E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Christine Aldridge,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
Transcriber's Note
Footnotes have been moved collectively to the chapter ends. Anchorsand footnotes have been renumbered sequentially and links provided.
In order to make this e-text viewable across the greatest variety ofbrowsers the following character substitutions have been used:
A broken bar character "¦" in place of the feminine caesura,which resembles a vertical ellipsis "...".
A subscripted caret is used for the stress syllable symbol,which resembles an subscripted upside-down capitol V.
Detailed notes about spelling variations, and other transcriber notesare located at the end of this e-text.
By permission of the Right Hon. Lord Sackville, G. C. M. G.
PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS BEAUMONT
From the original painting at Knole Park
Francis Beaumont: Dramatist
A Portrait
WITH SOME ACCOUNT
OF HIS CIRCLE, ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN,
AND OF HIS ASSOCIATION WITH
JOHN FLETCHER
LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
1914
Copyright, 1914, by
The Century Co.
Published, February, 1914
TO MY WIFE
PREFACE
In this period of resurgent dramatic creativity whenonce more the literature of the stage enthralls thepublic and commands the publisher, it is but naturalthat playwright, play-lover, and scholar alike shouldturn with renewed and enlightened interest to themodels afforded by our Elizabethan masters of the ageof gold, to the circumstances of their production andthe lives of their imperishable authors. Very close toShakespeare stood Beaumont and Fletcher; but, thoughduring the past three centuries books about Shakespearehave been as legion and studies of the "twinliterary heroes" have run into the hundreds, toFletcher as an individual but one book has been devoted,and to Beaumont but one.
A portrait of either Beaumont or Fletcher demandsindeed as its counterpart, painted by the same brushand with alternating strokes, a portrait of his literarypartner and friend. But in spirit and in favour thetwain are distinct. In this book I have tried to presentthe poetic and compelling personality of FrancisBeaumont not only as conjoined with, and distinguishedfrom, the personality of Fletcher, but as seenagainst the background of historic antecede