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To glad our age, and like young eagles teach them
Boldly to gaze against bright arms, and say,
'Remember what your fathers were, and conquer!'
The fair-eyed maids shall weep our banishments,
And in their songs curse ever-blinded Fortune,
Till she for shame see what a wrong she has done
To youth and nature. This is all our world :
We shall know nothing here but one another;
Hear nothing but the clock that tells our woes.
The vine shall grow, but we shall never see it :
Summer shall come, and with her all delights,
But dead-cold Winter must inhabit here still.

Pal. 'Tis too true, Arcite. To our Theban hounds,
That shook the aged forest with their echoes,
No more now must we halloo; no more shake
Our pointed javelins, whilst the angry swine
Flies like a Parthian quiver from our rages,
Struck with our well-steeled darts! All valiant uses
(The food and nourishment of noble minds)
In us two here shall perish: we shall die
(Which is the curse of honour) lastly,
Children of Grief and Ignorance.

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Pal.

How, gentle cousin?
Arc. Let's think this prison a holy sanctuary,
To keep us from corruption of worse men!
We are young, and yet desire the ways of honour,
That liberty and common conversation,
The poison of pure spirits, might, like women,
Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing
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,
A wife might part us lawfully, or business;
Quarrels consume us; envy of ill men

Crave our acquaintance; I might sicken, cousin,
Where you should never know it, and so perish
Without your noble hand to close mine eyes,
Or prayers to the gods: a thousand chances,
Were we from hence, would sever us.

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I thank you, cousin Arcite !—almost wanton
With my captivity: what a misery

It is to live abroad, and everywhere!

'Tis like a beast, methinks! I find the court here, I am sure, a more content; and all those pleasures, That woo the wills of men to vanity,

I see through now; and am sufficient
To tell the world, 'tis but a gaudy shadow,
That old Time, as he passes by, takes with him.
What had we been, old in the court of Creon,
Where sin is justice, lust and ignorance
The virtues of the great ones? Cousin Arcite,
Had not the loving gods found this place for us,
We had died, as they do, ill old men, unwept,
And had their epitaphs, the people's curses.
Shall I say more?

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From The Faithful Shepherdess.'

To CLORIN in the wood, enter a SATYR with fruit.

Satyr. Through yon same bending plain
That flings his arms down to the main,
And through these thick woods, have I run,
Whose bottom never kissed the sun,

Since the lusty spring began.
All to please my master Pan,
Have I trotted without rest,
To get him fruit; for at a feast
He entertains, this coming night,
His paramour the Syrinx bright:
But behold a fairer sight!
By that heavenly form of thine,
Brightest fair, thou art divine,
Sprung from great immortal race
Of the gods; for in thy face
Shines more awful majesty
Than dull weak mortality
Dare with misty eyes behold,
And live therefore, on this mould
Lowly do I bend my knee,
In worship of thy deity.
Deign it, goddess, from my hand
To receive whate'er this land
From her fertile womb doth send
Of her choice fruits; and but lend
Belief to that the Satyr tells―
Fairer by the famous wells,
To this present day ne'er grew,
Never better, nor more true.
Here be grapes whose lusty blood
Is the learned poets' good,

Sweeter yet did never crown

The head of Bacchus; nuts more brown

[Seeing Clorin

Than the squirrel whose teeth crack them; Deign, O fairest fair, to take them!

For these, black-eyed Dryope
Hath oftentimes commanded me
With my clasped knee to climb:

See how well the lusty time

Hath decked their rising cheeks in red,
Such as on your lips is spread!

Here be berries for a queen,
Some be red, some be green;
These are of that luscious meat

The great god Pan himself doth eat:

All these, and what the woods can yield,
The hanging mountain or the field,

I freely offer, and ere long

Will bring you more, more sweet and strong;

Till when, humbly leave I take,

Lest the great Pan do awake,

That sleeping lies in a deep glade,

Under a broad beech's shade.

I must go, I must run,

Swifter than the fiery sun.

Clorin. And all my fears go with thee!

What greatness, or what private hidden power,

Is there in me to draw submission

[Exit.

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Or voices calling me in dead of night

To make me follow, and so tole me on
Through mire and standing pools, to find my ruin.
Else why should this rough thing, who never knew
Manners nor smooth humanity, whose heats
Are rougher than himself and more misshapen,
Thus mildly kneel to me? Sure there's a power
In that great name of virgin that binds fast
All rude uncivil bloods, all appetites
That break their confines. Then, strong Chastity,
Be thou my strongest guard; for here I'll dwell
In opposition against fate and hell!

PERIGOT and AMORET.

draw

(From Act 1. sc. i.)

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I should not love alone, I should not lose
Those many passions, vows, and holy oaths

I've sent to heaven? Did you not give your hand,
Even that fair hand, in hostage? Do not then
Give back again those sweets to other men
You yourself vowed were mine.

Amo. Shepherd, so far as maiden's modesty
May give assurance, I am once more thine.
Once more I give my hand; be ever free
From that great foe to faith, foul jealousy.

Peri. I take it as my best good; and desire, For stronger confirmation of our love, To meet this happy night in that fair grove, Where all true shepherds have rewarded been For their long service: say, sweet, shall it hold? Amo. Dear friend, you must not blame me if I make A doubt of what the silent night may do. . . . Maids must be fearful. . . .

Peri. Oh, do not wrong my honest simple truth;
Myself and my affections are as pure

As those chaste flames that burn before the shrine
Of the great Dian: only my intent

To draw you thither was to plight our troths,
With interchange of mutual chaste embraces,
And ceremonious tying of ourselves.
For to that holy wood is consecrate

A virtuous well, about whose flowery banks
The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds
By the pale moonshine, dipping oftentimes
Their stolen children, so to make them free
From dying flesh and dull mortality.
By this fair fount hath many a shepherd sworn
And given away his freedom, many a troth
Been plight, which neither Envy nor old Time
Could ever break, with many a chaste kiss given
In hope of coming happiness: by this
Fresh fountain many a blushing maid

Hath crowned the head of her long-loved shepherd
With gaudy flowers, whilst he happy sung
Lays of his love and dear captivity.

(From Act 1. sc. ii.)

The lyrical pieces scattered throughout Beaumont and Fletcher's plays are generally in the graceful style of the Faithful Shepherdess:

Melancholy-from 'Nice Valour.'

Hence, all you vain delights,

As short as are the nights

Wherein you spend your folly!
There's nought in this life sweet,
If man were wise to see 't,
But only melancholy;

O sweetest melancholy!

Welcome, folded arms, and fixed eyes,
A sigh that piercing mortifies,

A look that's fastened to the ground,
A tongue chained up, without a sound!

Fountain heads, and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves!
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly housed, save bats and owls!
A midnight bell, a parting groan!
These are the sounds we feed upon;

Then stretch your bones in a still gloomy valley : Nothing's so dainty-sweet as lovely melancholy. There are obvious resemblances between this lyric and Milton's Penseroso, which may have owed some suggestions to Fletcher.

Song-from The False One.'

Look out, bright eyes, and bless the air:
Even in shadows you are fair.
Shut-up beauty is like fire,

That breaks out clearer still and higher.
Though your beauty be confined,

And soft Love a prisoner bound, Yet the beauty of your mind

Neither check nor chain hath found. Look out nobly, then, and dare Even the fetters that you wear.

The Power of Love-from 'Valentinian,'
Hear ye, ladies that despise

What the mighty Love has done;
Fear examples, and be wise:
Fair Calisto was a nun:
Leda, sailing on the stream,

To deceive the hopes of man,
Love accounting but a dream,
Doted on a silver swan :
Danae in a brazen tower,
Where no love was, loved a shower.

Hear ye, ladies that are coy,

What the mighty Love can do ; Fear the fierceness of the boy;

The chaste moon he makes to woo; Vesta, kindling holy fires,

Circled round about with spies,
Never dreaming loose desires,
Doting at the altar dies;
Ilion, in a short hour, higher
He can build, and once more fire.

To Sleep-from the Same.

Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes,
Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose
On this afflicted prince: fall like a cloud

In gentle showers; give nothing that is loud

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He

Francis Beaumont wrote also a number of miscellaneous pieces, collected and published after his death. But some of the poems attributed to him were by Donne, Jonson, Shirley, Carew, Waller, or other less-known writers. Beaumont's love-poem on the Ovidian story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus was written when he was seventeen. wrote verses to Jonson 'Upon his Fox,' 'Upon the Silent Woman,' and ‘Upon his Catiline;' but his most celebrated non-dramatic work is the letter to Ben Jonson, which was originally published at the end of the play Nice Valour in the 1647 folio, with the following title: 'Mr Francis Beaumont's Letter to Ben Jonson, written before he and Master Fletcher came to London, with two of the precedent Comedies then not finished, which deferred their merry-meetings at the Mermaid.'

From the Letter to Ben Jonson.

The sun (which doth the greatest comfort bring
To absent friends, because the self-same thing
They know they see, however absent) is
Here our best haymaker (forgive me this ;
It is our country's style): in this warm shine
I lie, and dream of your full Mermaid wine.
Oh, we have water mixed with claret lees,
Drink apt to bring in drier heresies

Than beer, good only for the sonnet's strain,
With fustian metaphors to stuff the brain,
So mixed that, given to the thirstiest one,
Twill not prove alms unless he have the stone.
I think with one draught man's invention fades :
Two cups had quite spoiled Homer's Iliads.
'Tis liquor that will find out Sutcliffe's wit,

Lie where he will, and make him write worse yet;
Filled with such moisture in most grievous qualms,
Did Robert Wisdom write his singing psalms;
And so must I do this: And yet I think

It is a potion sent us down to drink

By special Providence, keeps us from fights,

Makes us not laugh when we make legs to knights. bows

'Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states,

A medicine to obey our magistrates:

For we do live more free than you; no hate,

No envy at one another's happy state

Moves us; we are all equal every whit :

Of land that God gives men here is their wit,
If we consider fully; for our best

And gravest men will with their main house-jest
Scarce please you; we want subtilty to do
The city tricks, lie, hate, and flatter too.
Here are none that can bear a painted show,
Strike when you wink, and then lament the blow;
Who, like mills set the right way for to grind,
Can make their gains alike with every wind;
Only some fellows with the subtlest pate
Amongst us may perchance equivocate
At selling of a horse, and that's the most.

Methinks the little wit I had is lost
Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best

With the best gamesters. What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,

As if that every one from whence they came

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest

Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town

For three days past; wit that might warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly

Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone, We left an air behind us, which alone Was able to make the two next companies Right witty-though but downright fools, more wise. Matthew Sutcliffe (1550?-1629), Dean of Exeter and long a court favourite, wrote over a score of books in controversial theology; and Robert Wisdom, who died Archdeacon of Ely in 1568, contributed one psalm-translation to Sternhold and Hopkins's version, and wrote a few other hymns and elegiac verses, but was neither revered for his wisdom nor praised for his poetry. Of land, &c., there men's wit depends on their estates. Main house-jest, standing family joke, handed down from father to son. My rest is up,' at tennis, bowls, and various games of cards and chance, was a phrase used to mean, My stake is laid: I take the chance.'

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On the Tombs in Westminster.

Mortality, behold and fear;

What a change of flesh is here!

Think how many royal bones

Sleep within this heap of stones!

Here they lie had realms and lands,

Who now want strength to stir their hands;
Where, from their pulpits sealed with dust,
They preach, 'In greatness is no trust.'
Here's an acre sown indeed
With the richest, royalest seed,
That the earth did e'er suck in

Since the first man died for sin.

Here the bones of birth have cried,

'Though gods they were, as men they died.' Here are wands, ignoble things,

Dropt from the ruined sides of kings.

Here's a world of pomp and state

Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

The following poem, credited to Beaumont, and not unlike his other work, was rejected by Dyce as being by a later hand :

An Epitaph.

Here she lies whose spotless fame
Invites a stone to learn her name :
The rigid Spartan that denied

An epitaph to all that died,
Unless for war, in charity
Would here vouchsafe an elegy.
She died a wife, but yet her mind,

Beyond virginity refined,

From lawless fire remained as free

As now from heat her ashes be.

Keep well this pawn, thou marble chest ;

Till it be called for, let it rest ;

For while this jewel here is set,
The grave is like a cabinet.

The best edition of Beaumont and Fletcher is that of Dyce (11 vols. 1843-46), which superseded its chief predecessor, that of Weber (1812). Ten of the principal plays are given in the two volumes edited by Mr St Loe Strachey (Mermaid Series,' 1887). See A. W. Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature (2 vols. 1875); Fleay's Shakespeare Manual; G. C. Macaulay's Francis Beaumont, a Critical Study (1883); G. Rhys's edition of the Lyric Poems of the two poets (1897); and the bibliography by A. C. Potter in Harvard Bibliographical Contributions (1891).

William Rowley (c.1585-c.1642), actor and playwright, is known as having collaborated with Middleton, Dekker, Heywood, Webster, Massinger, and Ford. He seems to have been indifferent to dramatic fame: of the score of plays in which he had some share we know not what his share was. A New Wonder, a Woman Never Vext; All's Lost by Lust; A Match at Midnight; A Shoomaker a Gentleman—all written between 1632 and 1638-are the only plays which bear his name as sole author, but they are partly adaptations of older plays. His versification was harsh; but his fellow-dramatists valued his vigour and versatility both in tragedy and comedy. He rarely attained to pathos; his fund of humour was conspicuous-humour sometimes rich and true, sometimes passing into mere buffoonery. His name used to be specially associated with The Witch of Edmonton, published as 'a tragicomedy by divers well esteemed poets, William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, John Ford, etc.' But probably Dekker had the main share in it, the farcical element being Rowley's. The Birth of Merlin, on whose title-page (1662) Shakespeare's name was unfortunately associated with Rowley's, is probably an old play remodelled, with an expansion of the comic element, by Rowley and others. In The Old Law, by Massinger, Middleton, and Rowley, Mr Bullen regards Act III. sc. i. as a characteristic specimen of Rowley's humour. This dread law, much as in Anthony Trollope's Fixed Period, was 'that every man living to fourscore years, and women to threescore, shall then be cut off as fruitless to the republic;' and Gnotho, anxious to be rid of his wife and marry a new one, bribes the parish clerk to falsify a date in the register in order to hasten the happy despatch: Gnotho. You have searched o'er the parish-chronicle, sir?

Clerk. Yes, sir; I have found out the true age and date of the party you wot on.

Gnoth. Pray you, be covered, sir.

Clerk. When you have shewed me the way, sir.
Gnoth. O sir, remember yourself, you are a clerk.
Clerk. A small clerk, sir.

Gnoth. Likely to be the wiser man, sir; for your greatest clerks are not always so, as 'tis reported.

Clerk. You are a great man in the parish, sir. Gnoth. I understand myself so much the better, sir; for all the best in the parish pay duties to the clerk, and I would owe you none, sir.

Clerk. Since you'll have it so, I'll be the first to hide my head.

Gnoth. Mine is a capcase: now to our business in hand. Good luck, I hope; I long to be resolved.

Clerk. Look you, sir, this is that cannot deceive you : This is the dial that goes ever true; You may say ipse dixit upon this witness, And it is good in law too.

Gnoth. Pray you, let's hear what it speaks.

Clerk. Mark, sir. —Agatha, the daughter of Pollux, (this is your wife's name, and the name of her father,) bornGnoth. Whose daughter say you?

Clerk. The daughter of Pollux. Gnoth. I take it his name was Bollux. Clerk. Pollux the orthography I assure you, sir; the word is corrupted else.

Gnoth. Well, on, sir,-of Pollux; now come on, Castor. Clerk. Born in an. 1540, and now 'tis 99. By this infallible record, sir, (let me see,) she is now just fiftynine, and wants but one.

Gnoth. I am sorry she wants so much.

Clerk. Why, sir? alas, 'tis nothing; 'tis but so many months, so many weeks, so many

Gnoth. Do not deduct it to days, 'twill be the more tedious; and to measure it by hour-glasses were intolerable. Clerk. Do not think on it, sir; half the time goes away in sleep, 'tis half the year in nights.

Gnoth. O, you mistake me, neighbour, I am loath to leave the good old woman; if she were gone now it would not grieve me; for what is a year, alas, but a lingering torment? and were it not better she were out of her pain? 'T must needs be a grief to us both.

Clerk. I would I knew how to ease you, neighbour ! Gnoth. You speak kindly, truly, and if you say but Amen to it, (which is a word that I know you are perfect in,) it might be done. Clerks are the most indifferent honest men,-for to the marriage of your enemy, or the burial of your friend, the curses or the blessings to you are all one; you say Amen to all.

Clerk. With a better will to the one than the other, neighbour but I shall be glad to say Amen to any thing might do you a pleasure.

:

Gnoth. There is, first, something above your duty: [Gives him money] now I would have you set forward the clock a little, to help the old woman out of her pain. Clerk. I will speak to the sexton; but the day will go ne'er the faster for that.

Gnoth. O, neighbour, you do not conceit me; not the jack of the clock-house; the hand of the dial, I mean. -Come, I know you, being a great clerk, cannot choose but have the art to cast a figure.

Clerk. Never, indeed, neighbour; I never had the judgment to cast a figure.

Gnoth. I'll shew you on the back side of your book, look you,-what figure's this?

Clerk. Four with a cipher, that's forty.

Gnoth. So! forty; what's this now?

Clerk. The cipher is turned into 9 by adding the tail, which makes forty-nine.

Gnoth. Very well understood; what is't now?
Clerk. The 4 is turned into 3; 'tis now thirty-nine.
Gnoth. Very well understood ; and can you do this again?
Clerk. O, easily, sir.

Gnoth. A wager of that! let me see the place of my wife's age again.

Clerk. Look you, sir, 'tis here, 1540.

Gnoth. Forty drachmas you do not turn that forty into thirty-nine!

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