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"Apicaene."
This is to my feelings the most entertaining of old Ben's comedies, and, more than any other, would admit of being brought out anew, if under the management of a judicious and stage-understanding playwright; and an actor, who had studied Morose, might make his fortune.
Act i. sc. 1. Clerimont's speech:—
"He would have hang'd a pewterer's 'prentice once upon a Shrove Tuesday's riot, for being of that trade, when the rest were quiet."
"The old copies read quit,—i.e., discharged from working, and gone to divert themselves."—Whalley's note.
It should be "quit" no doubt, but not meaning "discharged from working," &c.—but quit, that is, acquitted. The pewterer was at his holiday diversion as well as the other apprentices, and they as forward in the riot as he. But he alone was punished under pretext of the riot, but in fact for his trade.
Act ii. sc. 1.—
"Morose. Cannot I, yet, find out a more compendious method than by this trunk, to save my servants the labour of speech, and mine ears the discord of sounds?"
What does "trunk" mean here, and in the first scene of the first act? Is it a large ear-trumpet?—or rather a tube, such as passes from parlour to kitchen, instead of a bell?
Whalley's note at the end:—
"Some critics of the last age imagined the character of Morose to be wholly out of nature. But to vindicate our poet, Mr. Dryden tells us from tradition, and we may venture to take his word, that Jonson was really acquainted with a person of this whimsical turn of mind: and as humour is a personal quality, the poet is acquitted from the charge of exhibiting a monster, or an extravagant unnatural caricatura."
If Dryden had not made all additional proof superfluous by his own plays, this very vindication would evince that he had formed a false and vulgar conception of the nature and conditions of drama and dramatic personation. Ben Jonson would himself have rejected such a plea:—
"For he knew, poet never credit gain'd By writing truths, but things, like truths, well feign'd."
By "truths" he means "facts." Caricatures are not less so because they are found existing in real life. Comedy demands characters, and leaves caricatures to farce. The safest and the truest defence of old Ben would be to call the Epicoene the best of farces. The defect in Morose, as in other of Jonson's dramatis personae, lies in this;—that the accident is not a prominence growing out of, and nourished by, the character which still circulates in it; but that the character, such as it is, rises out of, or, rather, consists in, the accident. Shakespeare's comic personages have exquisitely characteristic features; however awry, disproportionate, and laughable they may be, still, like Bardolph's nose, they are features. But Jonson's are either a man with a huge wen, having a circulation of its own, and which we might conceive amputated, and the patient thereby losing all his character; or they are mere wens themselves instead of men,—wens personified, or with eyes, nose, and mouth cut out, mandrake-fashion.
Nota bene.—All the above, and much more, will have justly been said, if, and whenever, the drama of Jonson is brought into comparisons of rivalry with the Shakespearian. But this should not be. Let its inferiority to the Shakespearian be at once fairly owned,—but at the same time as the inferiority of an altogether different genius of the drama. On this ground, old Ben would still maintain his proud height. He, no less than Shakespeare stands on the summit of his hill, and looks round him like a master,—though his be Lattrig and Shakespeare's Skiddaw.
"The Alchemist."
Act i. sc. 2. Face's speech:—
"Will take his oath o' the Greek Xenophon, If need be, in his pocket."
Another reading is "Testament."
Probably, the meaning is—that intending to give false evidence, he carried a Greek Xenophon to pass it off for a Greek Testament, and so avoid perjury—as the Irish do, by contriving to kiss their thumb-nails instead of the book.
Act ii. sc. 2. Mammon's speech:—
"I will have all my beds blown up; not stuft: Down is too hard."
Thus the air-cushions, though perhaps only lately brought into use, were invented in idea in the seventeenth century!
"Catiline's Conspiracy."
A fondness for judging one work by comparison with others, perhaps altogether of a different class, argues a vulgar taste. Yet it is chiefly on this principle that the Catiline has been rated so low. Take it and Sejanus, as compositions of a particular kind, namely, as a mode of relating great historical events in the liveliest and most interesting manner, and I cannot help wishing that we had whole volumes of such plays. We might as rationally expect the excitement of the Vicar of Wakefield from Goldsmith's History of England, as that of Lear, Othello, &c., from the Sejanus or Catiline.
Act i. sc. 4.—
"Cat. Sirrah, what ail you?
(He spies one of his boys not answer.)
Pag. Nothing.
Best. Somewhat modest.
Cat. Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot," &c.
This is either an unintelligible, or, in every sense, a most unnatural, passage,—improbable, if not impossible, at the moment of signing and swearing such a conspiracy, to the most libidinous satyr. The very presence of the boys is an outrage to probability. I suspect that these lines down to the words "throat opens," should be removed back so as to follow the words "on this part of the house," in the speech of Catiline soon after the entry of the conspirators. A total erasure, however, would be the best, or, rather, the only possible, amendment.
Act ii. sc. 2. Sempronia's speech:—
..."He is but a new fellow, An inmate here in Rome, as Catiline calls him."
A "lodger" would have been a happier imitation of the inquilinus of Sallust.
Act iv. sc. 6. Speech of Cethegus:—
"Can these or such be any aids to us," &c.
What a strange notion Ben must have formed of a determined, remorseless, all-daring, foolhardiness, to have represented it in such a mouthing Tamburlane, and bombastic tonguebully as this Cethegus of his!
"Bartholomew Fair."
Induction. Scrivener's speech:—
"If there be never a servant-monster in the Fair, who can help it he says, nor a nest of antiques?"
The best excuse that can be made for Jonson, and in a somewhat less degree for Beaumont and Fletcher, in respect of these base and silly sneers at Shakespeare is, that his plays were present to men's minds chiefly as acted. They had not a neat edition of them, as we have, so as, by comparing the one with the other, to form a just notion of the mighty mind that produced the whole. At all events, and in every point of view, Jonson stands far higher in a moral light than Beaumont and Fletcher. He was a fair contemporary, and in his way, and as far as Shakespeare is concerned, an original. But Beaumont and Fletcher were always imitators of, and often borrowers from him, and yet sneer at him with a spite far more malignant than Jonson, who, besides, has made noble compensation by his praises.
Act ii. sc. 3.—
"Just. I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babe of booty, boy, a cut purse."
Does not this confirm, what the passage itself cannot but suggest, the propriety of substituting "booty" for "beauty" in Falstaff's speech, Henry IV. part i. act i. sc. 2. "Let not us, &c.?"
It is not often that old Ben condescends to imitate a modern author; but Master Dan. Knockhum Jordan, and his vapours are manifest reflexes of Nym and Pistol.
Ib. sc. 5.—
"Quarl. She'll make excellent geer for the coachmakers here in Smithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with."
Good! but yet it falls short of the speech of a Mr. Johnes, M.P., in the Common Council, on the invasion intended by Buonaparte:—"Houses plundered—then burnt;—sons conscribed—wives and daughters ravished," &c., &c.—"But as for you, you luxurious Aldermen! with your fat will he grease the wheels of his triumphant chariot!"
Ib. sc. 6.—
"Cok. Avoid in your satin doublet, Numps."
This reminds me of Shakespeare's "Aroint thee, witch!" I find in several books of that age the words aloigne and eloigne—that is,—"keep your distance!" or "off with you!" Perhaps "aroint" was a corruption of "aloigne" by the vulgar. The common etymology from ronger to gnaw seems unsatisfactory.
Act iii. sc. 4.—
"Quarl. How now, Numps! almost tired in your protectorship? overparted, overparted?"
An odd sort of propheticality in this Numps and old Noll!
Ib. sc. 6. Knockhum's speech:—
"He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth."
A good motto for the Parson in Hogarth's Election Dinner,—who shows how easily he might be reconciled to the Church of Rome, for he worships what he eats.
Act v. sc. 5.—
"Pup. Di. It is not profane.
Lan. It is not profane, he says.
Boy. It is profane.
Pup. It is not profane.
Boy. It is profane.
Pup. It is not profane.
Lan. Well said, confute him with Not, still."
An imitation of the quarrel between Bacchus and the Frogs in Aristophanes:—
"Χορός. ἀλλὰ μὴν κεκραξόμεσθά γ', ὁπόσον ἡ φάρυνξ ἂν ἡμῶν χανδάνη δι' ἡμέρας, βρεκεκεκὲξ, κοὰξ, κοὰξ.
Διόνυσος. τούτω γὰρ οὐ νικήσετε.
Χορός. οὐδὲ μὴν ἡμᾶς σὺ τάντως.
Διόνυσος. οὐδὲ μὴν ὑμεῖς γε δή μ' οὐδέποτε."
"The Devil Is An Ass."
Act i. sc. 1.—
"Pug. Why any: Fraud, Or Covetousness, or lady Vanity, Or old Iniquity, I'll call him hither."
"The words in italics should probably be given to the master-devil, Satan."—Whalley's note.
That is, against all probability, and with a (for Jonson) impossible violation of character. The words plainly belong to Pug, and mark at once his simpleness and his impatience.
Ib. sc. 4. Fitz-dottrel's soliloquy.
Compare this exquisite piece of sense, satire, and sound philosophy in 1616 with Sir M. Hale's speech from the bench in a trial of a witch many years afterwards.
Act ii. sc. 1. Meercraft's speech:—
"Sir, money's a whore, a bawd, a drudge."
I doubt not that "money" was the first word of the line, and has dropped out:—
"Money! Sir, money's a," &c.
"The Staple Of News."
Act iv. sc. 3. Pecunia's speech:—
"No, he would ha' done, That lay not in his power: he had the use Of your bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute's."
Read (1815)—
... "he had the use of Your bodies," &c.
Now, however, I doubt the legitimacy of my transposition of the "of" from the beginning of this latter line to the end of the one preceding;—for though it facilitates the metre and reading of the latter line, and is frequent in Massinger, this disjunction of the preposition from its case seems to have been disallowed by Jonson. Perhaps the better reading is—
"O' your bodies," &c.—
the two syllables being slurred into one, or rather snatched, or sucked, up into the emphasised "your." In all points of view, therefore, Ben's judgment is just; for in this way, the line cannot be read, as metre, without that strong and quick emphasis on "your" which the sense requires;—and had not the sense required an emphasis on "your," the tmesis of the sign of its cases "of," "to," &c., would destroy almost all boundary between the dramatic verse and prose in comedy:—a lesson not to be rash in conjectural amendments.—1818.
Ib. sc. 4.—
"P. jun. I love all men of virtue, frommy Princess."
"Frommy," fromme—pious, dutiful, &c.
Act v. sc. 4. Penny-boy, sen., and Porter.
I dare not, will not, think that honest Ben had Lear in his mind in this mock mad scene.
"The New Inn."
Act i. sc. 1. Host's speech:—
"A heavy purse, and then two turtles, makes."
"Makes," frequent in old books, and even now used in some counties for mates, or pairs.
Ib. sc. 3. Host's speech:—
..."And for a leap Of the vaulting horse, to play the vaulting house."
Instead of reading with Whalley "ply" for "play," I would suggest "horse" for "house." The meaning would then be obvious and pertinent. The punlet, or pun-maggot, or pun intentional, "horse and house," is below Jonson. The jeu-de-mots just below—
..."Read a lecture Upon Aquinas at St. Thomas a Waterings"—
had a learned smack in it to season its insipidity.
Ib. sc. 6. Lovel's speech:—
"Then shower'd his bounties on me, like the Hours, That open-handed sit upon the clouds, And press the liberality of heaven Down to the laps of thankful men!"
Like many other similar passages in Jonson, this is εῖδος χαλεπὸν ἰδεῖν—a sight which it is difficult to make one's self see,—a picture my fancy cannot copy detached from the words.
Act ii. sc. 5. Though it was hard upon old Ben, yet Felton, it must be confessed, was in the right in considering the Fly, Tipto, Bat Burst, &c., of this play mere dotages. Such a scene as this was enough to damn a new play; and Nick Stuff is worse still,—most abominable stuff indeed!
Act iii. sc. 2. Lovel's speech:—
"So knowledge first begets benevolence, Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love."
Jonson has elsewhere proceeded thus far; but the part most difficult and delicate, yet, perhaps, not the least capable of being both morally and poetically treated, is the union itself, and what, even in this life, it can be.
NOTES ON BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
SEWARD'S Preface. 1750.—
"The King and No King, too, is extremely spirited in all its characters; Arbaces holds up a mirror to all men of virtuous principles but violent passions. Hence he is, as it were, at once magnanimity and pride, patience and fury, gentleness and rigour, chastity and incest, and is one of the finest mixtures of virtues and vices that any poet has drawn," &c.
These are among the endless instances of the abject state to which psychology had sunk from the reign of Charles I. to the middle of the present reign of George III.; and even now it is but just awaking.
Ib. Seward's comparison of Julia's speech in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, act iv. last scene—
"Madam, 'twas Ariadne passioning," &c.
with Aspatia's speech in the Maid's Tragedy—
"I stand upon the sea-beach now," &c.—Act ii.—
and preference of the latter.
It is strange to take an incidental passage of one writer, intended only for a subordinate part, and compare it with the same thought in another writer, who had chosen it for a prominent and principal figure.
Ib. Seward's preference of Alphonso's poisoning in A Wife for a Month, act i. sc. 1, to the passage in King John, act v. sc. 7:—
"Poison'd, ill fare! dead, forsook, cast off!"
Mr. Seward! Mr. Seward! you may be, and I trust you are, an angel; but you were an ass.
Ib.—
"Every reader of taste will see how superior this is to the quotation from Shakespeare."
Of what taste?
Ib. Seward's classification of the plays.
Surely Monsieur Thomas, the Chances, Beggar's Bush, and the Pilgrim, should have been placed in the very first class! But the whole attempt ends in a woful failure.
Harris's Commendatory Poem On Fletcher.
"I'd have a state of wit convok'd, which hath A power to take up on common faith:"—
This is an instance of that modifying of quantity by emphasis, without which our elder poets cannot be scanned. "Power," here, instead of being one long syllable—pow'r—must be sounded, not indeed as a spondee, nor yet as a trochee; but as - u u;—the first syllable is 1-1/4.
We can, indeed, never expect an authentic edition of our elder dramatic poets (for in those times a drama was a poem), until some man undertakes the work, who has studied the philosophy of metre. This has been found the main torch of sound restoration in the Greek dramatists by Bentley, Porson, and their followers;—how much more, then, in writers in our own language! It is true that quantity, an almost iron law with the Greek, is in English rather a subject for a peculiarly fine ear, than any law or even rule; but, then, instead of it, we have, first, accent; secondly, emphasis; and lastly, retardation, and acceleration of the times of syllables according to the meaning of the words, the passion that accompanies them, and even the character of the person that uses them. With due attention to these,—above all, to that, which requires the most attention and the finest taste, the character, Massinger, for example, might be reduced to a rich and yet regular metre. But then the regulae must be first known; though I will venture to say, that he who does not find a line (not corrupted) of Massinger's flow to the time total of a trimeter catalectic iambic verse, has not read it aright. But by virtue of the last principle—the retardation of acceleration of time—we have the proceleusmatic foot u u u u, and the dispondaeus - - - -, not to mention the choriambus, the ionics, paeons, and epitrites. Since Dryden, the metre of our poets leads to the sense; in our elder and more genuine bards, the sense, including the passion, leads to the metre. Read even Donne's satires as he meant them to be read, and as the sense and passion demand, and you will find in the lines a manly harmony.
Life Of Fletcher In Stockdale's Edition, 1811.
"In general their plots are more regular than Shakespeare's."
This is true, if true at all, only before a court of criticism, which judges one scheme by the laws of another and a diverse one. Shakespeare's plots have their own laws of regulae, and according to these they are regular.
"Maid's Tragedy."
Act i. The metrical arrangement is most slovenly throughout.
"Strat. As well as masque can be," &c.—
and all that follows to "who is return'd"—is plainly blank verse, and falls easily into it.
Ib. Speech of Melantius:—
"These soft and silken wars are not for me: The music must be shrill, and all confus'd, That stirs my blood; and then I dance with arms."
What strange self-trumpeters and tongue-bullies all the brave soldiers of Beaumont and Fletcher are! Yet I am inclined to think it was the fashion of the age from the Soldier's speech in the Counter Scuffle; and deeper than the fashion B. and F. did not fashion.
Ib. Speech of Lysippus:—
"Yes, but this lady Walks discontented, with her wat'ry eyes Bent on the earth," &c.
Opulent as Shakespeare was, and of his opulence prodigal, he yet would not have put this exquisite piece of poetry in the mouth of a no-character, or as addressed to a Melantius. I wish that B. and F. had written poems instead of tragedies.
Ib.—
"Mel. I might run fiercely, not more hastily, Upon my foe."
Read
"I might run more fiercely, not more hastily."
Ib. Speech of Calianax:—
"Office! I would I could put it off! I am sure I sweat quite through my office!"
The syllable off reminds the testy statesman of his robe, and he carries on the image.
Ib. Speech of Melantius:—
... "Would that blood, That sea of blood, that I have lost in fight," &c.
All B. and F.'s generals are pugilists or cudgel-fighters, that boast of their bottom and of the claret they have shed.
Ib. The Masque;—Cinthia's speech:—
"But I will give a greater state and glory, And raise to time a noble memory Of what these lovers are."
I suspect that "nobler," pronounced as "nobiler" - u -, was the poet's word, and that the accent is to be placed on the penultimate of "memory." As to the passage—
"Yet, while our reign lasts, let us stretch our power," &c.—
removed from the text of Cinthia's speech, by these foolish editors as unworthy of B. and F.—the first eight lines are not worse, and the last couplet incomparably better, than the stanza retained.
Act ii. Amintor's speech:—
"Oh, thou hast nam'd a word, that wipes away All thoughts revengeful! In that sacred name, 'The king,' there lies a terror."
It is worth noticing that of the three greatest tragedians, Massinger was a democrat, Beaumont and Fletcher the most servile jure divino royalists, and Shakespeare a philosopher;—if aught personal, an aristocrat.
"A King And No King."
Act iv. Speech of Tigranes:—
"She, that forgat the greatness of her grief And miseries, that must follow such mad passions, Endless and wild as women!" &c.
Seward's note and suggestion of "in."
It would be amusing to learn from some existing friend of Mr. Seward what he meant, or rather dreamed, in this note. It is certainly a difficult passage, of which there are two solutions;—one, that the writer was somewhat more injudicious than usual;—the other, that he was very, very much more profound and Shakespearian than usual. Seward's emendation, at all events, is right and obvious. Were it a passage of Shakespeare, I should not hesitate to interpret it as characteristic of Tigranes' state of mind, disliking the very virtues, and therefore half-consciously representing them as mere products of the violence of the sex in general in all their whims, and yet forced to admire, and to feel and to express gratitude for, the exertion in his own instance. The inconsistency of the passage would be the consistency of the author. But this is above Beaumont and Fletcher.
"The Scornful Lady."
Act ii. Sir Roger's speech:—
"Did I for this consume my quarters in meditations, vows, and woo'd her in heroical epistles? Did I expound the Owl, and undertake, with labour and expense, the recollection of those thousand pieces, consum'd in cellars and tobacco-shops, of that our honour'd Englishman, Nic. Broughton?" &c.
Strange, that neither Mr. Theobald nor Mr. Seward should have seen that this mock heroic speech is in full-mouthed blank verse! Had they seen this, they would have seen that "quarters" is a substitution of the players for "quires" or "squares," (that is) of paper:—
"Consume my quires in meditations, vows, And woo'd her in heroical epistles."
They ought, likewise, to have seen that the abbreviated "Ni. Br." of the text was properly "Mi. Dr."—and that Michael Drayton, not Nicholas Broughton, is here ridiculed for his poem The Owl and his Heroical Epistles.
Ib. Speech of Younger Loveless:—
"Fill him some wine. Thou dost not see me mov'd," &c.
These Editors ought to have learnt, that scarce an instance occurs in B. and F. of a long speech not in metre. This is plain staring blank verse.
"The Custom Of The Country."
I cannot but think that in a country conquered by a nobler race than the natives, and in which the latter became villeins and bondsmen, this custom, lex merchetae, may have been introduced for wise purposes,—as of improving the breed, lessening the antipathy of different races, and producing a new bond of relationship between the lord and the tenant, who, as the eldest born, would at least have a chance of being, and a probability of being thought, the lord's child. In the West Indies it cannot have these effects, because the mulatto is marked by nature different from the father, and because there is no bond, no law, no custom, but of mere debauchery.—1815.
Act i. sc. 1. Rutilio's speech:—
"Yet if you play not fair play," &c.
Evidently to be transposed, and read thus:—
"Yet if you play not fair, above-board too, I'll tell you what— I've a foolish engine here:—I say no more— But if your Honour's guts are not enchanted."
Licentious as the comic metre of B. and F. is,—a far more lawless, and yet far less happy, imitation of the rhythm of animated talk in real life than Massinger's—still it is made worse than it really is by ignorance of the halves, thirds, and two-thirds of a line which B. and F. adopted from the Italian and Spanish dramatists. Thus, in Rutilio's speech:—
"Though I confess Any man would desire to have her, and by any means," &c.
Correct the whole passage,—
"Though I confess Any man would Desire to have her, and by any means, At any rate too, yet this common hangman That hath whipt off a thousand maids heads already— That he should glean the harvest, sticks in my stomach!"
In all comic metres the gulping of short syllables, and the abbreviation of syllables ordinarily long by the rapid pronunciation of eagerness and vehemence, are not so much a license as a law,—a faithful copy of nature, and let them be read characteristically, the times will be found nearly equal. Thus, the three words marked above make a choriambus — u u, or perhaps a paeon primus - u u u; a dactyl, by virtue of comic rapidity, being only equal to an iambus when distinctly pronounced. I have no doubt that all B. and F.'s works might be safely corrected by attention to this rule, and that the editor is entitled to transpositions of all kinds, and to not a few omissions. For the rule of the metre once lost—what was to restrain the actors from interpolation?
"The Elder Brother."
Act i. sc. 2. Charles's speech:—
... "For what concerns tillage, Who better can deliver it than Virgil In his Georgicks? and to cure your herds, His Bucolicks is a master-piece."
Fletcher was too good a scholar to fall into so gross a blunder, as Messrs. Sympson and Colman suppose. I read the passage thus:—
... "For what concerns tillage, Who better can deliver it than Virgil, In his Georgicks, or to cure your herds (His Bucolicks are a master-piece); but when," &c.
Jealous of Virgil's honour, he is afraid lest, by referring to the Georgics alone, he might be understood as undervaluing the preceding work. "Not that I do not admire the Bucolics too, in their way.—But when," &c.
Act iii. sc. 3. Charles's speech:—
... "She has a face looks like a story; The story of the heavens looks very like her."
Seward reads "glory;" and Theobald quotes from Philaster:—
"That reads the story of a woman's face."
I can make sense of this passage as little as Mr. Seward;—the passage from Philaster is nothing to the purpose. Instead of "a story," I have sometimes thought of proposing "Astraea."
Ib. Angellina's speech:—
... "You're old and dim, Sir, And the shadow of the earth eclips'd your judgment."
Inappropriate to Angellina, but one of the finest lines in our language.
Act iv. sc. 3. Charles's speech:—
"And lets the serious part of life run by As thin neglected sand, whiteness of name. You must be mine," &c.
Seward's note, and reading:—
... "Whiteness of name, You must be mine!"
Nonsense! "Whiteness of name" is in apposition to "the serious part of life," and means a deservedly pure reputation. The following line—"You must be mine!" means—"Though I do not enjoy you to-day, I shall hereafter, and without reproach."
"The Spanish Curate."
Act iv. sc. 7. Amaranta's speech:—
"And still I push'd him on, as he had been coming."
Perhaps the true word is "conning,"—that is, learning, or reading, and therefore inattentive.
"Wit Without Money."
Act i. Valentine's speech:—
"One without substance," &c.
The present text, and that proposed by Seward, are equally vile. I have endeavoured to make the lines sense, though the whole is, I suspect, incurable except by bold conjectural reformation. I would read thus:—
"One without substance of herself, that's woman; Without the pleasure of her life, that's wanton; Tho' she be young, forgetting it; tho' fair, Making her glass the eyes of honest men, Not her own admiration."
"That's wanton," or, "that is to say, wantonness."
Act ii. Valentine's speech:—
"Of half-a crown a week for pins and puppets."
"As there is a syllable wanting in the measure here."—Seward.
A syllable wanting! Had this Seward neither ears nor fingers? The line is a more than usually regular iambic hendecasyllable.
Ib.—
"With one man satisfied, with one rein guided; With one faith, one content, one bed; Aged, she makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue; A widow is," &c.
Is "apaid"—contented—too obsolete for B. and F.? If not, we might read it thus:—
"Content with one faith, with one bed apaid, She makes the wife, preserves the fame and issue;"—
Or, it may be,—
... "with one breed apaid"—
that is, satisfied with one set of children, in opposition to,—
"A widow is a Christmas-box," &c.
Colman's note on Seward's attempt to put this play into metre.
The editors, and their contemporaries in general, were ignorant of any but the regular iambic verse. A study of the Aristophanic and Plautine metres would have enabled them to reduce B. and F. throughout into metre, except where prose is really intended.
"The Humorous Lieutenant."
Act i. sc. 1. Second Ambassador's speech:—
... "When your angers, Like so many brother billows, rose together, And, curling up your foaming crests, defied," &c.
This worse than superfluous "like" is very like an interpolation of some matter of fact critic—all pus, prose atque venenum. The "your" in the next line, instead of "their," is likewise yours, Mr. Critic!
Act ii. sc. 1. Timon's speech:—
"Another of a new way will be look'd at."
"We must suspect the poets wrote, 'of a new day.' So immediately after,
... Time may For all his wisdom, yet give us a day."
Seward's Note.
For this very reason I more than suspect the contrary.
Ib. sc. 3. Speech of Leucippe:—
"I'll put her into action for a wastcoat."
What we call a riding-habit,—some mannish dress.
"The Mad Lover."
Act iv. Masque of beasts:—
... "This goodly tree, An usher that still grew before his lady, Wither'd at root: this, for he could not woo, A grumbling lawyer:" &c.
Here must have been omitted a line rhyming to "tree;" and the words of the next line have been transposed:—
... "This goodly tree, Which leafless, and obscur'd with moss you see, An usher this, that 'fore his lady grew, Wither'd at root: this, for he could not woo," &c.
"The Loyal Subject."
It is well worthy of notice, and yet has not been, I believe, noticed hitherto, what a marked difference there exists in the dramatic writers of the Elizabetho-Jacobaean age—(Mercy on me! what a phrase for "the writers during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.!")—in respect of their political opinions. Shakespeare, in this, as in all other things, himself and alone, gives the permanent politics of human nature, and the only predilection which appears, shows itself in his contempt of mobs and the populacy. Massinger is a decided Whig;—Beaumont and Fletcher high-flying, passive-obedience, Tories. The Spanish dramatists furnished them with this, as with many other ingredients. By the by, an accurate and familiar acquaintance with all the productions of the Spanish stage previously to 1620, is an indispensable qualification for an editor of B. and F.;—and with this qualification a most interesting and instructive edition might be given. This edition of Colman's (Stockdale, 1811) is below criticism.
In metre, B. and F. are inferior to Shakespeare, on the one hand, as expressing the poetic part of the drama, and to Massinger, on the other, in the art of reconciling metre with the natural rhythm of conversation,—in which, indeed, Massinger is unrivalled. Read him aright, and measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more legitimate,—none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment. B. and F. are fond of the twelve syllable (not Alexandrine) line, as:—
"Too many fears 'tis thought too: and to nourish those."
This has often a good effect, and is one of the varieties most common in Shakespeare.
"Rule A Wife And Have A Wife."
Act iii. Old Woman's speech:—
... "I fear he will knock my Brains out for lying."
Mr. Seward discards the words "for lying," because "most of the things spoke of Estifania are true, with only a little exaggeration, and because they destroy all appearance of measure."—Colman's note.
Mr. Seward had his brains out. The humour lies in Estifania's having ordered the Old Woman to tell these tales of her; for though an intriguer, she is not represented as other than chaste; and as to the metre, it is perfectly correct.
Ib.—
"Marg. As you love me, give way.
Leon. It shall be better, I will give none, madam," &c.
The meaning is:—"It shall be a better way, first;—as it is, I will not give it, or any that you in your present mood would wish."
"The Laws Of Candy."
Act i. Speech of Melitus:—
"Whose insolence and never yet match'd pride Can by no character be well express'd, But in her only name, the proud Erota."
Colman's note.
The poet intended no allusion to the word "Erota" itself; but says that her very name, "the proud Erota," became a character and adage;—as we say, a Quixote or a Brutus: so to say an "Erota," expressed female pride and insolence of beauty.
Ib. Speech of Antinous:—
"Of my peculiar honours, not deriv'd From successary, but purchas'd with my blood."
The poet doubtless wrote "successry," which, though not adopted in our language, would be, on many occasions, as here, a much more significant phrase than ancestry.
"The Little French Lawyer."
Act i. sc. 1. Dinant's speech:—
"Are you become a patron too? 'Tis a new one, No more on't," &c.
Seward reads:—
"Are you become a patron too? How long Have you been conning this speech? 'Tis a new one," &c.
If conjectural emendation like this be allowed, we might venture to read:—
"Are you become a patron to a new tune?"
or,—
"Are you become a patron? 'Tis a new tune."
Ib.—
"Din. Thou wouldst not willingly Live a protested coward, or be call'd one?
Cler. Words are but words.
Din. Nor wouldst thou take a blow?"
Seward's note.
O miserable! Dinant sees through Cleremont's gravity, and the actor is to explain it. "Words are but words," is the last struggle of affected morality.
"Valentinian."
Act i. sc. 3.—
It is a real trial of charity to read this scene with tolerable temper towards Fletcher. So very slavish—so reptile—are the feelings and sentiments represented as duties. And yet, remember, he was a bishop's son, and the duty to God was the supposed basis.
Personals, including body, house, home, and religion;—property, subordination, and inter-community;—these are the fundamentals of society. I mean here, religion negatively taken,—so that the person be not compelled to do or utter, in relation of the soul to God, what would be, in that person, a lie;—such as to force a man to go to church, or to swear that he believes what he does not believe. Religion, positively taken, may be a great and useful privilege, but cannot be a right,—were it for this only, that it cannot be pre-defined. The ground of this distinction between negative and positive religion, as a social right, is plain. No one of my fellow-citizens is encroached on by my not declaring to him what I believe respecting the super-sensual; but should every man be entitled to preach against the preacher, who could hear any preacher? Now, it is different in respect of loyalty. There we have positive rights, but not negative rights;—for every pretended negative would be in effect a positive;—as if a soldier had a right to keep to himself whether he would, or would not, fight. Now, no one of these fundamentals can be rightfully attacked, except when the guardian of it has abused it to subvert one or more of the rest. The reason is, that the guardian, as a fluent, is less than the permanent which he is to guard. He is the temporary and mutable mean, and derives his whole value from the end. In short, as robbery is not high treason, so neither is every unjust act of a king the converse. All must be attacked and endangered. Why? Because the king, as a to A, is a mean to A, or subordination, in a far higher sense than a proprietor, as b to A, is a mean to B, or property.
Act ii. sc. 2. Claudia's speech:—
"Chimney-pieces!" &c.
The whole of this speech seems corrupt; and if accurately printed,—that is, if the same in all the prior editions,—irremediable but by bold conjecture. "Till my tackle," should be, I think, "While," &c.
Act iii. sc. 1. B. and F. always write as if virtue or goodness were a sort of talisman, or strange something, that might be lost without the least fault on the part of the owner. In short, their chaste ladies value their chastity as a material thing,—not as an act or state of being; and this mere thing being imaginary, no wonder that all their women are represented with the minds of strumpets, except a few irrational humourists, far less capable of exciting our sympathy than a Hindoo who has had a basin of cow-broth thrown over him;—for this, though a debasing superstition, is still real, and we might pity the poor wretch, though we cannot help despising him. But B. and F.'s Lucinas are clumsy fictions. It is too plain that the authors had no one idea of chastity as a virtue, but only such a conception as a blind man might have of the power of seeing by handling an ox's eye. In The Queen of Corinth, indeed, they talk differently; but it is all talk, and nothing is real in it but the dread of losing a reputation. Hence the frightful contrast between their women (even those who are meant for virtuous) and Shakespeare's. So, for instance, The Maid in the Mill:—a woman must not merely have grown old in brothels, but have chuckled over every abomination committed in them with a rampant sympathy of imagination, to have had her fancy so drunk with the minutiae of lechery as this icy chaste virgin evinces hers to have been.
It would be worth while to note how many of these plays are founded on rapes,—how many on incestuous passions, and how many on mere lunacies. Then their virtuous women are either crazy superstitions of a mere bodily negation of having been acted on, or strumpets in their imaginations and wishes, or, as in this Maid in the Mill, both at the same time. In the men, the love is merely lust in one direction,—exclusive preference of one object. The tyrant's speeches are mostly taken from the mouths of indignant denouncers of the tyrant's character, with the substitution of "I" for "he,"" and the omission of the prefatory "he acts as if he thought" so and so. The only feelings they can possibly excite are disgust at the AEciuses, if regarded as sane loyalists, or compassion if considered as Bedlamites. So much for their tragedies. But even their comedies are, most of them, disturbed by the fantasticalness, or gross caricature, of the persons or incidents. There are few characters that you can really like (even though you should have erased from your mind all the filth which bespatters the most likeable of them, as Piniero in The Island Princess for instance),—scarcely one whom you can love. How different this from Shakespeare, who makes one have a sort of sneaking affection even for his Barnardines;—whose very Iagos and Richards are awful, and, by the counteracting power of profound intellects, rendered fearful rather than hateful;—and even the exceptions, as Goneril and Regan, are proofs of superlative judgment and the finest moral tact, in being left utter monsters, nulla virtute redemptae, and in being kept out of sight as much as possible,—they being, indeed, only means for the excitement and deepening of noblest emotions towards the Lear, Cordelia, &c. and employed with the severest economy! But even Shakespeare's grossness—that which is really so, independently of the increase in modern times of vicious associations with things indifferent (for there is a state of manners conceivable so pure, that the language of Hamlet at Ophelia's feet might be a harmless rallying, or playful teazing, of a shame that would exist in Paradise)—at the worst, how diverse in kind is it from Beaumont and Fletcher's! In Shakespeare it is the mere generalities of sex, mere words for the most part, seldom or never distinct images, all head-work, and fancy drolleries; there is no sensation supposed in the speaker. I need not proceed to contrast this with B. and F.
"Rollo."
This, perhaps, the most energetic of Fletcher's tragedies. He evidently aimed at a new Richard III. in Rollo;—but, as in all his other imitations of Shakespeare, he was not philosopher enough to bottom his original. Thus, in Rollo, he has produced a mere personification of outrageous wickedness, with no fundamental characteristic impulses to make either the tyrant's words or actions philosophically intelligible. Hence the most pathetic situations border on the horrible, and what he meant for the terrible, is either hateful, τὸ μισητὸν, or ludicrous. The scene of Baldwin's sentence in the third act is probably the grandest working of passion in all B. and F.'s dramas;—but the very magnificence of filial affection given to Edith, in this noble scene, renders the after scene (in imitation of one of the least Shakespearian of all Shakespeare's works, if it be his, the scene between Richard and Lady Anne) in which Edith is yielding to a few words and tears, not only unnatural, but disgusting. In Shakespeare, Lady Anne is described as a weak, vain, very woman throughout.
Act i. sc. 1.—
"Gis. He is indeed the perfect character Of a good man, and so his actions speak him."
This character of Aubrey, and the whole spirit of this and several other plays of the same authors, are interesting as traits of the morals which it was fashionable to teach in the reigns of James I. and his successor, who died a martyr to them. Stage, pulpit, law, fashion,—all conspired to enslave the realm. Massinger's plays breathe the opposite spirit; Shakespeare's the spirit of wisdom which is for all ages. By the by, the Spanish dramatists—Calderon, in particular,—had some influence in this respect, of romantic loyalty to the greatest monsters, as well as in the busy intrigues of B. and F.'s plays.
"The Wildgoose Chase."
Act ii. sc. 1. Belleur's speech:—
... "That wench, methinks, If I were but well set on, for she is a fable, If I were but hounded right, and one to teach me."
Sympson reads "affable," which Colman rejects, and says, "the next line seems to enforce" the reading in the text.
Pity, that the editor did not explain wherein the sense, "seemingly enforced by the next line," consists. May the true word be "a sable"—that is, a black fox, hunted for its precious fur? Or "at-able,"—as we now say,—"she is come-at-able?"
"A Wife For A Month."
Act iv. sc. 1. Alphonso's speech:—
"Betwixt the cold bear and the raging lion Lies my safe way."
Seward's note and alteration to—
"'Twixt the cold bears, far from the raging lion"—
This Mr. Seward is a blockhead of the provoking species. In his itch for correction, he forgot the words—"lies my safe way!" The bear is the extreme pole, and thither he would travel over the space contained between it and "the raging lion."
"The Pilgrim."
Act iv. sc. 2.—
Alinda's interview with her father is lively, and happily hit off; but this scene with Roderigo is truly excellent. Altogether, indeed, this play holds the first place in B. and F.'s romantic entertainments, Lustspiele, which collectively are their happiest performances, and are only inferior to the romance of Shakespeare in the As You Like It, Twelfth Night, &c.
Ib.—
"Alin. To-day you shall wed Sorrow, And Repentance will come to-morrow."
Read "Penitence," or else—
"Repentance, she will come to-morrow."
"The Queen Of Corinth."
Act ii. sc. 1.—
Merione's speech. Had the scene of this tragi-comedy been laid in Hindostan instead of Corinth, and the gods here addressed been the Vishnu and Co. of the Indian Pantheon, this rant would not have been much amiss.
In respect of style and versification, this play and the following of Bonduca may be taken as the best, and yet as characteristic, specimens of Beaumont and Fletcher's dramas. I particularly instance the first scene of the Bonduca. Take Shakespeare's Richard II., and having selected some one scene of about the same number of lines, and consisting mostly of long speeches, compare it with the first scene in Bonduca,—not for the idle purpose of finding out which is the better, but in order to see and understand the difference. The latter, that of B. and F., you will find a well-arranged bed of flowers, each having its separate root, and its position determined aforehand by the will of the gardener,—each fresh plant a fresh volition. In the former you see an Indian fig-tree, as described by Milton;—all is growth, evolution;—each line, each word almost, begets the following, and the will of the writer is an interfusion, a continuous agency, and not a series of separate acts. Shakespeare is the height, breadth, and depth of Genius: Beaumont and Fletcher the excellent mechanism, in juxta-position and succession, of talent.
"The Noble Gentleman."
Why have the dramatists of the times of Elizabeth, James I., and the first Charles become almost obsolete, with the exception of Shakespeare? Why do they no longer belong to the English, being once so popular? And why is Shakespeare an exception?—One thing, among fifty, necessary to the full solution is, that they all employed poetry and poetic diction on unpoetic subjects, both characters and situations, especially in their comedy. Now Shakespeare is all, all ideal,—of no time, and therefore for all times. Read, for instance, Marine's panegyric in the first scene of this play:—
... "Know The eminent court, to them that can be wise, And fasten on her blessings, is a sun," &c.
What can be more unnatural and inappropriate (not only is, but must be felt as such) than such poetry in the mouth of a silly dupe? In short, the scenes are mock dialogues, in which the poet solus plays the ventriloquist, but cannot keep down his own way of expressing himself. Heavy complaints have been made respecting the transposing of the old plays by Cibber; but it never occurred to these critics to ask, how it came that no one ever attempted to transpose a comedy of Shakespeare's.
"The Coronation."
Act i. Speech of Seleucus:—
"Altho' he be my enemy, should any Of the gay flies that buz about the court, Sit to catch trouts i' the summer, tell me so, I durst," &c.
Colman's note.
Pshaw! "Sit" is either a misprint for "set," or the old and still provincial word for "set," as the participle passive of "seat" or "set." I have heard an old Somersetshire gardener say:—"Look, Sir! I set these plants here; those yonder I sit yesterday."
Act ii. Speech of Arcadius:—
"Nay, some will swear they love their mistress, Would hazard lives and fortunes," &c.
Read thus:—
"Nay, some will swear they love their mistress so, They would hazard lives and fortunes to preserve One of her hairs brighter than Berenice's, Or young Apollo's; and yet, after this," &c.
"They would hazard"—furnishes an anapaest for an iambus. "And yet," which must be read, anyet, is an instance of the enclitic force in an accented monosyllable. "And yet," is a complete iambus; but anyet is, like spirit, a dibrach u u, trocheized, however, by the arsis or first accent damping, though not extinguishing, the second.
"Wit At Several Weapons."
Act i. Oldcraft's speech:—
"I'm arm'd at all points," &c.
It would be very easy to restore all this passage to metre, by supplying a sentence of four syllables, which the reasoning almost demands, and by correcting the grammar. Read thus:—
"Arm'd at all points 'gainst treachery, I hold My humour firm. If, living, I can see thee Thrive by thy wits, I shall have the more courage, Dying, to trust thee with my lands. If not, The best wit, I can hear of, carries them. For since so many in my time and knowledge, Rich children of the city, have concluded For lack of wit in beggary, I'd rather Make a wise stranger my executor, Than a fool son my heir, and have my lands call'd After my wit than name: and that's my nature!"
Ib. Oldcraft's speech:—
"To prevent which I have sought out a match for her."
Read—
"Which to prevent I've sought a match out for her."
Ib. Sir Gregory's speech:—
... "Do you think I'll have any of the wits hang upon me after I am married once?"
Read it thus:—
... "Do you think That I'll have any of the wits to hang Upon me after I am married once?"
and afterwards—
... "Is it a fashion in London To marry a woman, and to never see her?"
The superfluous "to" gives it the Sir Andrew Ague-cheek character.
"The Fair Maid Of The Inn."
Act ii. Speech of Albertus:—
... "But, Sir, By my life, I vow to take assurance from you, That right hand never more shall strike my son,
Chop his hand off!"
In this (as, indeed, in all other respects, but most in this) it is that Shakespeare is so incomparably superior to Fletcher and his friend,—in judgment! What can be conceived more unnatural and motiveless than this brutal resolve? How is it possible to feel the least interest in Albertus afterwards? or in Cesario after his conduct?
"The Two Noble Kinsmen."
On comparing the prison scene of Palamon and Arcite, act ii. sc. 2, with the dialogue between the same speakers, act i. sc. 2, I can scarcely retain a doubt as to the first act's having been written by Shakespeare. Assuredly it was not written by B. and F. I hold Jonson more probable than either of these two.
The main presumption, however, for Shakespeare's share in this play rests on a point, to which the sturdy critics of this edition (and indeed all before them) were blind,—that is, the construction of the blank verse, which proves beyond all doubt an intentional imitation, if not the proper hand, of Shakespeare. Now, whatever improbability there is in the former (which supposes Fletcher conscious of the inferiority, the too poematic minus-dramatic nature of his versification, and of which, there is neither proof nor likelihood) adds so much to the probability of the latter. On the other hand, the harshness of many of these very passages, a harshness unrelieved by any lyrical inter-breathings, and still more the want of profundity in the thoughts, keep me from an absolute decision.
Act i. sc. 3. Emilia's speech:—
... "Since his depart, his sports, Tho' craving seriousness and skill," &c.
I conjecture "imports,"—that is, duties or offices of importance. The flow of the versification in this speech seems to demand the trochaic ending - u; while the text blends jingle and hisses to the annoyance of less sensitive ears than Fletcher's—not to say, Shakespeare's.
"The Woman Hater."
Act i. sc. 2.—
This scene from the beginning is prose printed as blank verse, down to the line—
"E'en all the valiant stomachs in the court"—
where the verse recommences. This transition from the prose to the verse enhances, and indeed forms the comic effect. Lazarillo concludes his soliloquy with a hymn to the goddess of plenty.
THE END.
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