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
Beside the rhetorical mannerisms classified in the preceding paragraphs
I might rehearse a long list of Fletcher's favourite expressions and
figures of speech. Of the former Mr. Oliphant[173] has mentioned
'plaguily,' 'claw'd,' 'slubber'd,' 'too,' 'shrewdly,' 'stuck with,' 'it
shews,' 'dwell round about ye,' 'for ever,' 'no way,' (for 'not at
all'). In addition I have noted the reiterated 'thus,' 'miracle,'
'prodigious' (in the sense of 'ominous')--'prodigious star,' 'prodigious
meteor'--'bugs,' 'monsters,' and 'scorpions'; 'torments,' 'diseases,'
'imposthumes,' 'canker,' 'mischiefs,' 'ruins,' 'blasted,' 'rotten';
'myrmidons'; 'monuments' (for 'tombs'), 'marble'; 'lustre,' 'crystal,'
'jewels,' 'picture,' 'painting,' 'counterfeit in arras'; 'blushes,'
'palates,' 'illusion,' 'abused' (for 'deceived'), 'blessed,' 'flung
off,' 'cloister'd up,' 'fat earth,' 'turtle,' 'passion,' 'Paradise.'
Oliphant assigns to Fletcher 'pulled on,' but I find that almost as
frequently in Beaumont. 'Poison,' 'contagious' and 'loaden,' also abound
in Fletcher, but are sometimes used by Beaumont. Fletcher affects
alliterative epithets: 'prince of popinjays,' 'pernicious petticoat
prince,' 'pretty prince of puppets,'--and antitheses such as 'prince of
wax,' 'pelting prattling peace.' His characters talk much of 'silks' and
'satins,' 'branched velvets' and 'scarlet' clothes. They are said to
speak in 'riddles'; they are threatened with 'ribald rhymes'; they shall
be 'bawled in ballads,' or 'chronicled,' 'cut and chronicled.'