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
metrical and stylistic, indications of his authorship.
I have said that no _ye's_ occur in Acts I and II, and Act V, 2, the
parts in which Beaumont's hand as author or reviser appears. Another
very interesting confirmation of his authorship of Act I, 1, Act II, 1,
and Act V, 2, is afforded by the double nomenclature of one of the
characters, the amorous spinster who serves as waiting-woman to the
Scornful Lady. According to the first three quartos (1616, 1625, 1630),
and the folio (1679) which follows the text of these, whenever she
appears in stage-direction or text before the beginning of Act III
(viz., in Beaumont's scenes), she is called Mistress Younglove or
Younglove, but in Acts III, IV, V, she is uniformly called Abigal,
except in Beaumont's V, 2, where in the text and stage-direction (line
263) she is again Younglove. In the speech-headings, she is Abig. or
Abi., all through the last three acts, for Fletcher has noticed that the
abbreviation Young, for her, occurring by the side of Young Lo. for
another character, Young Loveless, is confusing. But Beaumont, who
revised the first two acts, has been less careful than his wont, for he
occasionally retains the Young., which stood for the name by which he
always thought of the waiting-woman.
Beaumont's Mistress Younglove of the earlier scenes is vividly vulgar
and amorous. Fletcher takes her up and turns her into a commonplace
stage lecher in petticoats; but Beaumont, in the fifth act, restores her
to womanhood by giving her something of a heart. The Scornful Lady of
Beaumont's scenes is self-possessed and many-sided, introspective and
capable of affection. In Fletcher's hands she is shrewd and witty but
evidently constructed for the furtherance of dramatic business. The
steward, Savil, of Beaumont's Act I, appears not only to be honest but
to be designed with a view to a leading part in the complication; in Act
II, 2, Fletcher reduces him to drunkenness and servility, with slight
regard to the possibilities of character and plot. The brisk but
mechanical movement of the action and the stagey characterization and
more animated scenes are Fletcher's; also the manoeuvers directed
against the Lady's attitude of scorn, except that by which she is
overcome. Thorndike calls this comedy "perhaps the best representation
of the collaboration" of these dramatists in that kind. If this is the
best of which they were capable in that kind, it is as well that they
did not produce more. This was written after Beaumont had retired to
Sundridge Place, and was giving very little attention to play-writing.
It was, however, a very popular play; frequently acted before
suppression of the theatres, and in the decade succeeding the
Restoration when it was several times witnessed by Pepys. Later, it was
acted by Mrs. Oldfield; and, as _The Capricious Lady_ (an alteration by
W. Cooke), with Mrs. Abington in the heroine's part, it held the stage
as late as 1788--some six revivals in all. But, as Sir Adolphus Ward