G. Age. True. Cho. Let narrow natures, how they will, mistake, The great should still be good for their own sake. [They come forward. Pal. Welcome to earth, and reign. Pal. Leave that to Jove: therein you are You far-famed spirits of this happy isle, That, for your sacred songs have gain'd the style To wait upon the Age that shall your names new nourish, Since Virtue press'd shall grow, and buried Arts shall flourish. That in Elysian bowers the blessed seats do keep, That for their living good, now semi-gods are made, And went away from earth, as if but tam'd with sleep? These we must join to wake; for these are of the strain That justice dare defend, and will the age sustain. Cho. Awake, awake, for whom these times were kept. O wake, wake, wake, as you had never slept! Make haste and put on air, to be their guard, Whom once but to defend, is still reward. Pal. Thus Pallas throws a lightning from her shield. [The scene of light discovered. Cho. To which let all that doubtful darkness yield. Ast. Now Peace. The first Dance. Pal. Already do not all things smile? Age. That every thought a seed doth bring, Pal. The earth unplough'd shall yield her crop, The fountain shall run milk: Cho. The very shrub shall balsam sweat, Here the main Dance. After which, Pal. But here's not all: you must do more, Poe. The male and female us'd to join, That pure simplicity. Then Feature did to Form advance, It was a time of no distrust, So much of love had nought of lust; The language melted in the ear, Cho. Each touch and kiss was so well plac'd, Here they dance with the Ladies. Than I have now to stay; Of all there seems a second birth; I feel the godhead; nor will doubt This, this, and only such as this, Where she would pray to live; Here they dance the Galliards and Corantos. 'Tis now enough; behold you here, You hither must retire. And as his bounty gives you cause, To show the world your fire. Like lights about Astræa's throne, Who vows, against or heat or cold, To write your names in some new flower, Cho. To Jove, to Jove, be all the honour given, That thankful hearts can raise from earth to heaven. FRANCIS BEAUMONT-JOHN FLETCHER. The literary partnerships of the drama which we have had occasion to notice were generally brief and incidental, confined to a few scenes or a single play. In BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, we have the interesting spectacle of two young men of high genius, of good birth and connexions, living together for ten years, and writing in union a series of dramas, passionate, romantic, and comic, thus blending together their genius and their fame in indissoluble connexion. Shakspeare was undoubtedly the inspirer of these kindred spirits. They appeared when his Fletcher. genius was in its meridian splendour, and they were completely subdued by its overpowering influence. They reflected its leading characteristics, not as slavish copyists, but as men of high powers and attainments, proud of borrowing inspiration from a source which they could so well appreciate, and which was at once ennobling and inexhaustible. Francis Beaumont was the son of Judge Beaumont, a member of an ancient family settled at Grace Dieu, in Leicestershire. He was born in 1586, and educated at Cambridge. He became a student of the Inner Temple, probably to gratify his father, but does not seem to have prosecuted the study of the law. He was married to the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Henry Isley of Kent, by whom he had two daughters. He died before he had completed his thirtieth year, and was buried, March 9, 1615-6, at the entrance to St Benedict's chapel, Westminster Abbey. John Fletcher was the son of Dr Richard Fletcher, bishop of Bristol, and afterwards of Worcester. He was born ten years before his friend, in 1576, and he survived him ten years, dying of the great plague in 1625, and was buried in St Mary Overy's church, Southwark, on the 19th of August. The dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher are fiftytwo in number. The greater part of them were not printed till 1647, and hence it is impossible to assign the respective dates to each. Dryden mentions, that Philaster was the first play that brought them into esteem with the public, though they had written two or three before. It is improbable in plot, but interesting in character and situations. The jealousy of Philaster is forced and unnatural; the character of Euphrasia, disguised as Bellario, the page, is a copy from Viola, yet there is something peculiarly delicate in the following account of her hopeless attachment to Philaster: My father oft would speak Your worth and virtue; and, as I did grow My birth no match for you, I was past hope Whilst there was hope to hide me from men's eyes, Abide with you: then sat I by the fount Philaster had previously described his finding the disguised maiden by the fount, and the description is highly poetical and picturesque : Hunting the buck, I found him sitting by a fountain-side, Did signify; and how all, order'd thus, profound or vigorous, language; his thoughts are noble, and tinged with the ideality of romance; his metaphors vivid, though sometimes too forced; he possesses the idiom of English without much pedantry, though in many passages he strains it beyond common use; his versification, though studiously irregular, is often rhythmical and sweet; yet we The Maid's Tragedy, supposed to be written about are seldom arrested by striking beauties. Good lines the same time, is a drama of a powerful but un- occur in every page, fine ones but rarely. We lay pleasing character. The purity of female virtue in down the volume with a sense of admiration of what Amintor and Aspatia, is well contrasted with the we have read, but little of it remains distinctly in guilty boldness of Evadne; and the rough soldier- the memory. Fletcher is not much quoted, and has like bearing and manly feeling of Melantius, render not even afforded copious materials to those who cull the selfish sensuality of the king more hateful and the beauties of ancient lore.' His comic powers are disgusting. Unfortunately, there is much licentious- certainly far superior to his tragic. Massinger imness in this fine play-whole scenes and dialogues presses the reader more deeply, and has a moral are disfigured by this master vice of the theatre of beauty not possessed by Beaumont and Fletcher, but Beaumont and Fletcher. Their dramas are a rank in comedy he falls infinitely below them. Though unweeded garden,' which grew only the more disor- their characters are deficient in variety, their knowderly and vicious as it advanced to maturity. Flet- ledge of stage-effect and contrivance, their fertility cher must bear the chief blame of this defect, for he of invention, and the airy liveliness of their dialogue, wrote longer than his associate, and is generally give the charm of novelty and interest to their understood to have been the most copious and fertile scenes. Mr Macaulay considers that the models composer. Before Beaumont's death, they had, in which Fletcher had principally in his eye, even for addition to Philaster,' and the Maid's Tragedy,' his most serious and elevated compositions, were not produced King and no King, Bonduca, The Laws of Shakspeare's tragedies, but his comedies. It was Candy (tragedies); and The Woman Hater, The these, with their idealised truth of character, their Knight of the Burning Pestle, The Honest Man's For- poetic beauty of imagery, their mixture of the grave tune, The Coxcomb, and The Captain (comedies). Flet- with the playful in thought, their rapid yet skilful cher afterwards produced three tragic dramas, and transitions from the tragic to the comic in feeling; nine comedies, the best of which are, The Chances, it was these, the pictures in which Shakspeare had The Spanish Curate, The Beggar's Bush, and Rule a made his nearest approach to portraying actual life, Wife and Have a Wife. He also wrote an exquisite and not those pieces in which he transports the imapastoral drama, The Faithful Shepherdess, which Mil-gination into his own vast and awful world of tragic ton followed pretty closely in the design, and partly in the language and imagery, of Comus. A higher though more doubtful honour has been assigned to the twin authors; for Shakspeare is said to have assisted them in the composition of one of their works, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and his name is joined with Fletcher's on the title page of the first edition. The bookseller's authority in such matters is of no weight; and it seems unlikely that our great poet, after the production of some of his best dramas, should enter into a partnership of this description. The Two Noble Kinsmen' is certainly not superior to some of the other plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. The genius of Beaumont is said to have been more correct, and more strongly inclined to tragedy, than that of his friend. The later works of Fletcher are chiefly of a comic character. His plots are sometimes inartificial and loosely connected, but he is always lively and entertaining. There is a rapid succession of incidents, and the dialogue is witty, elegant, and amusing. Dryden considered that they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better than Shakspeare; and he states that their plays were, in his day, the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage; two of theirs being acted through the year, for one of Shakspeare's or Jonson's. It was different some forty years previous to this. In 1627, the King's Company bribed the Master of the Revels with £5, to interfere in preventing the players of the theatre called the Red Bull, from performing the dramas of Shakspeare. One cause of the preference of Beaumont and Fletcher, may have been the license of their dramas, suited to the perverted taste of the court of Charles II., and the spirit of intrigue which they adopted from the Spanish stage, and naturalised on the English. 'We cannot deny,' remarks Hallam, 'that the depths of Shakspeare's mind were often unfathomable by an audience; the bow was drawn by a matchless hand, but the shaft went out of sight. All might listen to Fletcher's pleasing, though not action, and suffering, and emotion-that attracted Fletcher's fancy, and proved congenial to his cast of feeling.' This observation is strikingly just, applied to Shakspeare's mixed comedies or plays, like the Twelfth Night,' the 'Winter's Tale, As You Like It,' &c. The rich and genial comedy of Falstaff, Shallow, and Slender, was not imitated by Fletcher. His Knight of the Burning Pestle' is an admirable burlesque of the false taste of the citizens of London for chivalrous and romantic adventures, without regard to situation or probability. On the whole, the dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher impress us with a high idea of their powers as poets and dramatists. The vast variety and luxuriance of their genius seem to elevate them above Jonson, though they were destitute of his regularity and solidity, and to place them on the borders of the 'magic circle' of Shakspeare. The confidence and buoyancy of youth are visible in their productions. They had not tasted of adversity, like Jonson or Massinger; and they had not the profoundly-meditative spirit of their great master, cognisant of all human feelings and sympathies; life was to them a scene of enjoyment and pleasure, and the exercise of their genius a source of refined delight and ambition. They were gentlemen who wrote for the stage, as gentlemen have rarely done before or since. [Generosity of Cæsar.] [Ptolemy, king of Egypt, having secured the head of Pompey, comes with his friends Achoreus and Photinus to present it to Cæsar, as a means of gaining his favour. To them enter Cæsar, Antony, Dolabella, and Sceva.] Pho. Do not shun me, Cæsar. And all thy furious conflicts were but slumbers: See. Give me hate, gods! Pho. This Cæsar may account a little wicked; But yet remember, if thine own hands, conqueror, Had fall'n upon him, what it had been then; If thine own sword had touch'd his throat, what that way! He was thy son-in-law; there to be tainted Had been most terrible! Let the worst be render'd, We have deserv'd for keeping thy hands innocent. Casar. Oh, Sceva, Sceva, see that head! See, captains, The head of godlike Pompey! Sce. He was basely ruin'd; But let the gods be griev'd that suffer'd it. Casar. Oh thou conqueror, Thou glory of the world once, now the pity; Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus ? Ant. Oh, how brave these tears show! Dol. Glory appears not greater than this goodness. Caesar. Egyptians, dare ye think your highest pyramids, Built to outdare the sun, as you suppose, But the eternal substance of his greatness, Cæsar. And doubtless you expect rewards? I'll give 'em such as Nature never dream'd of; Into one man, and that one man I'll bake then. Cæsar. Peace!-I forgive you all; that's recompense. You're young and ignorant; that pleads your pardon; I mean a head of equal reputation, And that you lov'd, tho' 'twere your brightest sister's (But her you hate), I would not be behind you. Ptol. Hear me, great Cæsar! Cæsar. I have heard too much; And study not with smooth shows to invade Cæsar. You've robb'd him of those tears Till Nilus raise his seven heads and devour ye! The False One. [Grief of Aspatia for the Marriage of Amintor and Evadne.] EVADNE, ASPATIA, DULA, and other Ladies. Evad. Would thou could'st instil [To Dula. Some of thy mirth into Aspatia. Asp. It were a timeless smile should prove my cheek; It were a fitter hour for me to laugh, When at the altar the religious priest Were pacifying the offended powers With sacrifice, than now. This should have been My night, and all your hands have been employ'd To young Amintor's bed, as we are now Or both thought so; perhaps he found me worthless; Evad. Nay, leave this sad talk, madam. Asp. Would I could, then should I leave the cause. Lay a garland on my hearse of the dismal yew. Evad. That's one of your sad songs, madam. Asp. Believe me, 'tis a very pretty one. Erad. How is it, madam? Asp. Lay a garland on my hearse Of the dismal yew; Maidens, willow branches bear, Say I died true. My love was false, but I was firm, From my hour of birth; Upon my buried body lie Lightly, gentle earth! lord Madam, good night; may no discontent [Amintor enters. And to that destiny have patiently Laid up my hour to come. Pal. Oh, cousin Arcite, Where is Thebes now? where is our noble country? Shall we two exercise, like twins of honour, Arc. No, Palamon, Those hopes are prisoners with us; here we are, Pal. "Tis too true, Arcite. To our Theban hounds Pal. Certainly 'Tis a main goodness, cousin, that our fortunes Pal. How, gentle cousin ? Arc. Let's think this prison holy sanctuary, Can be, but our imaginations May make it ours? And here being thus together, We are an endless mine to one another; We are one another's wife, ever begetting New births of love; we are father, friends, acquaintance; We are, in one another, families; I am your heir, and you are mine. This place Is our inheritance; no hard oppressor Dare take this from us; here, with a little patience, We shall live long, and loving; no surfeits seek us; The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas Swallow their youth. Were we at liberty, |