DID THE BEAUMONT 'ROMANCE' INFLUENCE SHAKESPEARE?
Richard Flecknoe, in his _Discourse of the English Stage_, 1664,
thinking rather of the romantic and ornamented quality of Beaumont and
Fletcher's plays, "full of fine flowers," than of any anticipation in
them of the love and honour of plays of the Restoration, says that they
were the first to write "in the Heroick way." Symonds calls them the
"inventors of the heroical romance." And lately Professor Thorndike[256]
and others have conjectured that the Shakespeare of _Cymbeline_,
_Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_ was following the lead of the two
younger dramatists in what is attributed to them as a new style of
'dramatic romance' in his dramas. The argument is that _Philaster_
(acted before October 8, 1610) preceded _Cymbeline_ (acted between April
20, 1610 and May 15, 1611), and suggested to Shakespeare a radical
change of dramatic method, first manifest in _Cymbeline_. And that five
other "romances by Beaumont and Fletcher," _Foure Playes in One_,
_Thierry and Theodoret_, _The Maides Tragedy_, _Cupid's Revenge_ and _A
King and No King_, constituting with _Philaster_ a distinctly new type
of drama, were in all probability acted before the close of 1611, and
similarly influenced the method of _The Winter's Tale_ and _The
Tempest_, also of 1611.
Before discussing the theory of Shakespeare's indebtedness to
_Philaster_ and its "Beaumont-Fletcher" successors, I should like to
file a two-fold protest; first, against the use of the word 'romance'
for any kind of dramatic production, whatever. 'Romance' applies to
narrative of heroic, marvellous, and imaginative content, not to drama.
_The Maides Tragedy_ and _Cupid's Revenge_ are not romances; they are
romantic tragedies. _Philaster_, _A King and No King_, and _Cymbeline_
are, of course, romantic; but specifically they are melodramatic
tragicomedies of heroic cast. _Pericles_, _The Winter's Tale_, and _The
Tempest_ are romantic comedies of marvel or adventure. Nothing is gained
in criticism by giving them a name which applies, in English, strictly
to narrative, or by regarding them as of a different dramatic species
from the romantic dramas of Greene and Shakespeare that preceded them. I
object, in the second place, to the grouping of the six plays said to
constitute "a distinctly new type of drama" under the denomination
"dramatic romances of Beaumont _and_ Fletcher"; for in some of them
Beaumont had no hand, and in others, the most important, Fletcher's
contribution of romantic novelty is altogether secondary, mostly
immaterial. With _Thierry and Theodoret_, for instance, thus loosely
called a "Beaumont-Fletcher romance," it is not proved that Beaumont had
anything to do. The drama displays nothing of his vocabulary, rhetoric
or poetry. It is a later production by Fletcher, Massinger, and probably
one other; and is the only play of this tragic-idyllic-romantic type
attempted by Fletcher after Beaumont had ceased writing. In three of the
_Foure Playes in One_, Beaumont does not appear. He may possibly be
traced in three scenes of _The Triumph of Love_; but with no certainty.
Fletcher, on the other hand, had very little to do with the three great
dramas of sensational romance which form the core of the group in
question, _Philaster_, _The Maides Tragedy_, and _A King and No King_.
As I have shown, he contributed not more than four scenes to
_Philaster_, four to _The Maides Tragedy_, and five to _A King and No
King_. And, with the exception of two spectacularly violent scenes in
_The Maides Tragedy_, his contribution, so far as writing goes, is
supplementary dialogue and histrionic by-play. Whatever is essentially
novel, vital, and distinctive is by Beaumont. To _Cupid's Revenge_
Beaumont's contribution was slighter in volume, but without it the play
would lack its distinctive quality. If we must cling to the misnomer
'romance' for any group of plays which may have influenced Shakespeare's
later comedies, let us limit the group to its Beaumont core, and speak
of the 'Beaumont romance.'
The express novelty in technique of the six arbitrarily selected,
so-called 'Beaumont-Fletcher romances' is supposed to lie in the
dramatic adaptation of certain sensational properties more suitable to
narrative fiction; especially in the attempt to heighten interest by
adding to the legitimate portrayal of character under stress and strain
(as in tragedy), or of character in amusing maladjustment with social
convention (as in comedy), the portrayal of vicissitudes of fortune; and
in the attempt to enhance the thrills appropriate to tragic and comic
appeal by such an amalgamation of the two as shall cause the spectator
to run up and down the whole gamut of emotional sensibility. In the
realm of tragedy the accentuation of the possibilities of suspense,
whether by Beaumont or any other, would be a novelty merely of degree.
_Cupid's Revenge_, and _The Triumph of Death_ (in the _Foure Playes in
One_) could hardly have impressed the author of _Romeo and Juliet_ and
_Hamlet_ as in this respect astounding innovations; and _The Maides
Tragedy_ does not, so far as I can determine, sacrifice the unities of
interest and effect for enhancement and variety of emotional thrill. In
any case, it would be necessary to date _Timon_, _Antony_, and
_Coriolanus_, two or three years later than the fact, if one desired to
prove that any Shakespearian tragedy was influenced by a
Beaumont-Fletcher exaggeration of suspense. Whatever exaggeration may
exist had already been practised by Shakespeare himself. If a
Beaumont-Fletcher novelty influenced Shakespeare, that novelty must have
lain in the transference of tragic suspense to the realm of romantic
comedy with all its minor aesthetic appeals, and it would consequently
be limited to their tragicomedies, _Philaster_ and _A King and No King_.
The tragicomic masques in the _Foure Playes in One_, that of _Honour_
and that of _Death_, are too insignificant to warrant consideration; and
Beaumont had nothing to do with them.
In determining the indebtedness, if any, of _Cymbeline_ to _Philaster_
we lack the assistance of authentic dates of composition. The plays were
acted about the same time,--_Philaster_ certainly, _Cymbeline_ perhaps,
before October 8, 1610. Beaumont and Fletcher's play may have been
written as early as 1609; Shakespeare's also as early as 1609 or 1608:
in fact, there are critics who assign parts of it to 1606. With regard
to the relative priority of _Cymbeline_ and _A King and No King_, we are
more fortunate in our knowledge. The former had certainly been acted by
May 15, 1611; the latter was not even licensed until that year, and was
not performed at Court till December 26. The probabilities are
altogether in favour of a date of composition later than that of
_Cymbeline_.
But that Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_ and his later romantic dramas betray
any consciousness of the existence of _Philaster_ and its succeeding
_King and No King_ has not been proved. Save for the more emphatic
employment of the masque and its accessories of dress and scenic
display, of the combination of idyllic, romantic, and sensational
elements of material, and the heightened uncertainty of denouement, all
naturally suggested by the demands of Jacobean taste, no variation is
discoverable in the course of Shakespeare's dramatic art. And in these
respects I find no extrinsic novelty, no momentous change--nothing in
_Philaster_ and _A King and No King_ that had not been anticipated by
Shakespeare. _Cymbeline_, _The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_ are but
the flowering of potentialities latent in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_
and _As You Like It_, _Much Ado About Nothing_ and _Twelfth Night_,
_All's Well That Ends Well_ and _Measure for Measure_--latent in the
story of Apollonius of Tyre, and unavoidable in its dramatization as
_Pericles_, a play that was certainly not influenced by the methods of
_Philaster_. If in his later romantic dramas Shakespeare borrowed any
hint of technique from the Beaumont contribution to the 'romances,' he
was but borrowing back what Beaumont had borrowed from him or from
sources with which Shakespeare was familiar when Beaumont was still
playing nursery miracles of the Passion with his brothers in the
Gethsemane garden at Grace-Dieu. Shakespeare's later comedies are a
legitimate development of his peculiar dramatic art. Beaumont's
tragicomedies, with all their poetic and idyllic beauty and dramatic
individuality, are novel, so far as construction goes, only in their
emphasized employment of the sensational properties and methods
mentioned above. Their characteristic, when compared with that of
Shakespeare's last group of comedies, is melodramatic rather than
romantic. They set, in fine, as did Chapman's _Gentleman Usher_, and
Shakespeare's _Measure for Measure_ and _All's Well that Ends Well_, an
example which, abused, led to the decadence of Elizabethan romantic
comedy.
The resemblance between _Philaster_ and _Cymbeline_, such as it is, is
closer than that between _Philaster_ and the Shakespearian successors of
_Cymbeline_,--_The Winter's Tale_ and _The Tempest_. But the common
features of all these plays, the juxtaposition of idyllic scenes and
interest with those of royalty, the combination of sentimental, tragic,
and comic incentives to emotion, the false accusations of unchastity and
the resulting jealousy, intrigue, and crime, the wanderings of an
innocent and distressed woman in boy's clothing, the romantic
localization, did not appear first in either _Philaster_ or _Cymbeline_.
_Philaster_ and _Cymbeline_ follow numerous clues in the idyllic-comic
of _Love's Labour's Lost_ and _Midsummer-Night's Dream_; in the
idyllic-romantic-pathetic of _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _As You Like
It_, and _Twelfth Night_; and for that matter in the materials furnished
by Greene, Lodge, Sidney, Sannazzaro, Montemayor, Bandello, Cinthio and
Boccaccio; and in the romantic and tragicomic fusion already attempted
in _Much Ado_, _All's Well_, and _Measure for Measure_. For the
character and the trials of Imogen, Shakespeare did not require the
inspiration of a Beaumont. He had been busied with the figure of Innogen
(as he then called her) as early as 1599; for in the 1600 quarto of
_Much Ado_ she appears by sheer accident in a stage direction as the
wife of the Leonato of that play. He had been using the sources from
which _Cymbeline_ is drawn,--Holinshed and Boccaccio, and that early
romantic drama, _Fidele and Fortunio_,--before _Philaster_ was written.
And it is much more likely that the Belarius of Shakespeare and the
Bellario of Beaumont were both suggested by the Bellaria of Greene's
_Pandosto_, than that Shakespeare borrowed from Beaumont. Nor is
Shakespeare likely to have been indebted to Beaumont's example for the
sensational manner of the denouement in _Cymbeline_--the succession of
fresh complications and false starts by which suspense is sustained.
These are precisely the features that distinguish those scenes of
_Pericles_ which by the consensus of critics are assigned to
Shakespeare; and _Pericles_ was written by 1608, at least as early as
_Philaster_, and in all probability earlier. In his story of Marina,
Shakespeare is merely pursuing the sensational methods of _Measure for
Measure_ and anticipating those of _The Winter's Tale_. In general, the
plot lies half-way between the tragicomic possibilities of the _Comedy
of Errors_, _Twelfth Night_, _All's Well_, and _Measure for Measure_,
and the romantic manipulation of _Cymbeline_ and the later plays.
In fine, there is closer resemblance between _Cymbeline_ and half a
dozen of Shakespeare's earlier comedies, than between _Cymbeline_ and
_Philaster_; and it might more readily be shown that the author of
_Philaster_ was indebted to those half-dozen plays, than Shakespeare to
_Philaster_. The differences between the Beaumont 'romances' and
Shakespeare's later romantic comedies are in fact more vital than the
similarities. In _Philaster_, _The Maides Tragedy_, and _A King and No
King_ the central idea is of contrast between sentimental love and
unbridled lust, and this gives rise to misunderstanding, intrigue, and
violence. In Shakespeare's later comedies the central motive is
altogether different: it is of disappearance and discovery. The
disappearance is occasioned by false accusation or conspiracy. In
_Pericles_, _Cymbeline_, and _The Winter's Tale_, the dramatic interest
revolves about the pursuit of a lost wife or child, the wanderings and
trials of the heroine, and her recovery;[257] in _The Tempest_, about
the disappearance and discovery of the ousted Duke and his daughter.
There is no resemblance between Beaumont's love-lorn maidens in page's
garb pursuing the unconscious objects of their affection and
Shakespeare's joyous girls and traduced wives. Nor is there in
Shakespeare's later comedies any analogue to the sensual passion of the
'Beaumont and Fletcher romances,' to their Bachas, Megras, and Evadnes,
their ultra-sentimental Philasters, their blunt soldier-counselors and
boastful poltroons. Pisanio and Cloten have respectively no kinship with
Dion and Pharamond. What appears to be novel in _Pericles_ and its
Shakespearian successors, the somewhat melodramatic denouement, is, as I
have said, but the modification of the playwright's well-known methods
in conformity with the contemporary demand for more highly seasoned
fare. But, in essence, the dramatic careers of Imogen and Hermione, are
no more sensational than those of their older sisters, Hero, Helena, and
Isabella. And what is most evidently not novel with Shakespeare in his
later romantic comedies,--the consistent dramatic interaction between
crisis and character,--is precisely what the 'Beaumont-Fletcher
romances' do not always possess. Beaumont's characterization at its
best, with all its naturalness, compelling pathos, poignancy, and
abandon is lyrical or idyllic rather than dramatic; Fletcher's is
expository and histrionic--of manners rather than the man.
Beaumont did not influence Shakespeare. And if not Beaumont, then
certainly not Fletcher; for in the actual composition of the core of the
so-called 'Beaumont-Fletcher romances' Fletcher's share was altogether
subordinate; and since after the dissolution of the partnership he
attempted but one romantic tragic drama of that particular kind,
_Thierry and Theodoret_,--and that a clumsy failure,--it must be
concluded that in the designing of those 'romances' his share was even
less significant. But to appreciate the contribution of Beaumont to
Elizabethan drama, and his place in literary history, it is fortunately
not necessary to assume that he diverted from its natural course the
dramatic technique of a master, twenty years his senior and for twenty
years before Beaumont began to write, intimately acquainted with the
conditions of the stage,--the acknowledged playwright of the most
successful of theatrical companies and, in spite of changing fashions,
the most steadily progressive and popular dramatic artist of the early
Jacobean period. With regard to Beaumont it is marvel sufficient, that
between his twenty-fifth and his twenty-eighth year of age he should
have elaborated in dramatic art, even with the help of Fletcher, so
striking a combination of preceding models, and have infused into the
resulting heroic-romantic type such fresh poetic vigour and verve of
movement.
FOOTNOTES:
[256] _The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespeare_, 1901.
See M. W. Sampson's critique in _J. Ger. Phil._, II, 241.
[257] See Morton Luce, _Hand Book to Shakespeare's Works_, p. 338.