Beaumont and Fletcher

The Maide's Tragedie by Beaumont and Fletcher (1619). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

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Beaumont and Fletcher were the English dramatists Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625), who collaborated in their writing during the reign of James I (reigned in England 1603-1625).

Lives

As Beaumont and Flectcher are indissolubly associated in the history of English literature, it is convenient to treat of them in one place. Beaumont was the son of Francis Beaumont, a Judge of the Common Pleas, and was born at the family seat, Grace Dieu, Leicestershire. He was educated at Oxford, but his father dying in 1598, he left without taking his degree. He went to London and entered the Inner Temple in 1600, and soon became acquainted with Ben Jonson, Drayton, and other poets and dramatists. His first work was a translation from Ovid, followed by commendatory verses prefixed to certain plays of Jonson. Soon afterwards his friendship with Fletcher began. They lived in the same house and had practically a community of goods until Beaumont's marriage in 1613 to Ursula, daughter and co-heiress of Henry Isley of Sundridge in Kent, by whom he had 2 daughters. He died in 1616, and is buried in Westminster Abbey. Fletcher was the youngest son of Richard Fletcher, Bishop of London, who accompanied Mary Queen of Scots to the scaffold. He went to Cambridge, but it is not known whether he took a degree, though he had some reputation as a scholar. His earliest play is The Woman Hater (1607). He is said to have died of the plague, and is buried in St. Saviour's Church, Southwark.

Writing

The plays attributed to Beaumont and Fletcher number 52 and a masque, and much labor has been bestowed by critics in trying to allocate their individual shares. It is now generally agreed that others collaborated with them to some extent &ndash Massinger, Rowley, Shirley, and even Shakespeare. Of those believed to be the joint work of Beaumont and Fletcher Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy are considered the masterpieces, and are as dramas unmatched except by Shakespeare. The Two Noble Kinsmen is thought to contain the work of Shakespeare. As regards their respective powers, Beaumont is held to have had the graver, solider, and more stately genius, while Fletcher excelled in brightness, wit, and gaiety. The former was the stronger in judgment, the latter in fancy. The plays contain many very beautiful lyrics, but are often stained by gross indelicacy.

The plays generally recognized as Beaumont/Fletcher collaborations:

• The Woman Hater, comedy (1606; printed 1607)
• Cupid's Revenge, tragedy (c. 1607–12; printed 1615)
• Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding, tragicomedy (c. 1609; printed 1629)
• The Maid's Tragedy, tragedy (c. 1609; printed 1619)
• A King and No King, tragicomedy (1611; printed 1619)
• The Captain, comedy (c. 1609–12; printed 1647)
• The Scornful Lady, comedy (c. 1613; printed 1616)
• Love's Pilgrimage, tragicomedy c. 1615–16; 1647)
• The Noble Gentleman, comedy (licensed Feb. 3, 1626; printed 1647).

Beaumont/Fletcher plays, later revised by Massinger:

• Thierry and Theodoret, tragedy (c. 1607?; printed 1621)
• The Coxcomb, comedy (1608–10; printed 1647)
• Beggars' Bush, comedy (c. 1612–13?; revised 1622?; printed 1647)
• Love's Cure, comedy (c. 1612–13?; revised 1625?; printed 1647).

Due to Fletcher's distinctive pattern of contractional forms and linguistic preferences ('em for them, ye for you, etc.), his hand can be fairly readily distinguished from Beaumont's in their collaborative works. In A King and No King, Beaumont wrote Acts I, II, and III in their entirety, plus scene IV,iv and V,ii and iv, while Fletcher wrote only the first three scenes in Act IV (IV,i-iii) and the first and third scenes of Act V (V,i and iii). The play is more Beaumont's than it is Fletcher's. Beaumont also dominates in The Maid's Tragedy, The Noble Gentleman, Philaster, and The Woman Hater. In contrast, The Captain, The Coxcomb, Cupid's Revenge, Beggars' Bush, and The Scornful Lady contain more of Fletcher's work than Beaumont's. The cases of Thierry and Theodoret and Love's Cure are somewhat confused by Massinger's revision; but in these plays too, Fletcher appears the dominant partner.

Critics and scholars debate other plays. Fletcher clearly wrote the last two quarters of Four Plays in One, another play in his canon — and he clearly didn't write the first two sections. Many scholars attribute the play's first half to Nathan Field — though some prefer Beaumont. Given the limits of the existing evidence, some of these questions may be unresolvable with currently-available techniques.

Publications

Collected editions

• Works (with introduction & notes by Henry Weber). (14 volumes), Edinburgh: Printed by James Ballantyne for F.C. & J. Rivington et al, 1812.

Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, Volume IV, Volume V, Volume VI, Volume VII, Volume VIII, Volume IX, Volume X, Volume XI, Volume XII, Volume XIII, Volume XIV.

• Works (edited by A.R. Waller). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1905-1906; New York: Octagon Press, 1969.

Volume I, Volume II,Volume III, Volume IV, Volume V, Volume VI, Volume VII, Volume VIII, Volume IX, Volume X.

See also

• List of British poets
• List of English-language playwrights

References

• Fletcher, Ian. Beaumont and Fletcher. London, Longmans, Green, 1967.
• Hoy, Cyrus. "The Shares of Fletcher and His Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon." Studies in Bibliography. Seven parts: Vols. VIII-IX, XI-XV, 1956-62.
• Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1978.

External links

Poems

• Beaumont and Fletcher in The English Poets: An anthology: Song from The Maid's Tragedy,

About

• Critical Introduction by Andrew Cecil Bradley
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at "Beaumont and Fletcher"