Francis Beaumont - Beaumont's Plays

Beaumont's Plays

It was once written of Beaumont and Fletcher that "in their joint plays their talents are so...completely merged into one, that the hand of Beaumont cannot clearly be distinguished from that of Fletcher." Yet this romantic notion did not stand up to critical examination.

In the seventeenth century, Sir Aston Cockayne, a friend of Fletcher's, specified that there were many plays in the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher folio that contained nothing of Beaumont's work, but rather featured the writing of Philip Massinger. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics like E. H. C. Oliphant subjected the plays to a self-consciously literary, and often subjective and impressionistic, reading — but nonetheless began to differentiate the hands of the collaborators. This study was carried much farther, and onto a more objective footing, by twentieth-century scholars, especially Cyrus Hoy. Short of absolute certainty, a critical consensus has evolved on many plays in the canon of Fletcher and his collaborators; in regard to Beaumont, the schema below is among the least controversial that has been drawn.

By Beaumont alone:

• The Knight of the Burning Pestle, comedy (performed 1607; printed 1613)
• The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, masque (performed 20 February 1613; printed 1613?)

With Fletcher:

• The Woman Hater, comedy (1606; 1607)
• Cupid's Revenge, tragedy (c. 1607–12; 1615)
• Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding, tragicomedy (c. 1609; 1620)
• The Maid's Tragedy, tragedy (c. 1609; 1619)
• A King and No King, tragicomedy (1611; 1619)
• The Captain, comedy (c. 1609–12; 1647)
• The Scornful Lady, comedy (ca. 1613; 1616)
• Love's Pilgrimage, tragicomedy (c. 1615–16; 1647)
• The Noble Gentleman, comedy (licensed 3 February 1626; 1647)

Beaumont/Fletcher plays, later revised by Massinger:

• Thierry and Theodoret, tragedy (c. 1607?; 1621)
• The Coxcomb, comedy (c. 1608–10; 1647)
• Beggars' Bush, comedy (c. 1612–13?; revised 1622?; 1647)
• Love's Cure, comedy (c. 1612–13?; revised 1625?; 1647)

Because of Fletcher's highly distinctive and personal pattern of linguistic preferences and contractional forms (ye for you, 'em for them, etc.), his hand can be distinguished fairly easily from Beaumont's in their collaborations. In A King and No King, for example, Beaumont wrote all of Acts I, II, and III, plus scenes IV.iv and V.ii and iv; Fletcher wrote only the first three scenes in Act IV (IV,i-iii) and the first and third scenes in Act V (V,i and iii) — so that the play is more Beaumont's than Fletcher's. The same is true of The Woman Hater, The Maid's Tragedy, The Noble Gentleman, and Philaster. On the other hand, Cupid's Revenge, The Coxcomb, The Scornful Lady, Beggar's Bush, and The Captain are more Fletcher's than Beaumont's. In Love's Cure and Thierry and Theodoret, the influence of Massinger's revision complicates matters; but in those plays too, Fletcher appears to be the majority contributor, Beaumont the minority.