The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland Volume I Part 11

Sir John appears to be a gentleman of great pleasantry and humour; his fortune was easy, the court his element, and which is ever an advantage to an author, wit was not his business, but diversion: 'Tis not to be doubted, but his translation of Ariosto was published after Spenser's Fairy Queen, and yet both in language and numbers it is much inferior, as much as it is reasonable to suppose the genius of Harrington was below that of Spenser.

Mrs. Cooper remarks, that the whole poem of Orlando is a tedious medley of unnatural characters, and improbable events, and that the author's patron, Cardinal Hippolito De Este, had some reason for that severe question. Where the devil, Signior Ludovico, did you pick up all these d.a.m.ned lies? The genius of Ariosto seems infinitely more fit for satire than heroic poetry; and some are of opinion, that had Harrington wrote nothing but epigrams, he had been more in his own way.

We cannot certainly fix the time that Sir John died, but it is reasonable to suppose that it was about the middle, or rather towards the latter end of James I's reign. I shall subjoin an epigram of his as a specimen of his poetry.

IN CORNUTUM.

What curl'd pate youth is he that sitteth there, So near thy wife, and whispers in her eare, And takes her hand in his, and soft doth wring her.

Sliding his ring still up and down her finger?

Sir, 'tis a proctor, seen in both the lawes, Retain'd by her in some important cause; Prompt and discreet both in his speech and action, And doth her business with great satisfaction.

And think'st thou so? a horn-plague on thy head!

Art thou so-like a fool, and wittol led, To think he doth the bus'ness of thy wife?

He doth thy bus'ness, I dare lay my life.

[Footnote 1: Muses Library, p. 296.]

[Footnote 2: Ubi supra.]

THOMAS DECKER,

A poet who lived in the reign of King James I. and as he was cotemporary with Ben Johnson, so he became more eminent by having a quarrel with that great man, than by all his works. Decker was but an indifferent poet, yet even in those days he wanted not his admirers; he had also friends among the poets; one of whom, Mr. Richard Brome, always called him Father; but it is the misfortune of little wits, that their admirers are as inconsiderable as themselves, for Brome's applauses confer no great honour on those who enjoy them. Our author joined with Webster in writing three plays, and with Rowley and Ford in another; and Langbaine a.s.serts, that these plays in which he only contributed a part, far exceed those of his own composition. He has been concerned in eleven plays, eight whereof are of his own writing, of all which I shall give an account in their alphabetical order.

I. Fortunatus, a comedy, printed originally in 4to but with what success, or when acted, I cannot gain any account.

II. Honest Wh.o.r.e, the first part; a comedy, with the humours of the Patient Man, and the Longing Wife, acted by the Queen's Servants, 1635.

III. Honest Wh.o.r.e, the second part, a comedy; with the humours of the Patient Man, the Impatient Wife; the Honest Wh.o.r.e persuaded by strong arguments to turn Courtezan again; her refusing those arguments, and lastly the comical pa.s.sage of an Italian bridewel, where the scene ends. Printed in 4to, London 1630. This play Langbaine thinks was never exhibited, neither is it divided into acts.

IV. If this be not a good play the devil is in it; a comedy, acted with great applause by the Queen's majesty's servants, at the Red-Bull, and dedicated to the actors. The beginning of this play seems to be writ in imitation of Machiavel's novel of Belphegor, where Pluto summons the Devils to council.

Match me in London, a Tragi-Comedy, often presented, first at the Bull's head in St. John's-street, and then at a private house in Drury-lane, called the Phoenix, printed in 4to. in 1631.

VI. Northward Ho, a comedy, often acted by the children of Paul's, printed in 4to. London, 1607. This play was writ by our author and John Webster.

VII. Satyromastix, or the untrussing the humourous poet, a comical satire, presented publickly by the Lord Chamberlain's servants, and privately by the children of Paul's, printed in 4to, 1602, and dedicated to the world. This play was writ on the occasion of Ben Johnson's Poetaster, for some account of which see the Life of Johnson.

VIII. Westward Ho,[1] a comedy, often acted by the children of Paul's, and printed in 4to. 1607; written by our author and Mr. Webster.

IX. Wh.o.r.e of Babylon, an history acted by the prince's servants, and printed in 4to. London 1607. The design of this play, by feigned names, is to set forth the admirable virtues of queen Elizabeth; and the dangers she escaped by the happy discovery of those designs against her sacred person by the Jesuits and bigotted Papists.

X. Wyatt's History, a play said to be writ by him and Webster, and printed in 4to. The subject of this play is Sir Thomas Wyat of Kent, who made an insurrection in the first year of Queen Mary, to prevent her match with Philip of Spain.

Besides these plays he joined with Rowley and Ford in a play called, The Witch of Edmonton, of which see Rowley.

There are four other plays ascribed to our author, in which he is said by Mr. Phillips and Winstanley to be an a.s.sociate with John Webster, viz. n.o.ble Stranger; New Trick to cheat the Devil; Weakest goes to the Wall; Woman will have her Will; in all which Langbaine a.s.serts they are mistaken, for the first was written by Lewis Sharp, and the other by anonymous authors.

[Footnote 1: This was revived in the year 1751, at Drury-lane theatre on the Lord Mayor's day, in the room of the London Cuckolds, which is now discontinued at that house.]

BEAUMONT and FLETCHER

Were two famous dramatists in the reign of James I. These two friends were so closely united as authors, and are so jointly concerned in the applauses and censures bestowed upon their plays, that it cannot be thought improper to connect their lives under one article.

Mr. FRANCIS BEAUMONT

Was descended from the ancient family of his name, seated at Grace dieu in Leicestershire,[1] and was born about the year 1585 in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. His grandfather, John Beaumont, was Master of the Rolls, and his father Francis Beaumont, one of the Judges of the Common Pleas. Our poet had his education at Cambridge,[2]but of what college we are not informed, nor is it very material to know. We find him afterwards admitted a student in the Inner-Temple, but we have no account of his making any proficiency in the law, which is a circ.u.mstance attending almost all the poets who were bred to that profession, which few men of sprightly genius care to be confined to. Before he was thirty years of age he died, in 1615, and was buried the ninth of the same month in the entrance of St. Benedictine's Chapel, within St. Peter's Westminster. We meet with no inscription on his tomb, but there are two epitaphs writ on him, one by his elder brother Sir John Beaumont, and the other by Bishop Corbet. That by his brother is pretty enough, and is as follows:

On Death, thy murderer, this revenge I take: I slight his terror, and just question make, Which of us two the best precedence have, Mine to this wretched world, thine to the grave.

Thou should'st have followed me, but Death to blame Miscounted years, and measured age by fame.

So dearly hast thou bought thy precious lines; Thy praise grew swiftly, so thy life declines.

Thy muse, the hearer's queen, the reader's love All ears, all hearts, but Death's could please and move.

Our poet left behind him one daughter, Mrs. Frances Beaumont, who lived to a great age and, died in Leicestershire since the year 1700. She had been possessed of several poems of her father's writing, but they were lost at sea in her voyage from Ireland, where she had lived sometime in the Duke of Ormond's family. Besides the plays in which Beaumont was jointly concerned with Fletcher, he writ a little dramatic piece ent.i.tled, A Masque of Grays Inn Gentlemen, and the Inner-Temple; a poetical epistle to Ben Johnson; verses to his friend Mr. John Fletcher, upon his faithful Shepherd, and other poem's printed together in 1653, 8vo. That pastoral which was written by Fletcher alone, having met with but an indifferent reception, Beaumont addressed the following copy of verses to him on that occasion, in which he represents the hazard of writing for the stage, and satirizes the audience for want of judgment, which, in order to shew his versification I shall insert.

Why should the man, whose wit ne'er had a stain, Upon the public stage present his vein, And make a thousand men in judgment sit To call in question his undoubted wit, Scarce two of which can understand the laws, Which they should judge by, nor the party's cause.

Among the rout there is not one that hath, In his own censure an explicit faith.

One company, knowing thy judgment Jack, Ground their belief on the next man in black; Others on him that makes signs and is mute, Some like, as he does, in the fairest sute; He as his mistress doth, and me by chance: Nor want there those, who, as the boy doth dance Between the acts will censure the whole play; Some, if the wax lights be not new that day: But mult.i.tudes there are, whose judgment goes Headlong, according to the actors clothes.

Mr. Beaumont was esteemed so accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Johnson, while he lived, submitted all his writings to his censures; and it is thought, used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving most of his plots.

[Footnote 1: Jacob's Lives of the Poets.]

[Footnote 2: Wood.]

Mr. JOHN FLETCHER

Was son of Dr. Richard Fletcher, Lord Bishop of London, and was born in Northamptonshire in the year 1576. He was educated at Cambridge, probably at Burnet-college, to which his father was by his last will and testament a benefactor[1]. He wrote plays jointly with Mr. Beaumont, and Wood says he a.s.sisted Ben Johnson in a Comedy called The Widow. After Beaumont's death, it is said he consulted Mr. James Shirley in forming the plots of several of his plays, but which those were we have no means of discovering. The editor of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays in 1711 thinks it very probable that Shirley supplied many that were left imperfect, and that the players gave some remains of Fletcher's for Shirley to make up; and it is from hence (he says) that in the first act of Love's Pilgrimage, there is a scene of an ostler transcribed verbatim out of Ben Johnson's New Inn, Act I. Scene I. which play was written long after Fletcher died, and transplanted into Love's Pilgrimage, after printing the New Inn, which was in the year 1630, and two of the plays printed under Fletcher's name. The Coronation and The Little Thief have been claimed by Shirley as his; it is probable they were left imperfect by the one, and finished by the other. Mr. Fletcher died of the plague in the forty ninth year of his age, the first of King Charles I. An. 1625, and was buried in St. Mary Overy's Church in Southwark.

Beaumont and Fletcher, as has been observed, wrote plays in concert, but what share each bore in forming the plots, writing the scenes, &c. is unknown. The general opinion is, that Beaumont's judgment was usually employed in correcting and retrenching the superfluities of Fletcher's wit, whose fault was, as Mr. Cartwright expresses it, to do too much; but if Winstanley may be credited, the former had his share likewise in the drama, for that author relates, that our poets meeting once at a tavern in order to form the rude draught of a tragedy, Fletcher undertook to kill the king, which words being overheard by a waiter, he was officious enough, in order to recommend himself, to lodge an information against them: but their loyalty being unquestioned, and the relation of the circ.u.mstance probable, that the vengeance was only aimed at a theatrical monarch, the affair ended in a jest.

The first play which brought them into esteem, as Dryden says, was Philaster, or Love lies a Bleeding; for, before that, they had written two or three very unsuccessfully, as the like is reported of Ben Johnson before he writ Every Man in his Humour. These authors had with the advantage of the wit of Shakespear, which was their precedent, great natural gifts improved by study. Their plots are allowed generally more regular than Shakespear's; they touch the tender pa.s.sions, and excite love in a very moving manner; their faults, notwithstanding Beaumont's castigation, consist in a certain luxuriance, and stretching their speeches to an immoderate length;[2] however, it must be owned their wit is great, their language suited to the pa.s.sions they raise, and the age in which they lived is a sufficient apology for their defects. Mr. Dryden tells us, in his Essay on Dramatic Poetry, that Beaumont and Fletcher's plays in his time were the most pleasing and frequent entertainments of the stage, two of theirs being acted through the year for one of Shakespear's or Johnson's; and the reason he a.s.signs is, because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies, and a pathos in their most serious plays which suits generally with all men's humours; but however it might be when Dryden writ, the case is now reversed, for Beaumont and Fletcher's plays are not acted above once a season, while one of Shakespear's is represented almost every third night. It may seem strange, that wits of the first magnitude should not be so much honoured in the age in which they live, as by posterity;[3] it is now fashionable to be in raptures with Shakespear; editions are multiplied upon editions, and men of the greatest genius have employed all their power in ill.u.s.trating his beauties, which ever grow upon the reader, and gain ground upon perusal. These n.o.ble authors have received incense of praise from the highest pens; they were loved and esteemed by their cotemporaries, who have not failed to demonstrate their respect by various copies of verses at different times, and upon different occasions, addressed to them, the insertion of which would exceed the bounds proposed for this work. I shall only observe, that amongst the ill.u.s.trious names of their admirers, are Denham, Waller, Cartwright, Ben Johnson, Sir John Berkenhead, and Dryden himself, a name more than equal to all the rest. But the works of our authors have not escaped the censure of critics, especially Mr. Rhymer the historiographer, who was really a man of wit and judgment, but somewhat ill natured; for he has laboured to expose the faults, without taking any notice of the beauties of Rollo Duke of Normandy, the King and No King, and the Maids Tragedy, in a piece of his called The Tragedies of the Last Age considered, and examined by the practice of the ancients, and by the common sense of all ages, in a letter to Fleetwood Shepherd esquire. Mr. Rymer sent one of his books as a present to Mr. Dryden, who in the blank leaves before the beginning, and after the end of the book, made several remarks, as if he intended to publish an answer to that critic, and his opinion of the work was this[4]; "My judgment (says he) of this piece, is, that it is extremely learned, but the author seems better acquainted with the Greek, than the English poets; that all writers ought to study this critic as the best account I have seen of the ancients; that the model of tragedy he has here given is extremely correct, but that it is not the only model of tragedy, because it is too much circ.u.mscribed in the plot, characters, &c. And lastly, that we may be taught here justly to admire and imitate the ancients, without giving them the preference, with this author, in prejudice to our own country."

Some of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays were printed in quarto during the lives of their authors; and in the year 1645 twenty years after Fletcher's death, there was published in folio a collection of their plays which had not been printed before, amounting to between thirty and forty. At the beginning of this volume are inserted a great number of commendatory verses, written by the most eminent wits of that age. This collection was published by Mr. Shirley after shutting up the Theatres, and dedicated to the earl of Pembroke by ten of the most famous actors. In 1679 there was an edition of all their plays published in folio. Another edition in 1711 by Tonson in seven volumes 8vo. containing all the verses in praise of the authors, and supplying a large omission of part of the last act of Thierry and Theodoret. There was also another edition in 1751. The plays of our authors are as follow,

1. Beggars Bush, a Comedy, acted with applause.

2. Bonduca, a Tragedy; the plot from Tacitus's Annals, b. xiv. Milton's History of England, b. ii. This play has been twice revived.

3. The b.l.o.o.d.y Brother, or Rollo Duke of Normandy, a Tragedy, acted at the Theatre at Dorset-Garden. The plot is taken from Herodian's History, b. iv.

4. Captain, a Comedy.

5. Chances, a Comedy; this was revived by Villiers duke of Buckingham with great applause.

6. The Coronation, a Tragi-Comedy, claimed by Mr. Shirley as his.

7. The c.o.xcomb, a Comedy.

8. Cupid's Revenge, a Tragedy.