Melancholy--from 'Nice Valour.' Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly! Welcome, folded arms, and fixed eyes, A look that's fastened to the ground, Fountain heads, and pathless groves, Are warmly housed, save bats and owls! Then stretch your bones in a still gloomy valley : Nothing's so dainty-sweet as lovely melancholy. There are obvious resemblances between this lyric and Milton's Penseroso, which may have owed some suggestions to Fletcher. Song-from 'The False One.' Look out, bright eyes, and bless the air: That breaks out clearer still and higher. And soft Love a prisoner bound, Yet the beauty of your mind Neither check nor chain hath found. Look out nobly, then, and dare Even the fetters that you wear. The Power of Love-from 'Valentinian.' What the mighty Love has done; To deceive the hopes of man, Hear ye, ladies that are coy, What the mighty Love can do ; Fear the fierceness of the boy; The chaste moon he makes to woo; Vesta, kindling holy fires, Circled round about with spies, Ilion, in a short hour, higher To Sleep-from the Same. Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes, In gentle showers; give nothing that is loud Or painful to his slumbers; easy, light, Song to Pan. All ye woods, and trees, and bowers, In the pleasant springs or brakes, To our sound, Whilst we greet All this ground, With his honour and his name He is great and he is just, Whilst we sing, Ever holy, Ever holy, Ever honoured, ever young! Thus great Pan is ever sung. From The Bloody Brother.' Take, O take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn ; And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn; But my kisses bring again, Seals of love, though sealed in vain. Hide, O hide those hills of snow, Which thy frozen bosom bears, Are yet of those that April wears; A Drinking-Song-from the Same. Drink to-day and drown all sorrow, You shall perhaps not do it to-morrow, But while you have it use your breath ; There is no drinking after death. Wine works the heart up, wakes the wit, There is no cure 'gainst age but it; It helps the headache, cough, and tisic, And is for all diseases physic. Then let us swill, boys, for our health, Who drinks well loves the commonwealth; And he that will to bed go sober Falls with the leaf still in October. Echoes of the last are found in many later drinking-songs'Down among the Dead Men,' for example, and Landlord, fill the Flowing Bowl.' Tisic is a form from phthisis, consumption. He Francis Beaumont wrote also a number of miscellaneous pieces, collected and published after his death. But some of the poems attributed to him were by Donne, Jonson, Shirley, Carew, Waller, or other less-known writers. Beaumont's love-poem on the Ovidian story of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus was written when he was seventeen. wrote verses to Jonson Upon his Fox,' 'Upon the Silent Woman,' and 'Upon his Catiline;' but his most celebrated non-dramatic work is the letter to Ben Jonson, which was originally published at the end of the play Nice Valour in the 1647 folio, with the following title: 'Mr Francis Beaumont's Letter to Ben Jonson, written before he and Master Fletcher came to London, with two of the precedent Comedies then not finished, which deferred their merry-meetings at the Mermaid.' From the Letter to Ben Jonson. The sun (which doth the greatest comfort bring Than beer, good only for the sonnet's strain, Lie where he will, and make him write worse yet; It is a potion sent us down to drink By special Providence, keeps us from fights, Makes us not laugh when we make legs to knights. bows 'Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states. A medicine to obey our magistrates: For we do live more free than you; no hate, No envy at one another's happy state Moves us; we are all equal every whit : Of land that God gives men here is their wit, And gravest men will with their main house-jest Methinks the little wit I had is lost Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, Of his dull life; then when there hath been thrown For three days past; wit that might warrant be Till that were cancelled; and when that was gone, We left an air behind us, which alone Was able to make the two next companies Right witty-though but downright fools, more wise. Matthew Sutcliffe (1550?-1629), Dean of Exeter and long a court favourite, wrote over a score of books in controversial theology; and Robert Wisdom, who died Archdeacon of Ely in 1568, contributed one psalm-translation to Sternhold and Hopkins's version, and wrote a few other hymns and elegiac verses, but was neither revered for his wisdom nor praised for his poetry. Of land, &c., there men's wit depends on their estates. Main house-jest, standing family joke, handed down from father to son. 'My rest is up,' at tennis, bowls, and various games of cards and chance, was a phrase used to mean, My stake is laid: I take the chance.' On the Tombs in Westminster. Mortality, behold and fear; What a change of flesh is here! Think how many royal bones Sleep within this heap of stones! Here they lie had realms and lands, Who now want strength to stir their hands, Since the first man died for sin. Here the bones of birth have cried, 'Though gods they were, as men they died.' Here are wands, ignoble things, Dropt from the ruined sides of kings. Here's a world of pomp and state Buried in dust, once dead by fate. The following poem, credited to Beaumont, and not unlike his other work, was rejected by Dyce as being by a later hand : An Epitaph. Here she lies whose spotless fame An epitaph to all that died, From lawless fire remained as free As now from heat her ashes be. Keep well this pawn, thou marble chest ; Till it be called for, let it rest; For while this jewel here is set, The best edition of Beaumont and Fletcher is that of Dyce (11 vols. 1843-46), which superseded its chief predecessor, that of Weber (1812). Ten of the principal plays are given in the two volumes edited by Mr St Loe Strachey (Mermaid Series,' 1887). See A. W. Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature (2 vols. 1875); Fleay's Shakespeare Manual; G. C. Macaulay's Francis Beaumont, a Critical Study (1883); G. Rhys's edition of the Lyric Poems of the two poets (1897); and the bibliography by A. C. Potter in Harvard Bibliographical Contributions (1891). William Rowley (c.1585-c.1642), actor and playwright, is known as having collaborated with Middleton, Dekker, Heywood, Webster, Massinger, and Ford. He seems to have been indifferent to dramatic fame: of the score of plays in which he had some share we know not what his share was. A New Wonder, a Woman Never Vext; All's Lost by Lust; A Match at Midnight; A Shoomaker a Gentleman—all written between 1632 and 1638—are the only plays which bear his name as sole author, but they are partly adaptations of older plays. His versification was harsh; but his fellow-dramatists valued his vigour and versatility both in tragedy and comedy. He rarely attained to pathos; his fund of humour was conspicuous-humour sometimes rich and true, sometimes passing into mere buffoonery. His name used to be specially associated with The Witch of Edmonton, published as 'a tragicomedy by divers well esteemed poets, William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, John Ford, etc.' probably Dekker had the main share in it, the farcical element being Rowley's. The Birth of Merlin, on whose titie-page (1662) Shakespeare's name was unfortunately associated with Rowley's, is probably an old play remodelled, with an expansion of the comic element, by Rowley and others. In The Old Law, by Massinger, Middleton, and Rowley, Mr Bullen regards Act III. sc. i. as a characteristic specimen of Rowley's humour. This dread law, much as in Anthony Trollope's Fixed Period, was 'that every man living to fourscore years, and women to threescore, shall then be cut off as fruitless to the republic;' and Gnotho, anxious to be rid of his wife and marry a new one, bribes the parish clerk to falsify a date in the register in order to hasten the happy despatch: Gnotho. You have searched o'er the parish-chronicle, sir? But Clerk. Yes, sir; I have found out the true age and date of the party you wot on. Gnoth. Pray you, be covered, sir. Clerk. When you have shewed me the way, sir. Gnoth. O sir, remember yourself, you are a clerk. Gnoth. Likely to be the wiser man, sir; for your greatest clerks are not always so, as 'tis reported. Clerk. You are a great man in the parish, sir. Gnoth. I understand myself so much the better, sir; for all the best in the parish pay duties to the clerk, and I would owe you none, sir. Clerk. Since you'll have it so, I'll be the first to hide my head. Gnoth. Mine is a capcase: now to our business in You may say ipse dixit upon this witness, Gnoth. Pray you, let's hear what it speaks. Clerk. Mark, sir.-Agatha, the daughter of Pollux, (this is your wife's name, and the name of her father,) bornGnoth. Whose daughter, say you? Clerk. The daughter of Pollux. Gnoth. I take it his name was Bollux. Clerk. Pollux the orthography I assure you, sir; the word is corrupted else. By this Gnoth. Well, on, sir,-of Pollux; now come on, Castor. Clerk. Born in an. 1540, and now 'tis 99. infallible record, sir, (let me see,) she is now just fiftynine, and wants but one. Gnoth. I am sorry she wants so much. Clerk. Why, sir? alas, 'tis nothing; 'tis but so many months, so many weeks, so many Gnoth. Do not deduct it to days, 'twill be the more tedious; and to measure it by hour-glasses were intolerable Clerk. Do not think on it, sir; half the time gres away in sleep, 'tis half the year in nights. Gnoth. O, you mistake me, neighbour, I am loath to leave the good old woman; if she were gone now it would not grieve me; for what is a year, alas, but a lingering torment? and were it not better she were o of her pain? 'T must needs be a grief to us both. Clerk. I would I knew how to ease you, neighbour! Gnoth. You speak kindly, truly, and if you say but Amen to it, (which is a word that I know you are perfect in,) it might be done. Clerks are the most indifferent honest men,-for to the marriage of your enemy, or the burial of your friend, the curses or the blessings to you are all one; you say Amen to all. Clerk. With a better will to the one than the other, neighbour: but I shall be glad to say Amen to any thing might do you a pleasure. Gnoth. There is, first, something above your duty: [Gives him money] now I would have you set forward the clock a little, to help the old woman out of her pain. Clerk. I will speak to the sexton; but the day will go ne'er the faster for that. Gnoth. O, neighbour, you do not conceit me; not the jack of the clock-house; the hand of the dial, I mean -Come, I know you, being a great clerk, cannot choose but have the art to cast a figure. Clerk. Never, indeed, neighbour; I never had the judgment to cast a figure. Gnoth. I'll shew you on the back side of your book, look you,-what figure's this? Clerk. Four with a cipher, that's forty. Gnoth. So! forty; what's this now? Clerk. The cipher is turned into 9 by adding the tail. which makes forty-nine. Gnoth. Very well understood; what is 't now? Gnoth. A wager of that! let me see the place of my wife's age again. Clerk. Look you, sir, 'tis here, 1540. Gnoth. Forty drachmas you do not turn that forty into thirty-nine! Clerk. A match with you! Gnoth. Done! and you shall keep stakes yourself: there they are. Clerk. A firm match-but stay, sir, now I consider it, I shall add a year to your wife's age; let me seeScirophorion the 17,-and now 'tis Hecatombaion the II. If I alter this, your wife will have but a month to live by the law. Gnoth. That's all one, sir; either do it, or pay me my wager. Clerk. Will you lose your wife before you lose your wager? Gnoth. A man may get two wives before half so much money by 'em; will you do 't? Clerk. I hope you will conceal me, for 'tis flat corruption. Gnoth. Nay, sir, I would have you keep counsel; for I lose my money by 't, and should be laughed at for my labour, if it should be known. Clerk. Well, sir, there!-'tis done; as perfect a 39 as can be found in black and white: but mum, sir,— there's danger in this figure-casting. Gnoth. Ay, sir, I know that: better men than you have been thrown over the bar for as little; the best is, you can be but thrown out of the belfry. Enter the Cook, TAILOR, BAILIFF, and BUTler. Clerk. Lock close, here comes company; asses have ears as well as pitchers. Cook. O Gnotho, how is 't? here's a trick of discarded cards of us! we were ranked with coats, as long as our old master lived. Groth. And is this then the end of serving-men? Cook. Yes, 'faith, this is the end of serving men a wise man were better serve one God than all the men in the world. Gnoth. 'Twas well spoke of a cook. And are all fallen into fasting-days and Ember-weeks, that cooks are out of use? Tailor. And all tailors will be cut into lists and shreds; if this world hold, we shall grow both out of request. Butler. And why not butlers as well as tailors? if they can go naked, let 'em neither eat nor drink. Clerk. That's strange, methinks, a lord should turn away his tailor, of all men :—and how dost thou, tailor? Tail. I do so so; but, indeed, all our wants are long of this publican, my lord's bailiff; for had he been rentgatherer still, our places had held together still, that are now seam-rent, nay cracked in the whole piece. Bailiff. Sir, if my lord had not sold his lands that claim his rents, I should still have been the rent-gatherer. Cook. The truth is, except the coachman and the footman, all serving-men are out of request. Gnoth. Nay, say not so, for you were never in more request than now, for requesting is but a kind of a begging; for when you say, I beseech your worship's charity, 'tis all one as if you say, I request it; and in that kind of requesting, I am sure serving-men were never in more request. Cook. Troth, he says true: well, let that pass, we are upon a better adventure. I see, Gnotho, you have been before us; we came to deal with this merchant for some commodities. Clerk. With me, sir? any thing that I can. But. Nay, we have looked out our wives already: marry, to you we come to know the prices, that is, to know their ages; for so much reverence we bear to age, that the more aged, they shall be the more dear to us. Tail. The truth is, every man has laid by his widow; so they be lame enough, blind enough, and old enough, 'tis good enough. Clerk. I keep the town-stock; if you can but name 'em, I can tell their ages to a day. All. We can tell their fortunes to an hour, then. But. The butler before the cook, while you live; there's few that eat before they drink in a morning. Tail. Nay, then the tailor puts in his needle of priority, for men do clothe themselves before they either drink or eat. Bail. I will strive for no place; the longer ere I marry my wife, the older she will be, and nearer her end and my ends. Clerk. I will serve you all, gentlemen, if you will have patience. Gnoth. I commend your modesty, sir; you are a bailiff, whose place is to come behind other men, as it were in the bum of all the rest. Bail. So, sir! and you were about this business too, seeking out for a widow? Gnoth. Alack! no, sir; I am a married man, and have those cares upon me that you would fain run into. Bail. What, an old rich wife! any man in this age desires such a care. Gnoth. 'Troth, sir, I'll put a venture with you, if you will; I have a lusty old quean to my wife, sound of wind and limb, yet I'll give out to take three for one at the marriage, of my second wife. Bail. Ay, sir, but how near is she to the law? Gnoth. Take that at hazard, sir; there must be time, you know, to get a new. Unsight, unseen, I take three to one. Bail. Two to one I'll give, if she have but two teeth in her head. Gnoth. A match; there's five drachmas for ten at my next wife. Bail. A match. Cook. I shall be fitted bravely; fifty-eight, and upwards; 'tis but a year and a half, and I may chance make friends, and beg a year of the duke. But. Hey, boys! I am made sir butler; my wife that shall be wants but two months of her time; it shall be one ere I marry her, and then the next will be a honey moon. Tail. I outstrip you all; I shall have but six weeks of Lent, if I get my widow, and then comes eating-tide, plump and gorgeous. Gnoth. This tailor will be a man, if ever there were any. Bail. Now comes my turn, I hope, goodman Finis, you that are still at the end of all, with a so be it. Well now, sirs, do you venture there as I have done; and I'll venture here after you. Good luck, I beseech thee! Clerk. Amen, sir. Bail. That deserves a fee already-there 'tis ; please me, and have a better. Clerk. Amen, sir. Cook. How, two for one at your next wife! is the old one living? Gnoth. You have a fair match, I offer you no foul one; if death make not haste to call her, she 'll make none to go to him. But. I know her, she 's a lusty woman; I'll take the venture. Gnoth. There's five drachmas for ten at my next wife. But. A bargain. Cook. Nay, then we 'll be all merchants: give me. Tail. And me. But. What has the bailiff sped? Bail. I am content; but none of you shall know my happiness. Clerk. As well as any of you all, believe it, sir. But. Nay, then we have made a good match on 't; if she have no froward disease, the woman may live this dozen years by her age. Tail. I'm afraid she's broken-winded, she holds silence so long. Cook. We'll now leave our venture to the event; I must a wooing. But. I'll but buy me a new dagger, and overtake you. Bail. So we must all; for he that goes a wooing to a widow without a weapon, will never get her. [Exeunt all but Gnotho and Agatha. Gnoth. O wife, wife! Agatha. What ail you, man, you speak so passionately? Gnoth. 'Tis for thy sake, sweet wife who would think so lusty an old woman, with reasonable good teeth, and her tongue in as perfect use as ever it was, should be so near her time?-but the Fates will have it so. Aga. What's the matter, man? you do amaze me. Gnoth. What pity 'tis a woman should be so near her end, and yet not sick! Aga. Near her end, man! tush, I can guess at that; I have years good yet of life in the remainder : I want two yet at least of the full number; Gnoth. Ay, alas! I see thou hast been repairing time as well as thou couldst; the old wrinkles are well filled up, but the vermilion is seen too thick, too thick-and I read what's written in thy forehead; it agrees with the church-book. Aga. Have you sought my age, man? and, I prithee, how is it? Gnoth. I shall but discomfort thee. Aga. Not at all, man; when there's no remedy, I will go, though unwillingly. Gnoth. 1539. Just; it agrees with the book: you have about a year to prepare yourself. Aga. Out, alas! I hope there's more than so. But do you not think a reprieve might be gotten for half a score and 'twere but five years, I would not care? an able woman, methinks, were to be pitied. : Gnoth, Ay, to be pitied, but not helped; no hope of that for, indeed, women have so blemished their own reputations now-a-days, that it is thought the law will meet them at fifty very shortly. Aga. Marry, the heavens forbid ! Gnoth. There's so many of you, that, when you are old, become witches; some profess physic, and kill good subjects faster than a burning fever . . ; for these and such causes 'tis thought they shall not live above fifty. Aga. Ay, man, but this hurts not the good old women. Gnoth. I' faith, you are so like one another, that a man cannot distinguish 'em: now, were I an old woman, I would desire to go before my time, and offer myself willingly, two or three years before. O, those are brave women, and worthy to be commended of all men in the world, that, when their husbands die, they run to be burnt to death with 'em: there's honour and credit! give me half a dozen such wives. Aga. Ay, if her husband were dead before, 'twere a reasonable request; if you were dead, I could be content to be so. Gnoth. Fie! that's not likely, for thou hadst two husbands before me. Aga. Thou wouldst not have me die, wouldst thoa, husband? Gnoth. No, I do not speak to that purpose; but I say what credit it were for me and thee, if thou wouldst ; then thou shouldst never be suspected for a witch, 1 physician, a bawd, or any of those things: and then how daintily should I mourn for thee, how bravely should I see thee buried! when, alas, if he goes before, it cannot choose but be a great grief to him to think he has not seen his wife well buried. There be such virtuous women in the world, but too few, too few, who desire to die seven years before their time, with all their hearts. Aga. I have not the heart to be of that mind; but, indeed, husband, I think you would have me gone. Gnoth. No, alas! I speak but for your good and your credit; for when a woman may die quickly, why should she go to law for her death? Alack, I need not wish thee gone, for thou hast but a short time to stay with me: you do not know how near 'tis,-it must out; you have but a month to live by the law. Aga. Out, alas! Gnoth. Nay, scarce so much. Aga. 0, 0, 0, my heart! Gnoth. Ay, so if thou wouldst go away quietly, 'twere sweetly done, and like a kind wife; lie but a little longer, and the bell shall toll for thee. Aga. O my heart, but a month to live! Gnoth. Alas, why wouldst thou come back again for a month? I'll throw her down again-O, woman, 'tis not three weeks; I think a fortnight is the most. Aga. Nay, then I am gone already. [Swoons Gnoth. I would make haste to the sexton now, but I'm afraid the tolling of the bell will wake her again. If she be so wise as to go now-she stirs again; there's two lives of the nine gone. [Exit. Aga. O, wouldst thou not help to recover me, husband? Gnoth. Alas, I could not find in my heart to hold thee by thy nose, or box thy cheeks; it goes against my conscience. Aga. I will not be thus frighted to my death; I'll search the church-records: a fortnight! 'tis Too little of conscience, I cannot be so near; O time, if thou be'st kind, lend me but a year! Gnoth. What a spite's this, that a man cannot persuade his wife to die in any time with her good will! I have another bespoke already; though a piece of old beef will serve to breakfast, yet a man would be glad of a chicken to supper. The clerk, I hope, understands no Hebrew, and cannot write backward what he hath writ forward already, and then I am well enough. 'Tis but a month at most; if that were gone, My venture comes in with her two for one: 'Tis use enough a' conscience for a broker-if he had a conscience. [Exit. Jack of the clock-house, the figure that struck the clock-bel"; Scirophorion and Hecatombaion are Greek names of the months, pedantically and absurdly introduced by the clerk; coats are court cards; The End of Serving Men is the title of an old ballad: passionately is sorrowfully; bravely here is finely. |