Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/311

 traced. Mr. Robert Boyle (Englische Studien, viii. 39) detects the presence of a third author, and Mr. Fleay supposes that this third author was [q. v.] The play was acted by the children of Her Majesty's Revels at Whitefriars in January 1611–12. For the groundwork of the plot the playwrights were indebted to Sidney's ‘Arcadia.’

The ‘Coxcomb,’ first printed in the 1647 folio, was acted in 1612–13, and may have been produced earlier. The underplot, relating to Viola, may be attributed to Beaumont; but in other parts of the play we are more frequently reminded of William Rowley than of Beaumont or Fletcher. It is a somewhat unpleasing play. The ‘Captain,’ 1647, was composed some time before 20 May 1613, when Hemings and his company were paid for representing it at court. No portion can be definitely assigned to Beaumont; but Fletcher certainly had assistance from some quarter. Mr. Fleay suggests that ‘Jonson worked with Fletcher on the original play.’ There are occasional traces of Middleton's hand. The most powerful and most repulsive scene, act iv. sc. 5, cannot be ascribed to Fletcher, although he probably supplied the song ‘Come hither you that love.’

In honour of the marriage of the Count Palatine with the Princess Elizabeth, February 1612–13, Beaumont composed the ‘Masque of the Inner Temple and Grayes Inne,’ n. d., 4to, which was dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon. The songs are of rare beauty.

The ‘Honest Man's Fortune,’ 1647, was performed in 1613. In the Dyce Library is preserved the manuscript copy which was licensed in 1624 by Sir Henry Herbert for the king's company. It is entitled ‘The Honest Mans Fortune, plaide in the yeare 1613.’ The fifth act is plainly by Fletcher, and Mr. Boyle has given excellent reasons for ascribing the third act, or part of it, to Massinger. Mr. Fleay's suggestion that the fourth act (with perhaps part of the third) belongs to Field is very plausible. Acts i. and ii. are by some other playwright. Appended to the play is a curious copy of verses ‘Upon an Honest Man's Fortune. By Master John Fletcher.’ Not a trace of Beaumont's hand can be found in this comedy. Nor can any part of the ‘Knight of Malta,’ 1647, produced before Burbage's death (March 1618–1619), be safely assigned to Beaumont. Mr. Macaulay (A Study of Francis Beaumont, p. 196) gives the fifth act to him; but the poverty of the lyrical passages affords sufficient evidence that he was not the author. Three scenes (iii. 2, 3, iv. 1) are shown by Mr. Boyle to belong to Massinger, and to these may be added part of another (v. 2). The second act, which contains the strongest writing in the play, is wholly by Fletcher, who also contributed iii. 1. Some other dramatist wrote the first act and part of the fifth. No portions of ‘Thierry and Theodoret,’ published in 1621 and written probably about 1616, can be confidently given to Beaumont. The most impressive scene (iv. 1), in which Ordella declares her readiness to lay down her life for her husband, is unmistakably Fletcher's. In depicting womanly heroism Fletcher always overshoots the mark; when he essays to be profoundly pathetic he becomes sentimental. Massinger largely assisted him in this play, but the third act appears to be by some unknown author. ‘Wit at Several Weapons,’ 1647, produced about 1614, is a merry comedy of intrigue, and the scene is laid in London. In reading it we are strongly reminded of Middleton's town-comedies, or of the mixed work of Middleton and Rowley.

Beaumont died 6 March 1615–16, and appears to have given up dramatic work as early as 1614. Dyce printed from Harleian MS. 6057, fol. 34, some lines, ‘Come, sorrow, come,’ signed ‘I. F.,’ that may have been written by Fletcher on the occasion of Beaumont's death. Aubrey states, on the authority of Earle, that Beaumont's ‘main businesse was to correct the overflowings of Mr. Fletcher's witte,’ and Dryden declares that Beaumont was ‘so accurate a judge of plays’ that Ben Jonson ‘submitted all his writings to his censure.’ Little weight can be attached to these statements; but the stage tradition, that Beaumont was superior in judgment to Fletcher, is supported by sound criticism. In the most important plays that they wrote together Beaumont's share outweighs Fletcher's, both in quantity and quality. Beaumont had the firmer hand and statelier manner; his diction was more solid; there was a richer music in his verse. Fletcher excelled as a master of brilliant dialogue and sprightly repartee. In the management of his plots and in the development of his characters he was careless and inconsistent. But in his comedies the unceasing liveliness and bustle atone for structural defects; and in tragedy his copious command of splendid declamation reconciles us to the absence of rarer qualities. Fletcher's metrical characteristics are strongly marked. He sought by various devices to give greater freedom to the movement of blank verse. Thus he introduces redundant syllables in all parts of the line, and he is particularly fond of ending the line with an emphatic extra monosyllable, a practice in which he