I object again,--and the reader who has followed the exposition of the preceding pages will, I hope, object with me,--to the dictum of a German writer of this latter day, that the reason of the degeneracy of _Beaumont_ and Fletcher, ethically, "seems to lie in the narrowing of the drama from a national interest to the flattery of a courtly caste." Mr. More opines that such an explanation should not be pressed too far; and he suggests that one reason why "we are unable to comprehend many of the persons upon the stage of Beaumont and Fletcher" is that we are similarly unable to comprehend "the more typical men and women who were playing the actual drama of the age." So far as Fletcher's _dramatis personae_ are concerned, there is truth in this; but why couple Beaumont with him? If you omit a character or two in _The Woman-Hater_, which was a youthful _jeu d'esprit_, you shall find very few incomprehensible figures among those of Beaumont's creation. And as to the German mentioned above, Dr. Aronstein, what "flattery of a courtly caste" can he possibly detect in Beaumont's satire upon favourites in _The Woman-Hater_; in that burlesque of bourgeois affectations, _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_ (the Court, too, was still reading the literature there satirized); or in his Philaster, who was a rebel; or in his Amintor of _The Maides Tragedy_, whose fate hinged upon his shuffling subservience to a king, or in the King himself on whom God sends "unlookt-for sudden death," because of his lust; or in his King Arbaces, whose general has "not patience to looke on whilst you runne these forbidden courses"; or in his scenes of _Cupid's Revenge_, which scourge the vices of the Court; or in his Sir Roger and Mistress Abigail and her scornful Lady,--or in his Ricardo and Viola, who are just a lover and his lass, and have never dreamed of Court or King at all?