Such are the excellences and defects of Fletcher. Let us give him all the glory of the former: but stay from burdening Beaumont, who had faults of his own, with responsibility for the latter,--with the unmorality or immorality or extravagant artistry of Fletcher when not associated with Beaumont. With the vices and virtues of Fletcher's rocket, bursting in stellar polychrome, Beaumont had nothing to do. To him justice can be accorded only if he, after these three centuries, be considered alone,--not for ever coupled with Fletcher, but spoken and thought of, and known, as dramatist, poet, man of far sounder fibre, and more virile marrow,--of superior insight, imagination, and art. Next to Shakespeare, the most essentially poetic dramatist of the early Jacobean period was Francis Beaumont. He had not the learning of Jonson, nor the long career, nor the dictatorial position; nor did he attempt to rival him in comedy, or criticism. But his great poem, _The Maides Tragedy_ is a thousand times more enthralling and poetic than _Sejanus_ or _Catiline_. Shakespeare always excepted, the only author of tragedy in that day whose intuitions and lines of astounding splendour at all compete with, sometimes surpass, Beaumont's is Webster; but the fascination of his _Duchess of Malfy_ is lurid, miasmatic, stupefying; that of _The Maides Tragedy_, breathless and heart-breaking. In the drama of mingled motive, Jonson produced but one masterpiece that in poetry, valiancy of design, and portrayal of the ridiculous, equals Beaumont's _A King and No King_,--the _Volpone_; but that is not tragicomedy, and it drips venom. All that stands between _A King and No King_ and artistic perfection is the denouement. If the lovers had died, their struggle against temptation still continuing, their passion unfulfilled,--if in the moment of death, they had discovered that their union were no incest after all, Beaumont would have left behind him another consummate tragedy. As it is, to find a parallel in Jacobean literature, outside of Shakespeare, one must turn to Ford's _'Tis a Pity, She's a Whore_. There again with poetic effulgence the problem of incest is dramatized; but how half-hearted the struggle, insincere the moral,--the poetry, purple and unconvincing! In romantic comedy, between 1603 and 1625, others have produced plays which from the dramatic point of view equal _Philaster_,--Dekker, Heywood, Marston, Chapman, Middleton, and Rowley. Not all even of Shakespeare's romantic comedies come up to _Philaster_ in literary or dramatic excellence; but only Shakespeare has written what surpasses it.