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 Beaumont of the Nuneham Portrait 192
Michael Drayton 202
John Fletcher 226
John Earle, Bishop of Worcester and Salisbury 244
Don Diego Sarmiento, Count Gondomar 372
BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST
PART ONE
BEAUMONT'S LIFE, HIS ACQUAINTANCES, AND HIS CAREER AS POET AND
DRAMATIST.
BEAUMONT, THE DRAMATIST
CHAPTER I
THE CASTOR AND POLLUX OF ELIZABETHAN DRAMA
"Among those of our dramatists who either were contemporaries of
Shakespeare or came after him, it would be impossible to name more than
three to whom the predilection or the literary judgment of any period of
our national life has attempted to assign an equal rank by his side. In
the Argo of the Elizabethan drama--as it presents itself to the
imagination of our own latter days--Shakespeare's is and must remain the
commanding figure. Next to him sit the twin literary heroes, Beaumont
and Fletcher, more or less vaguely supposed to be inseparable from one
another in their works. The Herculean form of Jonson takes a somewhat
disputed precedence among the other princes; the rest of these are, as a
rule, but dimly distinguished." So, with just appreciation, our senior
historian of the English drama, to-day, the scholarly Master of
Peterhouse. Sir Adolphus Ward himself has, by availing of the inductive
processes of the inventive and indefatigable Fleay and his successors
in separative criticism, contributed not a little to a discrimination
between the respective efforts of the "twin literary heroes" who sit
next Jason; and who are "beyond dispute more attractive by the beauty of
their creations than any and every one of Shakespeare's
fellow-dramatists." But even he doubts whether "the most successful
series of endeavours to distinguish Fletcher's hand from Beaumont's is
likely to have the further result of enabling us to distinguish the mind
of either from that of his friend." Just this endeavour to distinguish
not only hand from hand, but mind from mind, is what I have had the
temerity to attempt. And still not, by any means, a barefaced temerity,
for my attempt at first was merely to fix anew the place of the
joint-authors in the history of English comedy; and it has been but
imperceptibly that the fascination of the younger of them, of Frank
Beaumont, the personality of his mind as well as of his art, has so
grown upon me as to compel me to set him before the world as he appears
to me to be clearly visible.