CHAPTER XXIII
THE AUTHORSHIP OF THREE DISPUTED PLAYS
With the tests which have thus been described we are equipped for an examination of the plays written before 1616, which have, in these latter days, been with some show of evidence regarded as the joint-production of the "two wits and friends."[180] While attempting to separate the composition of one author from that of the other, we may determine the dramatic peculiarities of each during the course of the partnership, and obtain a fairly definite basis for an historical and literary appreciation of the plays, individually considered.
1.--Of the _Foure Playes, or Morall Representations, in One_ (first published as by Beaumont and Fletcher in the folio of 1647, but without indication of first performance or of acting company), the last two, _The Triumph of Death_ and _The Triumph of Time_, are, according to the verse tests, undoubtedly Fletcher's and have been assigned to him by all critics. _The Triumph of Death_ is studded with alliterations and with repetitions of the effective word:
Oh I could curse And crucify myself for childish doting Upon a face that feeds not with fresh figures Every fresh hour;
and with triplets:
What new body And new face must I make me, with new manners;
and with the resonant "all":
Make her all thy heaven, And all thy joy, for she is all thy happiness;
and with Fletcher's favourite words and his nouns in apposition, rhetorical questions, afterthoughts, verbal enumerations, and turgid exposition. The same may be said of _The Triumph of Time_. As there is less of the redundant epithet than in _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ (1609), but more than in _Philaster_ (before July 12, 1610), I am of the opinion that Fletcher's contribution to the _Triumphs_ falls chronologically between those plays. As Fletcher matures he prunes his adjectives.
The rest of these _Morall Representations_ display neither the verse nor the rhetoric of Fletcher. On the basis of verse-tests Boyle assigns them to Beaumont. Macaulay says, "probably,"--and adds the _Induction_. But Oliphant, taking into consideration also the rhetorical and dramatic qualities, gives the _Induction_ and _The Triumph of Honour_ to a third author, Nathaniel Field, and only _The Triumph of Love_ to Beaumont. As to the _Induction_ and _The Triumph of Honour_ I agree with Oliphant. They are full of polysyllabic Latinisms such as Field uses in his _Woman is a Weather-cocke_ (entered for publication November 23, 1611) and Beaumont never uses: 'to participate affairs,' 'torturous engine,' etc.; and they are marked by simpler Fieldian expressions 'wale,' 'gyv'd,' 'blown man,' 'miskill,' 'vane,' 'lubbers,' 'urned,' and a score of others not found anywhere in Beaumont's undoubted writings. A few words, like 'basilisk' and 'loathed' suggest Beaumont, as does the verse; but this may be explained by vogue or imitation. Field was two or three years younger than Beaumont, and had played as a boy actor in one or more of the early Beaumont and Fletcher productions. His _Woman is a Weather-cocke_ and his _Amends for Ladies_ indicate the influence of Beaumont in matters of comic invention, poetic hyperbole, burlesque and pathos, as well as in metrical style. The _Honour_ is a somewhat bombastic, puerile, magic-show written in manifest imitation of Beaumont's verse and rhetoric.
As to _The Triumph of Love_, I go further than Oliphant. I assign at least half of it, viz., scenes 1, 2, and 6, on the basis of diction, to Field. In scenes 3, 4, and 5, I find some trace of Beaumont's favourite expressions, of his thoughts of destiny and death and woman's tenderness, his poetic spontaneity, his sensational dramatic surprises; but I think these are an echo. The rural scene lacks his exquisite simplicity; and some of the words are not of his vocabulary. One is sorry to strike from the list of Beaumont's creations the pathetic and almost impressive figure of Violante. If it was originally Beaumont's, it is of his earlier work revamped by Field; if it is Field's, it is an echo simulating the voice, but missing the reality, of Beaumont's Aspatia, Bellario, Urania. This criticism holds true of both the Triumphs, _Love_ and _Honour_.
The commonly accepted date, 1608, for the composition of the _Foure Playes in One_ is derived from Fleay, who mistakenly quotes a reference in the 1619 quarto of _The Yorkshire Tragedy_ to the _Foure Playes_ as if it were of the 1608 quarto where the reference does not appear.[181] While Fletcher may have written the first draft of his contribution before the middle of 1610, it is evident from Field's Address _To the Reader_ in the first quarto of the _Woman is a Weather-cocke_ (entered S. R., November 23, 1611), that Field's contribution was made after November 23, 1611. In that Address he makes it plain that this is his first dramatic effort: "I have been vexed with vile plays myself a great while, hearing many; now I thought to be even with some, and they should hear mine too." We have already noticed[182] that Field had not written even his _Weather-cocke_, still less anything in collaboration with Fletcher, at the time of the publication of _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ (between January and July, 1609); for in his complimentary poem for the quarto of that "Pastorall," Field acknowledges his unknown name and his Muse in swaddling clouts, and timidly confesses his ambition to write something like _The Shepheardesse_, "including a Morallitie, Sweete and profitable." That Field's contribution to the _Foure Playes_ was not made before the date of the first performance of _The Weather-cocke_ by the Revels' Children at Whitefriars, _i. e._, January 4, 1610 to Christmas 1610-11 (when its presentation before the King at Whitehall probably took place), further appears from his dedication _To Any Woman that hath been no Weather-cocke_ (quarto, 1611) in which he alludes not to _The Triumph of Honour_, or of _Love_, but to _Amends for Ladies_, as his "next play," then on the stocks, and, he thought, soon to be printed.[183] The evidence, external and internal, amply presented by Oliphant, Thorndike, and others, but with a view to conclusions different from mine as to date and authorship, confirms me in the belief that Fletcher's _Time_ and _Death_, though written at least two years earlier, were not gathered up with Field's _Induction_, _Honour_, and _Love_, into the _Foure Playes in One_ until about 1612; and that the series was performed at Whitefriars by Field's company of the Queen's Revels' Children, shortly after they had first acted _Cupid's Revenge_ at the same theatre.
2.--Of the remaining ten plays in which, according to the historical evidence adduced by various critics, Beaumont could have collaborated, at least two furnish no material that can be of service for the estimation of his qualities. If _Love's Cure_ was written as early as the date of certain references in the story, viz., 1605-1609, it is so overlaid by later alteration that whether, as the textual experts guess, it be Beaumont's revised by Massinger, or Fletcher's revised by Massinger and others, or Massinger and Middleton's, or Beaumont's with the assistance of Fletcher and revised by Massinger, Beaumont for us is indeterminate. Fleay, Oliphant, and others trace him in a few prose scenes, and in two or three of verse.[184] But where the rhetorical and dramatic manner occasionally suggest him, or the metre has somewhat of his stamp, words abound that I find in no work of his undisputed composition. The servant, Lazarillo, like him of Beaumont's _Woman-Hater_, is a glutton, but he does not speak Beaumont's language. The scenes ascribed to Beaumont reek with an excremental and sexual vulgarity to which Beaumont never condescended, unless for brief space, and when absolutely necessary for characterization. And there is little, indeed, that bespeaks Fletcher. _Love's Cure_ was first attributed to Beaumont and Fletcher at a "reviving of the play" after they were both dead; and it was not printed till 1647. It is not unlikely, as G. C. Macaulay holds, that the play was written by Massinger, in or after 1622.
3.--As to that comedy of prostitution, with occasional essays on the special charms of cuckoldry, _The Captaine_ (acted in 1613, maybe as early as 1611, and by the King's Company) there is no convincing external proof of Beaumont's authorship. It is, on the contrary, assigned to Fletcher by one of his younger contemporaries, Hills, whose attributions of such authorship are frequently correct; and its accent throughout is more clearly that of Fletcher than of any other dramatist. The critics are agreed that it is not wholly his, however; and G. C. Macaulay in especial conjectures the presence of Massinger. The verse and prose of a few scenes[185] do not preclude the possibility of Beaumont's cooperation; but I find in them no vestige of his faith in sweet innocence; and in only one,--the awful episode (IV, 5), in which the Father seeks his wanton daughter in a house of shame and would kill her,--his imaginative elevation or his dramatic creativity.
FOOTNOTES:
[180] To employ in this process of separation the characteristics of Fletcher's later dramatic technique as a criterion does not appear to me permissible. For these, however, the reader may consult Miss Hatcher's _John Fletcher, A Study on Dramatic Method_, and sections 15 and 16 of my essay on _The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare_, Part Two, _Rep. Eng. Com._, Vol. III, now in press. The technique is more likely to change than the versification, the style, the mental habit. Its later characteristics may, some of them, have been derived from the association with Beaumont; or they may be of Fletcher's maturer development under different influences and conditions. It is fair to cite them as corroborative evidence in the process of separation, only when they are in continuance of Fletcher's earlier idiosyncrasy. I have, also, refrained from complicating the present discussion by analysis of the style of Massinger, for which see Fleay, _N. S. S. Trans._, 1874, _Shakesp. Manual_, 1876, _Engl. Studien_, 1885-1886, and _Chron. Eng. Dram._, 1891; Boyle, _Engl. Studien_, 1881-1887, and _N. S. S. Trans._, 1886; Macaulay, _Francis Beaumont_, 1883; Oliphant, _Engl. Studien_, 1890-1892; Thorndike, _Infl. of B. and F._, 1901; and section 16 of my essay mentioned above. There is no proof of Massinger's dramatic activity before July 1613, nor of his cooperation with Fletcher until after that date, _i. e._, after Beaumont's virtual cessation. He may have revised some of Beaumont's lines and scenes; but Beaumont's style is too well defined to be confused with that of Massinger or of any other reviser; or of an imitator, such as Field.
[181] See Thorndike, _Infl. of B. and F._, p. 85, for discussion and authorities.
[182] Chapter VI.
[183] It was not printed till 1618; but had been acted long before.
[184] II, 1, 2; III, 1, 3, 5; V, 3.
[185] IV, 5; V, 2, 4, 5.