Part 8
How early the two poets came to London is uncertain. They had already made Ben Jonson’s acquaintance in 1607. Their first joint play, “Philaster, or Love lies a-bleeding,” was produced in 1608. I suppose this play is more generally known than any other of theirs, and the characteristic passages have a charm that is perhaps never found less mixed with baser matter in any other of the plays which make up the collection known as the Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, and they bear the supreme test of being read over again many times without loss of freshness. Philaster is son and heir to a King of Sicily, but robbed of his rights by the King of Calabria. This King has a daughter, Arethusa, secretly in love with Philaster, as he with her, but destined by her father to marry Pharamond, a Spanish Prince. Euphrasia, daughter of Dion, an honest courtier, is also in love with Philaster, and has entered his service disguised as a page, under the name of Bellario. Arethusa makes her love known to Philaster, who, in order that they may have readier means of communicating with each other, transfers Bellario to her. Thyra, a very odious lady of the court, spreads a report that Arethusa and her handsome page have been too intimate. Philaster believes this slander, and this leads to many complications. Arethusa dismisses Bellario. Philaster refuses to take him back. They all meet in a convenient forest, where Philaster is about to kill Arethusa at her own earnest entreaty, when he is prevented by a clown who is passing. The King, finding his daughter wounded, is furious, and orders instant search for the assassin. Bellario insists that he is the criminal. He and Philaster are put under arrest; the Princess asks to be their jailer. The people rise in insurrection, and rescue him. It then turns out that he and Arethusa have been quietly married. Of course the play turns out with the discovery of Bellario’s sex and the King’s consent to everything.
I have said that it is hazardous to attempt dividing the work of Beaumont and Fletcher where they worked together. Both, of course, are to blame for what is the great blot on the play,--Philaster’s ready belief, I might well say eager belief, in the guilt of the Princess. One of his speeches is positively monstrous in infamous suggestion. Coleridge says: “Beaumont and Fletcher always write as if virtue or goodness were a sort of talisman or strange something that might be lost without the least fault on the part of the owner. In short, their chaste ladies value their chastity as a material thing, not as an act or state of being; and this mere thing being imaginary, no wonder that all their women are represented with the minds of strumpets, except a few irrational humorists.... Hence the frightful contrast between their women (even those who are meant to be virtuous) and Shakespeare’s.” There is some truth in this, but it is extravagant. Beaumont and Fletcher have drawn pure women. Both Bellario and Arethusa are so. So is Aspatia. They had coarse and even animal notions of women, it is true, but we must, in judging what they meant their women to be, never forget that coarseness of phrase is not always coarseness of thought. Women were allowed then to talk about things and to use words now forbidden outside the slums. Decency changes its terms, though not its nature, from one age to another. This is a partial excuse for Beaumont and Fletcher, but they sin against that decorum of the intellect and conscience which is the same in all ages. In “Women Pleased” Claudio disguises himself, and makes love to his married sister Isabella in order to test her chastity.
The question as to the authorship of “The Two Noble Kinsmen” has an interest perhaps even greater than that concerning the shares of Beaumont and Fletcher respectively in the plays they wrote together, because in this case a part is attributed to Shakespeare. “The Two Noble Kinsmen” was first published in 1634, and ascribed on the title-page to “the memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John F. and Mr. W. S.” That Fletcher’s name should have been put first is not surprising, if we remember his great popularity. He seems for a time to have been more fashionable than Shakespeare, especially with the young bloods fresh from the University and of the Inns of Court. They appear to have thought that he knew the world, in their limited understanding of the word, better than his great predecessor. The priority of name on the title-page, if not due to this, probably indicated that the greater part of the play was from the hand of Fletcher. Opinion has been divided, with a leaning on the part of the weightier judges towards giving a greater or less share to Shakespeare. I think the verdict must be the Scottish one of “not proven.” On the one hand, the play could not have been written earlier than 1608, and it seems extremely improbable that Shakespeare, then at the height of his fame, and in all the splendid maturity of his powers and of his mastery over them, should have become the junior partner of a younger man. Nor can he be supposed to have made the work over and adapted it to the stage, for he appears to have abandoned that kind of work long before. But we cannot suppose the play to be so early as 1608, for the parts admitted on all hands to be Fletcher’s are in his maturer manner. Yet there are some passages which seem to be above his reach, and might lead us to suppose Fletcher to have deliberately imitated Shakespeare’s manner; but that he never does, though indebted to him for many suggestions. There is one speech in the play which is certainly very like Shakespeare’s in the way it grows, and beginning with a series of noble images, deepens into philosophic thought at the close. And yet I am not altogether convinced, for Fletcher could heighten his style when he thought fit, and when the subject fully inspired him.
Beaumont and Fletcher undoubtedly owed a part of their immediate renown to the fact that they were looked upon as gentlemen and scholars. Not that they put on airs of gentility, as their disciple Ford was fond of doing a little later, and as Horace Walpole, Byron, and even Landor did. They frankly gave their address in Grub Street, so far as we know. But they certainly seem to have been set up, as being artists and men of the world, not perhaps as rivals of Shakespeare, but in favorable comparison with one who was supposed to owe everything to nature. I believe that Pope, in the preface to his edition of Shakespeare, was the first to express doubts about the wisdom of accepting too literally what Ben Jonson says of his “little Latin and less Greek.” However that may be, and I am inclined to think Shakespeare had more learning even, not to say knowledge, than is commonly allowed him, it is singular that the man whose works show him to have meditated deeply on whatever interests human thought, should have been supposed never to have given his mind to the processes of his own craft. But this comparison of him with Beaumont and Fletcher suggests one remark of some interest, namely, that not only are his works by far more cleanly in thought and phrase than those of any of his important contemporaries, except Marlowe, not only are his men more manly and his women more womanly than theirs, but that his types also of gentlemen and ladies are altogether beyond any they seem to have been capable of conceiving.
Of the later dramatists, I think Beaumont and Fletcher rank next to Shakespeare in the amount of pleasure they give, though not in the quality of it, and in fanciful charm of expression. In spite of all their coarseness, there is a delicacy, a sensibility, an air of romance, and above all a grace, in their best work that make them forever attractive to the young, and to all those who have learned to grow old amiably. Imagination, as Shakespeare teaches us to know it, we can hardly allow them, but they are the absolute lords of some of the fairest provinces in the domain of fancy. Their poetry is genuine, spontaneous, and at first hand. As I turn over the leaves of an edition which I read forty-five years ago, and see, by the passages underscored, how much I enjoyed, and remember with whom, so many happy memories revive, so many vanished faces lean over the volume with me, that I am prone to suspect myself of yielding to an enchantment that is not in the book itself. But no, I read Beaumont and Fletcher through again last autumn, and the eleven volumes of Dyce’s edition show even more pencil marks than the two of Darley had gathered in repeated readings. The delight they give, the gayety they inspire, are all their own. Perhaps one cause of this is their lavishness, their lightsome ease, their happy confidence in resources that never failed them. Their minds work without that reluctant break which pains us in most of the later dramatists. They had that pleasure in writing which gives pleasure in reading, and deserve our gratitude because they promote cheerfulness, or, even when gravest, a pensive melancholy that, if it does not play with sadness, never takes it too seriously.
VI
MASSINGER AND FORD
Philip Massinger was born in 1584, the son of Arthur Massinger, a gentleman who held some position of trust in the household of Henry, Earl of Pembroke, who married the sister of Sir Philip Sidney. It was for her that the “Arcadia” was written. And for her Ben Jonson wrote the famous epitaph:--
“Underneath this sable hearse Lies the subject of all verse. Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother. Death! ere thou hast slain another, Learn’d and fair and good as she, Time shall throw a dart at thee.”
It would be pleasant to think that Massinger’s boyhood had been spent in the pure atmosphere that would have surrounded such a woman, but it should seem that he could not have been brought up in her household. Otherwise it is hard to understand why, in dedicating his “Bondman” to Philip, Earl of Montgomery, one of her sons, he should say, “However, I could never arrive at the happiness to be made known to your lordship, yet a desire, born with me, to make a tender of all duties and service to the noble family of the Herberts descended to me as an inheritance from my dead father, Arthur Massinger.” All that we know of his early life is that he entered a commoner at St. Alban’s Hall, Oxford, in 1602. At the University he remained four years, but left it without taking a degree.
From the year 1606, until his name appears in an undated document which the late Mr. John Payne Collier decides to be not later than 1614, we know nothing of him. This document is so illustrative of the haphazard lives of most of the dramatists and actors of the time as to be worth reading. It was written by Nathaniel Field, the actor who played the part of Bussy d’Ambois in Chapman’s play of that name, and who afterwards became prosperous and one of the shareholders in the Globe Theatre. Here it is:--
“_To our most loving friend, Mr. Philip Hinchlow, Esq., These_:
“MR. HINCHLOW,--You understand our unfortunate extremity, and I do not think you so void of Christianity, but you would throw so much money into the Thames as we request now of you rather than endanger so many innocent lives. You know there is X_l._ more at least to be received of you for the play. We desire you to lend us V_l._ of that, which shall be allowed to you, without which we cannot be bailed, nor I play any more till this be despatched. It will lose you XX_l._ ere the end of the next week, besides the hindrance of the next new play. Pray, sir, consider our cases with humanity, and now give us cause to acknowledge you our true friend in time of need. We have entreated Mr. Davison to deliver this note, as well to witness your love as our promises and always acknowledgment to be your most thankful and loving friend,
NAT FIELD.”
Under this is written:--
“The money shall be abated out of the money [that] remains for the play of Mr. Fletcher and ours.
ROB DABORNE.”
“I have always found you a true loving friend to me, and, in so small a suit, it being honest, I hope you will not fail us.
PHILIP MASSINGER.”
The endorsement on this appeal shows that Hinchlow sent the money. No doubt Field was selected to write it as the person most necessary to Hinchlow, who could much more easily get along without a new play than without a popular actor. It is plain from the document itself that the signers of it were all under arrest, probably for some tavern bill, or it would not otherwise be easy to account for their being involved in a common calamity. Davison was doubtless released as being the least valuable. It is amusing to see how Hinchlow’s humanity and Christianity are briefly appealed to first as a matter of courtesy, and how the real arguments are addressed to his self-interest as more likely to prevail. Massinger’s words are of some value as showing that he had probably for some time been connected with the stage.
There are two other allusions to Massinger in the registers of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels. Both are to plays of his now lost. Of one of them even the name has not survived. On the 11th of January, 1631, Sir Henry refused to license this nameless performance “because it did contain dangerous matter--as the deposing of Sebastian King of Portugal by Philip II., there being peace sworn between England and Spain.” He adds, amusingly enough, “I had my fee notwithstanding, which belongs to me for reading it over, and ought always to be brought with a book.” Again, in 1638, at the time of the dispute between Charles I. and his subjects about ship-money, Sir Henry quotes from a manuscript play of Massinger submitted to him for censure the following passage:--
“Monies? We’ll raise supplies which way we please, And force you to subscribe to blanks in which We’ll mulct you as we shall think fit. The Cæsars In Rome were wise, acknowledging no laws But what their swords did ratify, the wives And daughters of the senators bowing to Their wills as deities,” etc.
Sir Henry then adds, “This is a piece taken out of Philip Massinger’s play called ‘The King and the Subject,’ and entered here forever to be remembered by my son and those that cast their eyes upon it, in honor of King Charles, my master, who, reading the play over at Newmarket, set his mark upon the place with his own hand and in these words: ‘This is too insolent, and to be changed.’ Note that the poet makes it the speech of Don Pedro, King of Spain, and spoken to his subjects.” Coleridge rather hastily calls Massinger a democrat. But I find no evidence of it in his plays. He certainly was no advocate of the slavish doctrine of passive obedience, or of what Pope calls the right divine of kings to govern wrong, as Beaumont and Fletcher often were, but he could not have been a democrat without being an anachronism, and that no man can be.
The license of the stage at that time went much farther than this; nay, it was as great as it ever was at Athens. From a letter of the Privy Council to certain justices of the peace of the County of Middlesex in 1601, we learn that “certain players who use to recite their plays at the Curtain in Moorfields do represent upon the stage in their interludes the persons of some gentlemen of good desert and quality, that are yet alive, under obscure manner, but yet in such sort as all the hearers may take notice both of the matter and the persons that are meant thereby.” And again it appears that in 1605 the Corporation of the City of London memorialized the Privy Council, informing them that “Kemp Armyn and other players at the Black Friars have again not forborne to bring upon their stage one or more of the Worshipful Company of Aldermen, to their great scandal and the lessening of their authority,” and praying that “order may be taken to remedy the abuse, either by putting down or removing the said Theatre.” Aristophanes brought Socrates and Euripides upon the stage,--but neither of these was an Alderman.
Massinger committed no offences of this kind, unless Sir Giles Overreach be meant for some special usurer whom he wished to make hateful, of which there is no evidence. He does indeed express his own opinions, his likes and dislikes, very freely. Nor were these such as he need be ashamed to avow. It may be inferred, on the strength of some of the sentiments put by him into the mouths of his characters, that he would have sympathized rather with Hampden and Pym than with Charles I. But nothing more than this can be conjectured as to his probable politics. He disliked cruel creditors, grinders of the poor, enclosers of commons, and forestallers, as they were called; for corners in wheat and other commodities were not unknown to our ancestors, nor did they think better of the men that made them than we. There is a curious passage in his play of “The Guardian” which shows that his way of thinking on some points was not unlike Mr. Ruskin’s. Severino, who has been outlawed, draws up a code of laws for the banditti of whom he has become captain, defining who might be properly plundered and who not. Among those belonging to the former class he places the
“Builders of iron-mills that grub up forests With timber trees for shipping;”
and in the latter, scholars, soldiers, rack-rented farmers, needy market folks, sweaty laborers, carriers, and women. All that we can fairly say is that he was a man of large and humane sympathies.
But though Massinger did not, so far as we know, indulge in as great licenses of scenic satire as some of his contemporaries, there is in his “Roman Actor” so spirited a defence of the freedom of the stage and of its usefulness as a guardian and reformer of morals that I will quote it:--
“_Aretinus._ Are you on the stage, You talk so boldly?
_Paris._ The whole world being one, This place is not exempted; and I am So confident in the justice of our cause That I could wish Cæsar, in whose great name All kings are comprehended, sat as judge To hear our plea, and then determine of us. If, to express a man sold to his lusts, Wasting the treasure of his time and fortunes In wanton dalliance, and to what sad end A wretch that’s so given over does arrive at; Deterring careless youth, by his example, From such licentious courses; laying open The snares of bawds, and the consuming arts Of prodigal strumpets, can deserve reproof, Why are not all your golden principles, Writ down by grave philosophers to instruct us To choose fair virtue for our guide, not pleasure, Condemned unto the fire?
_Sura._ There’s spirit in this.
_Paris._ Or if desire of honor was the base On which the building of the Roman Empire Was raised up to this height; if, to inflame The noble youth with an ambitious heat T’ endure the frosts of danger, nay, of death, To be thought worthy the triumphal wreath By glorious undertakings, may deserve Reward or favor from the commonwealth, Actors may put in for as large a share As all the sects of the philosophers. They with cold precepts (perhaps seldom read) Deliver what an honorable thing The active virtue is; but does that fire The blood, or swell the veins with emulation To be both good and great, equal to that Which is presented on our theatres? Let a good actor, in a lofty scene, Shew great Alcides honour’d in the sweat Of his twelve labours; or a bold Camillus Forbidding Rome to be redeem’d with gold From the insulting Gauls; or Scipio, After his victories, imposing tribute On conquer’d Carthage; if done to the life, As if they saw their dangers, and their glories, And did partake with them in their rewards, All that have any spark of Roman in them, The slothful arts laid by, contend to be Like those they see presented.
_Rusticus._ He has put The consuls to their whisper.
_Paris._ But ’t is urged That we corrupt youth, and traduce superiors. When do we bring a vice upon the stage That does go off unpunish’d? Do we teach, By the success of wicked undertakings, Others to tread in their forbidden steps? We shew no arts of Lydian panderism, Corinthian poisons, Persian flatteries, But mulcted so in the conclusion, that Even those spectators that were so inclined, Go home changed men. And, for traducing such That are above us, publishing to the world Their secret crimes, we are as innocent As such as are born dumb. When we present An heir that does conspire against the life Of his dear parent, numbering every hour He lives as tedious to him, if there be Among the auditors one whose conscience tells him He is of the same mould,--WE CANNOT HELP IT. Or, bringing on the stage a loose adulteress, That does maintain the riotous expense Of him that feeds her greedy lust, yet suffers The lawful pledges of a former bed To starve the while for hunger; if a matron, However great in fortune, birth, or titles, Guilty of such a foul, unnatural sin, Cry out, ’T is writ for me,--WE CANNOT HELP IT. Or, when a covetous man’s express’d, whose wealth Arithmetic cannot number, and whose lordships A falcon in one day cannot fly over, Yet he so sordid in his mind, so griping, As not to afford himself the necessaries To maintain life; if a patrician (Though honour’d with a consulship) find himself Touch’d to the quick in this,--WE CANNOT HELP IT. Or, when we show a judge that is corrupt, And will give up his sentence as he favours The person, not the cause, saving the guilty, If of his faction, and as oft condemning The innocent, out of particular spleen; If any in this reverend assembly, Nay, even yourself, my lord, that are the image Of absent Cæsar, feel something in your bosom That puts you in remembrance of things past, Or things intended,--’T IS NOT IN US TO HELP IT. I have said, my lord: and now, as you find cause, Or censure us, or free us with applause.”
We know nothing else of Massinger’s personal history beyond what has been told, except that the parish register of St. Saviour’s contains this entry: “March 20, 1639–40, buried Philip Massinger, a stranger.” A pathos has been felt by some in the words “a stranger,” as if they implied poverty and desertion. But they merely meant that Massinger did not belong to that parish. John Aubrey is spoken of in the same way in the register of St. Mary Magdalen at Oxford, and for the same reason.
Massinger wrote thirty-seven plays, of which only eighteen have come down to us. The name of one of these non-extant plays, “The Noble Choice,” gives a keen pang to a lover of the poet, for it seems to indicate a subject peculiarly fitted to bring out his best qualities as a dramatist. Four of the lost plays were used to kindle fires by that servant of Mr. Warburton who made such tragic havoc in our earlier dramatic literature, a vulgar Omar without the pious motive of the Commander of the Faithful, if, as is very doubtful, he did indeed order the burning of the Alexandrian Library.