E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Christine Aldridge, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 34214-h.htm or 34214-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/34214/pg34214-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34214/34214-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text in italics is surrounded by _underscores_. Text in large bold font is surrounded by =equals=. Superscripted characters are shown as {^x} with "x" representing the superscripted letter. A broken bar character "|" has been used in place of the feminine caesura, which resembles a vertical ellipsis "...". [+!] is used for the stress syllable symbol, which resembles an upside-down subscripted capitol V. Footnotes have been moved collectively to the chapter ends. Anchors and footnotes have been renumbered sequentially. Detailed notes about spelling variations, and other transcriber notes are located at the end of this e-text. [Illustration: By permission of the Right Hon. Lord Sackville, G. C. M. G. PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS BEAUMONT From the original painting at Knole Park] FRANCIS BEAUMONT: DRAMATIST A Portrait With Some Account of His Circle, Elizabethan and Jacobean, and of His Association with John Fletcher by CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY, LITT.D., LL.D. _Professor of the English Language and Literature in the University of California_ [Illustration: DESORMAIS] London Duckworth & Co. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden 1914 Copyright, 1914, by The Century Co. Published, February, 1914 TO MY WIFE PREFACE In this period of resurgent dramatic creativity when once more the literature of the stage enthralls the public and commands the publisher, it is but natural that playwright, play-lover, and scholar alike should turn with renewed and enlightened interest to the models afforded by our Elizabethan masters of the age of gold, to the circumstances of their production and the lives of their imperishable authors. Very close to Shakespeare stood Beaumont and Fletcher; but, though during the past three centuries books about Shakespeare have been as legion and studies of the "twin literary heroes" have run into the hundreds, to Fletcher as an individual but one book has been devoted, and to Beaumont but one.