smile at some of his traits, we admire the resoluteness of purpose that lies behind his self-confidence; we admire his lofty theory of virtue, though his own vices are not concealed. Thirty elegies, composed by his friends, were collected into Jonsonus Virbius and published the year after his death.* BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625) by birth and education were of a higher social standing than their fellow-dramatists, Beaumont being the son of a judge, and Fletcher the son of a bishop. The younger man was an Oxford, and Fletcher a Cambridge student, and also a collaborator with Shakespeare, especially in Henry VIII. and in The Two Noble Kinsmen. Concerning the details of their lives we possess but scanty information. Their Literary Partnership.†There has been no successful attempt to discriminate what each contributed to their joint work, so close was their unity of mind. Swinburne has done this as well as any one. To Beaumont, perhaps, belongs the compacter dramatic sense, the deeper * Cunningham published a revised edition of Gifford's Memoir of Ben Jonson (1875). The bibliography is large. See A Study of Ben Jonson by A. C. Swinburne (1890), and in the "Mermaid Series" three volumes by Brinsley Nicholson devoted to Ben Jonson (1893–1894). † "There was a wonderful similarity between Mr. Francis Beaumont and Mr. John Fletcher, which caused the clearness of friendship between them. I have heard Dr. John Earle, since Bishop of Sarum, say, who knew them, that his (Beaumont's) business was to correct the superflowings of Mr. Fletcher's wit. They lived together on the Bankside, not far from the playhouse; both bachelors, had one bench of the house between them, which they did so admire the same cloathes, cloaks, etc., between them." — Aubrey, 1697. See his article on Beaumont and Fletcher in the Encycl. Britannica Vol. III. voice, the more fiery spirit; to Fletcher, the fluency, exuberance, humor, and swift verse. Their Dramatic Works. -Their works give evidence of the influence and inspiration of Shakespeare; and several of their plays, in which humorous and romantic qualities predominate, are worthy of comparison with such comedies as Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like it, and Measure for Measure. But in the delineation of sustained passion they are inferior to their master. The range of their character-painting is comparatively limited, and their pathos is tender rather than deep. Their portraits of valiant soldiers are not surpassed, and they are skilled in depicting magnanimous characters. It is in their pieces of mixed sentiment, containing comic matter intermingled with romantic and elevated incidents, that their powers are best displayed. Of this class, no better examples can be selected than the comedies of Philaster, The Elder Brother, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, Beggars' Bush, The Maid's Tragedy, and the Spanish Curate. In more farcical intrigues and characters, such as are to be found in the Little French Lawyer, the Woman-Hater, the Scornful Lady, the eccentricity is laughably extravagant, and the authors seem to enjoy heaping up absurdity upon absurdity. Some of their pieces furnish stores of antiquarian and literary material; for example, the Beggars' Bush contains abundant illustrations of contemporary slang; and the Knight of the Burning Pestle is a storehouse of ancient English ballad poetry. They occasionally attempt good-humored banter of Shakespeare. In the play just mentioned, the droll, pathetic speech on the installation of Clause as King of the Gypsies, is a parody of Cranmer's speech in the last scene of Henry VIII. There are fifty-two plays accredited to their joint title, many of which belong to Fletcher alone, or to him and his collaborators Massinger, Shakespeare, Rowley, and Shirley. The pastoral drama of The Faithful Shepherdess was written by Fletcher alone. Its exquisitely delicate sentiments are too often soiled by passages of loose and vicious thinking. Ben Jonson's best poetry, The Sad Shepherd, and Milton's Comus, were inspired by this poem.' * Philip Massinger (1583-1639) spent four years in the University of Oxford, and probably was deprived of his degree by his conversion to Catholicism. In 1604 he began his theatrical life, and found it an uninterrupted succession of struggles, disappointments, and distress. We have the titles of thirtynine plays, either entirely or partly of his composition. Only eighteen of them are extant. The best known are The Virgin Martyr, The Fatal Dowry, The Duke of Milan, The Bondman, The City Madam, and A New Way to Pay Old Debts. A New Way to Pay Old Debts is occasionally put upon the modern stage, and contains the original character of Sir Giles Overreach. Massinger's style and versification are singularly sweet and noble. Dignity and grace are the qualities in which he excels. At the close of a life of poverty he died in obscurity, and in noting his death the parish register names him “Philip Massinger a stranger." ‡ John Webster is perhaps the most original genius among the Shakespearean dramatists of the second order. His writing reminds one of the dark and woeful expression that thrills us in the work of Dante. The number of his known works is small; the most celebrated among them is the tragedy of The Duchess of Malfi; but others are not inferior to that strange piece in intensity of feeling and savage grimness of treatment. *See The Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, with notes and a memoir, by Alex. Dyce (2 vols., 1854); also A. W. Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature (1875). † Eleven of them in manuscript were in possession of a Mr. Warburton, whose cook, desirous of saving what she considered better paper, used them in the kindling of fires and the basting of roasts. See Cunningham's revision of Gifford's Plays of Philip Massinger (1867); also Selections from Massinger, by Arthur Symons in the "Mermaid Series " (1887-1889). We have The Devil's Law Case, Northward Ho, The White Devil, and Appius and Claudius as examples of his best work. As Charles Lamb says, "To move a horror skillfully, to touch a soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wean and weary a life till it is ready to drop, and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit; this only a Webster can do."* The Close of the Dramatic Era. The dramatic era of Elizabeth and James closes with James Shirley (1596-1666), whose comedies, though in many respects bearing the same general character as the works of his great predecessors, still seem the earnest of a new period. He excels in the delineation of gay and fashionable society; his plays are more remarkable for grace and animation than for portraiture of character. The glory of the English drama had almost departed; its suppression was hastened by the breaking out of the Civil War in 1642, and by enactments of Parliament in 1642, 1647, and 1648, which closed the theaters and suppressed the dramatic profession. From that date until the Restoration, all theatrical performances were illegal. With that event began an entirely new chapter in the history of the English stage. In this chapter we have considered — 1. Ben Jonson.-2. Beaumont and Fletcher.-3. Philip Massinger, John Webster, James Shirley.-4. The Close of the Dramatic Era. * Both Alex. Dyce (1830) and Hazlitt (1857-1858), made collections of Webster's works. See also Mr. J. A. Symonds's edition in the "Mermaid Series " (1888). CHAPTER XV. THE PROSE LITERATURE OF THE ELIZABETHAN PERIOD. MUCH of the practical tendency of our contemporary literature can be traced to its beginning in the Elizabethan era, when education first found many devotees among English laymen, and prose literature was for the first time generally used for other than ecclesiastical purposes. The clergy had no longer the monopoly of the learning and acquirements which had given them the monopoly of intellectual influence. Laymen began to wield the pen. Sir Walter Raleigh. One of the extraordinary men of this era was Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), whose romantic career belongs to the political rather than to the literary history of England. When James I. came to the throne his fortunes declined. He was unjustly charged with treason and sentenced to the Tower, where he was imprisoned for thirteen. years. During this time he devoted himself to literary and scientific work, experimenting in chemistry, with the hope of discovering the philosopher's stone, and with the help of friends preparing his History of the World.* At the end of his imprisonment he was sent to South America in quest of riches for the king. One of Raleigh's exploits enraged the Spanish court; and to appease the wrath of the Spaniards, he was seized upon his return to England and was beheaded on the old charge of treason. He was a man of remarkable patience and resolution, who might have been eminent among literary men had his life been *See Raleigh's Works, Oxford, 1829. |