Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 04
General
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 04
Literature -- Collections
They lived in the closest intimacy on the Bankside, near the Globe
Theatre in Southwark, sharing everything in common, even the bed, and
some say their clothing,--which is likely enough, as it can be
paralleled without going back three centuries. It is certain that the
more affluent circumstances of Beaumont tided his less fortunate friend
over many a difficulty; and the astonishing dramatic productivity of
Fletcher's later period was probably due to Beaumont's untimely death,
making it necessary for Fletcher to rely on his pen for support.
In 1613 Beaumont's marriage to a Kentish heiress put an end to the
communistic bachelor establishment. He died March 6th, 1616, not quite
six weeks before Shakespeare, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Fletcher survived him nine years, dying of the plague in 1625. He was
buried, not by the side of the poet with whose name his own is forever
linked, but at St. Saviour's, Southwark.
"A student of physiognomy," says Swinburne, "will not fail to mark the
points of likeness and of difference between the faces of the two
friends; both models of noble manhood.... Beaumont the statelier and
serener of the two, with clear, thoughtful eyes, full arched brows, and
strong aquiline nose, with a little cleft at the tip; a grave and
beautiful mouth, with full and finely curved lips; the form of face a
very pure oval, and the imperial head, with its 'fair large front' and
clustering hair, set firm and carried high with an aspect of quiet
command and knightly observation. Fletcher with more keen and fervid
face, sharper in outline every way, with an air of bright ardor and
glad, fiery impatience; sanguine and nervous, suiting the complexion and
color of hair; the expression of the eager eyes and lips almost rivaling
that of a noble hound in act to break the leash it strains at;--two
heads as lordly of feature and as expressive of aspect as any gallery of
great men can show."
It may not be altogether fanciful to transfer this description of their
physical bearing to their mental equipment, and draw some conclusions as
to their several endowments and their respective share in the work that
goes under their common name. Of course it is impossible to draw hard
and fast lines of demarkation, and assign to each poet his own words.
They, above all others, would probably have resented so dogmatic a
procedure, and affirmed the dramas to be their joint offspring,--even as
a child partakes of the nature of both its parents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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