there to be kept by the aforesaid jailer Argus, otherwise Circumspection, for ever, unto whom Prudentia shall deliver a lock, whereupon shall be written In Eternum. Then Temperantia shall likewise deliver unto Argus a key, whose name shall be Nunquam, signifying that, when False Report and Discord are committed to the prison of Extreme Oblivion, and locked there everlastingly, he should put in the key to let them out nunquam [never]; and when he hath so done, then the trumpets to blow, and the English ladies to take the nobility of the strangers, and dance.' On the second night, a castle is presented in the hall, and Peace comes in riding in a chariot drawn by an elephant, on which sits Friendship. The latter pronounces a speech on the event of the preceding evening, and Peace is left to dwell with Prudence and Temperance. The third night shewed Disdain on a wild boar, accompanied by Prepensed Malice, as a serpent, striving to procure the liberation of Discord and False Report, but opposed successfully by Courage and Discretion. At the end of the fight, 'Disdain shall run his ways, and escape with life, but Prepensed Malice shall be slain; signifying that some ungodly men may still disdain the perpetual peace made between these two virtues; but as for their prepensed malice, it is easy trodden under these ladies' feet.' The second night ends with a flowing of wine from conduits, during which time the English lords shall mask with the Scottish ladies: the third night terminates by the six or eight ladymaskers singing a song 'as full of harmony as may be devised.' The whole entertainment indicates a sincere desire of reconciliation on the part of Elizabeth; but the first scene-a prison seems strangely ominous of the events which followed six years after. The mask, as has been stated, attained the zenith of its glory in the reign of James I.-the most festive reign in England between those of Henry VIII. and Charles II. The queen, the princess, and nobles and ladies of the highest rank, took parts in them, and they engaged the genius of Jonson and Inigo Jones, one as poet, and the other as machinist, while no expense was spared to render them worthy of the place, the occasion, and the audience. It appears from the accounts of the Master of the Revels, that no less than £4215 was lavished on these entertainments in the first six years of the king's reign. Jonson himself composed twenty-three masks; and Dekker, Middleton, and others of the leading dramatic authors, Shakspeare alone excepted, were glad to contribute in this manner to the pleasures of a court from which they derived their best patronage and support. The marriage of Lord James Hay to Anne, daughter and heir of Lord Denny (January 6, 1607), was distinguished at court (Whitehall) by what was called the Memorable Mask, the production of Dr Thomas Campion, an admired musician as well as poet of that day, now forgotten. On this occasion, the great hall of the palace was fitted up in a way that shews the mysteries of theatrical scenery and decoration to have been better understood, and carried to a greater height, in that age than is generally supposed. One end of the hall was set apart for the audience, having the king's seat in the centre; next to it was a space for ten concerted musicians-base and mean lutes, a bandora, a double sackbut, a harpsichord, and two treble violins-besides whom there were nine violins, three lutes, six cornets, and six chapel-singers. The stage was concealed by a curtain resembling dark clouds, which being withdrawn, disclosed a green valley with green round about it, and in the midst of them nine golden clouds of fifteen feet high. The bower of Flora was on their right, the house of Night on the left; between them a hill hanging like a cliff over the grove. The bower of Flora was spacious, garnished with flowers and flowery branches, with lights among them; the house of Night, ample and stately, with black columns studded with golden stars; while about it were placed, on wires, artificial bats and owls continually moving. As soon as the king entered the great hall, the hautboys were heard from the top of the hill and from the wood, till Flora and Zephyrus were seen busily gathering flowers from the bower, throwing them into baskets which two sylvans held, attired in changeable taffety. Besides two other allegorical characters, Night and Hesperus, there were nine maskers, representing Apollo's knights, and personated by young men of rank. After songs and recitative, the whole vale was suddenly withdrawn, and a hill with Diana's tree discovered. Night appeared in her house with Nine Hours, apparelled in large robes of black taffety, painted thick with stars; their hair long, black, and spangled with gold; on their heads, coronets of stars, and their faces black. Every Hour bore in his hand a black torch painted with stars, and lighted. As she doth burn in rage; come, leave our shrine, Flora hath wakened wide our drowsy sprites. ... Flora doth honour Cynthia and her right; After some more such dialogue, in which Hesperus takes part, Cynthia is reconciled to the loss of her nymph; the trees sink, by means of machinery, under the stage, and the maskers come out of their tops to fine music. Dances, processions, speeches, and songs follow, the last being a duet between a Sylvan and an Hour, by the way of tenor and bass. Sylvan. Tell me, gentle Hour of Night, Hour. Not in sleep. Syl. Wherein, then? Syl. Lov'st thou music? Hour. Oh, 'tis sweet! feet. Syl. Joy you in fairies and in elves? 1 Diana. Then the maskers made an obeisance to the king, and attended him to the banqueting-room. The masks of Jonson contain a great deal of fine poetry, and even the prose descriptive parts are remarkable for grace and delicacy of language -as, for instance, where he speaks of a sea at the back of a scene catching 'the eye afar off with a wandering beauty.' In that which was produced at the marriage of Ramsay, Lord Haddington, to Lady Elizabeth Ratcliff, the scene presented a steep red cliff, topped by clouds, allusive to the red cliff from which the lady's name was said to be derived; before which were two pillars charged with spoils of love, amongst which were old and young persons bound with roses, wedding-garments, rocks, and spindles, hearts transfixed with arrows, others flaming, virgins' girdles, garlands, and worlds of such like.' Enter Venus in her chariot, attended by the Graces, and delivers a speech expressive of her anxiety to recover her son Cupid, who has run away from her. The Graces then make proclamation as follows: First Grace. Beauties, have you seen this toy, Called Love, a little boy, Almost naked, wanton, blind; Cruel now, and then as kind? If he be amongst ye, say; Second Grace. She that will but now discover Where the winged wag doth hover, Shall to-night receive a kiss, How or where herself would wish; But who brings him to his mother, Shall have that kiss, and another. Third Grace. He hath marks about him plenty; And his breath a flame entire, First Grace. At his sight the sun hath turned, Second Grace. Wings he hath, which, though ye clip, Third Grace. He doth bear a golden bow, And a quiver hanging low, Full of arrows, that outbrave First Grace. Still the fairest are his fuel. Second Grace. Trust him not; his words, though sweet, Third Grace. Idle minutes are his reign; First Grace. If by these ye please to know him, Beauties, be not nice, but shew him. Second Grace. Though ye had a will to hide him, Now, we hope, ye'll not abide him. Third Grace. Since you hear his falser play, And that he's Venus' runaway. Cupid enters, attended by twelve boys, representing the Sports and pretty Lightnesses that accompany Love,' who dance; and then Venus apprehends her son; and a dialogue ensues between them and Hymen. Vulcan afterwards appears, and, claiming the pillars as his workmanship, strikes the red cliff, which opens, and shews a large luminous sphere containing the astronomical lines and signs of the zodiac. makes a quaint speech, and presents the sphere as his gift to Venus on the triumph of her son. The Lesbian god and his consort retire amicably to their chariot, and the piece ends by the singing of an epithalamium, interspersed with dances of maskers: Up, youths and virgins, up, and praise Could never boast of brighter lights; Whose bands pass liberty. Two of your troop, that with the morn were free, And what they are, If you 'll perfection see, Yourselves must be. Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, thou wished star! What joy, what honours can compare With holy nuptials, when they are Of years, of states, of hands, of hearts! When in the happy choice The spouse and spoused have foremost voice! He Such, glad of Hymen's war, And long perfection see ; Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, thou wished star! FRANCIS BEAUMONT-JOHN FLETCHER. The literary partnerships of the drama which we have had occasion to notice were generally brief and incidental, confined to a few scenes or a single play. In BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, we have the interesting spectacle of two young men of high genius, of good birth and connections, living together for ten years, and writing in union a series of dramas, passionate, romantic, and comic, thus blending together their genius and their fame in indissoluble connection. Shakspeare was undoubtedly the inspirer of these kindred spirits. They appeared when his genius was in its meridian splendour, and they were completely subdued by its overpowering influence. They reflected its leading characteristics, not as slavish copyists, but as men of high powers and attainments, proud of borrowing inspiration from a source which they could so well appreciate, and which was at once ennobling and inexhaustible. Francis Beaumont was the son of Judge Beaumont, a member of an ancient family settled at Grace Dieu, in Leicestershire. He was born in 1586, and educated at Cambridge. He became a student of the Inner Temple, probably to gratify his father, but does not seem to have prosecuted the study of the law. He was married to the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Henry Isley of Kent, by whom he had two daughters. He died before he had completed his thirtieth year, and was buried March 9, 1615-16, at the entrance to St Benedict's Chapel, Westminster Abbey.-John Fletcher was the son of Dr Richard Fletcher, bishop of Bristol, and afterwards of Worcester. He was born ten years before his friend, in 1576, and he survived him ten years, dying of the Great Plague in 1625, and was buried in St Mary Overy's Church, Southwark, on the 19th of August. Heaved from a sheep-cote to a sceptre raised Act V. sc. 5. Philaster had previously described his finding the disguised maiden by the fount, and the description is highly poetical and picturesque : Hunting the buck, I found him sitting by a fountain-side, Act I. sc. 2. The dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher are fiftytwo in number. The greater part of them were not printed till 1647, and it is impossible to assign the respective dates to each. Dryden mentions that Philaster was the first play that brought them into esteem with the public, though they had written two or three before. It is improbable in about the same time, is a drama of a powerful but The Maid's Tragedy, supposed to be written plot, but interesting in character and situations. The jealousy of Philaster is forced and unnatural; in Amintor and Aspatia, is well contrasted with unpleasing character. The purity of female virtue the character of Euphrasia, disguised as Bellario, the guilty boldness of Evadne; and the rough the page, is a copy from Viola, yet there is some-soldier-like bearing and manly feeling of Melanthing peculiarly delicate in the following account of her hopeless attachment to Philaster: · My father oft would speak Your worth and virtue; and, as I did grow Their tius, render the selfish sensuality of the king more hateful and disgusting. Unfortunately, there is much licentiousness in this fine play-whole scenes and dialogues are disfigured by this master-vice of the theatre of Beaumont and Fletcher. dramas are 'a rank unweeded garden,' which grew only the more disorderly and vicious as it advanced to maturity. Fletcher must bear the chief blame of this defect, for he wrote longer than his associate, and is generally understood to have been Before the most copious and fertile composer. Beaumont's death, they had, in addition to Philaster and the Maid's Tragedy, produced King and no King, Bonduca, the Laws of Candy (tragedies); and the Woman-hater, the Knight of the Burning or plays, like the Twelfth Night, the Winter's Tale, As You Like It, &c. The rich and genial comedy of Falstaff, Shallow, and Slender was not imitated by Fletcher. His Knight of the Burning Pestle is an admirable burlesque of the false taste of the citizens of London for chivalrous and romantic adventures, without regard to situation or probability. On the whole, the dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher impress us with a high idea of their powers as poets and dramatists. The vast variety and luxuriance of their genius seem to elevate them above Jonson, though they were destitute of his regularity and solidity, and to place them on the borders of the 'magic circle' of Shakspeare. The confidence and buoyancy of youth are visible in their productions. They had not tasted of adversity, like Jonson or Massinger; and they had not the profoundly meditative spirit of their great master, cognizant of all human feelings and sympathies; life was to them a scene of enjoyment and pleasure, and the exercise of their genius a source of refined delight and ambition. They were gentlemen who wrote for the stage as gentlemen have rarely done before or since. Pestle, the Honest Man's Fortune, the Coxcomb, Beaumont and Fletcher, but in comedy he falls and the Captain (comedies). Fletcher afterwards infinitely below them. Though their characters are produced three tragic dramas and nine comedies, deficient in variety, their knowledge of stage-effect the best of which are: the Chances, the Spanish and contrivance, their fertility of invention, and Curate, the Beggar's Bush, and Rule a Wife and the airy liveliness of their dialogue, give the charm Have a Wife. He also wrote an exquisite pastoral of novelty and interest to their scenes. Macaulay drama, the Faithful Shepherdess, which Milton fol- considers that the models which Fletcher had lowed pretty closely in the design, and partly in principally in his eye, even for his most serious the language and imagery, of Comus. A higher, and elevated compositions, were not Shakspeare's though more doubtful honour has been assigned tragedies, but his comedies. 'It was these, with to the twin authors; for Shakspeare is said to their idealised truth of character, their poetic have assisted them in the composition of one of beauty of imagery, their mixture of the grave with their works, the Two Noble Kinsmen, and his the playful in thought, their rapid yet skilful tranname is joined with Fletcher's on the title-page of sitions from the tragic to the comic in feeling; it the first edition. The bookseller's authority in was these, the pictures in which Shakspeare had such matters is of no weight; and it seems un- made his nearest approach to portraying actual likely that our great poet, after the production of life, and not those pieces in which he transports some of his best dramas, should enter into a the imagination into his own vast and awful world partnership of this description. The Two Noble of tragic action, and suffering, and emotion-that Kinsmen is certainly not superior to some of the attracted Fletcher's fancy, and proved congenial other plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. to his cast of feeling.' This observation is strikThe genius of Beaumont is said to have beeningly just, applied to Shakspeare's mixed comedies more correct, and more strongly inclined to tragedy, than that of his friend. The later works of Fletcher are chiefly of a comic character. His plots are sometimes inartificial and loosely connected, but he is always lively and entertaining. There is a rapid succession of incidents, and the dialogue is witty, elegant, and amusing. Yet no one ever recollects the plots of their dramas. Shakspeare's are ineffaceably stamped on the memory, but those of Beaumont and Fletcher seem 'writ in water.' Dryden considered that they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better than Shakspeare; and he states that their plays were, in his day, the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage -two of theirs being acted through the year, for one of Shakspeare's or Jonson's.' It was different some forty years previous to this. In 1627, the King's Company bribed the Master of the Revels with £5, to interfere in preventing the players of the theatre called the Red Bull from performing the dramas of Shakspeare. One cause of the preference of Beaumont and Fletcher may have been the licence of their dramas (suited to the perverted taste of the court of Charles II.), and the spirit of intrigue which they adopted from the Spanish stage, and naturalised on the English. 'We cannot deny,' remarks Hallam, 'that the depths of Shakspeare's mind were often unfathomable by an audience; the bow was drawn by a matchless hand, but the shaft went out of sight. All might listen to Fletcher's pleasing, though not profound or vigorous language; his thoughts are noble, and tinged with the ideality of romance; his metaphors vivid, though sometimes too forced; he possesses the idiom of English without much pedantry, though in many passages he strains it beyond common use; his versification, though studiously irregular, is often rhythmical and sweet; yet we are seldom arrested by striking beauties. Good lines occur in every page, fine ones but rarely. We lay down the volume with a sense of admiration of what we have read, but little of it remains distinctly in the memory. Fletcher is not much quoted, and has not even afforded copious materials to those who cull the beauties of ancient lore.' His comic powers are certainly far superior to his tragic. Massinger impresses the reader more deeply, and has a moral beauty not possessed by Generosity of Cæsar. Ptolemy, king of Egypt, having secured the head of Pompey, comes with his friends Achoreus and Photinus to present it to Cæsar, as a means of gaining his favour. To them enter Cæsar, Antony, Dolabella, and Sceva. From kingly Ptolemy I bring this present, Yet here he found a fort, that faced him strongly, Sceva. Give me hate, gods! Pho. This Cæsar may account a little wicked; If thine own sword had touched his throat, what that way! See. He was basely ruined; But let the gods be grieved that suffered it, Casar. O thou conqueror, Thou glory of the world once, now the pity; Thou awe of nations, wherefore didst thou fall thus? Antony. Oh, how brave these tears shew! But the eternal substance of his greatness, To which I leave him. Take the head away, And, with the body, give it noble burial: Your earth shall now be blessed to hold a Roman, But great men may dissemble, 'tis held possible, Casar. You look now, king, And you that have been agents in this glory, For our especial favour? Ptolemy. We desire it. Casar. And doubtless you expect rewards? I'll give 'em such as Nature never dreamed of; To send you for a present, king of Egypt, I mean a head of equal reputation, And that you loved, though 'twere your brightest sister's But her you hate-I would not be behind you. Cæsar. I have heard too much; And study not with smooth shows to invade Cæsar. You've robbed him of those tears Grief of Aspatia for the Marriage of Amintor and Evadne. EVADNE, ASPATIA, DULA, and other Ladies. Evadne. Would thou couldst instil Some of thy mirth into Aspatia. [To Dula. Aspatia. It were a timeless smile should prove my cheek; It were a fitter hour for me to laugh, With sacrifice, than now. This should have been To young Amintor's bed, as we are now For you: pardon, Evadne; would my worth Or both thought so! Perhaps he found me worthless ; Evad. Nay, leave this sad talk, madam. Asp. Would I could, then should I leave the cause. Lay a garland on my hearse of the dismal yew. Evad. That's one of your sad songs, madam. Asp. Believe me, 'tis a very pretty one. Evad. How is it, madam? |