Jonson's prosperity and intellectual power reached their culmination between 1603 and 1619. In the former year The Fall of Sejanus, a tragedy, appeared, followed in rapid succession by some of his finest works,- Volpone, Epicene, The Alchymist, and Catiline. He was frequently employed by the Court in arranging those splendid and fantastic entertainments called masques, in which he exhibited his stores of invention and all the resources of his profound and elegant scholarship. In 1616 he received the office of Laureate, with an annual pension of one hundred marks; and though writing little between 1619 and 1625, his fortunes suffered no material abatement until the death of James I., in 1625. Thereafter, disappointment, poverty, ill-health, and too great fondness for sack, combined their forces to break down the veteran. Many of his later plays were unsuccessful; and in one of them, The New Inn, acted in 1630, he complains bitterly of the hostility and bad taste of his audience. He died in 1637, and was buried in an upright posture in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. Above his grave a plain stone bears the excellent and laconic inscription, "O RARE BEN JOHNSON."*

Jonson's dramatic works are of various degrees of merit, ranging from an excellence unsurpassed by any contemporary except Shakespeare, to the lowest point of laborious mediocrity. He seems to have won his high place among the writers of the Elizabethan era, not so much by virtue of creative imagination, or by any strictly poetic faculties, as by weight and breadth of understanding, quickness of fancy, power of analysis, and preternatural keenness of observation. Thorough and extensive study strengthened these native qualities, but could not supply the deficiencies. His tragedies, The Fall of Sejanus and Catiline's Conspiracy, display the riches of a profound and learned intellect. They reproduce the details of Roman manners, religion and sentiments, with minute fidelity, and contain passages of wonderful force and grandeur. But as wholes, they are stiff and lifeless, lacking that subtile spirit of reality through which Shakespeare could "transform a series of incidents into a succession of events." It is mechanical, not vital energy with which Jonson has endowed his creations. Nor is it strange that there was this difference between these two dramatists.

* In that inscription his name is spelled "Johnson." The common spelling is "Jonson:"

Shakespeare disregarded the traditional laws of dramatic poetry and wrote with unfettered hand. Free from restraint, his English nature expressed itself in a drama that was true to the spirit of his age and his nation. His plays, therefore, have what we call reality. Jonson, as we have said, was a profound classical scholar. He was an enraptured admirer of the great works of the classic drama. The laws by which Greek dramatists had attained their success were to him the essential laws of a true drama; and as a student of dramatic art and a dramatist, he must obey those laws. By so much as he violated them, he was false to his profession. As a proof of his earnestness in holding this opinion, read his prologue to Every Man in his Humor. In his attempt to be loyal to his culture he placed himself under a bondage which made it impossible for him to give characters a native freedom. Bound to observe the unities of time, place, and action,* he could not portray life naturally.

But worse than the defects springing from Jonson's servitude to classical laws is his singular want of what is called humanity. His humor is never genial, his fun never infectious; his point of view is always that of the satirist. He takes his materials, both for intrigue and for character, from odious sources. For instance, the action of two of his finest plays, Volpone and The Alchymist, turns entirely upon a series of ingenious cheats and rascalities, all the persons being either scoundrels or their dupes.

Nevertheless, Jonson's knowledge is so vast, the force and vigor of his expression so unbounded, the tone of his morality so high and manly, that his plays retain a high place in literature.

As a literary man he stands alone. All critics say it; he says it. In pedantry he was as distinguished as he was for scholarship. His diction was as rotund as his figure. While you read his writings some one is continually telling you that the thoughts and the words are weighty and wonderful, and that one is Ben Jonson. He was his own ideal. He was a genuine Englishman. Shakespeare

Three rules were carefully observed in the composition of a Grecian Drama: 1. That there should be a distinct plot with one main action, to which all the minor parts of the play should contribute; 2. That the incidents of the play should naturally come within one day; 3. That the entire action should naturally occur in one place. These three rules are known as, the Unity of Action, the Unity of Time, and the Unity of Place, or as " the dramatic unities."

was a cosmopolite. Jonson was to Shakespeare what England is to the world. While we may smile at some of Jonson's traits, we admire the resoluteness of purpose that lies behind his self-confidence; we admire his lofty theory of virtue, though his own vices are not concealed; we admire the learning which supports his pedantry; we admire the bravery that comes to the rescue of his boasting.

It is singular that while Jonson in his plays is distinguished for that hardness and dryness which we have endeavored to point out, the same poet, in another field, should be remarkable for elegance and refinement of invention and style. In the thirty-five Masques and Court Entertainments, which he composed for the amusement of the king and the great nobles, as well as in the charming fragment of a pastoral drama entitled the Sad Shepherd, Jonson appears quite another man. Everything that the richest and most delicate invention could supply, aided by extensive, choice and recondite reading, is lavished upon these courtly compliments. Their gracefulness almost makes us forget their adulation and servility. Among the most beautiful of these masques we may mention Paris Anniversary, the Masque of Oberon, and the Masque of Queens. Besides his dramatic works, Jonson left literary remains in both prose and verse. The former portion, called Discoveries, contains many valuable notes on books and men-those on Shakespeare and Lacon being the most interesting.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

Superior to Ben Jonson in variety and animation, though not equal to him in solidity of knowledge, were Francis Beaumont (1586-1616) and John Fletcher (1576--1625), both of them by birth and by education of a higher social status than their fellow-dramatists, Beaumont being the son of a judge, and Fletcher the son of a bishop (91). Concerning the details of their lives and characters we possess but vague and scanty information; it is evident, however, that they were accomplished men, possessing a degree of scholarship amply sufficient to furnish their writings with rich allusions and abundant ornaments. The fifty-two dramatic works of these brilliant fellow-laborers are extraordinary for their excel

lence and variety. There seems to be reason for ascribing to Beaumont more of the sublime and tragic genius, to Fletcher gayety and comic humor. Fletcher was the more prolific and versatile writer, and the volatile creativeness of his fancy may have been restrained and directed by the sounder judgment of his friend.* But so blended is their glory that neither biography nor criticism has been able to separate their names. Their respective plays cannot be indicated with certainty, their tastes cannot be distinguished, their talents cannot be discriminated. In his generous enthusiasm, Charles Lamb praises the "noble practice" of the time when eminent authors shared each other's labors and each other's fame. It must have been a thought of the marvellous literary partnership existing between Beaumont and Fletcher that prompted his praise. A thought beyond them would have reminded him of the feuds of the Elizabethan authors, of the criminations, recriminations, and scandals of that time. Human nature had its selfishness and its jealousies then, and the great dramatists had their share of the weaknesses of human nature. Greene hated Marlowe, and was jealous of Shakespeare; Marlowe was indignant at Nash; Chapman shot poisoned arrows at Ben Jonson, and Jonson applied his cudgels to the backs of Dekker and Marston. No niche in the temple of literary fame is large enough to receive two men, save that in which Beaumont and Fletcher appear. Their part1606] nership was formed when Beaumont was twenty and Fletcher

thirty years of age, and was continued for ten years.

Their works afford constant evidence of the influence and inspiration of Shakespeare; and several of their plays, in which the graceful, humorous, and romantic elements predominate, are by no means unworthy of comparison with such comedies as Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Measure for Measure. But in the delineation of sustained passion they are immeasurably inferior to their master. The range of their character-painting is comparatively limited, and their pathos is tender rather than deep. Their

"There was a wonderful similarity between Mr. Francis Beaumont and Mr. John Fletcher, which caused the clearness of friendship between them. I have heard Dr. John Earle, since Bishop of Sarum, say, who knew them, that his (Beaumont's) business was to correct the superflowings of Mr. Fletcher's wit. They lived together on the Bankside, not far from the playhouse; both bachelors, had one bench of the house between them, which they did so admire, the same cloathes, cloaks, etc., between them."-Aubrey, 1697.

numerous portraits of valiant veterans may be pronounced unequalled, and they are singularly happy in depicting noble and magnanimous feeling. It is in their pieces of mixed sentiment, containing comic matter intermingled with romantic and elevated incidents, that their powers are best displayed. Of this class, no better examples can be selected than the comedies of the Elder Brother, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, Beggars' Bush, and the Spanish Curate. In the more violently farcical intrigues and characters, such as are to be found in the Little French Lawyer, the Woman-Hater, the Scornful Lady, the eccentricity is laughably extravagant; and the authors seem to enjoy the amusement of heaping up absurdity upon absurdity out of the very exuberance of their humorous conceits. Some of their pieces furnish stores of antiquarian and literary material; for example, the Beggars' Bush contains abundant illustrations of the slang dialect; and the fantastic extravaganza, the Knight of the Burning Pestle, is a storehouse of ancient English ballad poetry. They occasionally attempt some good-humored banter of Shakespeare. In the play just mentioned, the droll, pathetic speech on the installation of Clause as King of the Gypsies is a parody of Cranmer's speech in the last scene of Henry VIII.

The pastoral drama of The Faithful Shepherdess was written by Fletcher alone. Its exquisitely delicate sentiments are too often soiled by passages of loose and vicious thinking. Still it has so many charms that it commands the admiration of all who know the finest writings of our literature. Ben Jonson's best poetry, The Sad Shepherd, and Milton's Comus, were inspired by this poem of Fletcher.

Philip Massinger (1584–1640) was a gentleman by birth. He spent two years in the University of Oxford. His works prove that he had an intimate knowledge of the classical writers of antiquity. In 1604 he began his theatrical life, and continuing it until his death, found it an uninterrupted succession of struggle, disappointment, and distress. Unlike Beaumont and Fletcher, who were servile in their deference to the Court, he was an outspoken critic of the government, and an advocate of republican principles. According to the practice of the time, he frequently wrote in partnership with other playwrights-the names of Dekker, Field, Rowley, Middleton, and others being often found in conjunction with his.