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CHAPTER VIII

THE SUCCESSORS

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER

FTER Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher are

the first writers to guide the general dramatic tendency. Careful study has been given to the parts of these twin dramatists, but in the meantime I shall treat them as if I were speaking of one author. The important thing to note is their relation to Shakespeare. In some cases they use Shakespeare's themes

themes, not plots; they seem to have noticed what were the main elements of attraction in Shakespeare's theatre, to have taken them up and to have developed them in their own way. Certain changes in external conditions have to be remembered. Beaumont and Fletcher are writing apparently almost entirely for the Court; they probably, sometimes at least, had women actresses, and also they probably had rather more in the way of staging than Shakespeare was accustomed to until very late in his career. Let us examine Philaster," their first joint work, in order to see what relation they bear to their great forerunner.

Philaster is a young and gifted prince living at the court of a usurper who has slain his father. Throughout the play he is supposed to be impelled at intervals by a feeling that it is his duty to dethrone the king. The resemblance to Hamlet is obvious and probably would be exaggerated by the method of presentation, but Philaster is deterred from such vengeance and self

assertion, not by uncertain psychological motives, but by his love for Princess Arethusa, the usurper's daughter. This change affects the whole nature of the play and is very characteristic of the post-Shakespearean dramatists who have practically only one theme, the relation between men and women.

Again, Philaster is oppressed like Hamlet by a melancholy due, not to his dispossession, or even entirely to his uncertainty about Arethusa, but to his sense of the evil round him. In a fit of disgust he thinks of flying to wild and desert lands, and utters a soliloquy which is perhaps the germ of Rousseau's conception of the "noble savage."

"Oh, that I had been nourished in these woods
With milk of goats and acorns, and not known
The right of crowns nor the dissembling trains
Of women's looks; but digged myself a cave
Where I, my fire, my cattle, and my bed,
Might have been shut together in one shed;
And then had taken me some mountain-girl
Beaten with winds, chaste as the hardened rocks
Whereon she dwells, that might have strewed my bed
With leaves and reeds, and with the skins of beasts
Our neighbours, and have borne at her big breasts
My large coarse issue ! This had been a life

Free from vexation."

Besides Philaster there is a girl in the play, Euphrasia, who is disguised as a page under the name of Bellario, and whose relation to Philaster makes her a sort of cross between Ophelia and Julia in "Two Gentlemen of Verona." The treatment of her is very characteristic of the post-Shakespearean dramatists. She is a sentimental figure, and Philaster gives us a pretty sentimental description of his finding the orphan boy, as he believes her to be, in a glade in the forest. The dramatists get a certain amount of value out of the idea that she is an orphan child, and we are startled afterwards to discover that the whole thing is a mistake. Apparently

these pretty pictures were part of the general ornament the audience of the time required. It may be noticed that such a scene as the death of Fidele in "Cymbeline' has the same kind of effect.

The Maid's Tragedy" is probably the greatest of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays. It is characteristic and yet has a strength not very common in their work. Again, as in "Philaster," we find personages who seem to have been suggested by others in Shakespeare. The nominal hero of the play, Amintor, is represented, rather unconvincingly, as a noble and attractive young man of sensitive and refined conscience. Set over against him we have his friend Melantius, and the pair seem to have been conceived from the opposition of Hamlet and Laertes. Amintor finds himself deeply wronged in his honour by the king. He hesitates to take the vengeance which a noble nature demands because the name of king disarms him. In the sympathetic attitude of the authors to this conventional dilemma we see the influence of the time, partly due to Spanish ideas and partly to King James's insistence on the Divine Right of Kings. On the other hand, Melantius, who is of a coarser fibre, no sooner knows of the wrong than he sweeps to his revenge." It is possible that the dramatists originally intended this as the chief interest of the play, but in fact the heroine Evadne dominates completely these puppet-like figures. She is the king's mistress, and in the first part of the play glories in it. It has, however, become necessary that she should have a husband, and Amintor, who is of course ignorant of her position, is commanded by the king to leave Aspatia to whom he is betrothed and to marry Evadne. On the marriage night he is told the truth and is plunged in despair, but feels that he can do nothing. His friend Melantius, who is the brother of Evadne, but ignorant also of her relations with the king, returns to court, sees that something is wrong, and when he learns

the truth insists that Evadne shall assist in the vengeance.

The problem of the play is the motive of Evadne's sudden change of heart. A careful examination, however, of the scene between Melantius and Evadne seems to offer a satisfactory solution. Evadne had gloried in her relation to the king simply because he was the king: she had told him that if he ceased to be king he would lose her. To her, to be his mistress was a purer position than to be the wife of another man. Somehow Melantius manages to convey to her his feeling of disgust at her corruption. He says to her :

"He has undone thine honour, poisoned thy virtue, And of a lovely rose, left thee a canker."

In the crowning scene of the murder, these words are echoed by Evadne:

"Once I was lovely; not a blowing rose

More chastely sweet, till thou, thou, thou foul canker (Stir not) didst poison me."

As soon as she realizes that she is degraded by the connexion, she becomes an avenging Fury because she believes that with the king's blood she can wash away her own stain. She comes to him in his bedchamber, binds him to the bed-post as he sleeps, and stabs him thrice. Her triumph is reminiscent of the great speech of Clytemnestra in the " Agamemnon.” She gives him

three final blows:

"This for my lord Amintor!

This for my noble brother! And this stroke
For the most wronged of women!"

The king dies and Evadne exclaims :

"Die all our faults together! I forgive thee."

The play does not end there. Evadne, now triumphant

in what she regards as her recovered purity, rushes to Amintor :

"Noble Amintor, put off thy amaze,

Let thine eyes loose, and speak. Am I not fair?
Looks not Evadne beauteous with these rites now?
Were those hours half so lovely in thine eyes
When our hands met before the holy man ?
I was too foul inside to look fair then :
Since I knew ill, I was not fair till now.
. . . In this consists thy happiness and mine.
Joy to Amintor! for the king is dead.”

But Amintor is merely the conventional puppet. It is doubtful whether the dramatists meant the tragedy at this conjuncture. He answers:

Why, thou hast raised up mischief to his height,
And found out one to outname thy other faults.
Joy to Amintor! Thou hast touched a life,
The very name of which had power to chain
Up all my rage and calm my wildest wrongs."

His repudiation is answered by Evadne by suicide.

The Maid's Tragedy" has also a sentimental Ophelia-like figure, the forsaken Aspatia. She is ostentatiously heart-broken at Amintor's desertion and obtrudes herself on his notice singing songs. It is difficult to understand how the dramatists expected us to view Amintor's treatment of her. Had it not been for Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia probably no writer would have ventured to have made a sympathetic character behave in such a way.

The beauty of single scenes and speeches in Beaumont and Fletcher's work is undeniable. It does not, however, spring from the story and from the characters in the inevitable way that the thoughts of Shakespeare's people blossom into speech.

A very striking example of this fact is the wonderfully beautiful scene between the king and Ordella in that unpleasant play Thierry and Theodoret." The king