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
The "golden-mouthed Drayton musical" had spent his youth not many miles
from "wild Charnwood," at Polesworth Hall, the home of the Gooderes, in
Warwickshire. The dear nymph of Charnwood is Elizabeth Beaumont, in 1606
a lass of eighteen,--and the "hopeful boys" who bring the southern
shepherds (Jonson, perhaps, and young John Fletcher, as well as Drayton)
to their Grace-Dieu priory by the river Soar, are John, then about
twenty-three, and the future dramatist, about twenty-two.[24] Under the
pastoral pseudonym of Mirtilla, Elizabeth is again celebrated by Drayton
twenty-four years later, in his _Muses Elizium_. Since these Pastorals
are in confessed sequence with those of "the prime pastoralist of
England," and the pastoral Thyrsis and young Palmeo have already sung
divinely of the clear waters of their native stream, it would appear
that they too are disciples at that time of Master Edmund Spenser in his
_Shepheards Calender_. And since these brothers, so like in wit and
feature, and in charming devotion to their sister, are all the brothers
that she has, it is evident that this portion of the _Eglog_ was written
after July 10, 1605; for up to that date, the eldest of the family,
Henry, was still living, and at the manor house of Grace-Dieu. This
friendship between Drayton and the "hopeful boys" continued through
life; for, as we shall later note and more at length, in 1627, the year
of John's death, and many years after that of Francis, the older poet
still celebrates the twain as "My dear companions whom I freely chose My
bosome-friends."
When James I made his famous progress from Edinburgh to London, April 5
to May 3, 1603, "every nobleman and gentleman kept open house as he
passed. He spent his time in festivities and amusements of various
kinds. The gentry of the counties through which his journey lay thronged
in to see him. Most of them returned home decorated with the honours of
knighthood, a title which he dispensed with a profusion which astonished
those who remembered the sober days of Elizabeth."[25] One of those thus
decorated was the poet's brother Henry, who was dubbed knight bachelor
at Worksop in Derbyshire, on the same day as his uncle, "Henry Perpoint
of county Notts," and William Skipwith of Cotes in the Beaumont
county--who appears later as a friend of Fletcher. Two days afterwards,
Thomas Beaumont of Coleorton received the honour of knighthood at the
Earl of Rutland's castle of Belvoir.[26]