and Rowley. As has been pointed out, he was certainly as popular as Shakespeare, and probably more popular, between 1610 and 1642. During the Restoration period two of his plays were revived to one of any other man. Nor is this popularity hard to understand. He provides the maximum of entertainment of high literary value with the minimum of required attention. If it be true, as has recently been said, that “A playwright is a man who writes entertaining and successful plays; a dramatist is a playwright who teaches while he entertains,” then Fletcher is the consummate playwright, but Shakespeare remains the great dramatist. In serious drama, while following in general on the lines laid down in his collaborative work with Beaumont, he depends more upon constant variety in exciting incident and convincing characterisation within the scene than on character as consistent as the work of Beaumont showed or work as thoughtfully poetic. He is a past master in getting from his material the largest amount of emotional effect which it can provide for the audience he has in mind. Even his verse has a curiously persuasive value. Notable particularly for the freedom with which it uses extra syllables both within the line and at the end, it runs over freely. Indeed, while full of subtle music, it sounds when properly spoken remarkably like the speech of cultivated men and women. In his hands it is capable of almost any dramatic work and he rarely uses prose; but in the hands of those who copy him its delicacies of rhythm are missed, and it stumbles or halts into prose.

It is probably in comedy that Fletcher finds his best individual expression. His comedies with their conscienceless gaiety, their unceasing, cackling chase after laughter at any cost, their emphasis on the comic values of the duel of sex, in their regard for dialogue as a reliable appeal to the public, became models for the comedies of 1625 to 1642 and to a considerable extent for the Restoration comedy. In the Restoration the plots are thinner, the emphasis on talk greater; but the central situations, many of the characters, and the general moral tone are much the same. That is, there is no real break in English comedy between 1642 and 1660 because of Fletcher and his sons. Shirley admires and copies Fletcher; so, too, do many of the minor men before 1642. Etheredge in his Love and a Tub is, in the main plot, writing as nearly as he can in the style of Fletcher. Dryden studies and copies Fletcher, making his Spanish Friar from the Spanish Curate. Farquhar, not to mention other cases, makes his Inconstant from The Wild-Goose Chase.

The extraordinary acting quality of his plays is proved by the fact that they held the stage remarkably even beyond the Restoration. In the eighteenth century one finds repeated mention of performances of Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, The Chances, The Humorous Lieutenant, and Monsieur Thomas. Indeed, till the vogue of the “old comedy” passed, with the coming of Robertson’s plays in the sixties, we still find occasional performances of his plays.

It is doubtful if Fletcher ever took his art very seriously. He seems always to have held his unusual powers subject to the wishes of his public. Yet by his hold on the public of his own day, by his passing on to the Restoration the traditions of the newer romance which he had established with Beaumont, by his development of the finest comedy up to 1642 outside Shakespeare, and by his consummate stage-craft, he is remarkable. He belongs to the group of great theatrical entertainers of all ages, and stands very high in the list. One does not think of him with Euripides, Shakespeare, Goethe, Corneille, Racine, or Molière; but rather with Scribe and Sardou. In resourcefulness, in variety, in stage-craft he is the equal of the best playwrights, and even superior to most. In poetic power and literary ability he is incomparably above almost all of them. It was only his lack of artistic conscience which kept him from rising above the great playwright into the great dramatist.

Geo. P. Baker.


  By PanEris using Melati.

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