FLETCHER'S DICTION
The verse criterion is, however, not of itself a reagent sufficient to
precipitate fully the Beaumont of the joint-plays. For there still
exists the certainty that in plotting plays together, each of the
collaborators was influenced by the opinion of the other; and the
probability that, though one may have undertaken sundry scenes or divers
characters in a play, the other would, in the course of general
correction, insert lines in the parts written by his collaborator, and
would convey to his own scenes the distinguishing rhythm, "humour," or
diction of a definite character, created, or elaborated, by his
colleague. It, therefore, follows that the assignment of a whole scene
to either author on the basis alone of some recurring metrical
peculiarity is not convincing. In the same section, even in the same
speech, we may encounter insertions which bear the stamp of the revising
colleague. For instance, the opening of _Philaster_ is generally
assigned to Beaumont: it has the characteristics of his prose. But with
the entry of the King (line 89) we are launched upon a subscene in verse
which, on the one hand, has a higher percentage of double endings
(_viz._ 38) than Beaumont ever used, but does not fully come up to
Fletcher's usage; while on the other hand, it has a higher percentage
of run-on lines[157] (_viz._ 44) than Fletcher ever used. The other
verse tests leave us similarly in doubt. To any one, however, familiar
with the diction and characterization of the two authors the suspicion
occurs that the scene was written by Beaumont in the first instance; and
then worked over and considerably enlarged by his associate. In the
first hundred lines of Act II, Scene 4, similar insertions by Fletcher
occur, and in Act III, 2.[158]
Such being the case we may expect that an inquiry into the rhetorical
peculiarities and mental habit, first of Fletcher, then of Beaumont,
will furnish tests corrective of the criterion based upon versification.
1. Fletcher's Diction in _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_.
Though rather poetic than dramatic, and composed only partly in blank
verse, _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ affords the best approach to a
study of Fletcher's rhetoric; for, written about 1608 and by Fletcher
alone, it illustrates his youthful style in the period probably shortly
before he collaborated with Beaumont in the composition of _Philaster_.
The soliloquy of Clorin, with which _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ opens,
runs as follows:
Hail, holy Earth, whose cold Arms do imbrace
The truest man that ever fed his flocks
By the fat plains of fruitful Thessaly!
Thus I salute thy Grave; thus do I pay
My early vows and tribute of mine eyes 5
To thy still-loved ashes; thus I free
Myself from all insuing heats and fires
Of love; all sports, delights, and [jolly] games,
That shepherds hold full dear, thus put I off:
Now no more shall these smooth brows be [be] girt 10
With youthful Coronals, and lead the Dance;
No more the company of fresh fair Maids
And wanton Shepherds be to me delightful,
Nor the shrill pleasing sound of merry pipes
Under some shady dell, when the cool wind 15
Plays on the leaves; all be far away,
Since thou art far away, by whose dear side
How often have I sat Crowned with fresh flowers
For summers Queen, whilst every Shepherds boy
Puts on his lusty green, with gaudy hook 20
And hanging scrip of finest Cordovan.
But thou art gone, and these are gone with thee
And all are dead but thy dear memorie;
That shall out-live thee, and shall ever spring,
Whilst there are pipes or jolly Shepherds sing. 25
And here will I, in honour of thy love,
Dwell by thy Grave, forgetting all those joys,
That former times made precious to mine eyes;
Only remembring what my youth did gain
In the dark, hidden vertuous use of Herbs: 30
That will I practise, and as freely give
All my endeavours as I gained them free.
Of all green wounds I know the remedies
In Men or Cattel, be they stung with Snakes,
Or charmed with powerful words of wicked Art, 35
Or be they Love-sick, or through too much heat
Grown wild or Lunatic, their eyes or ears
Thickened with misty filme of dulling Rheum;
These I can Cure, such secret vertue lies
In herbs applyed by a Virgins hand. 40
My meat shall be what these wild woods afford,
Berries and Chestnuts, Plantanes, on whose Cheeks
The Sun sits smiling.[159]
This passage, as we have observed in the preceding section, does not
display in full proportion or untrammeled variety the metrical
peculiarities of Fletcher's popular dramatic blank verse. The verse is
lyric and declamatory: his purely dramatic verse whether in the
_Monsieur Thomas_ of his earlier period, _The Chances_ of the middle
period, or _A Wife for a Month_ and _Rule a Wife_ of his later years,
has the feminine endings, redundant syllables, anapaestic substitutions,
the end-stopped and sometimes fragmentary lines, the hurried and
spasmodic utterance of conversational speech. But, from the rhetorical
point of view, this soliloquy--in fact, the whole _Faithfull
Shepheardesse_--affords a basis for further discrimination between
Fletcher and Beaumont in the joint-plays; for it displays idiosyncrasies
of tone-quality and diction which persist, after Beaumont's death, in
Fletcher's dramas of 1616 to 1625 as they were in 1607-1609: sometimes
slightly modified, more often exaggerated, but in essence the same.
In Clorin's soliloquy, the reader cannot but notice, first, a tendency
toward alliteration, the _fed_ and _flocks_, _fat_ and _fruitful_,
_fresh_ and _fair_, _pleasing_ and _pipes_,--alliteration palpable and
somewhat crude, but not yet excessive; second, a balanced iteration of
words,--"be far away, Since thou art far away" (ll. 16-17), and, five
lines further down, "But thou art gone and these are gone with thee,"
and in lines 31 and 32 "as freely give ... as I gained them free"; and
an iteration of phrases, rhetorical asseverations, negatives,
alternatives, questions,--"Thus I salute thy grave; thus do I pay,"
"thus I free," "thus put I off" (lines 4, 6, 9); third, a preference for
iteration in triplets,--"No more shall these smooth brows," "No more the
company," "Nor the shrill ... sound" (lines 10-14), "Or charmed," "or
love-sick," "or through too much heat" (lines 35 and 36); fourth, a
fondness for certain sonorous words,--"all ensuing heats ... all sports"
(lines 7-8), "all my endeavours ... all green wounds" (lines 32-33), and
the "alls" of lines 16 and 23; fifth, a plethora of adjectives,--"holy
earth," "cold arms," "truest man," "fat plains"--many of them
pleonastic--"misty film," "dulling rheum"--some forty nouns buttressed
by epithets to twenty standing in their own strength; and a plethora of
nouns in apposition (preferably triplets),--"all sports, delights, and
jolly games" (line 8), "Berries and Chestnuts, Plantanes" (line 42);
sixth, an indulgence in conversational tautology: for Fletcher is rarely
content with a simple statement,--he must be forever spinning out the
categories of a concept; expounding his idea by what the rhetoricians
call division; enumerating the attributes and species painstakingly lest
any escape, or verbosely as a padding for verse or speech. Of this
mannerism The _Faithfull Shepheardesse_ affords many instances more
typical than those contained in these forty-three lines; but even here
Clorin salutes the grave of her lover in a dozen different periphrastic
ways. To say that "all are dead but thy dear memorie" is not enough;
she must specify "_that_ shall outlive thee." To assert that she knows
the remedies of "all green wounds" does not suffice: she must proceed to
the enumeration of the wounds; nor to tell us that her meat shall be
found in the woods: she must rehearse the varieties of meat. Her
soliloquy in the last thirty lines of the scene, not here quoted, is of
the same quality: it reminds one of a Henslowe list of stage properties,
or of the auctioneer's catalogue that sprawls down Walt Whitman's pages.
And, last, we notice what has been emphasized by G. C. Macaulay and
others, that much of this enumeration by division is by way of
"parentheses hastily thrown in, or afterthoughts as they occur to the
mind."[160] Even in the formal _Shepheardesse_ this characteristic lends
a quality of naturalness and conversational spontaneity to the speech.
2. In the Later Plays.
If now we turn to one of Fletcher's plays written after Beaumont's
death, and without the assistance of Massinger or any other,--say, _The
Humorous Lieutenant_ of about the year 1619,--we find on every page and
passages like the following.[161]--The King Antigonus upon the entry of
his son, Demetrius, addresses the ambassadors of threatening powers:
Do you see this Gent(leman),
You that bring Thunders in your mouths, and Earthquakes,
To shake and totter my designs? Can you imagine
(You men of poor and common apprehensions)
While I admit this man, my Son, this nature
That in one look carries more fire, and fierceness,
Than all your Masters lives[162]; dare I admit him,
Admit him thus, even to my side, my bosom,
When he is fit to rule, when all men cry him,
And all hopes hang about his head; thus place him,
His weapon hatched in bloud; all these attending
When he shall make their fortunes, all as sudden,
In any expedition he shall point 'em,
As arrows from a Tartar's bow, and speeding,
Dare I do this, and fear an enemy?
Fear your great master? yours? or yours?
Here we have blank verse, distinctively Fletcherian with its feminine
endings and its end-stopped lines. But, widely as this differs from the
earlier rhythm of _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ and its more lyric
precipitancy, the qualities of tone and diction are in the later play as
in the earlier. The alliterations may not be so numerous, and are in
general more cunningly concealed and interwoven, as in lines 2 to 4; but
the cruder kind still appears as a mannerism, the "fire and fierceness,"
"hopes," "hang," and "head." The iterations of word, phrase, and
rhetorical question, and of the resonant "all," the redundant nouns in
apposition, the tautological enumeration of categories, proclaim the
unaltered Fletcher. The adjectives are in this spot pruned, but they are
luxuriant elsewhere in the play. The triplets,--"this man, my son, this
nature,"--"admit," "admit," "admit," find compeers on nearly every page:
Shew where to lead, to lodge, to charge with safetie,--[163]
Here's a strange fellow now, and a brave fellow,
If we may say so of a pocky fellow.--[164]
And now, 't is ev'n too true, I feel a pricking,
A pricking, a strange pricking.--[165]
With such a sadness on his face, as sorrow,
Sorrow herself, but poorly imitates.
Sorrow of sorrows on that heart that caus'd it![166]
In the passages cited above there happen to be, also, a few examples of
the elocutionary afterthought:
You come with thunders in your mouth _and earthquakes_,--
As arrows from a Tartar's bow, _and speeding_.--
To this device, and to the intensive use of the pronominal "one"
Fletcher is as closely wedded as to the repetition of "all,"--
They have a hand upon us,
A heavy and a hard one.[167]
To wear this jewel near thee; he is a tried one
And one that ... will yet stand by thee.[168]
Other plays conceded by the critics to Fletcher alone, and written in
his distinctive blank verse, display the same characteristics of style:
_The Chances_ of about 1615, _The Loyall Subject_ of 1618 (like _The
Humorous Lieutenant_ of the middle period), and _Rule a Wife and Have a
Wife_ of the last period, 1624. I quote at random for him who would
apply the tests,--first from _The Chances_,[169] the following of the
repeating revolver style:
Art thou not an Ass?
And modest as her blushes! what a blockhead
Would e're have popt out such a dry Apologie
For this dear friend? and to a Gentlewoman,
A woman of her youth and delicacy?
They are arguments to draw them to abhor us.
An honest moral man? 't is for a Constable:
A handsome man, a wholesome man, a tough man,
A liberal man, a likely man, a man
Made up by Hercules, unslaked with service:
The same to night, to morrow night, the next night,
And so to perpetuity of pleasures.
Now, from _The Loyall Subject_[170]--the farewell of _Archas_ to his
arms and colours. I wish I could quote it all as an example of noble
noise, enumerative and penny-a-line rhetoric:
Farewell, my Eagle! when thou flew'st, whole Armies
Have stoopt below thee: at Passage I have seen thee
Ruffle the Tartars, as they fled thy furie,
And bang 'em up together, as a Tassel,
Upon the streach, a flock of fearfull Pigeons.
I yet remember when the Volga curl'd,
The aged Volga, when he heav'd his head up,
And rais'd his waters high, to see the ruins,
The ruines our swords made, the bloudy ruins;
Then flew this Bird of honour bravely, Gentlemen;
But these must be forgotten: so must these too,
And all that tend to Arms, by me for ever.
And from Act II, Scene 1, pages 101-102, for triplets:
Fight hard, lye hard, feed hard, when they come home, sir....
To be respected, reckon'd well, and honour'd....
Where be the shouts, the Bells rung out, the people?...
And, for "alls," and triplets:
And whose are all these glories? why their Princes,
Their Countries and their Friends. Alas, of all these,
And all the happy ends they bring, the blessings,
They only share the labours!
Finally, from _Rule a Wife_, a few instances of the iterations,
three-fold or multiple, and redundant expositions. In the first
scene[171] Juan describes Leon:
Ask him a question,
He blushes like a Girl, and answers little,
To the point less; he wears a Sword, a good one,
And good cloaths too; he is whole-skin'd, has no hurt yet,
Good promising hopes;
and Perez describes the rest of the regiment,
That swear as valiantly as heart can wish,
Their mouths charg'd with six oaths at once, and whole ones,
That make the drunken Dutch creep into Mole-hills; ...
and he proceeds to Donna Margarita:
She is fair, and young, and wealthy,
Infinite wealthy, _etc._
And then to Estefania who has tautologized of her chastity, he
tautologizes of his harmlessness:[172]
I am no blaster of a lady's beauty,
Nor bold intruder on her special favours;
I know how tender reputation is,
And with what guards it ought to be preserv'd, lady.
As a fair example of this method of filling a page, I recommend the
first scene of the third act; and of eloquence by rhetorical 'division,'
Perez's description of his room in the next scene: all in terms of three
times three.
If now the reader will turn, by way of confirmation, to _The Triumph of
Time_ and _The Triumph of Death_ of which the metrical characteristics
are admittedly Fletcher's, he will find that there, Fletcher, before
Beaumont's retirement from the partnership, is already using in purely
dramatic composition the rhetorical mannerisms which mark both the
lyrically designed _Shepheardesse_ of his early years and the genuine
dramas of the later.
3. Stock Words, Phrases, and Figures.
Beside the rhetorical mannerisms classified in the preceding paragraphs
I might rehearse a long list of Fletcher's favourite expressions and
figures of speech. Of the former Mr. Oliphant[173] has mentioned
'plaguily,' 'claw'd,' 'slubber'd,' 'too,' 'shrewdly,' 'stuck with,' 'it
shews,' 'dwell round about ye,' 'for ever,' 'no way,' (for 'not at
all'). In addition I have noted the reiterated 'thus,' 'miracle,'
'prodigious' (in the sense of 'ominous')--'prodigious star,' 'prodigious
meteor'--'bugs,' 'monsters,' and 'scorpions'; 'torments,' 'diseases,'
'imposthumes,' 'canker,' 'mischiefs,' 'ruins,' 'blasted,' 'rotten';
'myrmidons'; 'monuments' (for 'tombs'), 'marble'; 'lustre,' 'crystal,'
'jewels,' 'picture,' 'painting,' 'counterfeit in arras'; 'blushes,'
'palates,' 'illusion,' 'abused' (for 'deceived'), 'blessed,' 'flung
off,' 'cloister'd up,' 'fat earth,' 'turtle,' 'passion,' 'Paradise.'
Oliphant assigns to Fletcher 'pulled on,' but I find that almost as
frequently in Beaumont. 'Poison,' 'contagious' and 'loaden,' also abound
in Fletcher, but are sometimes used by Beaumont. Fletcher affects
alliterative epithets: 'prince of popinjays,' 'pernicious petticoat
prince,' 'pretty prince of puppets,'--and antitheses such as 'prince of
wax,' 'pelting prattling peace.' His characters talk much of 'silks' and
'satins,' 'branched velvets' and 'scarlet' clothes. They are said to
speak in 'riddles'; they are threatened with 'ribald rhymes'; they shall
be 'bawled in ballads,' or 'chronicled,' 'cut and chronicled.'
Another characteristic of Fletcher's diction is his preference for the
pronoun _ye_ instead of _you_. This was pointed out by Mr. R. B.
McKerrow, who in his edition of _The Spanish Curate_[174] notes that in
the scenes generally attributed, in accordance with other tests, to
Fletcher, _ye_ occurs 271 times, while in the scenes attributed to
Massinger it occurs but four. That is to say, for every _ye_ in
Fletcher's part there are but 0.65 _you's_; for every _ye_ in
Massinger's part, 50 _you's_. Mr. W. W. Greg, applying the test in his
edition of _The Elder Brother_,[175] and counting the _y'are's_ as
instances of _ye_, finds that the percentage of _ye's_ to _you's_ in
Fletcher's part is almost three times as high as in Massinger's. In a
recent article in _The Nation_[176] Mr. Paul Elmer More communicates his
independent observation of the same mannerism in Fletcher. Though he has
been anticipated in part, his study adds to McKerrow's the valuable
information that Fletcher uses the _ye_ for _you_ in "both numbers and
cases, and in both serious and comic scenes." Mr. More's statistics
favour the conclusion that the test distinguishes Fletcher not only from
Massinger, but from other collaborators: Middleton, Rowley, Field,
Jonson, Tourneur. They do not carry conviction regarding Shakespeare,
whose habit as Greg and others had already announced varies in a
perplexing manner. Nor does Mr. More arrive at any definite result
concerning the test "when applied to the mixed work of Beaumont and
Fletcher." For though the high percentage of _ye's_ in the third and
fourth of the _Foure Playes_ confirms the general attribution of those
'Triumphs' to Fletcher, the low percentage in the first two 'Triumphs'
does not justify "the common opinion which attributes them to Beaumont."
Their author, as I have elsewhere stated, was probably Field. "In the
plays which are units," continues Mr. More, "such as _The Maid's
Tragedy_, _Philaster_, _A King and No King_, _The Knight of the Burning
Pestle_, and _The Coxcomb_, this mark of Fletcher does not occur at all.
It should seem that the writing here, at least in its final form, was
almost entirely Beaumont's." I have gone through all the plays which
have been ordinarily regarded as joint-productions of Beaumont and
Fletcher, and find that in this surmise Mr. More is right. _The Knight_,
to be sure, is Beaumont's alone; but with regard to the other four plays
mentioned above, in which they undoubtedly cooperated, the suggestion
that the writing, at least in its final form, was almost entirely
Beaumont's, because of the practically complete absence of _ye's_, is
justified by the facts. It is, also, helpful in the examination of plays
not mentioned in this list. It has, in connection with other
considerations, assisted me to the conclusion that Fletcher went over
two or three scenes of _The Woman-Hater_, stamping them with his _ye's_
after Beaumont had finished it as a whole; and it has confirmed me in
the belief that _The Scornful Ladie_ was one of the latest joint-plays,
only partly revised by Beaumont,--and that, not long before his death.
Fletcher's preference for _ye_ is a distinctive mannerism. His usage
varies from the employment of one-third as many _ye's_ to that of twice
as many _ye's_ as _you's_; whereas Beaumont rarely uses a _ye_. Even
more distinctive is Fletcher's use of _y'are_, and of _ye_ in the
objective case. The latter, Beaumont does not tolerate.
For figurative purposes Fletcher finds material most frequently in the
phenomena of winter and storm: 'frosts,' 'nipping frosts,' 'nipping
winds,' 'hail,' 'cakes of ice,' 'icicles,' 'thaw,' 'tempests,'
'thunders,' 'billows,' 'mariners' and 'storm-tossed barks,' 'wild
overflows' of waters in stream or torrent; in the phenomena of heat and
light: 'suns,' the 'icy moon,' the 'Dog-star' or the 'Dog,' the 'Sirian
star,' the 'cold Bear' and 'raging Lion,' 'Aetna,' 'fire and flames'; of
trees: root and branch, foliage and fruit; of the oak and clinging vine;
of the rose or blossom and the 'destroying canker'; of fever and ague;
of youth and desire, and of Death 'beating larums to the blood,' of our
days that are 'marches to the grave,' and of our lives 'tedious tales
soon forgotten.' I have elsewhere called attention to the numerous
variations which he plays upon the 'story of a woman.' His 'monuments'
are in frequent requisition and, by preference, they 'sweat'; men
pursued by widows fear to be 'buried alive in another man's cold
monument.' Other common images are 'rock him to another world,'
'bestride a billow,' 'plough up the sea.' He indulges in extended
mythological tropes as of the 'Carthage queen' and Ariadne; is
especially attracted by Adonis, Hylas (whom he may have got either from
Theocritus or the Marquis D'Urfe's Astraean character), and Hercules;
and, in general, he levies more freely than Beaumont on commonplace
classical material. In his unassisted dramas his fondness for
personification seems to grow: many pages are thick with capitalized
abstractions; and the poetry, then, is usually limited to the
capitalization. The curious reader will find most of Fletcher's
predilections in image-making clustered in three or four typical
passages of the later and unassisted plays, such as Alphonso's raving in
_A Wife for a Month_, IV, 4; and in passages, undoubtedly of his verse
and diction, in plays written conjointly with Beaumont, such as that of
Spaconia's outburst in _King and No King_, IV, 2, 45-62.
Fletcher abounds in optatives: 'Would Gods thou hadst been so blest!'
'Would there were any safety in thy sex!' and the like. He is also given
to rhetorical interrogations and elaborate exclamations; more so than
Beaumont. He affects the lighter kind of oath, the appeal to something
sacred, in attestation--'Witness Heaven!' In entreaty--'High Heaven,
defend us!' Or in mere ejaculation--'Equal Heavens!' He varies his
asseverations so that they appear less bluntly profane: 'By my life!'
'By those lights, I vow!'--or more appropriate to the emergency: 'By all
holy in Heaven and Earth!' He swears occasionally 'By the Gods,' but not
so frequently as Beaumont, for there was a puritanical reaction after
Beaumont's death. In the early joint-plays he affects particularly 'all
the gods,' 'By _all_ those gods, you swore by!' 'By more than all the
gods!' In his imprecations he is even more sulphurous than Beaumont:
'Hell bless you for it!' 'Hell take me then!' 'Thou all-sin, all-hell,
and last all-devils!'
In summary let us say of Fletcher's diction, that its vocabulary is
repetitious; its sentence-structure, loose, cumulative, trailing: that
its larger movement is, in general, dramatic, conversational, abrupt,
rather than lyrical, declamatory, reflective. He writes for the
plot--forward: not from the character--outward. When he bestows a
lyrical or descriptive touch upon the narrative it is always incidental
to conversation or stage business. When he indulges in a classical
reminiscence he permits himself to embroider and bedizen; but usually
his ribbons (from a scantly furnished, much-rummaged wardrobe) are
carelessly pinned on. While capable, especially in tragedy, of
occasional long speeches, he prefers the brief interchange of utterance,
the rapid fire and spasm of dialogue.
FOOTNOTES:
[157] In the King's speech, 89-121.
[158] For particulars, see Chapter XXV, Sec. 7, below.
[159] As given in the _Camb. Engl. Classics_.
[160] G. C. Macaulay, _Francis Beaumont_, p. 45.
[161] Act I, Sc. 1, _Camb. Engl. Classics_, II, p. 286.
[162] Crane _MS._ (1625).
[163] _Cambridge_, II, p. 290.
[164] _Ibid._, p. 292.
[165] _Ibid._, p. 323.
[166] _Ibid._, p. 346.
[167] _Loyall Subject_, III, 1, end.
[168] _Hum. Lieut., Cambridge_, II, p. 290.
[169] John in II, 3, _Camb._, IV, p. 202.
[170] I, 3, _Camb._, III, p. 84.
[171] _Camb._, III, p. 170.
[172] _Ibid._, p. 172.
[173] _Engl. Studien_, XIV, 65.
[174] _Variorum, B. and F._, Vol. II, 1905.
[175] _Variorum, B. and F._, Vol. II, 1905.
[176] New York, Nov. 14, 1912.