OF THE

PRINCIPAL ACTORS

WHO PERFORMED IN

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER'S PLAY S.

N. B. The Names marked thus

are the Names of the Players who dedicated the Edition of 1647 to the Earl of Pembroke.

PREFACE.

CONSIDERING the acknowledged excellence of our authors, loudly acknowledged by the most eminent of their contemporaries and successors, it appears at first sight rather wonderful, that in the space of a hundred and fifty years, which have elapsed since the death of these poets, no more than three complete editions of their works have been published; we say three, because the first folio professedly included no more of their plays, than those which had not before been singly printed in quarto.

To what causes are we to attribute this amazing disparity between the reputation of the writers, and the public demand for their productions? Are libraries furnished with books, as apartments with furniture, according to the fashion? or is it necessary, because plays were originally written to be acted, that they must continue to be perpetually represented, or cease to be read?

Truth, we fear, obliges us to confess that these questions must, without much qualification, be answered in the affirmative. Shakespeare, admirable as he is, certainly owes some part of his present popularity, and the extraordinary preference given to his plays beyond those of all our other dramatists, to the mode adopted by the literary world to extol him. By the changes of fashion, nature and right reason sometimes come into vogue; but the multitude take them, like coin, because they are in currency, while men of sense and letters alone appreciate them according to their intrinsic value, and receive merit, wherever they find it, as bullion, though it has not the stamp of fashion impressed on it. To such men, the genius of Shakespeare, instead of obscuring, illustrates the kindred talents of Beaumont and Fletcher. Yet such men are but rare; and one of the most acute and learned editors of Shakespeare speaking of his own notes "concerned in a critical explanation of the author's beauties and defects; but chiefly of his beauties, whether in stile, thought, sentiinent, character, or composition," adds, that "the public judgment hath less need to be assisted in what it shall reject, than in what it ought to PRIZE. Nor is the value they set upon a work, a certain proof that they understand it. For it is ever seen, THAT HALF A DOZEN VOICES OF CREDIT GIVE THE LEAD, and if the public chance to be in good humour, or the author much in their favour, THE PEOPLE ARE SURE TO FOLLOW." To the popularity of a dramatic writer, nothing more immediately contributes than the frequency of theatrical representation. Common readers, like barren spectators, know little more of an author than what the actor, not always his happiest commentator, presents to them. Mutilations of Shakespeare have been recited, and even quoted, as his genuine text; and many of his dramas, not in the course of exhibition, are by the multitude not honoured with a perusal. On the stage, indeed, our authors formerly took the lead, Dryden having informed us, that in his day two of their plays were performed to one of Shakespeare. The stage, however, owes its attraction to the actor as well as author; and if the able performer will not contribute to give a polish and brilliancy to the work, it will lie, like the rough diamond, obscured and disregarded. The artists of

former

former days worked the rich mine of Beaumont and Fletcher; and Betterton, the Roscius of his age, enriched his catalogue of characters from their dramas, as well as those of Shakespeare. Unfortunately for our authors, the Roscius of our day confined his round of characters in old plays, too closely to Shakespeare. We may almost say of him indeed, in this respect, as Dryden says of Shakespeare's scenes of magic,

"Within that circle none durst walk but he;"

but surely we must lament, that those extraordinary powers, which have so successfully been exerted in the illustration of Shakespeare, and sometimes prostituted to the support of the meanest writers, should not more frequently have been employed to throw a light upon Beaumont and Fletcher. Their plays, we will be bold to say, have the same excellencies, as well as the same defects, each perhaps in an inferior degree, with the dramas of their great master. Like his, they are built on histories or novels, pursuing in the same manner the story through its various circumstances; like his, but not always with equal truth and nature, their characters are boldly drawn and warmly coloured; like his, their dialogue, containing every beauty of stile, and licentiousness of construction, is thick sown with moral sentiments, interchanged with ludicrous and serious, ribaldry and sublime, and sometimes enlivened with wit in a richer vein than even the immortal dramas of Shakespeare. In comedy, the critics of their own days, and those immediately succeeding, gave Beaumont and Fletcher the preference to Shakespeare; and although the slow award of time has at length justly decreed the superior excellence of the glorious father of our drama beyond all further appeal, yet these his illustrious followers ought not surely to be cast so far behind him, as to fall into contemptnous neglect, while the most careless works of Shakespeare are studiously brought forward. The Maid's Tragedy, King and No King, Love's Pilgrimage, Monsieur Thomas, &c. &c. &c. would hardly disgrace that stage which has exhibited The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Mr. Seward has employed great part of his preface in citing similar passages from Shakespeare and our authors; and though we do not entirely agree with him in the comparisons he has drawn, we cannot resist the temptation of adducing one instance, in our opinion, more to the advantage of our authors than any mentioned in that preface. It is the entire character of the boy HENGO, in the tragedy of Bonduca; a character which is, we think (taken altogether) better sustained, and more beautifully natural and pathetic, than the Prince Arthur of Shakespeare. The scene in King John between Arthur and Hubert, excellent as it is, almost passes the bounds of pity and terror, and becomes horrible; besides which, Shakespeare, to whom "a quibble," as Dr. Johnson says, "was the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it," has enervated the dialogue with many frigid conceits, which he has, with more than usual impropriety, put into the mouth of the innocent Arthur, while he is pleading most affectingly for mercy.

As for example:

"Will you put out mine eyes?

These eyes, that never did, nor never shall,
So much as frown on you?

Hub. I've sworn to do it;

And with hot irons must I burn them out.

Arth

And again:

"Go to! hold your tongue!

Arth. Hubert, the utterance of a brace of tongues
Must needs want pleading for a pair of eyes:
Let me not hold my tongue; let me not, Hubert!
Or, Hubert, if you will, cut out my tongue,

So I may keep mine eyes. Oh, spare mine eyes;
Tho' to no use, but still to look on you!

Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold,
And would not harm me.

Hub. I can heat it, boy.

Arth. No, in good sooth; the fire is dead with grief,
Being create for comfort, to be us'd

In undeserv'd extremes: see else yourself;

There is no malice in this burning coal;

The breath of Heaven hath blown its spirit out,
And strew'd repentant ashes on its head.

Hub. But with my breath I can revive it, boy.
Arth. And if you do, you will but make it blush,
And glow with shame of your proceedings, Hubert:
Nay, it, perchance, will sparkle in your eyes;
And, like a dog, that is compell'd to fight,
Snatch at his master that doth tarre him on.
All things, that you should use to do me wrong,
Deny their office: only you do lack

That mercy, which fierce fire and iron extend,
Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses.”

The reader, we imagine, will concur in our disapprobation of the passages printed in Italics. Between Caratach and Hengo we do not remember that a line occurs, affected or unnatural; and nothing can be more exquisitely tender than the several scenes between them. The whole play abounds with dramatic and poetic excellence.

Allowing, however, freely allowing, the general superiority of Shakespeare to Beaumont and Fletcher (and indeed to all other poets, Homer perhaps only excepted) yet we cannot so far degrade our authors, as to reduce the most excellent of their pieces to a level with the meanest effusions of Shakespeare; nor can we believe that there are not many of their long-neglected dramas that might not, with very inconsiderable variations, be accommodated to the taste of a modern audience. The public have been long habituated to the phraseology of Shakespeare, whose language, in the opinion of Dryden, is a little obsolete in comparison of that of our authors; and irregularities of fable have been not only pardoned, but defended. When the great English actor, of whom we have been speaking, first undertook the direction of the stage, his friend (the present Laureat) boldly told him,

VOL. I.

"A nation's taste depends on you."

The

The national taste, under his happy influence, acquired from day to day, from year to year, an increased relish for Shakespeare; and it is almost matter of amazement, as well as concern, that so little of his attention was directed to those dramatic writers, whose poetical character bore so great an affinity to the just object of his admiration. A deceased actor, of great merit, and still greater promise, very successfully opened his theatrical career by appearing in the tragedy of Philaster. At the same time, the same tragedy contributed not a little to the growing fame of one of our principal actresses. That play, the Two Noble Kinsmen, and some other pieces of Beaumont and Fletcher, besides those we have already enumerated, would undoubtedly become favourite entertainments of the stage, if the theatrical talents of the performers bore any kind of proportion to the dramatic abilities of the writers. Since the directors of our theatres in some sort hold the keys of the temple of dramatic fame, let them do honour to themselves by throwing open their doors to Beaumont and Fletcher! Seeing there are at present but small hopes of emulating the transcendent actor, who so long and so effectually impressed on our minds the excellence of Shakespeare, let them at least rescue their performers from an immediate comparison, so much to their disadvantage, by trying their force on the characters of our authors! The Two Noble Kinsmen indeed has been ascribed (falsely, as we think) to Shakespeare. "The Two Noble Kinsmen," says Pope, "if that play be his, as there goes a tradition it was, and indeed it has little resemblance of Fletcher, and more of our author, than some of those which have been received as genuine." Unhappy poets! whose very excellence is turned against them. Shakespeare's claim to any share in the Two Noble Kinsmen we have considered at the end of that piece, to which we refer the reader. In this place we shall only enter our protest against the authority of Pope, who appears to have felt himself mortified and ashamed, when he "discharged the dull duty of an editor." He surely must be allowed to discharge his duty with reluctance, and most probably with neglect, who speaks of it in such terms. In his preface indeed he has, with a most masterly hand, drawn the outline of the poetical character of Shakespeare; but in that very preface, by a strange perversion of taste, he proposes to throw out of the list of Shakespeare's plays The Winter's Tale, which he considers as spurious! On no better foundation, we think, has he asserted, that the play of the Two Noble Kinsmen has little resemblance of Fletcher. "There goes a tradition," that Garth did not write his own Di pensary; "there goes a tradition," that the admirable translator of Homer, like Shakespeare himself, had little Latin, and less Greek; but what candid critic would countenance such a tradition? And is such a vague, blind, playhouse tradition a sufficient warrant for one great poet to tear the laurel from the brows of another?

The modern editors of Shakespeare contemplate with admiration that indifference to future fame, which suffered him to behold with uncommon apathy some of his pieces incorrectly printed during his life, without attempting to rescue them from the hands of barbarous editors, or preparing for posterity a genuine collection of his works, supervised and corrected by himself. In our opinion, the dedication and preface of Heminge and Condell more than insinuate the intention of Shakespeare, had

he