THEATRES AND MUSIC.
THE fame enjoyed by Beaumont and Fletcher in this country is some- thing very peculiar. To say that the mass of plays ticketed with their names is read by the majority of English readers, would be as mon- strous as to think that the Cynegeticon of Gratius Faliscus has been studied by the greater part of the young gentlemen who pass a college examina- tion. Nay, if we reduce the mass to a quarter of its dimensions, the sup- position that even this portion has been mastered by ordinary readers, is hardly less monstrous than the first. If we be met by the observation that scarcely any literary reputation rests on the bulk of an author's works, but is generally based on one or two special productions, we concede the point; but still the fame of Beaumont and Fletcher remains unexplained. Shak- spere's celebrity, as far as the stage is concerned, is chiefly sustained by BOMB eighteen dramas, at the head of which may be placed Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth; while his remarkable position as a patriarch of English poetry extends an importance to everything that proceeded from his pen. With respect to Beaumont and Fletcher, the only one of their plays that kept possession of the stage for a long series of years was Rule a Wife and Have a Wife; a lively, agreeable piece of wickedness, it is true, but certainly not such a favourite with the public as to account for an immortality. Shakspere's Timon of Athens may be cited as a drama foreign to the stage yet highly prized in the closet. No corresponding case can be found in the works of Beaumont and Fletcher—no play that has a closet celebrity distinct from a celebrity with the planting community. If it be said that Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess is a case in point, we answer, that we are not speak- ing with reference to the regular students of English poetry, but are con- fining our view to those gentlemanlike, well-informed readers, who without any predilection for one branch of literature have gone through their Shak- spere, their Milton, their Pope, their Swift, and their Addison, as a sort of literary duty. If these, who are after all the community of the reading public, are familiar with Fletcher's pastoral, we are greatly mistaken. The intrinsic merit of Beaumont and Fletcher's works is not here the subject of consideration. That they have beauties enough to delight the poetical student, is a fact too well established to be worth controverting. The question is, how they acquired that diffused celebrity which they certainly enjoy—how the familiarity with their names became so immensely al- proportionate to the knowledge of their plays, or even of the titles of their plays?
With the writers who at the beginning of the present century gave an impulse to the study of the earlier English poets, the celebrated pair were no especial favourites. Indeed, they rather lost than gained by the revival of the Elizabethan spirit. John Webster was raked from an obscurity which had concealed even his name; Dekker became a favourite object of admiration; Heywood was regarded with much delight; • and the lustre given to these new old men was obtained rather at the expense of the more established celebrities.
Nevertheless, the prestige of name remains unchanged. Let a manager state that he is about to produce a play by Beaumont and Fletcher—the general public knows that a work from an established source is going to be presented. Let him state that he is about to produce a play by Webster —the same public, ignorant of the Reverend Mr. Dyce's of the san- guinary old John, will imagine that it is to be regaled with a drama by the worthy lessee of the Haymarket Theatre. We do not intend to make any dissertation here on the causes of Beau- mont and Fletcher's fame; but we could not help calling attention to the fact of this peculiar celebrity, since in the present week it has been thrust upon our notice in a remarkable manner. Two plays, The Honest Fortune, and the Woman-Hater, have been produced at Sadler's Wells and the Olympic. The former is one of the least striking, and the latter is the crudest in all Beaumont and Fletcher's collection. Had it not been for the prestige of their authors' names, no manager in England would have dreamed of producing either. And let us add, that this prestige is
not associated with any particular good-luck. The modification of the
Maid's 'Tragedy, called the Bridal, may now be considered as a stock piece in addition to Rule a Wife; but King and No King, the Doisble Marriage, and the Scornful Lady, have not permanently enlarged our theatrical re- pertoire; and the example of the amateurs, who produced the Elder Bro- ther, has not been followed.
The Honest Man's Fortune relates the fate of a ruined nobleman, who bears his calamities with such decorum that a lady whose servant he has
become gives him her hand in preference to her other suitors. The suitors
bffinficeeatfiat appar -uveraka and duke who is jealous simply because his authors want him to be ealous, and leaves off his jealousy at the command of the same august authorities. It is too much the practice of Beaumont and Fletcher to treat their person- ages as puppets, and not only to bring them into such actions, but to endow them with such thoughts and feelings as may snit any exigency of the moment. The play does not come neat from the hands of its old authors, but has passed through the medium of Mr. Horne; who has worked at a difficult task with no small geniality. He has altered the plot in several particulars, that we do not care to set forth; but his tact has been chiefly displayed in raising the bully of the piece to an importance approaching that of his great prototype Captain Bobadil. The soliloquy he has given him is not only humorous in itself, but the whole part thus heightened is well fitted for Mr. George Bennett, who has a peculiar talent for this line of character. Montague makes a reasonably good part for Mr. Phelps. The Woman-Hater, which was written by Fletcheralone, is a very crude affair indeed; the plot being even more inartificial than that of the Honest Man's Fortune. Mr. Dyck° places it as the very earliest of Fletcher's works; and it is just such a production as might be supposed to emanate from a young beginner. However, with all its faults, it has more distinct- ive character than the other revival of the present week. Lazarillo, the hungry courtier, (an imitation of the parasites of Plautus,) whose chase after a fish called an " Umbrane" causes an amusing series of adventures, is an admirable specimen of that school of burlesque-writing which consists in treating a thing of trifling importance with all the. grandiloquence be- longing to a subject of vital consequence. His anxieties about the fish are expressed in speeches remarkable for fanciful illustration, and for conveying the pleasing impression that the author is in a thorough good-humour with his own extravagancies. As for the " woman-hater," who gives the name to the piece, he is a mere abstract quality, set forth with the coarse vigour of the period. The plot, which consists of his attempt to ruin a lady's character by entrapping her into a house of ill-fame and then making her appear at the window, is too paltry to need comment. It is the under-plot concerning Lazarillo and the Umbrane that gives the piece its value. This crude old play has probably been selected by the Olympic mana- ger with a view to the comic actor Mr. Compton. The humour of Comp- ton is of a very dry order; and to the support of a modern farce he. can bring neither the unction of Keeley, the improvisatorial fun of Wright, t, . nor the indescribable drollery of Buckstone. But he has a peculiar talent for seizing on the quaint creations of the old dramatists; his stiff gestures are not inappropriate to their formal oddities, and he is a very careful reader of their language. The burlesque emotions of Lazarillo are alto- gether in his line, and probably the part could not have been better repre- sented by any living actor. Mr. Spicer has reduced the Woman-Hater to three acts, but has not altered the plot in any essential point.
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