and irregularity, the form being hetero geneous not homogeneous. Although in their numerous dramas there are great diversities of merit as regards their artistical form, in none is the form organic; all are mechanical contrivances, some times dovetailed with considerable skill, sometimes loosely thrown together, with out even displaying much mechanical ingenuity. They built rather than created, and the bulk of their product increased by accumulation and accretion, not by growth. They had not sufficient force of imagination to fuse their materials into one harmonious whole. They were not men of comprehensive souls, and neither over the heart nor the brain was their sway of much potency. Though, perhaps, as poets they may rank next to Shakspeare in occasional romantic sweetness of fancy and sentiment, they do not approach him so nearly as many others of the old dramatists, in grandeur of imagination, in sustained delineation of character, and in what has been called the very essence of the drama-impassioned action. They have not the rapidity nor fiery strength of Marlowe; the depth and strangeness of Webster; the vital humanity and clear singing sweetness of Decker; the solid, determined purpose, the artistical propriety, and quick-footed fancy of Jonson; nor those deep glimpses into the inmost recesses of the moral nature, and that terrible directness of expression, which awe and thrill us amidst the buffoonery and bombast of many inferior dramatists of the time. They were rather men with genius than men of genius; and in spite of the fullness and richness with which some of their faculties were developed, the splendor and force of many of their individual scenes, and the felicity with which they depicted some forms of life and a few types of character, they not only lack that wide range of characterization, that power of combination within the limits of the possible and real, and that capacity to grasp a subject as a whole, which mark great poets, but their absence of seriousness and depth places them in fact beneath those who, without being great poets, have occasionally done great things in poetry.

The unconquerable levity of Beaumont and Fletcher, their mercurial spirit, and their ambition of mere effect, sent them lightly skimming over the surfaces of character and passion, without producing any great delineations of either. They

have all the faults and imperfections of men, whose waste fertility of intellect is disproportioned to their weight of thought and sanity of feeling. There was a certain lightness and weakness in the very foundation of their minds. They have little specific gravity, little concentrativeness, little hold upon their materials. The consequence is, that they often seek to make rhetoric perform the office of inspiration and insight, and give us fine writing for natural sentiment, bombast and extravagance for tragic passion. They toil and sweat in expression, when they strive to handle some great subject, and heap words and images upon it, instead of sending it forth from their hearts in one direct gush of fire-tipped language. A comparison of their style with Shakspeare's, whose language is ever penetrated and condensed by imagination, will show its relative weakness and diffuseness. Though their plays are full of variety, bustle, motion, they are deficient in progressive action. The wheels of their chariot rapidly revolve, but the chariot itself moves forward but slowly. They sometimes bring their plot to the fifth act without having really developed it, and end abruptly, sacrificing the keeping of character and the truth of sentiment merely to close the matter. In many of their most furious scenes of passion, they are not so much divinely mad as giddy and light-headed. In tragedy their aim seems to have been to startle and amaze, by representing the monstrous aspects of human guilt and suffering-to make their representation melo-dramatic rather than dramatic. Occasionally they raise spirits whose portentous freaks they are unable to control, and are whirled away with them to "blast and ruin." They overdo almost everything they attempt. Their comic vein is almost without humor, and either falls into the extravagant merriment of farce and caricature, or trusts for effect, not so much in humorous situation and character, as in involving the dramatis persone in a labyrinth of drolleries. Neither in comedy nor tragedy did they strike deep enough in the beginning to produce great delineations. Continually mistaking the secondary for the primitive aspects of character, and satisfied with the appearances on the surface, they rarely wrote from, or pierced to, the heart of things. And, especially, they never give the impression of possessing power in reserve. They strain to the

utmost what they possess. Nothing strikes the reader of Shakspeare more forcibly than his inexhaustibleness. Great as his plays are, we do not conceive them as being complete expressions of the full might and extent of his mind.

We have referred to the faults and radical defects of Beaumont and Fletcher, with no intention of depreciating their merits, but simply to state the limitations of their genius, and file a general bill of exceptions against their claim to be considered great dramatists. We can give our readers, perhaps, a better notion of their powers and processes, by a consideration of a few of their best dramas, than by the most systematic enumeration of qualities and statement of qualifications. We propose referring to some of the most striking characteristics of our authors, viz. their female creations, their romantic sweetness, tenderness and pathos, their conception and embodiment of the heroic element in character, and their comic spirit. In regard to their delineation of character it may be said generally, that they reverse the process of genius, generalizing particular nature instead of individualizing general nature, The general moulds thus obtained serve them through the fifty-two plays in their collection. Their range is exceedingly circumscribed, a few types reappearing in almost every successive play, slightly varied to accommodate them to varying circumstances, and not individualized with sufficient force to bear always the stamp of consistency and keeping. It is to these types of character, as indicating the spirit and extent of their genius, rather than to the characters themselves, that we shall direct our attention.

The most celebrated plays of Beaumont and Fletcher are "The Maid's Tragedy," "King and no King," and Philaster;" the best of those written by Fletcher alone, are "Thierry and Theodoret," "The False One," "The Double Marriage," "The Elder Brother," "The Faithful Shepherdess," Valentinian," "The Mad Lover," "The Loyal Subject," "The Custom of the Country," "The Spanish Curate," "Rule a Wife and have a Wife," "The Chances," and "Monsieur Thomas." "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" is probably one of the joint plays. In "The Two Noble Kinsmen " Fletcher is supposed to have been assisted by Shakspeare, and in "The Bloody Brother" by some of his contemporaries unknown. We do not find in the plays

written by Fletcher after Beaumont's death, any new characters or any essential change of sentiment and purpose. There is more art, more polish, more elaboration, in those in which Beaumont participated, but not more vigor and richness. In all there is a vast amount of what Mr. Emerson calls " slag and refuse "-without poetry, decency, or even import. The corruption of the text of their plays by bad printers printing from bad stage copies, doubtless makes them responsible for much nonsense and indecency not their own. The peculiarity of their versification, on which Mr. Darley expends much just and forcible criticism, consists in the frequent use of double, triple, quadruple, and even quintuple endings to the lines, and of making the supernumerary syllable or syllables, long and emphatic; and, in the modulation of their verse, of throwing the pauses upon uneven syllables instead of even. This often gives to their verse "a certain openness, and abandon, and ever-varying elasticity," and in passages of declamation, the supernumerary emphatic syllable frequently makes more vividly obvious the heat and vehemence of the speaker, as in the farewell of Archas to war:

but it often produces discord and feebleness in the metre, and tempts to carelessness of composition by the opportunities it affords to that fatal facility of language which is the grave of true expression. Mr. Darley remarks, with regard to Fletcher's diction, that "he seems often to throw his words at thoughts in the hope of hitting them off by hazard, but he misses them altogether. His lightheaded shafts fall short of their mark. When they do touch, however, it is with the irradiating effect, if not the force, of thunderbolts; this has an inexpressible charm."

We shall only have space in this number to allude to Beaumont and Fletcher's female delineations, and quote a few of the lyrical compositions scattered over their plays. In our next we shall take up their more ambitious style of poetry, in the representation of heroic character, and also refer to their peculiarities as comic dramatists.

*

Beaumont and Fletcher are generally conceded to have delineated women better than men. Mr. Darley notices that almost every one of their fifty-two dramas is founded on love, aud contrasts them with Shakspeare in this respect, only one-third of whose dramas can be called decided love-plays. "Love," he adds, "with these writers, too often degenerates, as it always will when the sole pleasure and employ, into sensuality. Our two dramatists, and love-mongers by profession, do anything rather than exalt woman by their obsequiousness. When the tender passion' becomes hacknied, it loses its real tenderness; when made too common a subject it declines into somewhat worse than common place, maudlin namby-pamby. Woman is pawed rather than caressed by Etherege, Wycherley and Vanbrugh'; set up rather as a butt for compliments by Congreve, Dryden, &c., than a shrine for deep-murmured vows, prayers and praises. If love-making prevail as an indispensable rule, it soon degenerates into an artificial accomplishment-all that is not factitious about it is sensuality. Woman throughout Fletcher's comedies is treated too much as a fair animal, or little more. * Love is represented as a nobler passion, and by consequence a deeper one, in the tragedies, especially of Beaumont's co-fathership. Our authors have not developed it with as much native purity and wholesome intensity as Shakspeare has done; but they bestowed a grace upon it, a soft forlornness, or martyr-like or Magdalene air of pathos." This last sentence applies particularly to one class of Beaumont and Fletcher's women-the only one in which they can claim much pure and bright imagination-the class to which Bellario in "Philaster, " and Viola in "The Coxcomb," belong. This type, suggested perhaps by Shakspeare's Viola, but not copied from it, appears in its greatest purity in the joint plays. Perhaps its excellence is conceived more vividly by the reader, from its contrast with the surrounding grossness. Bellario and Viola have, what might be called, the ideality of fancy. Euphrasia, in "Philaster," falls in love with the prince, and follows him as a page. Her affection has in it nothing sensual-it is pure, artless, self-denying and reverential, the natural piety of the feelings. She wishes simply to be near him; and the peculiar sentiment she experiences, in all its

men's eyes,

For other than I seem'd that I might ever Abide with you: Then sat I by the fount, Where first you took me up.

The ingrained impurity of Beaumont and Fletcher is strikingly manifested in this play. The foul Megra appears here, as Cloe does in "The Faithful Shepherdess," to debase it. In every one of their productions there is generally introduced some woman, without virtue and without shame, who contrives by her grossness of act and speech to convey the worst libels on her sex. Many of their female representations, even of the better class, are illustrations of one of their own maxims-" will, and that great god of woman, appetite." Like the magician in the "The Humorous Lieutenant," they seem continually to address the foul spirits of passion:

"Rise from the shades below All you that prove

The helps of looser love." Martia, Zanthia, and especially Bacha Evadne, Megra, Hippolyta, Lelia, and Brunhalt, are results of this inspiration. The worshipful company of ladies' maids, have great reason to be shocked with Beaumont and Fletcher's treatment of them. Every virtuous lady in their plays is generally attended by some servant, whose lungs are an inexhaustible mine of vulgarities. Mr. Darley thinks that they have seized upon one deep truth of nature, in making their women much better or much worse than their men. The passion of love, however, as it appears in their male characters, is generally detestable, and we hope for the honor of human nature, as untrue as it is detestable. To use a phrase of old Dr. South's, it is but a little more cleanly name for lust. Arbaces, in "King and No King," is an instance. We waive the consideration that he believes Panthea to be his sister. Their heroines have little variety. Celia in the “Humorous Lieutenant," is brilliant, arch and virtuous; Olympia in "The Loyal Subject," and Lucina in "Valentinian," are savagely virtuous, but not very modest in its expression; Oriana and Lucinda in "The Knight of Malta," Aminta in "The Faithful Shepherdess," Ordella in

Thierry and Theodoret," and Dorigen in "The Triumph of Honor" are, perhaps, after Bellario and Viola, their best representations of pure and virtuous passion. In none, as it seems to us, do they approach Shakspeare's female creations. Cleopatra, in "The False One,” is drawn with much freedom and brilliancy, though, compared with Shakspeare's, she must be deemed a failure. The nearest approach made to the great master of character, is in her vexation at Cæsar's transient neglect of her, at a moment when the devil avarice had supplanted the devil lust:

"I will go study mischief, And put a look on armed with all my cun nings,

Shall meet him like a basilisk and strike him!

Love, put destroying flames into my eyes, Into my smiles deceits, that I may torture him,

That I may make him love to death, and laugh at him."

Aspatia, in the "The Maid's Tragedy," is a sweet and pathetic though somewhat

the sun

Comes but to kiss the fruit in wealthy autumn,

When all falls blasted. If you needs must love,

(Forced by ill fate) take to your maiden bosoms

Two dead-cold aspicks, and of them make lovers :

They cannot flatter, nor forswear; one kiss

Makes a long peace for all. But man, Oh, that beast man! Come, let's be sad, my girls!

That down-cast eye of thine, Olympias, Shows a fine sorrow. Mark Antiphila, Just such another was the nymph Enone, When Paris brought home Helen. Now, a tear ;

And then thou art a piece expressing fully The Carthage queen, when, from a cold sea-rock,

Full with her sorrow, she tied fast her eyes

To the fair Trojan ships; and, having lost them,

Just as thine eyes do, down stole a tear. Antiphila,

What would this wench do, if she were Aspatia?

Here she would stand, till some more pitying god

Turn'd her to marble! 'Tis enough, my wench!

Show me the piece of needlework you wrought.

ANT. Of Ariadne, madam?
ASP. Yes, that piece.-

This should be Theseus; he has a cozening face:

You meant him for a man?
ANT. He was so, madam.

ASP. Why, then, 'tis well enough.
Never look back:

You have a full wind, and a false heart, Theseus!

Does not the story say, his keel was split, Or his masts spent, or some kind rock or other

Met with his vessel ?

ANT. Not as I remember.

ASP. It should have been so. Could the gods know this,

And not, of all their number, raise a storm?

But they are all as ill! This false smile Was well express'd; just such another caught me !

You shall not go [on] so, Antiphila:
In this place work a quicksand,
And over it a shallow smiling water,
And his ship ploughing it; and then a
Fear;

Do that fear to the life, wench.

ANT. 'Twill wrong the story.

ASP. "Twill make the story, wrong'd by

wanton poets,

Live long, and be believed. But where's the lady?

ANT. There, madam.

ASP. Fie! you have miss'd it here, Antiphila;

You are much mistaken, wench:
These colors are not dull and pale enough
To shew a soul so full of misery
As this sad lady's was. Do it by me;
Do it again, by me, the lost Aspatia,
And you shall find all true but the wild
island.

Suppose I stand upon the sea-beach now,
Mine arms thus, and mine hair blown with

the wind,

Wild as that desert; and let all about me Be teachers of my story. Do my face (If thou hadst ever feeling of a sorrow) Thus, thus, Antiphila: Strive to make me look

Like Sorrow's monument! And the trees about me,

Let them be dry and leafless; let the rocks

Groan with continual surges; and, behind

me,