That shall succeed curse you as I do! and If it be possible, I ask it, Heaven, That your base issues may be ever monstrous, That must for shame of nature and succession, Be drowned like dogs! So, _passim_, in Beaumont--'lasting to ages in the memory of this damned act'; 'a great example of their justice to all ensuing ages.' FOOTNOTES: [178] Elegy on the Countess of Rutland. [179] I cannot understand how so careful a scholar as Professor Schelling (_Engl. Lit. during Lifetime of Shakesp._, 207) can attribute to him, from the hopelessly uncritical collection of Blaiklock, the poem entitled _The Indifferent_, and argue therefrom his "cynicism" concerning the constancy of woman. CHAPTER XXIII THE AUTHORSHIP OF THREE DISPUTED PLAYS With the tests which have thus been described we are equipped for an examination of the plays written before 1616, which have, in these latter days, been with some show of evidence regarded as the joint-production of the "two wits and friends."[180] While attempting to separate the composition of one author from that of the other, we may determine the dramatic peculiarities of each during the course of the partnership, and obtain a fairly definite basis for an historical and literary appreciation of the plays, individually considered. 1.--Of the _Foure Playes, or Morall Representations, in One_ (first published as by Beaumont and Fletcher in the folio of 1647, but without indication of first performance or of acting company), the last two, _The Triumph of Death_ and _The Triumph of Time_, are, according to the verse tests, undoubtedly Fletcher's and have been assigned to him by all critics. _The Triumph of Death_ is studded with alliterations and with repetitions of the effective word: Oh I could curse And crucify myself for childish doting Upon a face that feeds not with fresh figures Every fresh hour; and with triplets: What new body And new face must I make me, with new manners; and with the resonant "all": Make her all thy heaven, And all thy joy, for she is all thy happiness; and with Fletcher's favourite words and his nouns in apposition, rhetorical questions, afterthoughts, verbal enumerations, and turgid exposition. The same may be said of _The Triumph of Time_. As there is less of the redundant epithet than in _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ (1609), but more than in _Philaster_ (before July 12, 1610), I am of the opinion that Fletcher's contribution to the _Triumphs_ falls chronologically between those plays. As Fletcher matures he prunes his adjectives.