BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, two celebrated English dramatic writers, who flourished in the reign of James I., and were so closely connected both as authors and as friends, that it has been judged not improper to give them under one article.

Francis Beaumont was descended from an ancient family at Grâce-Dieu, in Leicestershire, where he was born about the year 1585 or 1586, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. His grandfather, John Beaumont, was Master of the Rolls, and his father, Francis Beaumont, one of the judges of the Common Pleas. He was educated at Cambridge, and afterwards admitted of the Inner Temple. It does not, however, appear that he made any great proficiency in the law, that being a study probably too dry and unentertaining to be attended to by a man of his fertile and sprightly genius. Indeed we should scarcely be surprised to find that he had given no application to any study but poetry, nor attended on any court but that of the Muses: our attention might rather fix itself on the opposite extreme, and fill us with admiration of the extreme assiduity of his genius and rapidity of his pen, when we look back on the voluminousness of his works, and then inquire into the time allowed him for them; works, the execution of which might well have occupied a long life. For although, out of fifty-three plays which are collected together as the labours of these authors, Beaumont was concerned in much the greater part, yet he did not live to complete his thirtieth year; death summoning him away in the beginning of March 1616, on the ninth day of which he was interred, in the entrance of St Benedict’s Chapel, in Westminster Abbey. There is no inscription on his tomb; but there are two epitaphs to his memory, one by his elder brother Sir John Beaumont, and the other by Bishop Corbet. He left a daughter, Frances Beaumont, who died in Leicester shire some time after the year 1700. She had in her possession several poems of her father’s writing; but these were lost at sea in a voyage from Ireland, where she had lived for some time in the duke of Ormond’s family.

John Fletcher was not more meanly descended than his poetical associate; his father, the Rev. Dr Fletcher, having first been made bishop of Bristol by Queen Elizabeth, and afterwards by the same princess, in the year 1593, translated to the rich see of London. Our poet was born in 1576; and, like his friend, was educated at Cambridge, where he made great proficiency in his studies, and was accounted a very good scholar. A natural vivacity of wit, for which he was remarkable, soon rendered him a devotee of the Muses; and his close attention to their service, and fortunate connection with a genius equal to his own, soon raised him to one of the highest places in the temple of poetical fame. As he was born near ten years before Beaumont, so he also survived him by an equal period; the plague, which broke out in the year 1625, having carried him off in the forty-ninth year of his age.

During the joint lives of these two great poets, it appears that they wrote nothing separately, excepting one little piece each, which seemed of too trivial a nature for either to require assistance in, namely, The Faithful Shepherd, a pastoral, by Fletcher; and The Masque of Grays Inn Gentlemen, by Beaumont. Yet what share each had in the writing or designing of the pieces composed by them jointly, there is no possibility of determining. It is however generally allowed, that Fletcher’s peculiar talent was wit, and Beaumont’s, though much the younger man, judgment. Nay, so extraordinary was the latter property in Beaumont, that it is recorded of Ben Johnson, who seems moreover to have had a sufficient degree of self opinion of his own abilities, that he constantly, as long as this gentleman lived, submitted his own writings to his censure, and, as is thought, availed himself of his judgment at least in the correction, if not even in the contrivance of all his plots. It is probable, therefore, that forming the plots and contriving the conduct of the fable, as well as writing the more serious and pathetic parts, and lopping off the redundant branches of Fletcher’s wit, whose luxuriance, it is said, stood frequently in need of castigation, might in general be Beaumont’s portion in the work; whilst Fletcher—-whose conversation with the fashionable world, to which indeed both of them from their birth and station in life had been ever accustomed, added to the volatile and lively turn he possessed, rendered him perfectly master of dialogue and polite language—might execute the designs formed by the other, and raise the superstructure of those lively and spirited scenes of which Beaumont had only laid the foundation; and in this he was so successful, that although his wit and raillery were extremely keen and poignant, yet they were at the same time so perfectly genteel, that they used rather to please than disgust the very persons on whom they seemed to reflect. Yet that Fletcher was not entirely excluded from a share in the conduct of the drama, may be gathered from a story related by Winstanley, that our two bards having concerted the rough draught of a tragedy over a bottle of wine at a tavern, Fletcher said he would undertake to “kill the king ;” which words being caught by the waiter, who had not overheard the context of their conversation, he lodged an information of treason against them. But on their explanation that it only meant the compassing the death of a theatrical monarch, and they loyalty being moreover unquestioned, the affair ended in a jest.

On the whole, the works of these authors, par nobile fratrum, have undoubtedly great merit; and some of their dramas deservedly stand on the list of the stock pieces of [7:4:481]the theatre. The plots are ingenious, interesting, and well managed; the characters are strongly marked; and the dialogue is sprightly and natural; yet there is in the latter a coarseness which is not suitable to the politeness of the present age, and a fondness of repartee, which frequently runs into obscenity, and which we may suppose to have been the vice of the time, since even Shakspeare himself is not entirely free from it. But as these authors have more of that kind of wit than the “Swan of Avon,” it is not to be wondered if, in the licentious reign of Charles II., their works were preferred to his. Now, however, the tables are entirely turned; and while Skakspeare’s immortal works form our constant and daily study, those of Beaumont and Fletcher are only occasionally dipped into. Some of their plays were printed in quarto during the lives of the authors; and in the year 1645 there was published in folio a collection of such plays as had not been printed before, amounting to between thirty and forty. This collection was published by Mr Shirley, after the shutting up of the theatres, and dedicated to the earl of Pembroke by ten of the most famous actors. In 1679 there was an edition of all their plays published in folio; and another appeared in 1711 by Mr Tonson, in seven volumes 8vo. The last and best edition is that edited by Mr H. Weber, in 14 vols. 8vo.