Part 22

_Countess_--She cannot. Pray wait! She's but half dressed. She's trying on things that I've given her for her wedding.

_Count_--Dressed or not, I wish to see her at once.

_Countess_--I can't prevent your doing so anywhere else, but here--

_Count_--You may say what you choose--I _will_ see her.

_Countess_--I thoroughly believe you'd like to see her in that state! but--

_Count_--Very well, Madame. If Susanna can't come out, at least she can talk. [_Turning toward the dressing-room._] Susanna, are you there? Answer, I command you.

_Countess_ [_peremptorily_]--Don't answer, Susanna! I forbid you! Sir, how can you be such a petty tyrant? Fine suspicions, indeed!

[_Susanna slips by and hides behind the Countess's bed without being noticed either by her or by the Count._]

_Count_--They are all the easier to dispel. I can see that it would be useless to ask you for the key, but it's easy enough to break in the door. Here, somebody!

_Countess_--Will you really make yourself the laughing-stock of the chateau for such a silly suspicion?

_Count_--- You are quite right. I shall simply force the door myself. I am going for tools.

_Countess_--Sir, if your conduct were prompted by love, I'd forgive your jealousy for the sake of the motive. But its cause is only your vanity.

_Count_--Love _or_ vanity, Madame, I mean to know who is in that room! And to guard against any tricks, I am going to lock the door to your maid's room. You, Madame, will kindly come with me, and without any noise, if you please. [_He leads her away._] As for the Susanna in the dressing-room, she will please wait a few minutes.

_Countess_ [_going out with him_]--Sir, I assure you--

_Susanna_ [_coming out from behind the bed and running to the dressing-room_]--Cherubino! Open quick! It's Susanna. [_Cherubino hurries out of the dressing-room._] Escape--you haven't a minute to lose!

_Cherubino_--Where can I go?

_Susanna_--I don't know, I don't know at all! but do go somewhere!

_Cherubino_ [_running to the window, then coming back_]--The window isn't so very high.

_Susanna_ [_frightened and holding him back_]--He'll kill himself!

_Cherubino_--Ah, Susie, I'd rather jump into a gulf than put the Countess in danger. [_He snatches a kiss, then runs to the window, hesitates, and finally jumps down into the garden._]

_Susanna_--Ah! [_She falls fainting into an arm-chair. Recovering slowly, she rises, and seeing Cherubino running through the garden she comes forward panting._] He's far away already! ... Little scamp! as nimble as he is handsome! [_She next runs to the dressing-room._] Now, Count Almaviva, knock as hard as you like, break down the door. Plague take me if I answer you. [_Goes into the dressing-room and shuts the door._]

[_Count and Countess return._]

_Count_--Now, Madame, consider well before you drive me to extremes.

_Countess_--I--I beg of you--!

_Count_ [_preparing to burst open the door_]--You can't cajole me now.

_Countess_ [_throwing herself on her knees_]--Then I will open it! Here is the key.

_Count_--So it is _not_ Susanna?

_Countess_--No, but it's no one who should offend you.

_Count_--If it's a man I kill him! Unworthy wife! You wish to stay shut up in your room--you shall stay in it long enough, I promise you. _Now_ I understand the note--my suspicions are justified!

_Countess_--Will you listen to me one minute?

_Count_--Who is in that room?

_Countess_--Your page.

_Count_--Cherubino! The little scoundrel!--just let me catch him! I don't wonder you were so agitated.

_Countess_--I--I assure you we were only planning an innocent joke.

[_The Count snatches the key, and goes to the dressing-room door; the Countess throws herself at his feet._]

_Countess_--Have mercy, Count! Spare this poor child; and although the disorder in which you will find him--

_Count_--What, Madame? What do you mean? What disorder?

_Countess_--He was just changing his coat--his neck and arms are bare--

[_The Countess throws herself into a chair and turns away her head._]

_Count_ [_running to the dressing-room_]--Come out here, you young villain!

_Count_ [_seeing Susanna come out of the dressing-room_]--Eh! Why, it _is_ Susanna! [_Aside._] What, a lesson!

_Susanna_ [_mocking him_]--"I will kill him! I will kill him!" Well, then, why don't you kill this mischievous page?

_Count_ [_to the Countess, who at the sight of Susanna shows the greatest surprise_]--So _you_ also play astonishment, Madame?

_Countess_--Why shouldn't I?

_Count_--But perhaps she wasn't alone in there. I'll find out. [_He goes into the dressing-room._]

_Countess_--- Susanna, I'm nearly dead.

_Count_ [_aside, as he returns_]--No one there! So this time I really am wrong. [_To the Countess, coldly._] You excel at comedy, Madame.

_Susanna_--And what about me, sir?

_Count_--And so do you.

_Countess_--Aren't you glad you found her instead of Cherubino? [_Meaningly._] You are generally pleased to come across her.

_Susanna_--Madame ought to have let you break in the doors, call the servants--

_Count_--Yes, it's quite true--I'm at fault--I'm humiliated enough! But why didn't you answer, you cruel girl, when I called you?

_Susanna_--I was dressing as well as I could--with the aid of pins, and Madame knew why she forbade me to answer. She had her lessons.

_Count_--Why don't you help me get pardon, instead of making me out as bad as you can?

_Countess_--Did I marry you to be eternally subjected to jealousy and neglect? I mean to join the Ursulines, and--

_Count_--But, Rosina!

_Countess_--I am no longer the Rosina whom you loved so well. I am only poor Countess Almaviva, deserted wife of a madly jealous husband.

_Count_--I assure you, Rosina, this man, this letter, had excited me so--

_Countess_--I never gave my consent.

_Count_--What, you knew about it?

_Countess_--This rattlepate Figaro, without my sanction--

_Count_--He did it, eh! and Basilio pretended that a peasant brought it. Crafty wag, ready to impose on everybody!

_Countess_--You beg pardon, but you never grant pardon. If I grant it, it shall only be on condition of a general amnesty.

_Count_--Well, then, so be it. I agree. But I don't understand how your sex can adapt itself to circumstances so quickly and so nicely. You were certainly much agitated; and for that matter, you are yet.

_Countess_--Men aren't sharp enough to distinguish between honest indignation at unjust suspicion, and the confusion of guilt.

_Count_--We men think we know something of politics, but we are only children. Madame, the King ought to name you his ambassador to London.--And now pray forget this unfortunate business, so humiliating for me.

_Countess_--For us both.

_Count_--Won't you tell me again that you forgive me?

_Countess_--Have I said _that_, Susanna?

_Count_--Ah, say it now.

_Countess_--Do you deserve it, culprit?

_Count_--Yes, honestly, for my repentance.

_Countess [giving him her hand_]--How weak I am! What an example I set you, Susanna! He'll never believe in a woman's anger.

_Susanna_--You are prisoner on parole; and you shall see we are honorable.

FRANCIS BEAUMONT and JOHN FLETCHER

(1584-1616) (1579-1625)

"The names of Beaumont and Fletcher," says Lowell, in his lectures on 'Old English Dramatists,' "are as inseparably linked together as those of Castor and Pollux. They are the double star of our poetical firmament, and their beams are so indissolubly mingled that it is vain to attempt any division of them that shall assign to each his rightful share." Theirs was not that dramatic collaboration all too common among the lesser Elizabethan dramatists, at a time when managers, eager to satisfy a restless public incessantly clamoring for novelty, parceled out single acts or even scenes of a play among two or three playwrights, to put together a more or less congruous piece of work. Beaumont and Fletcher joined partnership, not from any outward necessity, but inspired by a common love of their art and true congeniality of mind. Unlike many of their brother dramatists, whom the necessities of a lowly origin drove to seek a livelihood in writing for the theatres, Beaumont and Fletcher were of gentle birth, and sprung from families eminent at the bar and in the Church.

Beaumont was born at Grace-Dieu in Leicestershire, 1584, the son of a chief justice. His name is first mentioned as a gentleman commoner at Broadgate Hall, now Pembroke College, Oxford. At sixteen he was entered a member of the Inner Temple, but the dry facts of the law did not appeal to his romantic imagination. Nowhere in his work does he draw upon his barrister's experience to the extent that makes the plays of Middleton, who also knew the Inner Temple at first hand, a storehouse of information in things legal. His feet soon strayed, therefore, into the more congenial fields of dramatic invention.

Fletcher was born in Rye, Sussex, the son of a minister who later became Bishop of London. Giles Fletcher the Younger, and Phineas Fletcher, both well-known poets in their day, were his cousins. His early life is as little known as that of Beaumont, and indeed as the lives of most of the other Elizabethan dramatists. He was a pensioner at Benet College, now Corpus Christi, Cambridge, in 1591, and in 1593 he was "Bible-clerk" there. Then we hear nothing of him until 'The Woman Hater' was brought out in 1607. The play has been ascribed to Beaumont alone, to Fletcher alone, and to the two jointly. Whoever may be the author, it is the firstling of his dramatic muse, and worth merely a passing mention. How or when their literary friendship began is not known; but since both were friends of Jonson, both prefixing commendatory verses to the great realist's play of 'The Fox,' it is fair to assume that through him they were brought together, and that both belonged to that brilliant circle of wits, poets, and dramatists who made famous the gatherings at the Mermaid Inn.

They lived in the closest intimacy on the Bankside, near the Globe Theatre in Southwark, sharing everything in common, even the bed, and some say their clothing,--which is likely enough, as it can be paralleled without going back three centuries. It is certain that the more affluent circumstances of Beaumont tided his less fortunate friend over many a difficulty; and the astonishing dramatic productivity of Fletcher's later period was probably due to Beaumont's untimely death, making it necessary for Fletcher to rely on his pen for support.

In 1613 Beaumont's marriage to a Kentish heiress put an end to the communistic bachelor establishment. He died March 6th, 1616, not quite six weeks before Shakespeare, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Fletcher survived him nine years, dying of the plague in 1625. He was buried, not by the side of the poet with whose name his own is forever linked, but at St. Saviour's, Southwark.

"A student of physiognomy," says Swinburne, "will not fail to mark the points of likeness and of difference between the faces of the two friends; both models of noble manhood.... Beaumont the statelier and serener of the two, with clear, thoughtful eyes, full arched brows, and strong aquiline nose, with a little cleft at the tip; a grave and beautiful mouth, with full and finely curved lips; the form of face a very pure oval, and the imperial head, with its 'fair large front' and clustering hair, set firm and carried high with an aspect of quiet command and knightly observation. Fletcher with more keen and fervid face, sharper in outline every way, with an air of bright ardor and glad, fiery impatience; sanguine and nervous, suiting the complexion and color of hair; the expression of the eager eyes and lips almost rivaling that of a noble hound in act to break the leash it strains at;--two heads as lordly of feature and as expressive of aspect as any gallery of great men can show."

It may not be altogether fanciful to transfer this description of their physical bearing to their mental equipment, and draw some conclusions as to their several endowments and their respective share in the work that goes under their common name. Of course it is impossible to draw hard and fast lines of demarkation, and assign to each poet his own words. They, above all others, would probably have resented so dogmatic a procedure, and affirmed the dramas to be their joint offspring,--even as a child partakes of the nature of both its parents.

Their plays are organic structures, with well worked-out plots and for the most part well-sustained characters. They present a complete fusion of the different elements contributed by each author; never showing that agglomeration of incongruous matter so often found among the work of the lesser playwrights, where each hand can be singled out and held responsible for its share. Elaborate attempts, based on verse tests, have been made to disentangle the two threads of their poetic fabric. These attempts show much patient analysis, and are interesting as evidences of ingenuity; but they appeal more to the scholar than to the lover of poetry. Yet a sympathetic reading and a comparison of the plays professedly written by Fletcher alone, after Beaumont's death, with those jointly produced by them in the early part of Fletcher's career, shows the different qualities of mind that went to the making of the work, and the individual characteristics of the men that wrote it. Here Swinburne's eloquence gives concreteness to the picture.

In the joint plays there is a surer touch, a deeper, more pathetic note, a greater intensity of emotion; there is more tragic pathos and passion, more strong genuine humor, nobler sentiments. The predominance of these graver, sweeter qualities may well be attributed to Beaumont's influence. Although a disciple of Jonson in comedy, he was a close follower of Shakespeare in tragedy, and a student of the rhythms and metres of Shakespeare's second manner,--of the period that saw 'Hamlet,' 'Macbeth,' and the plays clustering around them. Too great a poet himself merely to imitate, Beaumont yet felt the influence of that still greater poet who swayed every one of the later dramatists, with the single exception perhaps of Jonson. But in pure comedy, mixed with farce and mock-heroic parody, he belongs to the school of "rare Ben."

Fletcher, on the other hand, is more brilliant, more rapid and supple, readier in his resources, of more startling invention. He has an extraordinary swiftness and fluency of speech; and no other dramatist, not even Shakespeare, equals him in the remarkable facility with which he reproduces in light, airy verse the bantering conversations of the young beaux and court-gentlemen of the time of James I. His peculiar trick of the redundant syllable at the end of many of his lines is largely responsible in producing this effect of ordinary speech, that yet is verse without being prosy. There is a flavor about Fletcher's work peculiarly its own. He created a new form of mixed comedy and dramatic romance, dealing with the humors and mischances of men, yet possessing a romantic coloring. He had great skill in combining his effects, and threw a fresh charm and vividness over his fanciful world. The quality of his genius is essentially bright and sunny, and therefore he is best in his comic and romantic work. His tragedy, although it has great pathos and passion, does not compel tears, nor does it subdue by its terror. It lacks the note of inevitableness which is the final touchstone of tragic greatness.

Their first joint play, 'Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding,' acted in 1608, is in its detached passages the most famous. Among the others, 'The Maid's Tragedy,' produced about the same time, is their finest play on its purely tragic side, although the plot is disagreeable. 'King and No King' attracts because of the tender character-drawing of Panthea. 'The Scornful Lady' is noteworthy as the best exponent, outside his own work, of the school of Jonson on its grosser side. 'The Knight of the Burning Pestle' is at once a burlesque on knight-errantry and a comedy of manners.

Among the tragedies presumably produced by Fletcher alone, 'Bonduca' is one of the best, followed closely by 'The False One,' 'Valentinian,' and 'Thierry and Theodoret.' 'The Chances' and 'The Wild Goose Chase' may be taken as examples of the whole work on its comic side. 'The Humorous Lieutenant' is the best expression of the faults and merits of Fletcher, whose comedies Swinburne has divided into three groups: pure comedies, heroic or romantic dramas, and mixed comedy and romance. To the first group belong 'Rule a Wife and Have a Wife,' Fletcher's comic masterpiece, 'Wit without Money,' 'The Wild Goose Chase,' 'The Chances,' 'The Noble Gentleman.' The second group includes 'The Knight of Malta,' full of heroic passion and Catholic devotion, 'The Pilgrim,' 'The Loyal Subject,' 'A Wife for a Month,' 'Love's Pilgrimage,' 'The Lover's Progress.' The third group comprises 'The Spanish Curate,' 'Monsieur Thomas,' 'The Custom of the Country,' 'The Elder Brother,' 'The Little French Lawyer,' 'The Humorous Lieutenant,' 'Women Pleased,' 'Beggar's Bush,' 'The Fair Maid of the Inn.'

Fletcher had a part with Shakespeare in the 'Two Noble Kinsmen,' and he wrote also in conjunction with Massinger, Rowley, and others; Shirley, too, is believed to have finished some of his plays.

Leaving aside Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher's plays are the best dramatic expression of the romantic spirit of Elizabethan England. Their luxurious, playful fancy delighted in the highly colored, spicy tales of the Southern imagination which the Renaissance was then bringing into England. They drew especially upon Spanish material, and their plays are rightly interpreted only when studied in reference to this Spanish foundation. But they are at the same time true Englishmen, and above all true Elizabethans; which is as much as to say that, borne along by the eager, strenuous spirit of their time, reaching out toward new sensations and impressions, new countries and customs, and dazzled by the romanesque and fantastic, they took up this exotic material and made it acceptable to the English mind. They satisfied the curiosity of their time, and expressed its surface ideas and longings. This accounts for their great popularity, which in their day eclipsed even Shakespeare's, as it accounts also for their shortcomings. They skimmed over the surface of passion, they saw the pathos and the pity of it but not the terror; they lacked Shakespeare's profound insight into the well-springs of human action, and sacrificed truth of life to stage effect. They shared with him one grave fault which is indeed the besetting sin of dramatists, resulting in part from the necessarily curt and outline action of the drama, in part from the love of audiences for strong emotional effects; namely, the abrupt and unexplained moral revolutions of their characters. Effects are too often produced without apparent causes; a novelist has space to fill in the blanks. The sudden contrition of the usurper in 'As You Like It' is a familiar instance; Beaumont and Fletcher have plenty as bad. Probably there was more of this in real life during the Middle Ages, when most people still had much barbaric instability of feeling and were liable to sudden revulsions of purpose, than in our more equable society. On the other hand, virtue often suffers needlessly and acquiescingly.

In their speech they indulged in much license, Fletcher especially; he was prone to confuse right and wrong. The strenuousness of the earlier Elizabethan age was passing away, and the relaxing morality of Jacobean society was making its way into literature, culminating in the entire disintegration of the time of Charles II., which it is very shallow to lay entirely to the Puritans. There would have been a time of great laxity had Cromwell or the Puritan ascendancy never existed. Beaumont and Fletcher, in their eagerness to please, took no thought of the after-effects of their plays; morality did not enter into their scheme of life. Yet they were not immoral, but merely unmoral. They lacked the high seriousness that gives its permanent value to Shakespeare's tragic work. They wrote not to embody the everlasting truths of life, as he did; not because they were oppressed with the weight of a new message striving for utterance; not because they were aflame with the passion for the unattainable, as Marlowe; not to lash with the stings of bitter mockery the follies and vices of their fellow-men, as Ben Jonson; not primarily to make us shudder at the terrible tragedies enacted by corrupted hearts, and the needless unending sufferings of persecuted virtue, as Webster; nor yet to give us a faithful picture of the different phases of life in Jacobean London, as Dekker, Heywood, Middleton, and others. They wrote for the very joy of writing, to give vent to their over-bubbling fancy and their tender feeling.

They are lyrical and descriptive poets of the first order, with a wonderful ease and grace of expression. The songs scattered throughout their plays are second only to Shakespeare's. The volume and variety of their work is astonishing. They left more than fifty-two printed plays, and all of these show an extraordinary power of invention; the most diverse passions, characters, and situations enter into the work, their stories stimulate our curiosity, and their characters appeal to our sympathies. Especially in half-farcical, half-pathetic comedy they have no superior; their wit and spirit here find freest play. Despite much coarseness, their work is full of delicate sensibility, and suffused with a romantic grace of form and a tenderness of expression that endears them to our hearts, and makes them more lovable than any of their brother dramatists, with the possible exception of genial Dekker. The spirit of chivalry breathes through their work, and the gentleman and scholar is always present. For in contradiction to most of their fellow-workers, they were not on the stage; they never took part in its more practical affairs either as actors or managers; they derived the technical knowledge necessary to a successful playwright from their intimacy with stage folk.

As poets, aside from their dramatic work, they occupy a secondary place. Beaumont especially has left, beyond one or two exquisite lyrics, little that is noteworthy, except some commendatory verses addressed to Jonson. On the other hand, Fletcher's 'Faithful Shepherdess,' with Jonson's 'Sad Shepherd' and Milton's 'Comus,' form that delightful trilogy of the first pastoral poems in the English language.

The popularity of Beaumont and Fletcher in the seventeenth century, as compared to that of Shakespeare, has been over-emphasized; for between 1623 and 1685 they have only two folio editions, those of 1647 and 1679, as against four of Shakespeare. Their position among the Elizabethans is unique. They did not found a school either in comedy or tragedy. Massinger, who had more in common with them than any other of the leading dramatists, cannot be called their disciple; for though he worked in the same field, he is more sober and severe, more careful in the construction of his plots, more of a satirist and stern judge of society. With the succeeding playwrights the decadence of the Elizabethan drama began.

THE FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS

BY FLETCHER

[Clorin, a shepherdess, watching by the grave of her lover, is found by a Satyr.]