It would be curious, observes Mr. Dyce, "to know what was Lovelace's idea of downright coarseness." This very play, as the same critic remarks, was the one which Dryden instanced, in self-defence, as containing more indecency than all the plays of his own time put together. "A very bold assertion," continues Mr. Dyce. 'If Dryden and the other dramatists of Charles the Second's time did not equal their predecessors in open licentiousness (and of that they have a tolerable share), they far exceeded them in wanton inuendos and allusions. The truth is, the greater part of the eighteenth century had passed away before indecency was wholly banished from the writings of our countrymen: even in the pages of Addison, who did so much towards the purification of English literature, there are passages which may occasion some slight uneasiness to one reading aloud in a family circle.' So true is this remark on the Spectator, that the passages alluded to could not, with propriety, be read aloud at all. They are harmless, as far as mere coarseness is harmless; and Steele (for the benefit of conjugality) ventures a luxuriance now and then, which to readers who can take it as he meant, is equally so. But if caution has become necessary in reading Addison, who is justly designated as one of the purifiers of our literature, and whose name has been held synonymous with propriety, it may easily be supposed how abundant the necessity is rendered in the case of the two most licentious writers of a licentious age. Fortunately they wrote much, and beautifully; and it has been still more fortunate for them, that genius and purity go best together; so that my selection has not only been enabled to be copious as well as spotless (thanks to the facilities afforded to excision by the authors themselves), but with the exception of a few of their sentences, not so easily detachable, and of the equally few incidents connected with them, contains, I think I may say, the whole of their finest writing, and every presentable scene that has been deservedly admired. Not that indecency has been the sole bar to approval * Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. i. p. (of Memoir) xlvii. for the same haste to please, and want of discretion in the mode of pleasing,-joined perhaps to necessities for recruiting the purse (Beaumont being a younger brother, and Fletcher's father, the bishop, having at least been free from the scandal of leaving his family rich),-induced these illustrious "gentlemen about town" to put up with improbable plots, gratuitous and disjointed scenes, extravagant effects, and all those other substitutions of the surprising for the satisfactory, that lower the dramatist into the melodramatist, and have abundantly subjected even these great geniuses to the mortifying consequences. The same imperfection of moral discernment, or carelessness to sharpen it, led them into mistakes of sentimentalism for sentiment, violence for sincerity, and heapings of superlative phrases for paintings of character. The truth is, that, great geniuses as they were, and exquisite in a multitude of passages, few even of the lovers of books read their works through. The most willing admirers are not only repelled by the ribaldry, but tired by the want of truth and by the positive trash. They grow impatient of exits and entrances that have no ground but the convenience of the writers; of childish adventures, inconsistent speeches, substitutions of the authors themselves for their characters, sudden conversions of bad people to good, and heaps of talking for talking's sake. If they hurry the perusal, they perceive nothing distinctly; if they proceed step by step, the impediments become vexatious; and if, nevertheless, they resolve to read everything, they are always finding themselves in those foul places which delighted the courtiers of James the First, and which nauseate a modern reader to the soul. I have as little respect for prudery as anybody, and should be the last man in the world to formalise honest passion, or te deny to poetry and geniality that right poetic luxury of expression which is analogous to the utterances of Nature herself in the glowing beauty of her works; but some years ago, in attempting a regular perusal of Beaumont and Fletcher, I found myself desisting on these accounts at the fifth or sixth play. I have just now finished the whole fifty-two; and though my task has been rewarded by the beautiful volume before us, and by the consciousness of having done a service both to the authors and to the public, I feel a strong conviction, that none but antiquarian editors, or persons with very strange tastes indeed, could ever make such a thorough-going perusal a labour of love. Beaumont and Fletcher, says Sir Walter Scott, may "be said to have taken for their model the boundless license of the Spanish stage, from which many of their pieces are expressly and avowedly derived. The acts of their plays are so detached from each other, in substance and consistency, that the plot can scarce be said to hang together at all, or to have, in any sense of the word, a beginning, progress, and conclusion. It seems as if the play began because the curtain rose, and ended because it fell." "Beaumont and Fletcher's plots," observes Coleridge, are wholly inartificial; they only care to pitch a character into a position to make him or her talk; you must swallow all their gross improbabilities, and, taking it all for granted, attend only to the dialogue." These two judgments are quoted by Mr. Peter Cunningham in the notes to his edition of Campbell's Specimens of British Poets;* and they occasion him to observe, that, you could not publish tales from their plays, but scenes and incidents of truth and beauty without number." I was happy to find my project so felicitously prejudged. These scenes and incidents, it is trusted (as I have already intimated), the reader will find in the collection before him; though it must needs go to prove them not exactly "without number." If two or three of the most popular should be supposed absent-such as lively passages of dialogue in the Chances, and Leon's taming of his bride in Rule a Wife and Have a Wife-it is to be borne in mind, that those acquaintances of the old play-goer are not printed as the authors wrote them, but as they were adapted to the modern stage, and that my reasons for omitting the originals are the same which caused the adaptation. It is to be regretted that much of the wit of Beaumont and Fletcher is so inextricably interwoven with freedoms no longer endured, that it has ceased to be producible either in theatres or private circles; but, saving the *Fition of 1841. talk of King James's gentlemen, enough remains to show what it was; and even of that, when it became deceut,—“ which,” as Autolycus says, "was odd,"-intimations will not be found wanting. If Don John and Don Frederick are not here, talking of nurses and surgeons, yet here is Bessus, the prince of cowards; and Lazarillo, who worships a good dish; and Count Valore, who introduces him; and La Writ, the Little French Lawyer, who bustles himself into being a duellist; and Monsieur Mount-Marine, who is hoaxed up through all the degrees of nobility with as many whisks of a sword; and the Scornful Lady, who anticipates the style of Congreve; and Diego, in the Spanish Curate, who cheats a lawyer, and bequeaths vast estates out of nothing; besides many an airy passage in transitû, that will not leave the best tone of the day, or of any day, undis cernible. Again, if wit was the most popular, and seemed as if it would have been the most lasting quality of Beaumont and Fletcher, it has not turned out to be so. They were authors destined to survive only in fragments; and the fragments for which they have been most admired, are serious ones, not comic, speeches of forlorn maidens, descriptions of innocent boys, effusions of heroism and of martyrdom, songs of solitudes and of graves. Here are all those, and many to keep them company. Here are the most striking passages of their best and (as far as they could be given) of their worst characters, of their noble Caratachs and Mirandas, their good and wicked parents, their affecting children, their piteous sweet Euphrasias, Ordellas, and Julianas,-creations, many of which it did honour to the poets' hearts to conceive, and which, I have no doubt, their own conduct could have matched in corresponding manly worthiness, had circumstances occurred to challenge it; for though they were not Miltons, they were not Wallers,-much less the Rochesters whom they condescended to foreshadow. They did not grow baser, as they grew older; nor, when a noble character preseuted itself to their minds, did they fail, notwithstanding the weaknesses that beset them, to give it the welcome of undoubting hearts, and of expression to its height. In the tragedy of The False One Septimius enters with the head of Pompey, which he has cut off, exclaiming― 'Tis here! 'Tis done!-Behold, you fearful viewers, The pride and strength! Look; look again; 'tis finish'd! Achillas. And King Ptolemy, coming in, says— Stay; come no nearer : Methinks I feel the very earth shake under me! And then Cæsar, to whom the head is presented as a trophy, addresses it as the whole awful man, and as a thing sacred: O thou conqueror! Thou glory of the world once, now the pity, Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus! The light and life of Rome to a blind stranger, But the eternal substance of his greatness. So when Ordella, in the tragedy of Thierry and Theodoret, is prepared to undergo any infliction for the good of the state, Thierry says Suppose it death. Ord. I do. Thi. And endless parting |