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
Clorin salutes the grave of her lover in a dozen different periphrastic
ways. To say that "all are dead but thy dear memorie" is not enough;
she must specify "_that_ shall outlive thee." To assert that she knows
the remedies of "all green wounds" does not suffice: she must proceed to
the enumeration of the wounds; nor to tell us that her meat shall be
found in the woods: she must rehearse the varieties of meat. Her
soliloquy in the last thirty lines of the scene, not here quoted, is of
the same quality: it reminds one of a Henslowe list of stage properties,
or of the auctioneer's catalogue that sprawls down Walt Whitman's pages.
And, last, we notice what has been emphasized by G. C. Macaulay and
others, that much of this enumeration by division is by way of
"parentheses hastily thrown in, or afterthoughts as they occur to the
mind."[160] Even in the formal _Shepheardesse_ this characteristic lends
a quality of naturalness and conversational spontaneity to the speech.
2. In the Later Plays.
If now we turn to one of Fletcher's plays written after Beaumont's
death, and without the assistance of Massinger or any other,--say, _The
Humorous Lieutenant_ of about the year 1619,--we find on every page and
passages like the following.[161]--The King Antigonus upon the entry of
his son, Demetrius, addresses the ambassadors of threatening powers:
Do you see this Gent(leman),
You that bring Thunders in your mouths, and Earthquakes,
To shake and totter my designs? Can you imagine
(You men of poor and common apprehensions)
While I admit this man, my Son, this nature
That in one look carries more fire, and fierceness,
Than all your Masters lives[162]; dare I admit him,
Admit him thus, even to my side, my bosom,
When he is fit to rule, when all men cry him,
And all hopes hang about his head; thus place him,
His weapon hatched in bloud; all these attending
When he shall make their fortunes, all as sudden,
In any expedition he shall point 'em,
As arrows from a Tartar's bow, and speeding,
Dare I do this, and fear an enemy?
Fear your great master? yours? or yours?