Francis Beaumont
Francis Beaumont was an influential English playwright and poet, born into a family connected to the earls of Huntingdon. Educated at Oxford, he began writing professionally in 1606, primarily collaborating with John Fletcher to create approximately thirteen plays by 1612. Their works were initially produced for children's theaters and later for the King's Men at prestigious venues like the Blackfriars Theater and the Globe. Beaumont's plays, such as "Philaster" and "The Maid's Tragedy," often blended elements of tragicomedy and showcased complex character interactions, including themes of love and betrayal. Although praised by contemporaries like Ben Jonson and John Dryden, Beaumont's reputation waned in later centuries, possibly due to the evolving tastes in drama and the nature of his explorations into abnormal psychology. His works, however, have been recognized for their innovative approach to identity and role-playing, influencing later playwrights such as Luigi Pirandello. Beaumont's legacy continues, marked by his burial in Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey alongside other literary greats.
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Francis Beaumont
English playwright
- Born: c. 1584
- Birthplace: Grace-Dieu, Leicestershire, England
- Died: March 6, 1616
- Place of death: London, England
Biography
Ben Jonson is said to have submitted all of his plays to Francis Beaumont (BOH-muhnt) for his advice before producing them, and John Dryden’s mouthpiece Neander in Of Dramatic Poesie: An Essay (1668) thought that Beaumont’s plays were more perfect than William Shakespeare’s. The third poet to be buried in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, preceded only by Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser, Beaumont was one of four children born to Judge Francis Beaumont and Anne Pierrepont Beaumont, a family closely related to the earls of Huntingdon. Educated at Oxford until 1598, Francis Beaumont followed in his father’s footsteps, as well as those of his brothers, and entered the Inner Temple in 1600. While there, he discovered a talent for poetry, in 1602 publishing Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, a mythological poem in the vein of Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander (1598).
In 1606, Beaumont, then twenty-one and independent of family support, began to write professionally, possibly because he had to make a living. From 1606 until 1612, he and John Fletcher composed approximately thirteen plays, either in collaboration or separately. These plays were written at first for the children’s theaters and then for the King’s Men at the Blackfriars Theater and the Globe. Beaumont’s association with Fletcher was not purely professional, however; according to John Aubrey, they shared not only their plays but also a house, their clothes, and a “wench.”
The collaboration of Beaumont and Fletcher ended in 1613 with Beaumont’s marriage to the heiress Ursula Isley and their move to her country estate in Kent. Beaumont probably continued to write poetry there until he suffered a stroke. When he died in 1616, Beaumont left behind one daughter, an unborn child, and a reputation that rivaled that of Shakespeare.
The esteem with which the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher were held for more than one hundred years after their deaths faded during the Romantic era. Their loss of popularity may stem partly from the nature of tragicomedy, the genre that they usually employed in the plays. Another reason may be related to what some critics have described as the plays’ superficial and often voyeuristic examination of abnormal psychology.
The first play in the canon, The Woman Hater, predicts the nature of their later work. Although a tragic ending is never seriously posed, Oriana heroically chooses death rather than submit to the threat to her virtue arranged by the misogynist Gondarino in this “Jonsonian” humours play. Sometimes called the best burlesque in English, Beaumont’s second play, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, is an anomaly in the canon. Self-consciously theatrical, it presents a group of citizens watching a play entitled “The London Merchant,” in which an apprentice aspires to wed the daughter of his bourgeois master. The citizens, George and Nell, confuse the theatrical illusion of the play with reality and send their apprentice Rafe, who eventually becomes the real hero of the play, onto the stage.
Cupid’s Revenge contains all the elements of their mature work, including a romantic setting, an outlandish plot, a combination of realistic and fantastic characters, and dialogue that ranges from what Dryden called the “conversation of gentlemen” to the histrionic. All these elements are evident in Beaumont and Fletcher’s first undisputed success, Philaster, which depicts a Hamlet-like character whose father has been deposed from the throne of Sicily by the king of Calabria. The work is a love triangle, and Philaster’s conviction that his wife Arathusa and his page Bellario have betrayed him further complicates the plot; all ends happily, however, when Bellario reveals herself as Euphrasia. Another revelation brings about the happy ending of A King and No King, in which King Arbaces, who has lusted after his sister Panthea, learns that he is the son of a commoner and was reared by the queen when she feared she was barren. Dryden called Arbaces the best characterization in any of Beaumont’s and Fletcher’s collaborations. Their only tragedy is a play that also examines the concept of the divine right of kings. The Maid’s Tragedy follows the machinations of the king to hide his affair with Evadne by marrying her to Amintor, the betrothed of the “maid” Aspatia. This play and their “pure” comedy The Coxcomb bear witness to the continual experimentation that characterized the collaboration of Beaumont and Fletcher.
The praise lavished on Beaumont and Fletcher by their contemporaries and near-contemporaries has been overshadowed by the criticism that followed. The appeal their work held for the twentieth century absurdist playwright Luigi Pirandello, in contrast, attests the value of their exploration of identity and role playing and the technical achievement of their manipulation of the audience.
Bibliography
Appleton, William W. Beaumont and Fletcher: A Critical Study. Philadelphia: R. West, 1977. Explores literary questions in Beaumont’s plays, though, as the title suggests, the focus is on the literary collaboration of Beaumont with John Fletcher. The index is helpful in separating the works of Beaumont, and the second chapter, on their partnership, is a good starting point for understanding Beaumont’s style.
Bliss, Lee. Francis Beaumont. Boston: Twayne, 1987. This readable book, medium in length, opens with a biographical sketch and continues with detailed analyses of all Beaumont’s major works. This book reproduces a portrait of Beaumont and includes a thorough, well-annotated bibliography. Though it is part of a standard series, it is for advanced readers.
Clark, Sandra. The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: Sexual Themes and Dramatic Representation. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. Examines the role of sex and gender identity in the works of Beaumont and John Fletcher. Includes a bibliography and an index.
Danby, John F. Poets on Fortune’s Hill: Studies in Sidney, Shakespeare, Beaumont, and Fletcher. London: Faber and Faber, 1952. Reprint, as Elizabethan and Jacobean Poets, 1964. An excellent critical study that places these writers in their social and historical contexts. Sees Beaumont and Fletcher as the final, decadent stage of a great Elizabethan tradition.
Finkelpearl, Philip J. Court and Country Politics in the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. This masterful study reevaluates Beaumont’s background and social position before examining the politics of the plays.
Fletcher, Ian. Beaumont and Fletcher. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1967. An introductory British Council pamphlet with a bibliography that sorts out the collaborators.
Gayley, Charles Mills. Beaumont, the Dramatist. 1914. Reprint. New York: Russell & Russell, 1969. Remains the most thorough account of Beaumont’s life. Readers looking for answers to literary questions will not find them here, though any line from Beaumont’s plays that can be construed as biographical is quoted and explained. Gayley favors Beaumont in all controversies.
Gossett, Suzanne. The Influence of the Jacobean Masque on the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. New York: Garland, 1988. Gossett looks at the ways in which masques influenced the dramas of Beaumont and John Fletcher.
Hoy, Cyrus. “The Shares of Fletcher and His Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon.” Studies in Bibliography 8-12 (1956-1962). The authoritative study on this subject but many details remain open to dispute and may never be settled.
Leech, Clifford. The John Fletcher Plays. London: Chatto and Windus, 1962. Perceptive analyses of Fletcher’s main plays, with The Humorous Lieutenant seen as his masterpiece.
Masten, Jeffrey. Textual Intercourse: Collaboration, Authorship, and Sexualities in Renaissance Drama. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998. An examination of the collaboration of Beaumont and John Fletcher and the nature of their relationship.
Sprague, Arthur Colby. Beaumont and Fletcher on the Restoration Stage. Cambridge, England: Harvard University Press, 1926. Looks at the historical context.
Squire, Charles. John Fletcher. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986. Concentrates on Fletcher but includes brief biographies of both Beaumont and Fletcher and introductions to all the plays in the canon. Contains useful notes and annotated bibliography.
Waith, Eugene M. The Pattern of Tragicomedy in Beaumont and Fletcher. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1969. This book will be of interest to students who desire to focus on the genre of tragicomedy as Beaumont and Fletcher developed it. Covers other aspects of Beaumont’s works only insofar as they touch on such formal matters. Waith explains the stylized nature of Beaumont’s drama.
Wallis, Lawrence B. Fletcher, Beaumont, and Company: Entertainers to the Jacobean Gentry. New York: King’s Crown Press, 1947. Unlike other studies that concentrate on the plays, this one looks to the audience, seeing Beaumont and John Fletcher in the context of the society from which they made their living. Wallis speculates on how many scenes might have been played, explaining many matters that textual analysis alone leaves dark.