his fondness for ending a verse with an emphatic extra monosyllable-e.g.: And, love, I charge thee, never charm mine eyes more. (A single line from The Humorous Lieutenant, Act IV. sc. 2.) And unfrequented deserts where the snow dwells. (A single line from Bonduca.) Another characteristic is the monotonous pause at the end of the line. In more colloquial passages the verse is so irregular-through the introduction of redundant syllables (in all parts of the line)as to be barely distinguishable from prose. The metrical arrangement in the seventeenth-century editions is very faulty; and Fletcher has only himself to blame if modern editors cannot determine whether certain scenes should be printed as verse or prose. His easy, go-as-you-please freedom was obtained by the sacrifice of rhythm. Fletcher undoubtedly had a share in Shakespeare's Henry VIII. (see page 372). The touch of Shakespeare is felt with considerable certainty in the Two Noble Kinsmen (see page 372). There is a tone of music and a tread of thunder in some of the passages to which no parallel can be found in any of the companion dramas. Only three plays were, during Fletcher's lifetime, published as joint productions. Two of these-Philaster and the Maid's Tragedy are, with the exception of the great passages in the Two Noble Kinsmen, the glory of the collection. It seems odd that these plays are called by the name of Beaumont and Fletcher, thus giving precedence to the younger and less voluminous writer. Dyce's opinion was that of these three plays Beaumont had the greater share, or that through natural courtesy Fletcher placed the name of his deceased associate before his own, and that future editors naturally followed Fletcher's arrangement. It would appear that on the whole Beaumont possessed the deeper and more thoughtful genius, Fletcher the gayer and more idyllic. There is a glad, exuberant music and a May-morning light and freshness in the Faithful Shepherdess, which Milton did not disdain to accept as a model in the lyrical portions of Comus, and of which the Endymion of Keats is an echo. Beaumont and Fletcher never sound the deep sea of passion; they are poets first and dramatists after; they display but little power of serious and consistent characterisation, while they are much too fond of unnatural and violent situations. And there is an unpleasantly licentious element in many of the plays; even that most delightful pastoral the Faithful Shepherdess is marred by deformities of this kind. 'A spot,' says Charles Lamb, 'is on the face of this Diana.' Dryden reports that Philaster was the first play that brought the collaborators into esteem with the public, though they had produced several plays before it appeared. It is somewhat improbable in plot, but interesting in character and situations. The hero, heir to the King of Sicily, who had been unjustly deposed by the King of Calabria, claims his rights. The king's daughter Arethusa falls in love with him : Are. Do. Phi. I can endure it. Turn away my face? I never yet saw enemy that looked So dreadfully, but that I thought myself As great a basilisk as he; or spake So horribly, but that I thought my tongue A thing so loathed, and unto you that ask Are. Yet for my sake, a little bend thy looks. Are. With it, it were too little to bestow On thee: Now, though thy breath do strike me dead, (Which, know, it may) I have unript my breast. Phi. Madam, you are too full of noble thoughts, To lay a train for this contemnèd life, Which you may have for asking to suspect Were base, where I deserve no ill: Love you! By all my hopes, I do, above my life! But how this passion should proceed from you So violently, would amaze a man That would be jealous. Are. Another soul into my body shot Could not have filled me with more strength and spirit Will be the nobler and the better blest, Is mingled with it. Let us leave, and kiss ; Lest some unwelcome guest should fall betwixt us, 'Tis true; and worse How shall we devise To hold intelligence, that our true loves, On any new occasion, may agree What path is best to tread? Phi. I have a boy, Of which he borrowed some to quench his thirst, Which gave him roots; and of the crystal springs, The jealousy of Philaster is unnatural; Euphrasia, disguised as Bellario the page, is imitated from Viola, yet her hopeless attachment to Philaster is touching : My father oft would speak Your worth and virtue; and, as I did grow I grew acquainted with my heart, and searched My birth no match for you, I was past hope I could not stay with you, I made a vow, By all the most religious things a maid Could call together, never to be known, Whilst there was hope to hide me from men's eyes, (Act v. sc. v.) The Maid's Tragedy, supposed to be written about the same time, is a powerful but unpleasing drama. Aspatia's purity is well contrasted with the guilty boldness of Evadne; and the rough, soldier-like bearing and manly feeling of Melantius render the selfish sensuality of the king more hateful and disgusting. Unhappily whole scenes and dialogues are disfigured by the masterIvice of the theatre of Beaumont and Fletcher. Coleridge said, somewhat unkindly, that both |