In the romantic drama Beaumont and Fletcher are almost supreme. Their plays
are in general most truly delightful. I could read the Beggar's Bush from
morning to night. How sylvan and sunshiny it is! The Little French Lawyer
is excellent. Lawrit is conceived and executed from first to last in
genuine comic humour. Monsieur Thomas is also capital. I have no doubt
whatever that the first act and the first scene of the second act of the
Two Noble Kinsmen are Shakspeare's. Beaumont and Fletcher's plots are, to
be sure, wholly inartificial; they only care to pitch a character into a
position to make him or her talk; you must swallow all their gross
improbabilities, and, taking it all for granted, attend only to the
dialogue. How lamentable it is that no gentleman and scholar can he found
to edit these beautiful plays![1] Did the name of criticism ever descend so
low as in the hands of those two fools and knaves, Seward and Simpson?
There are whole scenes in their edition which I could with certainty put
back into their original verse, and more that could he replaced in their
native prose. Was there ever such an absolute disregard of literary fame as
that displayed by Shakspeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher?[2]
[Footnote 1:
I believe Mr. Dyce could edit Beaumont and Fletcher as well as any man of
the present or last generation; but the truth is, the limited sale of the
late editions of Ben Jonson, Shirley, &c., has damped the spirit of
enterprise amongst the respectable publishers. Still I marvel that some
cheap reprint of B. and F. is not undertaken.--ED.]
[Footnote 2:
"The men of the greatest genius, as far as we can judge from their own
works, or from the accounts of their contemporaries, appear to have been of
calm and tranquil temper, in all that related to themselves. In the inward
assurance of permanent fame, they seem to have been either indifferent or
resigned, with regard to immediate reputation."
* * * * *
"Shakspeare's evenness and sweetness of temper were almost proverbial in
his own age. That this did not arise from ignorance of his own comparative
greatness, we have abundant proof in his sonnets, which could scarcely have
been known to Mr. Pope, when he asserted, that our great bard 'grew
immortal in his own despite.'"--_Biog. Lit._ vol. i, p. 32.]
* * * * *
In Ben Jonson you have an intense and burning art. Some of his plots, that
of the Alchemist, for example, are perfect. Ben Jonson and Beaumont and
Fletcher would, if united, have made a great dramatist indeed, and yet not
have come near Shakspeare; but no doubt Ben Jonson was the greatest man
after Shakspeare in that age of dramatic genius.
The styles of Massinger's plays and the Sampson Agonistes are the two
extremes of the arc within which the diction of dramatic poetry may
oscillate. Shakspeare in his great plays is the midpoint. In the Samson
Agonistes, colloquial language is left at the greatest distance, yet
something of it is preserved, to render the dialogue probable: in Massinger
the style is differenced, but differenced in the smallest degree possible,
from animated conversation by the vein of poetry.
There's such a divinity doth hedge our Shakspeare round, that we cannot
even imitate his style. I tried to imitate his manner in the Remorse, and,
when I had done, I found I had been tracking Beaumont and Fletcher, and
Massinger instead. It is really very curious. At first sight, Shakspeare
and his contemporary dramatists seem to write in styles much alike: nothing
so easy as to fall into that of Massinger and the others; whilst no one has
ever yet produced one scene conceived and expressed in the Shakspearian
idiom. I suppose it is because Shakspeare is universal, and, in fact, has
no _manner_; just as you can so much more readily copy a picture than
Nature herself.
_February_ 20. 1833.