I have said that it is hazardous to attempt dividing the work of Beaumont and Fletcher where they worked together. Both, of course, are to blame for what is the great blot on the play,--Philaster’s ready belief, I might well say eager belief, in the guilt of the Princess. One of his speeches is positively monstrous in infamous suggestion. Coleridge says: “Beaumont and Fletcher always write as if virtue or goodness were a sort of talisman or strange something that might be lost without the least fault on the part of the owner. In short, their chaste ladies value their chastity as a material thing, not as an act or state of being; and this mere thing being imaginary, no wonder that all their women are represented with the minds of strumpets, except a few irrational humorists.... Hence the frightful contrast between their women (even those who are meant to be virtuous) and Shakespeare’s.” There is some truth in this, but it is extravagant. Beaumont and Fletcher have drawn pure women. Both Bellario and Arethusa are so. So is Aspatia. They had coarse and even animal notions of women, it is true, but we must, in judging what they meant their women to be, never forget that coarseness of phrase is not always coarseness of thought. Women were allowed then to talk about things and to use words now forbidden outside the slums. Decency changes its terms, though not its nature, from one age to another. This is a partial excuse for Beaumont and Fletcher, but they sin against that decorum of the intellect and conscience which is the same in all ages. In “Women Pleased” Claudio disguises himself, and makes love to his married sister Isabella in order to test her chastity.