LINGUA.

This comedy, which is exceedingly well written, holds the mean between a morality of the later type and a mask. It is of great length, and though it has a kind of plot and plenty of action, its attractions must have lain in the excellence of its rhetorical and descriptive passages1. 'All the senses, so one of the characters summarises (iii. 2) the preceding action, 'fell out about a crown fallen from heaven, and pitch'd a field for it; but Vicegerent Common Sense hearing of it, took upon him to umpire the contention, in which regard he hath appointed them (their arms dismissed) to appear before him, charging every one to bring as it were in a show, their proper objects, that by them he may determine of their several excellences.' Memory, as 'Master Register,' is called upon to read the charges brought by the Five Senses against Lingua, who aspires to be ranked as a sixth and to obtain the prize. Memory having forgotten her spectacles (I left them in the 349th page of Hall's Chronicles'), the indictment is read by her page Anamnestes; and after a long disputation containing much well-written rhetoric conducted by the Senses and their assistants-thus Auditus is accompanied by Tragedus and Comedus, and Olfactus by Tobacco, who talks in an Indian tongue as intelligible as the Carthaginian of the Poenulus, and whose virtues are summarised by his master in a passage of true eloquence 2-Communis Sensus not unwittily decides the issue. Lingua is judged to be no Sense simply: only thus much we from henceforth pronounce, that all women. for your sake shall have six Senses, that is, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, and the last and feminine sense, the sense of speaking.' This concludes the real plot of the

Commencement will require no explanation for those acquainted with the humours of the Sheldonian Theatre or of the Senate-House.

Attention should be directed to Anamnestes' speech on the difference between Comedy and Tragedy, and the hints which follow on the old and new style of actors' delivery (iv. 2).

*Genius of all swaggerers, profess'd enemy to physicians, sweet ointment for sour teeth, firm knot of good fellowship, adamant of company, swift wind to spread the wings of time, hated of none but those that know him not, and of so great deserts, that whoso is acquainted with him can hardly forsake him.' (iv. 5.) The pathos of this eulogium is only excelled by that of Charles Lamb's A

Farewell to Tobacco.

153

play; the fifth act being occupied with the evil results consequent upon all the Senses attending a banquet given by Gustus.

Such is the substance of an exceedingly well written academical entertainment, the enduring popularity of which is attested by its numerous editions. A legend which it is unnecessary to examine relates that the part of Tactus (Touch) in this comedy was taken by the late Usurper Cromwell,' and that the mock contention for the crown swelled his ambition so high that afterwards he contended for it in earnest 1.'

1 Related by Wriothesley, quoted in Dodsley. This would assign a Cambridge origin to the play (Cromwell was admitted there in 1616); and this comic story about the Usurper should not have escaped the notice of the tragic poet who has recently made him disreputable on the English stage.

CHAPTER VII.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER'.

and

AMONG the dramatic contemporaries and successors of Beaumont Shakspere there are only three to whom posterity has at Fletcher. any time been willing to allow honours equal to his. In the Argo of the Elisabethan drama-as it presents itself even now to popular imagination - Shakspere's is the commanding figure. Next to him sit the twin literary heroes, Beaumont and Fletcher, vaguely regarded as inseparable in their achievements. The Herculean form of Jonson has a more disputed place among the princes; and the rest are but dimly distinguished.

of their

fame.

The popularity of Beaumont and Fletcher has not how- Variations ever wholly withstood the test of time. In their own day there is every reason to believe that it surpassed that of Shakspere. It remained at its height till the stage was at last overwhelmed by the civil troubles; and even during the period of the suppression of the theatres it was after a fashion kept alive by a large number of scenes from their plays being performed as 'drolls' 'at fairs, in

'The best edition of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher-and indeed a model edition of its kind, both for what it contains and for what it omitsis that of Dyce (in II vols., with Notes and a Biographical Memoir, 1846). It has so entirely superseded its predecessors that it is unnecessary to refer to them individually; in Darley's in 2 vols. (new edition, 1856) the text is printed from Weber's edition (1812). For critical observations I have also referred to Mr. Donne's delightful essay on Beaumont and Fletcher, reprinted in his Essays on the Drama; to Coleridge's Literary Remains (vol. ii), which contain some most striking though disjointed observations on these poets; to Hazlitt's Lectures, by no means satisfactory, though always self-sufficient; to Schlegel's Lectures; and to the brief notes of Rapp in his Englisches Theater. Among earlier criticisms, those of Dryden should not be lost sight of.

halls and taverns, on mountebanks' stages'.' When, shortly before the execution of King Charles I, a few players surreptitiously acted a few plays at the Cock-pit, it was a tragedy of Fletcher's in the midst of which they were suddenly arrested by the hand of authority. When better days had arrived for the afflicted stage, Beaumont and Fletcher resumed their prerogative as favourite authors; and among the plays acted by Rhodes' company (of which Betterton was the star) immediately after the Restoration are several of those loosely ascribed to both these dramatists 3. During the whole of the Restoration period their plays remained pre-eminently popular; the diary of Pepys records frequent performances of them; and they were freely altered and adapted, with or without acknowledgment, by the dramatists of the period. Beaumont and Fletcher shared with Shakspere the discriminating praises of Dryden and the cavils of Rymer. But with the beginnings of modern criticism their fame declined. It is not worth while to pursue the gradations by which it passed from popularity to esteem. An eighteenth-century writer expresses in appropriate words the judgment which a popular and instructed opinion alike formed of

Beaumont and Fletcher! those twin stars that run

Their glorious course round Shakespeare's golden sun;' and the stage has in the end proved an even less kindly stepmother to them than literary criticism. They, who in their day had at times proclaimed themselves reformers of the theatre from the ribaldry and grossness which disfigured it, came to be regarded as typically intolerable by reason of an impurity of which in truth they cannot be acquitted. Then, on the rise of a broader kind of criticism,

1

1 Kirkman's The Wits, or Sport upon Sport (1672), from the title-page of which the above expressions are taken, is a collection of the 'drolls' in question. It will be observed that several of Fletcher's plays were thus partially kept before the public, while only one of these pieces is taken from Shakspere (The Gravemakers, from Hamlet) and one from Ben Jonson (The Imperick, from The Alchemist).

2 The Bloody Brother. See Dyce, i. lxxviii, from Wright's Historia His

trionica.

Geneste, i. 31.

See his Essays Of Dramatic Poesy and on The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy.

LIFE OF FLETCHER.

157

Schlegel (though without any very extensive knowledge of their works) pronounced them in want of that earnestness of mind and truest artistic insight which he had so fully established as characterising Shakspere; and Coleridge contributed some powerful illustrations of the same text. Though Charles Lamb did much to preserve them from neglect, and though an edition (by Weber), which Dyce pronounces the best which had yet appeared, was published in 1812, yet it was not till Dyce's own edition saw the light that a revival of their fame may be said to have begun. The means are now at hand for re-considering a verdict often hastily pronounced, and for attempting to arrive at a definitive conclusion as to the merits of two writers-if I may for the moment speak of them conjointly-who in attractiveness must be allowed to surpass all and every one of Shakspere's fellow-dramatists.

A brief sketch of their lives may precede a necessary endeavour, before judging of their plays, to distinguish between those which are to be ascribed to them conjointly, and those which belong to the one or the other of the pair alone.

Fletcher (1579

Of the two JOHN FLETCHER was the elder. He was a Life of John younger son of a large family. His father, Richard Fletcher, was successively President of Bene't (now Corpus Christi) 1625). College, Cambridge; minister of Rye in Sussex-where his son John was born in December, 1579; Dean of Peterborough-in which capacity he attended Mary Queen of Scots at Fotheringay Castle, and endeavoured to persuade her to recant the Catholic faith; Bishop of Bristol; and Bishop of London, from which office he was temporarily suspended, having incurred the Queen's displeasure by contracting a second marriage. Shortly after his restoration he died1 (1596), leaving behind him a numerous family and a heavy debt.

Of Fletcher's early life very little has been ascertained. As a younger son he would in any case have had to fight

1 Of grief, according to Fuller; nicosia immodice hausta,' according to Camden.