And through these thick woods have I run, Since the lusty spring began, His paramour, the Syrinx bright.-[Seeing Clorin. By that heavenly form of thine, Sweeter yet did never crown The head of Bacchus: nuts more brown Than the squirrel's teeth that crack them; For these, black-ey'd Dryope Hath oftentimes commanded me With my clasped knee to climb : See how well the lusty time Hath deck'd their rising cheeks in red, Such as on your lips is spread. Here be berries for a queen, Some be red, some be green : These are of that luscious meat The great god Pan himself doth eat. All these, and what the woods can yield, The hanging mountain or the field, I freely offer, and ere long Will bring you more-more sweet, more strong; Till when, humbly leave I take, Lest the great Pan do awake, That sleeping lies in a deep glade, Under a broad beech's shade. I must go, I must run Swifter than the fiery sun." The allegory of a rustic and untutored nature, awed by the beauty of holiness, is a direct copy of that perfect scene in Spenser's "Faerie Queene," of Una, the emblem of holiness, being surrounded by, and subduing the savage manners of the wild wood-gods. And the opening and the closing lines of the above speech were suggested by that one of the Fairy in the "Midsummer Night's Dream : "Over hill, over dale, Through brake, through briar, I do wander everywhere, Swifter than the moon's sphere." "The Faithful Shepherdess" was unsuccessful on the stage; and it is not to be wondered at; for the many-headed monster is not to be held spell-bound by the charm of lovely poetry alone; the common audience want incident, they want movement, and, above all, they want the real nature of heart-passion. The want of these was evidently the cause of its banishment from the theatre (it was often performed in private), and not, as Ben Jonson said, because it was not coarse and indecent enough to suit the prurient taste of the town, for the Court taste of the age was indecent enough. If this, however, were the true cause of its non-success, Fletcher made ample concession by the grossest suggestions in some of his after dramas. The fact of its condemnation drew from Beaumont an address to his friend, steeped in the wormwood of a noble scorn for the ignorant mob who flouted it. The plays of Beaumont and Fletcher are sprinkled over with songs and other lyrical compositions incident to dramatic writing. These little pieces, in themselves, would form a book of gems; and afford our composers a mine of wealth as verses for setting to music. Beaumont has the reputation of having written some of the most beautiful songs in the plays; such, for instance, as that honey-sweet song on "Love," in "Valentinian," beginning : Then there are those celebrated and fine lines in the play of "Nice Valour; or, The Passionate Madman," on "Melancholy," and which Milton imitated in his "Pensieroso," for the poem opens in the same manner, and almost in the same words : 'Hence, all you vain delights! As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly: Welcome folded arms and fixèd eyes, These are the sounds we feed upon. Then stretch our bones in a still, gloomy valley : Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely Melancholy." It would be impossible so to economise my space as to give even a brief abstract of the comic subjects dramatised by these fertile writers, and the reader would be ill-rewarded by my pains. Still less could I go into a detailed analysis of the structure of the several compositions. I will therefore select those only for especial reference and illustration that received contemporaneous popularity, ratified by the sanction of posterity. The first of these, and which I shall dismiss with a mere allusion, is entitled "The Mad Lover," a tragi-comedy, that was extravagantly praised in its day, and was a favourite during the revered era of the Second Charles's reign; the era when Shakespeare was neglected; or, when not neglected, altered, insulted, and made obscene by Dryden and others. I have read "The Mad Lover" with attention, and am wholly at a loss to discover the cause of its popularity. The principal character, Memnon, is visited with an assortment of demonstrations of mania: during one period he is mad for love; during another for music; and during another for brute violence, and which he exercises with amazing vivacity upon the bodies of his retainers and servants. He has a brother, Polydore, beloved by the Princess Calis; and both are in love with the same lady. She consults the oracle respecting her destiny, and is informed that she shall wed a dead lover. In the last act, Polydore, with Platonic VOL. VII., N.S. 1871. D generosity, orders himself to be brought into the presence on a bier, in order that he may induce his mistress to bestow her hand upon his brother, Memnon, who, by the way, at this convenient juncture, has perfectly recovered his reason. A scene of bewailment, of course, ensues; and Memnon, in a spasm of despair, is about to destroy himself, when Polydore leaps up and stays his hand. Thus the Princess fulfils the command of the oracle: she marries her dead lover, and Memnon magnanimously goes to the wars. These Platonic displays were fashionable (in dramatic poetry) in the days of Beaumont and Fletcher; and in themselves, indeed, they sufficiently indicate the artificial-nay, they indicate the meretricious -manners and morals of the age, as distinguished from the holy divulging of an honest and bounteous outpouring of the heart's pure affection. But I leave the reader to conceive what excellence of language could sustain such a plot as "The Mad Lover" in these our, so-called, degenerate days of the drama. I do not find that the principal characters are greatly supported. There is no dignity, no pathos, no sentiment in Memnon's madness; indeed, he is always artificial, and sometimes even farcical. But to add to the extravagance of the plot, there is another "mad lover," Siphax (also in love with the Princess), who is a shadow to Memnon. The absurdity of these two geniuses is amazing! Among the inferior characters, there is a merry old soldier, Chilax-humorously and coarsely sustained; but he, and the fool, and the page are totally unquotable; while the priestess of the temple, one would suppose, must have been an object of disgust, even in the age when the play was produced. Every age has its folly-mania; and it is evident that in Fletcher's days there must have been a rage for going fantastically mad for love-an assumed compliment to the "cruel fair." Now the homage is more innocently confined to the assiduous cultivation of the heart-vanquishing beard; and so our lovers look like distracted hearth-brooms. As Touchstone says:-"As all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly." In the "Nice Valour; or, Passionate Madman," we have another gentleman in the same state of love-ecstacy. But the play now named contains some choice writing, with humorous and original characters. The main incidents of the plot are a professed and direct satire upon the preposterous laws of that age that regulated the conduct of the duellists. Men pinked each other by the card; and honour was converted into a diagram, with all its lines of tangents and angles, obtuse and acute; the "Elements of Euclid not more clearly defined and precise. In the present day, however—nearly two centuries from this nonsensical age-the coxcombs in Germany, among the students, can scarcely be surpassed in the folly of their duel-code. The character of Chamont, whose extravagant notions of honour give the first title to the play ("Nice Valour "), is of a fine sterling quality, and it is drawn with spirit and vigour; and though in our days he has the air of being a pure emanation of the poet's fancy, yet I believe there is little doubt of his having been a faithful portrait of many a cavalier in the reign of James I. In staring contrast to Chamont is the most original and curious person in the company, Monsieur Lapet, a picture of a coward, such as certainly never existed, but which, notwithstanding, has never been surpassed for unlimited caricature. Shakespeare's and Ben Jonson's cowards— the Parolles, the Pistols, and the Bobadils-are matter-of-fact, prose versions compared with the sublimated poltroonery of Monsieur Lapet; he is a bigot, a fanatic in cowardice-it is his religion. Like Mawworm, in "The Hypocrite," he "likes to be parsecuted." He is recondite in thwacks, and has calculated the gauge and dimension of a kick. As Butler, in "Hudibras," wittily says: "Some kick'd, till they know whether The shoe be Spanish or neat's leather," so Monsieur Lapet thinks the social system is out of joint when he is not being thrashed; and that the government of the world is tottering when his ribs are whole. Tweaks of the nose, and lugs of the ear, are essential to the harmony of the spheres. Fletcher has, in almost every play, had the wisdom to ridicule the foolery of the gallants of his age, with their laws of the duello; not more absurd, by the way, than a society of modern time, who passed a resolution that any man refusing a challenge was incompetent to become a member; and any member fighting a duel should be expelled! Legislation worthy of the cause. Fletcher, to crown his satire upon these laws of honour, has made even Lapet write a book upon the punctilios of duelling. There is a curiously quaint soliloquy of his upon this subject, afterwards interrupted by the entrance of the brave Chamont, who, in consequence of his having received a blow from his Prince, unrevenged, comes to claim kindred with the coward. Lapet says: I have been ruminating with myself |