Francis Beaumont: Dramatist: A Portrait, with Some Account of His Circle, Elizabethan and Jacobean,; And of His Association with John Fletcher — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Francis Beaumont: Dramatist: A Portrait, with Some Account of His Circle, Elizabethan and Jacobean,; And of His Association with John Fletcher
John Stuart Mill · en
CHAPTER XVIII
THE VERSIFICATION OF FLETCHER AND OF BEAUMONT
I. In Plays Individually Composed.
The studies of the most experienced critics into the peculiarities of
Fletcher's blank verse as displayed in productions of the popular
dramatic kind, indubitably written by him alone,[149] such as _Monsieur
Thomas_ of the earlier period, ending 1613, _The Chances_, _The Loyall
Subject_, and _The Humorous Lieutenant_ of the middle period, ending
1619, and _Rule a Wife and Have a Wife_ of his latest period, indicate
that he indulges in an excessive use of double endings, sometimes as
many as seventy in every hundred lines, even in triple and quadruple
endings; in an abundance of trisyllabic feet; and in a peculiar
retention of the old end-stopped line, or final pause,--occasionally in
as many as ninety out of a hundred lines. Attention has been directed
also to the emphasis which he deliberately places upon the extra
syllable of the blank verse, making it a substantive rather than a
negligible factor: as in the "brains" and "too" of the following:
Or wander after that they know not where
To find? or, if found how to enjoy? Are men's brains
Made nowadays of malt, that their affections
Are never sober, but, like drunken people
Founder at every new fame? I do believe, too,
That men in love are ever drunk, as drunken men
Are ever loving,--[150]
and to his fondness for appending words such as "first," "then,"
"there," "still," "sir," and even "lady" and "gentlemen" to lines which
already possess their five feet. It has also been remarked that he makes
but infrequent employment of rhyme.
Of this metrical style examples will be found on pages in Chapter XIX,
Section 2, below; or on any page of Fletcher's _Rule a Wife and Have a
Wife_, as for instance the following from Act III, Scene 1, 14-23:
_Altea._ My life|, an in|nocent|!
_Marg._ That's it | I aim | at,
That's it | I hope | too; | then | I am sure | I rule |
him; 15
For in|nocents | are like | obe|dient chil|dren
Brought up | under a hard | [+!] moth|er-in-law|, a cru|el,
Who be|ing not us'd | to break|fasts and | colla|tions,
[+!] When | they have coarse | bread of|fer'd 'em | are thank|full,
And take | it for | a fa|vour too|. Are the rooms | 20
Made read|y to en|tertain | my friends|? I long | to dance now,
[+!] And | to be wan|ton. | Let | me have | a song.
Is the great | couch up | the Duke | of Medi|na sent?
[Illustration: JOHN EARLE, BISHOP OF WORCESTER AND SALISBURY
From the portrait in the National Portrait Gallery]
Here the first half of v. 14 is also the last of the preceding line;
seven out of ten verses have double endings; one has a triple ending.
One, v. 21, has a quadruple ending; unless we rearrange by adding "made
ready" to v. 20, so as to scan: