Over.
Yes, as rocks are
When foamy billows split themselves against
Their flinty ribs; or as the moon is moved
When wolves, with hunger pined, howl at her brightness,
I am of a solid temper, and, like these,

Steer on a constant course: with mine own sword,
If called into the field, I can make that right
Which fearful enemies murmured at as wrong.
Now, for these other piddling complaints,
Breathed out in bitterness; as, when they call me
Extortioner, tyrant, cormorant, or intruder
On my poor neighbour's right, or grand incloser
Of what was common to my private use;

Nay, when my ears are pierced with widows' cries,
And undone orphans wash with tears my threshold,
I only think what 'tis to have my daughter
Right honourable; and 'tis a powerful charm,
Makes me insensible of remorse or pity,

Or the least sting of conscience.
Lov.

The toughness of your nature.
Over.

I admire

'Tis for you,

My lord, and for my daughter, I am marble; Nay more, if you will have my character

In little, I enjoy more true delight

In my arrival to my wealth these dark

And crooked ways, than you shall e'er take pleasure
In spending what my industry hath compassed.
My haste commands me hence. In one word therefore,
Is it a match?

From 'The City Madam.'

Luke Frugal. No word, sir,

I hope, shall give offence: nor let it relish
Of flattery, though I proclaim aloud,

I glory in the bravery of your mind,

To which your wealth's a servant. Not that riches

Is, or should be, contemned, it being a blessing
Derived from heaven, and by your industry
Pulled down upon you; but in this, dear sir,
You have many equals: such a man's possessions
Extend as far as yours; a second hath
His bags as full; a third in credit flies

As high in the popular voice: but the distinction
And noble difference by which you are
Divided from them is, that you are styled
Gentle in your abundance, good in plenty;
And that you feel compassion in your bowels

Of other's miseries (I have found it, sir;

Heaven keep me thankful for 't !) while they are cursed As rigid and inexorable.

To hear this spoke to my face.

Luke. That shall not grieve you. Your affability and mildness, clothed In the garments of your thankful debtors' breath, Shall everywhere, though you strive to conceal it, Be seen and wondered at, and in the act With a prodigal hand rewarded. Whereas, such As are born only for themselves, and live so, Though prosperous in worldly understandings, Are but like beasts of rapine, that by odds Of strength usurp and tyrannise o'er others Brought under their subjection. . . . Can you think, sir,

In your unquestioned wisdom, I beseech you,

The goods of this poor man sold at an outcry,
His wife turned out of doors, his children forced
To beg their bread; this gentleman's estate
By wrong extorted, can advantage you? . . .
Or that the ruin of this once brave merchant,
For such he was esteemed, though now decayed,
Will raise your reputation with good men?
But you may urge (pray you, pardon me, my zeal
Makes me thus bold and vehement) in this
You satisfy your anger, and revenge

For being defeated. Suppose this, it will not
Repair your loss, and there was never yet
But shame and scandal in a victory,
When the rebels unto reason, passions, fought it.
Then for revenge, by great souls it was ever
Contemned, though offered; entertained by none
But cowards, base and abject spirits, strangers
To moral honesty, and never yet
Acquainted with religion.

aucti

How, my good brother? Luke. By making these your beadsmen. When they

Giovanni. There's no evasion, Lidia,
To gain the least delay, though I would buy it
At any rate. Greatness, with private men
Esteemed a blessing, is to me a curse;
And we, whom, for our high births, they conclude
The only freemen, are the only slaves:
Happy the golden mean! Had I been born
In a poor sordid cottage, not nursed up
With expectation to command a court,

I might, like such of your condition, sweetest,
Have ta'en a safe and middle course, and not,
As I am now, against my choice, compelled

Or to lie grovelling on the earth, or raised
So high upon the pinnacles of state,
That I must either keep my height with danger,
Or fall with certain ruin.

Lidia. Your own goodness
Will be your faithful guard.

Giov. O Lidia! For had I been your equal,

I might have seen and liked with mine own eyes, And not, as now, with others. I might still,

And without observation or envy,

As I have done, continued my delights
With you, that are alone, in my esteem,
The abstract of society: we might walk
In solitary groves, or in choice gardens ;
From the variety of curious flowers

Contemplate nature's workmanship and wonders:
And then, for change, near to the murmur of
Some bubbling fountain, I might hear you sing,
And, from the well-tuned accents of your tongue,
In my imagination conceive

With what melodious harmony a quire
Of angels sing above their Maker's praises.
And then, with chaste discourse, as we returned,
Imp feathers to the broken wings of Time:
And all this I must part from.

And ever am, your servant; but it was
And 'tis far from me in a thought to cherish
Such saucy hopes. If I had been the heir
Of all the globes and sceptres mankind bows to

At my best you had deserved me, as I am,
Howe'er unworthy, in my virgin zeal,

I wish you, as a partner of your bed,

A princess equal to you; such a one

That may make it the study of her life,

With all the obedience of a wife, to please you;
May you have happy issue, and I live
To be their humblest handmaid!

Giov. I am dumb, and can make no reply.
Lidia. Your excellence will be benighted.
Giov. This kiss, bathed in tears,
May learn you what I should say.

Song from 'The Emperor of the East.' Why art thou slow, thou rest of trouble, Death, To stop a wretch's breath,

That calls on thee, and offers her sad heart
A prey unto thy dart?

I am nor young nor fair; be, therefore, bold :

Sorrow hath made me old,

Deformed, and wrinkled; all that I can crave Is quiet in my grave.

Such as live happy, hold long life a jewel;

But to me thou art cruel,

If thou end not my tedious misery

And I soon cease to be.

Strike, and strike home, then! Pity unto me, In one short hour's delay, is tyranny.

The following passage from the Virgin Martyr has by all critics from Charles Lamb onward been attributed not to Massinger but to his collaborator Dekker. It was in speaking of this fine scene that Lamb was moved to say that Dekker had poetry enough for anything' (see page 423); but the drama as a whole is, in Mr Bullen's words, 'more orderly and artistic than any of the plays that Dekker wrote alone':

From The Virgin Martyr.'

[ANGELO, a good spirit, attends DOROTHEA as a Page.] Dorothea. My book and taper.

Angelo.

Here, most holy mistress.
Dor. Thy voice sends forth such music, that I never
Was ravished with a more celestial sound.
Were every servant in the world like thee,
So full of goodness, angels would come down
To dwell with us: thy name is Angelo,
And like that name thou art. Get thee to rest;
Thy youth with too much watching is opprest.

Ang. No, my dear lady, I could weary stars,
And force the wakeful moon to lose her eyes,
By my late watching, but to wait on you.
When at your prayers you kneel before the altar,
Methinks I'm singing with some quire in heaven,
So blest I hold me in your company.

Therefore, my most loved mistress, do not bid
Your boy, so serviceable, to get hence;
For then you break his heart.

Dor.

Be nigh me still, then.
In golden letters down I'll set that day
Which gave thee to me. Little did I hope
To meet such worlds of comfort in thyself,
This little, pretty body; when I, coming
Forth of the temple, heard my beggar-boy,
My sweet-faced, godly beggar-boy, crave an alms,
Which with glad hand I gave, with lucky hand!—
And when I took thee home, my most chaste bosom,
Methought, was filled with no hot wanton fire,
But with a holy flame, mounting since higher,
On wings of cherubins, than it did before.
Ang. Proud am I that my lady's modest eye
So likes so poor a servant.

Dor.
I have offered
Handfuls of gold but to behold thy parents.
I would leave kingdoms, were I queen of some,
To dwell with thy good father; for, the son
Bewitching me so deeply with his presence,
He that begot him must do 't ten times more.
I pray thee, my sweet boy, shew me thy parents;
Be not ashamed.

Beaumont and Fletcher,

two of the greatest Elizabethan dramatists, left in their joint work the most memorable outcome of a literary partnership, of a 'mysterious double personality.' Heretofore dramatic collaboration had been generally brief and incidental, confined to a few scenes or a single play. But Beaumont and Fletcher lived together for ten years, and wrote a series of dramas, passionate, romantic, and comic, with such perfect co-operation that their names, their genius, and their fame have been inseparably conjoined or indissolubly blended. Shakespeare inspired these kindred souls. They appeared when his dramatic supremacy was undisputed,

FRANCIS BEAUMONT.

From an Engraving by P. Audinet in the British Museum.

and, especially in the comedies, they could not but be touched by such a master-spirit. But Beaumont rendered enthusiastic homage to Ben Jonson, and several of his plays show abundant traces of Jonson's influence. Francis Beaumont was the younger by five years, and died nine years before his colleague. The son of a judge, a member of an ancient family settled at Gracedieu, in Leicestershire, he was born in 1584, and educated at Oxford. 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. In 1602 he published a poetical expansion of a tale from Ovid, and became an intimate of Ben Jonson and the circle of wits who met at the Mermaid Tavern. He was buried on 9th March 1616, at the entrance to St Benedict's Chapel, Westminster Abbey. - John Fletcher was the son of that Dean of Peterborough who obtruded unwelcome ministrations

on Mary Queen of Scots at the scaffold and died Bishop of London. He was born at Rye in 1579; was bred at Benet (Corpus), Cambridge; was left in poverty at his father's death; in 1607 produced the Woman Hater; and, dying of the plague in 1625, was buried in St Saviour's, Southwark.

Hazlitt said of these premature deaths: 'The bees were said to have come and built their hive in the mouth of Plato when a child; and the fable might be transferred to the sweeter accents of Beaumont and Fletcher. . . . One of these writers makes Bellario, the page, say to Philaster, who threatens to take his life: "Tis not a life, 'tis but a piece of childhood thrown away." But here was youth, genius, aspiring hope, growing reputation, cut off like a flower in its summer pride, or like "the lily on its stalk green," which makes us repine at fortune, and almost at nature, that seem to set so little store by their greates favourites. The life of poets is, or ought to be -judging of it from the light it lends to ours-a golden dream, full of brightness and sweetness, lapt in Elysium; and it gives one a relucta:: pang to see the splendid vision, by which they are attended in their path of glory, fade like a vapour, and their sacred heads laid low in ashes, before the sand of common mortals has run out.'

Beaumont and Fletcher's works comprise in a fifty-two plays, a masque, and several minor poems: but it is difficult to allocate the authorship. Ward fails to trace any essential difference between the plays ascribed to both and those attributed to Fletcher alone, while he detects two styles in the plays written by Fletcher along with another than Beaumont. Beaumont's own verses are the more severe and regular in form. Dyce thus assigns the authorship of the plays, with very varying degrees of certainty by Beaumont and Fletcher, Four Plays in One, Wit at Several Weapons, Thierry and Theodoret, Maid's Tragedy, Philaster, King and no King, Cupid's Revenge, Little Frenk Lawyer, Coxcomb, Laws of Candy, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, and The Scornful Lady: by Beaumont alone, the Masque; by Fletcher and Massinger, False One, Very Woman, The Lover's Progress; by Fletcher and Rowley, Queen of Corinth, Maid of the Mill, Bloody Brother; by Fletcher and Shirley, Noble Gentleman, Night Walker, Love's Pilgrimage; by Fletcher and Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen; the remaining plays, including The Faithful Shepherdess, The False One, Bonduca, and Wit without Money by Fletcher alone. Fletcher's collaborator in some of the later plays is, however, entirely uncertain His own versification has many peculiar feature: which make his verse distinguishable from that of his contemporary dramatists. Chief of these 's the frequency of double or feminine endings, which he exceeds any other writer of our o drama. A marked metrical peculiarity was his fondness for ending a verse with an emphatic extr monosyllable-e.g.:

And, love, I charge thee, never charm mine eyes more. (A single line from The Humorous Lieutenant, Act IV. sc. 2.) And unfrequented deserts where the snow dwells.

(A single line from Bonduca.)

The

Another characteristic is the monotonous pause at the end of the line. In more colloquial passages the verse is so irregular-through the introduction of redundant syllables (in all parts of the line)— as to be barely distinguishable from prose. metrical arrangement in the seventeenth-century editions is very faulty; and Fletcher has only himself to blame if modern editors cannot determine whether certain scenes should be printed as verse or prose. His easy, go-as-you-please freedom was obtained by the sacrifice of rhythm.

Fletcher undoubtedly had a share in Shakespeare's Henry VIII. (see page 372). The touch of Shakespeare is felt with considerable certainty in the Two Noble Kinsmen (see page 372). There is a tone of music and a tread of thunder in some of the passages to which no parallel can be found in any of the companion dramas. Only three plays were, during Fletcher's lifetime, published as joint productions. Two of these--Philaster and the Maid's Tragedy-are, with the exception of the great passages in the Two Noble Kinsmen, the glory of the collection. It seems odd that these plays are called by the name of Beaumont and Fletcher, thus giving precedence to the younger and less voluminous writer. Dyce's opinion was that of these three plays Beaumont had the greater share, or that through natural courtesy Fletcher placed the name of his deceased associate before his own, and that future editors naturally followed Fletcher's arrangement. It would appear that on the whole Beaumont possessed the deeper and more thoughtful genius, Fletcher the gayer and more idyllic. There is a glad, exuberant music and a May-morning light and freshness in the Faithful Shepherdess, which Milton did not disdain to accept as a model in the lyrical portions of Comus, and of which the Endymion of Keats is an echo. Beaumont and Fletcher never sound the deep sea of passion; they are poets first and dramatists after; they display but little power of serious and consistent characterisation, while they are much too fond of unnatural and violent situations. And there is an unpleasantly licentious element in many of the plays; even that most delightful pastoral the Faithful Shepherdess is marred by deformities of this kind. 'A spot,' says Charles Lamb, 'is on the face of this Diana.'

Dryden reports that Philaster was the first play that brought the collaborators into esteem with the public, though they had produced several plays before it appeared. It is somewhat improbable in plot, but interesting in character and situations. The hero, heir to the King of Sicily, who had been unjustly deposed by the King of Calabria, claims his rights. The king's daughter Arethusa falls in love with him:

Are. Do.

Phi. I can endure it. Turn away my face?
I never yet saw enemy that looked

So dreadfully, but that I thought myself
As great a basilisk as he; or spake

So horribly, but that I thought my tongue
Bore thunder underneath, as much as his ;
Nor beast that I could turn from: shall I then
Begin to fear sweet sounds? a lady's voice,
Whom I do love? Say, you would have my life;
Why, I will give it you; for 'tis to me
A thing so loathed, and unto you that ask
Of so poor use, that I shall make no price
If you entreat, I will unmovedly hear.

Are. Yet for my sake, a little bend thy looks.
Phi. I do.

Are. With it, it were too little to bestow

On thee: Now, though thy breath do strike me dead, (Which, know, it may) I have unript my breast.

Phi. Madam, you are too full of noble thoughts, To lay a train for this contemnèd life, Which you may have for asking to suspect Were base, where I deserve no ill: Love you! By all my hopes, I do, above my life! But how this passion should proceed from you So violently, would amaze a man

That would be jealous.

Are. Another soul into my body shot

Could not have filled me with more strength and spirit
Than this thy breath. But spend not hasty time
In seeking how I came thus: 'tis the gods,
The gods, that make me so; and, sure, our love

Will be the nobler and the better blest,

In that the secret justice of the gods

Is mingled with it. Let us leave, and kiss ;
Lest some unwelcome guest should fall betwixt us,
And we should part without it.

Phi.

I should abide here long.

Are.

You should come often.

"Twill be ill,

'Tis true; and worse

How shall we devise

To hold intelligence, that our true loves,

On any new occasion, may agree

What path is best to tread?

Phi.

I have a boy,
Sent by the gods, I hope, to this intent
Not yet seen in the court. Hunting the buck,
I found him sitting by a fountain's side,

Of which he borrowed some to quench his thirst,
And paid the nymph again as much in tears.
A garland lay him by, made by himself
Of many several flowers bred in the vale,
Stuck in that mystic order that the rareness
Delighted me but ever when he turned
His tender eyes upon 'em, he would weep,
As if he meant to make 'em grow again.
Seeing such pretty helpless innocence
Dwell in his face, I asked him all his story:
He told me that his parents gentle died,
Leaving him to the mercy of the fields,

Which gave him roots; and of the crystal springs,
Which did not stop their courses; and the sun,
Which still, he thanked him, yielded him his light.
Then took he up his garland, and did show
What every flower, as country-people hold,
Did signify, and how all, ordered thus,
Exprest his grief; and, to my thoughts, did read
The prettiest lecture of his country-art

That could be wished: so that methought I could
Have studied it. I gladly entertained
Him, who was as glad to follow; and have got
The trustiest, loving'st, and the gentlest boy
That ever master kept. Him will I send
To wait on you, and bear our hidden love.
(From Act 1. sc. Ïi )

The jealousy of Philaster is unnatural; Euphrasia, disguised as Bellario the page, is imitated from Viola, yet her hopeless attachment to Philaster is touching :

My father oft would speak

Your worth and virtue; and, as I did grow
More and more apprehensive, I did thirst
To see the man so praised. But yet all this
Was but a maiden longing, to be lost
As soon as found; till, sitting in my window,
Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a god,
I thought (but it was you) enter our gates.
My blood flew out, and back again as fast
As I had puffed it forth and sucked it in
Like breath: then was I called away in haste
To entertain you. Never was a man
Heaved from a sheep-cote to a sceptre raised
So high in thoughts as I : you left a kiss
Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep
From you for ever: I did hear you talk,
Far above singing. After you were gone,

I grew acquainted with my heart, and searched
What stirred it so: alas! I found it love!
Yet far from lust; for could I but have lived

In presence of you, I had had my end.
For this I did delude my noble father
With a feigned pilgrimage, and dressed myself
In habit of a boy; and for I knew

My birth no match for you, I was past hope
Of having you; and, understanding well
That when I made discovery of my sex,

I could not stay with you, I made a vow,

By all the most religious things a maid

Could call together, never to be known,

Whilst there was hope to hide me from men's eyes,
For other than I seemed, that I might ever
Abide with you: then sat I by the fount
Where first you toɔk me up.

(Act v. sc. v.)

The Maid's Tragedy, supposed to be written about the same time, is a powerful but unpleasing drama. Aspatia's purity is well contrasted with the guilty boldness of Evadne; and the rough, soldier-like bearing and manly feeling of Melantius render the selfish sensuality of the king more hateful and disgusting. Unhappily whole scenes and dialogues are disfigured by the mastervice of the theatre of Beaumont and Fletcher. Coleridge said, somewhat unkindly, that both