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
During the years when Shakespeare's company was producing their romantic
dramas, they were breathing, with Shakespeare, Burbadge, and Heming, the
atmosphere of the Globe and Blackfriars; and, after Shakespeare had
taken up a more continuous residence at Stratford, in 1611, Fletcher, at
any rate, not only kept in touch with the remaining shareholders and
actors of the Globe but with the Master himself, and conversed and wrote
with him on various occasions. These may have fallen either at the New
Place at Stratford, where the now wealthy country gentleman was wont to
entertain his friends, or when Shakespeare came to town--as in May 1612.
At that time his former host, Mountjoy's, son-in-law was suing the
tiremaker for his wife's unpaid dower, and "William Shakespeare of
Stratford upon Avon in the Countye of Warwicke, Gentleman" who had
helped to make the marriage, was summoned as a witness.[78] Or between
July and November of that year, when the "base fellow" Kirkham was
bringing against Burbadge and Heming a suit concerning the profits of
the Blackfriars theatre, in which as a shareholder Shakespeare, too,
must have been interested; and when Christopher Brooke of the pastoral
poets in Beaumont's Inns of Court was of the "councell" for
Shakespeare's company.[79] Or in March 1613, when Shakespeare was
negotiating for the house in Blackfriars which he bought that month from
Henry Walker. In the latter year the King's Players performed two plays
in the writing of which there is reason to believe that Shakespeare and
Fletcher participated: _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, first published as "by
the memorable worthies of their time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William
Shakespeare, gentlemen," in a quarto of 1634; and a lost play licensed
for publication as the "_History of Cardenio_ by Fletcher and
Shakespeare," in 1653. Of the former, critics are generally agreed that
Fletcher wrote about a dozen scenes and that Shakespeare in all
probability wrote others. Maybe, however, Fletcher, and perhaps later
Massinger, merely revised and completed Shakespeare's original draft of
the play left in the company's hands. That _The Two Noble Kinsmen_
borrows its antimasque from our friend Beaumont's _Maske of the Inner
Temple_, which was presented in February 1613, may be construed as
indicating that he, too, still had some connection with Shakespeare's
company. But it is more likely that he was now happily married and
settled in Kent, and didn't care what they did with his plays. Probably
the Shakespeare-Fletcher play was acted soon after Beaumont's, and in
the same year. With regard to the authorship of the _Cardenio_ we have
nothing but the publisher's statement; but we know that the play was
written after the appearance, in 1612, of the story upon which it is
based, in Shelton's English translation of the first part of _Don
Quixote_; and that it was acted at Court by Shakespeare's and Fletcher's
company in May and June 1613.