"Copy John Fletcher, the son of Richard Fletcher, vicar of Rye, Sussex -who in 1589 became Bishop of Bristol, and in 1594 Bishop of London-was born at Rye, December 1579. After receiving his earlier education under his father's roof, he was admitted (15th October, 1591) a pensioner of Benet College, Cambridge, of which his father had been fellow and president; and in 1593 was made one of the Bible clerks. We have no record of his progress at the University; but he had left it, was pursuing a literary career in London, and had become intimate with Ben Jonson, in 1607, when he wrote a of verses" in praise of Ben's Fox, and which were prefixed to that comedy. He made, at about the same time, that acquaintance—soon ripening into close friendship-with Francis Beaumont, which has joined their names together in a union never to be severed while and wherever English poetry or its memory shall endure. The WomanHater (1606 or 1607) is regarded as the unassisted production of Fletcher's pen, prior to his literary association with Beaumont; and Thierry and Theodoret is generally considered as coming within the same category. After that association had come into effect, Fletcher produced, of his own composition, The Faithful Shepherdess, a dramatic pastoral, which, on its first representation in the early part of 1610, was absolutely condemned: the "many-headed beast" having no idea, as the indignant author himself tells us, "what a pastoral tragi-comedy was; and, missing Whitsun ales, cream, wassail, and morrice-dances, growing angry." The Faithful Shepherdess was revived at court, on the occasion of an entertainment given by the queen to the king at Denmark House, on Twelfth Night, 1634; and being well received there, the judicious manager of the Blackfriars forthwith discerned its merits, and it was "acted divers times with great applause" at his establishment. Froin The Faithful Shepherdess Milton borrowed wisely and well for Comus. Fletcher's next unassisted play appears to have been The Captain, first acted in the autumn of 1612, or the spring of 1613. It is a production very indifferent in itself, and repulsive in much of its detail. Wit without Money (produced after August 1614) Mr. Dyce considers to be also the sole work of Fletcher. The same acute critic doubts much, in like manner, whether Beaumont had any thing to do with The Custom of the Country, which, however, is generally assigned to the conjunct authorship. Somewhere about 1614, Fletcher was concerned with Daborne, Field, and Massinger in the production of a comedy for Henslowe, called The Jeweller of Amsterdam, or the Hague. After Beaumont's death in 1616, Fletcher produced Boadicea. The Knight of Malta. Valentinian. The Queen of Corinth. (In conjunction with William Rowley.) The Mad Lover. The Loyal Subject. 1618. The False One. (In conjunction with Massinger.) The Double Marriage. The Humorous Lieutenant. Women Pleased. The Woman's Prize; or, the Tamer tamed. The Chances. Monsieur Thomas. The Island Princess. 1621. The Pilgrim. 1621. The Wildgoose Chase. 1621. The Prophetess. 1622. (In conjunction with William Rowley.) The Spanish Curate. 1622. The Beggar's Bush. 1622. The Maid of the Mill. 1623. The Devil of Dowgate; or, Usury put to Use. 1623. (Supposed the same with the Night-Walker, which, after Fletcher's death, appeared in his name, corrected by Shirley.) The Wandering Lovers. 1623. (In conjunction with Massinger; now lost.) Love's Cure; or, the Martial Maid. 1623. The Noble Gentleman. (Completed after Fletcher's death by Shirley.) The Elder Brother. Nice Valour; or, the Passionate Madman. (Supposed to have been completed after Fletcher's death by some other dramatist.) The Bloody Brother; or, Rollo Duke of Normandy. (Completed after Fletcher's death by Rowley.) The Lover's Progress. (Completed after Fletcher's death by Massinger.) Love's Pilgrimage. (Completed after Fletcher's death by Shirley.) And last, though amongst the greatest, the Two Noble Kinsmen, which, according to the title-page of the oldest edition (1634), was "written by the memorable worthies of their times, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare." Shakespeare's share in this play, what if any, has been matter of dispute amongst the leading critics of past and present times. Mr. Dyce, after an elaborate consideration of the question, considers that the whole of the first act, the first scene of the third, and some portion of the fifth, are Shakespeare's, written by him towards a reconstruction of Richard Edwards' Palamon and Arcite, as itself altered by some writer in 1594; and that the period of these Shakespeare portions was in or about January 1610, long anterior to the remaining portions contributed by Fletcher. Our poet died of the plague in August 1625, and was buried in the church of St. Saviour's, Southwark. It is believed that he was never married. WILLIAM ROWLEY. (Born circa 1580.) Of William Rowley all that is personally known is, that he was head of the Prince of Wales' company of comedians from 1613 to 1616. Of the time or place of his birth or death we are altogether ignorant. That he lived on terms of intimacy with the dramatic writers of his time, is sufficiently evident from his having written in conjunction with many of them; and, if we may believe the titlepage, in one he received assistance from Shakespeare himself. Rowley's dramatic productions are— 1. A New Wonder: a Woman never vext. Comedy. 2. All's Lost by Lust. Tragedy. 3. Match at Midnight. Comedy. 4. A Shoemaker's a Gentleman. Comedy. 5. The Travels of Three English Brothers. (Written in conjunction with Day and Wilkins.) 6. A Fair Quarrel. Comedy. (Written in conjunction with Middleton.) 7. The World toss'd at Tennis. Masque. (In conjunction with Middleton.) 8. The Spanish Gipsy. Comedy. (In conjunction with Middleton.) 9. The Changeling. Tragedy. (In conjunction with Middleton.) 10. The Maid of the Mill. (In conjunction with Fletcher.) 11. The Old Law. Tragi-Comedy. (In conjunction with Massinger and Middleton.) 12. The Witch of Edmonton. Tragi-Comedy. (In conjunction with Dekker and Ford.) 13. The Birth of Merlin. Tragi-Comedy. (Said to have been in conjunction with Shakspeare.) 14. The Cure for a Cuckold. Comedy. (In conjunction with Webster.) 15. The Thracian Wonder. Comedy. (In conjunction with Webster.) 16. Fortune by Land and Sea. Comedy. (In conjunction with Heywood.) The following also are entered in his name on the books of the Stationers' Company: The Fool without Book. A Knave in Print; or, One for Another. The Nonesuch. The Book of the Four honoured Loves. The Parliament of Love. Besides his dramatic pieces, Rowley was the author of a very curi ous prose tract, entitled A Search for Money, or the Lamentable Complaint for the Losse of the Wandering Knight, Mounsieur L'Argent; or, Come along with me, I know thou lovest Money, &c. This tract, published in 1609, and reprinted by the Percy Society, "is," says the editor of the reprint, a lively, fanciful, minute, and amusing picture of manners; and it includes some curious topographical details, chiefly regarding London and its suburbs. The author supposes himself and some other disbanded soldiers to go in search of money, personified under the figure of the Wandering Knight. This quest leads them through various parts of the metropolis, and among different classes of society, which are described with humour, spirit, and fidelity." ANTHONY BREWER. (Born circa 1580.) The chief title of Anthony Brewer to literary fame is, singularly enough, founded upon a play which, though generally passing under his name, is believed by the most competent judges to have been written by some one else; by whom, however, is not even suggested. Winstanley, who assigns Lingua to Brewer in the most distinct terms, attributes to him also Love's Loadstone, Llangarther, and Love's Dominion; but here, again, Langbaine (a better authority) positively contradicts him, which he probably would not have done had he not been well satisfied on the point. However this may have been, it seems clear that Brewer (of whose personal history nothing is known, except that he was born in the reign of Elizabeth) was held in esteem by some, at least, of his contemporaries; since in a poem called Steps to Parnassus, the author pays him this compliment: "Let Brewer take his artful pen in hand, Attending Muses will obey command, Invoke the aid of Shakespeare's sleeping clay, Lingua, or the Combat of the Tongue and the Five Senses for superiority (first printed 1607), by whomsoever written, is an allegory celebrating the contention of the five senses for the palm of superiority, and the pretensions of Lingua, or the tongue, to be admitted as a sixth sense. It is full of child's-play and of old-wives' tales, but is not unadorned with passages displaying strong good sense and powers of fantastic description. Chetwood, in relation to this play, records the following anecdote, to which, of course, the reader will give implicit credence: "When this play was acted at Cambridge," says he, "Oliver Cromwell performed the part of 'Tactus,' which he felt so warmly, that it first fired his ambition, and, from the possession of an imaginary crown, he stretched his views to a real one; to accomplish which, he was content to wade through a sea of blood. The speech with which he was so affected is the following: Roses and bays, pack hence! this crown and robe How gallantly it fits me ! sure the slave Styling me Cæsar, or great Alexander, Whoever was the author of Lingua may also be probably considered the author of Pathomachia, or Love's loadstone; for both plays are written upon the same plan and very much in the same style, although the former is greatly superior to the latter both in design and execution. Kirkman the bookseller assigned to Anthony Brewer The Country Girl (1647) and The Love-sick King (1655); but, with regard to the first, the initials T. B. stand upon the title-page as those of the author; and a person named Thomas Brewer has a commendatory poem prefixed to Humphry Mill's Night Search. CYRIL TOURNEUR. (Born circa 1580.) Cyril Tourneur is known only as an author, none of the dramatic biographers giving any account of him. Winstanley quotes the following distich from a contemporary poet, by which it appears that he was not held in much estimation for his writings: "His fame unto that pitch was only rais'd As not to be despis'd, nor over-prais'd." He was the author of— 1. The Revenger's Tragedy. Acted 1607. 2. The Atheist's Tragedy; or Honest Man's Revenge. Acted 1612. 3. The Nobleman. A Tragi-Comedy. VOL. I. |