Beaumont and Fletcher

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. Beau mont, Francis, b. 1584; "d. 1616; Fletcher, John, b. 1579; d. 1625: English poets and dramatists, well known for their work in collaboration.

Francis Beaumont, third son of Sir Francis Beaumont of Grace Dieu in Leicester, one of the justices of the Common Pleas, was admitted gentleman commoner at Broadgates Hall, Ox ford, in 1597, and was entered at the Inner Temple, London, 3 Nov. 1600. He married Ur sula, daughter of Henry Isley of Sundridge, Kent, probably in 1613, and left two daughters, one a posthumous child. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

John Fletcher, son of Richard Fletcher, bishop of London, was entered as a pensioner at Bene't College, Cambridge, 1591. His father, as dean of Peterborough, attended Mary Queen of Scots at Fotheringay, and was later rapidly promoted to the sees of Bristol, Worcester and London. He was a successful courtier and a favorite of the Queen, though he suffered a loss of favor shortly before his death in 1596. The dramatist received by bequest a share in his father's books, but apparently little other prop erty. He was buried 29 Aug. 1625, in Saint Saviour's, Southwark.

Although the biographical details of the friendship and collaboration of the two dram atists are involved in uncertainty, it seems prob able that Fletcher began writing plays for the London theatres as early as 1604-05, and that his friendship with Beaumont was established by 1607, when both prefixed commendatory verses to Jonson's (Volpone,> and (The Woman Hater,' probably by Beaumont alone, was pub lished. In 1612, in the address to the reader prefixed to the

By 1612, indeed, the work of their collabora tion was accomplished, for there is no direct evidence that Beaumont wrote anything for the public stage after that date. The most famous collaboration in the history of English litera ture, therefore, comprises only some half dozen years. During this time the dramatists, we are told, lived as brothers, sharing everything in common; and so intimate was their associa tion as writers that it is only recently that criticism has been able to separate their shares in the authorship of the plays with any degree of probability. Fletcher's energies seem to have been devoted exclusively to the theatre; but Beaumont wrote verses to the Countess of Rut land, and elegies on the Lady Markham, Lady Penelope Clifton, and the Countess of Rut land; and also a masque for the Lady Eliza beth's marriage in 1613, performed with great splendor by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple and Gray s Inn.

ditus,) 1602, may possibly have been written by him; it is so assigned in the entry of 1639 in the Stationer's Register. Eight plays may be assigned to this period before 1612 with consid erable certainty, each being the result of collab oration except where the contrary is indicated: (by Beaumont alone) ; Eight other plays may be assigned before 1612 with more or less probability: (The Woman's Prize> (Fletcher) ; at Several Weapons' (first version) ; Cure' ; (Thierry and Theodoret) • The brief period of their collaboration came at the climax of the astonishingly rapid and varied development of the Elizabethan drama. It was during these years that Jonson and Shakespeare were at their greatest ; but a grow ing critical consciousness among the dramatists themselves and an increasing patronage from the court seemed to promise for the drama a future even greater in achievement than its past. Gentlemen by birth and breeding, at tached to the court rather than the people, Beau mont and Fletcher naturally joined with Jon son in viewing the plays of their predecessors with critical, though doubtless appreciative minds, and in seeking for a more cultivated audience and a more critical art. Their atti tude toward the preceding drama is indicated by their abandonment of several species long popular but by this time falling under Jonson's attacks. Beaumont and Fletcher in their col laboration made no use of the historical matter of the chronicles or of the methods or specta cles of the chronicle play; nor did they use the story of blood vengeance, which had been pop ulanzed by Kyd in 'The Spanish Tragedy,' transformed by Shakespeare into (Hamlet,' and was still the prevailing type of tragedy. Some of their earlier plays were experiments that further attest their reforming attitude. Beaumont's (Woman Hater) was a comedy in Jonson's manner; and his (Knight of the Burn ing Pestle,' written under the inspiration of (Don Quixote,' was a burlesque on contempo rary plays of adventure. Fletcher's (Faithful Shepherdess) was an attempt to replace the abortive pastorals of earlier' playwrig-hts by a genuine and elaborate pastoral tram-comedy on the model of (II Pastor Fido.) These plays won the praise of the critical, but even the mani fest genius of the two latter was impotent to avert the disapproval of a public unused to such innovations.