Common Pleas. Fletcher (1579-1625) was educated at Cambridge, but does not seem to have graduated. The Woman Hater, formerly attributed to Fletcher,—now generally, on internal evidence alone, to Beaumont,—was published in 1607, and the two friends began to collaborate about this date. Philaster (1620) is probably their first joint work. Beaumont had been at Oxford, but only for a short time, being entered a member of the Middle Temple in November 1600. He began as a poet, composing an Ovidian story, Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (1602), and he wrote other poems in an extravagantly conceited style. He died in 1616, so that his friend and partner outlived him by nine years. After Beaumont's death, indeed, Fletcher collaborated with other dramatists, especially, it would seem, with Massinger.
The exact manner in which the two dramatists worked together is not discoverable, nor has the work Tone of their
plays. devoted to the problem recently altered the traditional view, which regarded Beaumont as the more careful and correct artist, Fletcher as the more inventive and genial temperament.[1] Differences
- ↑ I have no intention of belittling the interest of the researches of Mr Fleay (On Metrical Tests as applied to Dramatic Poetry, Part II., Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger, in Transactions of the Shakespeare Society, 1874), or of Mr R. Boyle (Englische Studien, vols. v. to x., 1882-7). In a fuller history it would be necessary to discuss their conclusions. My position is simply Dr Ward's (who accepts many of their findings), that no important distinction of ethos between the two has been revealed. Though, of course, it is of importance to know that it is to Fletcher is chiefly due the licentious use of extra-metrical syllables at the close of the line, which did so much to reduce verse to the level of rhythmical prose. The view that "Beaumont's judgment checked what Fletcher writ" deserves the respect due to an early tradition.
