University of Virginia Library

The Shares of Fletcher and his Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon (III)
by
Cyrus Hoy [*]

BEAUMONT'S WORK IS PRESENT IN TWELVE PLAYS of the canon, but the extent of his share in each of these varies widely. At the one extreme, there is The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a play which I regard as wholly his. Second only to this is The Woman Hater, in its original state almost certainly a product of Beaumont's sole authorship, but revised in five scenes of its extant text by Fletcher. Then there is The Noble Gentleman, another apparently Beaumontian original extensively revised by Fletcher some twenty years after its composition. And after these must be reckoned the famous trio of Philaster, The Maid's Tragedy, and A King and no King, in all of which (but to a less extent in the first than in the last two) Beaumont's share is much the greater, and his hand is the controlling one. In Cupid's Revenge and Love's Pilgrimage the shares of the two collaborators are roughly equal, and in the collaborations with Fletcher and Massinger, Beggars' Bush and Thierry and Theodoret, Beaumont's work accounts for approximately a third of the whole. But with The Coxcomb and The Scornful Lady we have reached the other extreme, for Fletcher's contribution is here the major one, and Beaumont's share in comparison is small indeed.

To distinguish, on the basis of linguistic evidence, the respective shares of the Beaumont-Fletcher collaborations is not always easy or possible. Only in Love's Pilgrimage, the revised scenes of The Woman Hater, and the two collaborations of Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger (Beggars' Bush and Thierry and Theodoret) does the Fletcherian ye occur to such an extent as to point immediately to the scenes of his authorship. In the chief of Fletcher's collaborations with Beaumont, ye is rarely found, with the result that such plays as The Coxcomb, Cupid's Revenge, A King and no King, The Maid's Tragedy, and

Philaster afford no scope for applying what has hitherto been the most successful linguistic test for Fletcher's authorship. All five of these plays have evidently been given their final form by Beaumont, and one can only assume that whatever instances of ye they might once have displayed have been almost wholly removed in the process of stylistic revision. If one is to judge from The Knight of the Burning Pestle and The Woman Hater (excluding, of course, the scenes revised by Fletcher), ye is a form which Beaumont almost never employed. It seems reasonable to assume that, if Beaumont did re-work his finished collaborations with Fletcher, the Fletcherian ye would have been one of the first linguistic forms to be eliminated in the interest of a single harmony of language. How conspicuous Fletcher's use of ye could be in a play principally of Beaumont's authorship can be seen from the revised scenes of The Woman Hater, probably the first play on which the two dramatists worked together. It may perhaps point to Beaumont's awareness of this that, thereafter, ye has come to be all but banished from Fletcher's share of their most notable collaborations.

With the evidence of ye no longer available, one comes to consider the evidence of such other linguistic forms as hath and doth, 'em and them, i'th, o'th', and the rest. As has been seen, these have often served to distinguish the work of Fletcher and Massinger even when the evidence of ye has been obscured, for each dramatist can be shown to have had fairly distinct preferences which tended to govern the use of such forms in his work. In the case of the Beaumont-Fletcher collaborations, even evidence of this sort avails nothing, for on the whole there is little if anything to distinguish Beaumont's preferences among such forms from Fletcher's. In the Beaumont-Fletcher collaborations, i'th', o'th', 'em, h'as, 's for his, and similar contractions can be found alike in scenes by both dramatists.

The whole matter is further complicated by the fact that Beaumont's linguistic practices are themselves so widely divergent as to make it all but impossible to predict what they will be from one play to another. Thus The Woman Hater can show a strong preference for them instead of 'em, while Cupid's Revenge and A King and no King show a reverse preference. Hath and doth can occur 86 and 22 times respectively in The Woman Hater, and but 7 and 3 times respectively in A King and no King. I'th' may appear 7 times in Beaumont's share of Cupid's Revenge, and but once in the whole of The Maid's Tragedy. The variety of contracted forms to be found in Beaumont's work is enormous, but one would be rash indeed to attempt to formulate from these a pattern of linguistic preferences that would purport to represent

his language practices, for no single form is to be found at a sustained rate of occurrence throughout his work. His use of such forms as ye, o'th', and 's for his is a case in point: these he neither employs regularly and to a fairly consistent degree, as does Fletcher, nor does he avoid using them altogether, as does Massinger. His linguistic "preferences"—if they can be termed such—are, in a word, nothing if not eclectic, and the quality of his writing gains accordingly, for his language is flexible and various. But it is this very protean character which makes it, in the end, quite impossible to establish for Beaumont a neat pattern of linguistic preferences that will serve as a guide to identifying his work wherever it might appear.

Beggars' Bush

• Beaumont: II; V, 1, 2b (from entrance of Hubert to the end).
• Fletcher: III; IV.
• Massinger: I; V, 2a (to entrance of Hubert).

In addition to the text of the first folio, the play is preserved in a scribal transcript in the Lambarde Collection at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Dr. R. C. Bald suggests that the manuscript, the work of the scribe of Aglaura, was commissioned by a private patron of the drama; on the evidence of the stage directions which it exhibits, the manuscript clearly derives from a theatrical prompt-book.[1] This seems to have been abridged somewhat for acting purposes, for the folio contains some thirty-five lines which the manuscript omits.

The linguistic evidence to be derived from the two texts is sufficiently of a piece. Though ye occurs somewhat more frequently in the manuscript than in the folio (191 instances in the manuscript to 158 in the folio), such divergence as is to be marked in the distribution of other language forms is hardly greater than what might be expected to exist between two texts independently transmitted. The important thing for the purpose of authorial evidence is the manner in which identical language forms appear at a virtually identical rate of occurrence at identical points in the two texts.

In both texts, three separate linguistic patterns can be distinguished. The most readily discernible of these is to be traced through Acts III and IV; of the 158 occurrences of ye in the folio text, 152 are found here. When, in this portion of the play, one finds no occurrence of hath (the only acts in which the form does not appear), and but a single use of them as opposed to 28 instances of the contracted 'em, the share of Fletcher is clear enough. In contrast to the linguistic pattern that emerges from Acts III and IV is that which emerges from Act I (and which can be discerned again at the beginning of V,ii). Here ye does not occur in the folio text (though the form appears 4 times in the manuscript). Both manuscript and folio exhibit 7 occurrences of hath; and while, in Act I of the folio and manuscript,

the contracted 'em appears but twice and a single time respectively, the expanded them is found 16 times. In neither text is any use made throughout the first act of such contractions as i'th', o'th', h'as, or 's for his. The linguistic pattern here, so markedly opposed to the Fletcherian one, is that of Massinger.

The third linguistic pattern that is present in Beggars' Bush can be traced throughout Act II, in V,i, and in the latter part of V,ii. These scenes have in common a number of linguistic features which sets them apart from the rest of the play. They exhibit an occasional use of ye (6 instances in the folio, 15 in the manuscript) that is enough to provide a contrast with the Massingerian scenes where, in the folio at least, the form does not appear;[2] at the same time, the use of ye in pattern number three never approaches the high occurrence of the form in the scenes of Fletcher's authorship. Of the play's 5 occurrences of doth, 4 appear in Act II and accordingly mark pattern number three with their presence. While the Fletcherian scenes show a decided preference for 'em to them, and the Massingerian scenes show an exactly opposite preference, the tendency in pattern number three, though there is an evident preference for the contracted form, falls somewhere between these opposing practices; there them occurs 9 times in both texts, while 'em is used 16 times in the folio, 15 times in the manuscript. In its use of such contractions as i'th', o'th', and the like, pattern number three does not differ in any distinguishable way from the Fletcherian one, though since these language forms do not have any significant part in the pattern of Massinger, the contrast on this score at least is sufficiently marked. Perhaps the single linguistic feature which serves most strikingly to distinguish pattern number three from the other two is the use of the contraction ha' for have. In the folio text this is found 12 times (9 times in the manuscript) in Acts II and V, but not elsewhere in the play. It occurs in none of the unaided plays of Massinger, and in the unaided plays of Fletcher it occurs but 4 times in three plays (twice in The Loyal Subject, once each in Monsieur Thomas and The Island Princess). To judge from its appearance in the plays that follow, it is a contraction that might be reasonably associated with the work of Beaumont, with whom pattern number three of Beggars' Bush is to be identified.

And yet to speak of a linguistic pattern for Beaumont is something of an anomaly, as has already been observed. That something approaching a pattern of linguistic preferences can be derived from his share of Beggars' Bush is possible simply because the individual features of the patterns of Fletcher and Massigner have been preserved in so evident a degree. When the Fletcherian ye gives way, and Beaumont refrains from his use of hath and doth, nothing remains to distinguish the linguistic practices of the one from the linguistic practices of the other.

In the table below, the occurrence of the relevant linguistic forms in both the folio and the manuscript texts of Beggars' Bush is given. Figures based on the manuscript are enclosed in square brackets.

The Coxcomb

• Beaumont: I, 4; II, 4; IV, 1, 3, 7; V.
• Fletcher: I, 1-3, 5; II, 1, 3; III, 1-2; IV, 2, 4-6, 8.
• Beaumont and Fletcher: I, 6; II,2 ; III, 3.

The prologue indicates that the play was revised when it was re-staged some years after the original production. Whether such evidences of Fletcher's linguistic pattern as ever existed in the text were lost then, or whether they had already been removed by Beaumont in his customary practice of giving the final form to his collaborations with Fletcher it is impossible to say. At any rate, Fletcher's usual language preferences are not to be found in any very noticeable degree in the extant text. Ye occurs but 7 times in the entire play, though it should be pointed out that all instances of the form appear in scenes in which Fletcher's hand can be traced. The Fletcherian scenes display as well 9 occurrences of 'em to an equal number of them, 9 instances of i'th', 3 of o'th', 2 of h'as, 2 of 's for his. Hath is found here 5 times, doth twice. The Beaumont portion shows a decided preference for them (used 26 times) to the contracted 'em (used 5 times). Here i'th' occurs thrice, o'th' not at all; there are single occurrences of 's for his, and h'as. And in Beaumont's share hath is found 4 times, doth 3 times.

In dividing the play between the two dramatists I have been guided in part by metrical considerations, though since a large part of the text is in prose, and since verse—when it occurs—is often printed as prose, even this criterion is not so serviceable as one could wish. In the main I have regarded all scenes involving Viola and her manifold woes as the work of Beaumont, while I consider Fletcher to be largely responsible for the main plot concerning the coxcombly Antonio, his wife Maria, and his friend Mercury whom he is so outrageously eager to enstate as his wife's lover. Viola is as tearful and as patiently self-sacrificing a maiden as Beaumont ever drew, and she has her place in a gallery that includes Aspatia in The Maid's Tragedy, Bellerio in Philaster, and Urania in Cupid's Revenge. But even an attribution on the basis of the play's two plots will not completely hold, for Beaumont is almost certainly responsible for the entire fifth act,

which brings both to their resolution. At the same time, this may be still another example of the kind of close collaboration between the two dramatists that is evident elsewhere in the play. One instance of this is I, 6; Viola's speech which opens the scene, and all of her brief lines thereafter, are surely the work of Beaumont, but the remainder of the scene involving Richardo and his drunken companions is, with almost equal surety, the work of Fletcher. Similarly with II, 2: Viola's first speech I regard as Beaumont's work, and the same I hold to be true of her brief soliloquy after the exit of the Tinker and Dorothy. Other than this, I regard the scene as Fletcher's. And though III, 3 is, I think, essentially Beaumont's, there are traces of Fletcher toward the end, as in such a line as Nan's "doe you know what a wake is? we have mighty cheer then, and such a coyle, 'twould blesse ye."

There is no doubt that the play represents, in its original form at least, a Beaumont-Fletcher collaboration. The extent to which it was subsequently revised will probably never be satisfactorily determined. Oliphant believed the reviser to have been Massinger, and divided the play among the three dramatists. I find nothing in the play that points even remotely to Massinger, and since his work elsewhere is so very distinctive it is hard to imagine he is present here.

Cupid's Revenge

• Beaumont: I, 1, 3; II, 1-2, 4-5; III, 1-2; IV, 1, 5; V, 1.
• Fletcher: I, 2, 4; II, 3, 6; III, 3-4; IV, 2-4; V, 2-3.

The linguistic evidence that emerges from the play gives no very clear indication of the respective shares of the two dramatists. Ye is found but a total of 13 times, though each time it occurs in a scene which I assign to Fletcher. But contractions which have tended to distinguish Fletcher's linguistic pattern from that of Massinger are of no avail in separating his work from Beaumont's, in this play at least. 'Em is used 16 times in Fletcher's share of the play, and 19 times in Beaumont's. The Fletcherian portion contains 3 instances of i'th', but that of Beaumont contains 7 occurrences of the form. The shares of both contain single occurrences of o'th'. And while 's for his is found twice in scenes by Fletcher, it appears 8 times in scenes by Beaumont. Finally, the occurrence of hath and doth is not here confined to the share of a single collaborator. In Beaumont's portion, hath is found once, doth twice. In Fletcher's share, there are 5 instances of hath, one of doth. The only linguistic form of any significance which does not occur equally in scenes by both dramatists is the contraction ha', all 7 instances of which appear in Beaumont's portion of the play.

Two inferences are to be drawn from the linguistic evidence afforded by Cupid's Revenge. The first is the natural one that the play has been given its final form by Beaumont, who in the process has eliminated most of Fletcher's ye's. The second is of even greater significance: that Beaumont's language preferences are not essentially different from Fletcher's, and that the contractions ('em, i'th', o'th', 's for his, and the like) which

have often served to separate Fletcher's work from Massinger's can be expected to appear alike in both portions of a play of Beaumont and Fletcher's joint authorship.

A King and no King

• Beaumont: I; II; III; IV, 4; V, 2, 4.
• Fletcher: IV, 1-3; V, 1, 3.

The play is largely the work of Beaumont, who seems to be responsible as well for the final form of the whole. Ye is found but 7 times in the entire play: 4 times in scenes by Beaumont, and thrice in Fletcher's V, 3. Apart from this, the only vestige of Fletcher's customary linguistic practices consists in the fact that, though hath and doth are used respectively 7 and 3 times in Beaumont's share of the play, neither form occurs in the Fletcherian portion. Fletcher's usual preference for the contraction 'em (here spelled throughout the play 'um), to them is evident, but a similar preference is evident in Beaumont's share as well. The play, indeed, furnishes striking proof that Beaumont's language preferences (apart from his avoidance of ye) are not essentially different from Fletcher's. In the five scenes of Fletcher's authorship, 'um is used 10 times, them 4 times, i'th' 3 times, o'th' 4 times, h'as 2 times, and 's for his a single time. There is little enough to distinguish the Fletcherian usage from the occurrence of the same forms in Beaumont's share, where 'um appears 39 times, them 17 times, i'th' 5 times, o'th' 2 times, h'as a single time, and 's for his 4 times. Fletcher's extra-metrical verse serves, on the whole, to set the five scenes of his authorship apart from the rest of the play, though one of these (V, 3) is almost entirely prose, and prose is to be found elsewhere in his share, most notably in the final half of V, 1.

The Knight of the Burning Pestle

• Beaumont: I-V.

Though one should, perhaps, be reluctant to deprive Fletcher of a share in this, the most celebrated play in the canon, I find no shred of evidence for assuming his work to be present here. Even granting Beaumont's practice of giving the final form to his collaborations with Fletcher, the evidence —linguistic, metrical, syntactic—which the play affords gives no valid basis for assuming a theory of dual authorship. Linguistically, at least, the play is very much of a piece, and the linguistic pattern which emerges from it is at one with all that we know of the pattern of Beaumont. Ye occurs but 3 times throughout the play. There are 37 instances of hath, 12 of doth. For 9 occurrences of 'em (and 2 of the unusual 'am, which occurs as well in The Woman Hater), there are 36 of them. The contraction ha', elsewhere associated with Beaumont, appears here 13 times. As for the contractions i'th' (here used 8 times), o'th' (used twice), h'as (used once), 's for his (used 7 times): it has been already noted that there is little if anything to distinguish Beaumont's use of such forms from Fletcher's. If Fletcher's work is present, it is present to a very negligible degree indeed, and whatever

distinctive features it may have possessed have been brought by Beaumont to a thorough conformity with the texture of the whole. In all essentials, the play is the product of a single dramatist.

Love's Pilgrimage

• Beaumont: I, 1a (lines 1-23), 1c (line 75 to entrance of Lazaro); IV; V.
• Fletcher: I, 2; II; III.
• Adapted from Jonson: I, 1b (lines 24-74), 1d (from Lazaro's entrance to the end).

The play's opening scene incorporates two sizeable passages (of 21 and 111 lines respectively) from Jonson's The New Inn, and the explanations for how this has come about have been numerous and various. Jonson's play was first produced, and immediately denounced by the first-night audience, in January 1629. On 16 September 1635, Herbert records in his Office-Book the receipt of one pound "from the King's Company, for the renewing of Love's Pilgrimage" (Herbert, p. 36). Since this was Herbert's usual fee for re-licensing an old play to which new scenes had been added,[3] the supposition is that Love's Pilgrimage had undergone alterations. It seems reasonable to assume that these consisted, in part at least, in adapting the two passages from Jonson's hapless comedy into the old Beaumont and Fletcher play that was about to be revived. So disastrous had been the reception of The New Inn that the play must have represented a total financial loss to the King's Company, and one might speculate that the actors would have been ready enough to salvage from it anything that could be put to use in refurbishing an old play for revival.

The discussion that has raged over the reproduction of the passages in the two plays has, of course, been chiefly concerned with whether they were in fact transferred from The New Inn at the revival of Love's Pilgrimage in 1635, or whether Jonson himself had lifted them from Beaumont and Fletcher's earlier work. Since both Beaumont and Fletcher were dead by the time Jonson wrote The New Inn, neither can be charged with stealing from Jonson, and if the two passages stood in the original version of Love's Pilgrimage, then Jonson must be judged guilty of appropriating them for his own. Oliphant (The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, p. 439) advances an elaborate theory which would suppose Jonson to have commenced, "probably about the time of Fletcher's death [August 1625]," a revision of Love's Pilgrimage, but one which was never carried beyond the first half of I, 1, When, according to Oliphant, Jonson began The New Inn several years later, he reclaimed some of his lines that had gone into his revision of the earlier play. But since Oliphant considers the second of the

two passages in question to be the work of Fletcher, he would contend that Jonson lifted not only some of his own lines, but carried with him as well "the only piece of Fletcher's work he had left in the only scene he had meddled with." Though Oliphant "fanc[ied] that [no] other explanation has been put forward that satisfies so many of the conditions," his theory is rather less than credible. Herford and Simpson, in their edition of Jonson's Works (II, 198 ff.), present as convincing proof as is likely to be advanced that the passages in The New Inn are the original ones. Since the authors of Love's Pilgrimage were dead at the date of Jonson's play, the passages could only have been introduced into their work by a later hand, most probably at the time the play was re-licensed in 1635.

That the play represents an original Beaumont-Fletcher collaboration is, I think, certain. About Fletcher's presence, there can be no doubt at all. The occurrence of ye clearly charts the extent of his share, from I, 2 through the end of Act III. The linguistic pattern that emerges from these scenes is as distinctly Fletcherian as any to be found in his unaided work, or the most readily distinguishable of his collaborations with Massinger. Ye in the Fletcherian scenes occurs 170 times, and is found but twice elsewhere in the play. The Fletcherian portion displays as well his usual linguistic preferences: 'em occurs 35 times, them not at all. There are 3 instances of i'th', 5 of o'th', 1 of 's for his. Hath is used but twice; doth does not occur. Beaumont's share is distinguished from Fletcher's first of course by the absence of ye, which, as has been said, occurs but twice in scenes assigned to him. But it is worth noting that here, as in Beggars' Bush and Cupid's Revenge, all instances of the contraction ha' appear in Beaumont's portion of the play. Finally, the 9 instances of hath in the Beaumont scenes afford something of a contrast with the infrequent use of the form in scenes by Fletcher.

But the linguistic pattern that emerges for Beaumont here displays, on the whole, a wide variety of contractions used at a rate that can seldom be distinguished from their occurrence in Fletcher. Thus we find in Beaumont's share of Love's Pilgrimage 32 instances of 'em (with 5 of them), 4 of i'th', 2 of o'th', 3 of h'as, and 3 of 's for his. The use of such contractions as these in the two shares of Love's Pilgrimage but serves further to bear out the truth of what was said regarding the use of such contractions in Cupid's Revenge: that they are of no value as evidence for distinguishing the work of Beaumont and Fletcher.

That the Fletcherian ye should be preserved to the extent that it is in Love's Pilgrimage is itself remarkable in a play of which Beaumont was part-author; it is the more so in view of the fact that the play has undergone some degree of alteration. The presence of ye would seem to indicate that here Beaumont is not responsible for the play's final form. It may indicate as well that the alterations of 1635 did not go much beyond the Jonsonian insertions in I, 1. The ye's of the Fletcherian scenes, at any rate, have not suffered the usual reduction that elsewhere has been found to be the inevitable consequence of a non-authorial revision of Fletcher's work.

The Maid's Tragedy

• Beaumont: I; II, 1; III; IV, 2; V, 3.
• Fletcher: II, 2; IV, 1; V, 1-2.

Like A King and no King, The Maid's Tragedy is essentially Beaumont's work. Fletcher's contribution seems to be confined to four scenes, though one of these IV, 1)—the scene in which Melantius confronts his sister Evadne with his knowledge that she is the mistress of the King, and orders her to murder her royal lover—constitutes the climax of the play. The catastrophe that directly results from this scene, the actual murder of the King by Evadne (V, 1), is also Fletcher's work.

As usual with the Beaumont-Fletcher collaborations, the linguistic evidence which the play affords tells us very little. There is no scope for the test of ye: the form occurs but 7 times in the entire play, 5 times in Beaumont's share and twice in scenes by Fletcher. Hath is found 17 times in the Beaumont portion and but thrice in Fletcher's; doth appears 4 times in Beaumont's share and not at all in Fletcher's. This is the only possible evidence of distinct linguistic preferences that emerges for the two collaborators. Here again the contraction 'em is found in the shares of both dramatists: 9 times in Beaumont's, 5 times in Fletcher's. There are single occurrences of i'th', o'th', and 's for his in Beaumont's share of the play, though none of these typically Fletcherian contractions appears in the four scenes attributed to him. Of the play's 14 instances of the contraction ha', 11 are found in scenes of Beaumont's authorship.

The Noble Gentleman

• Beaumont: I, 4; II, 2; III, 1, 3-4; IV, 3-5.
• Beaumont and Fletcher: I, 1-3; II, 1; III, 2; IV, 1-2; V.

I consider the extant text of the play to represent Fletcher's revision of an early work of Beaumont's sole authorship. There is a certain amount of external evidence for such a supposition. The prologue printed with the first folio text declares the play to have been revived some two decades after its original production:

According to the Office-Book of Sir Henry Herbert, under the date of 3 February 1626, The Noble Gentleman was licensed for acting as the work of Fletcher (Herbert, p. 31). The play is certainly not his unaided work, and the supposition must be that, since it had been revised and was about to be re-staged after a considerable lapse of time, it had necessarily to be licensed anew. That it was attributed to Fletcher is understandable, since he was the reviser. An identical situation was to occur eight years later,

when Fletcher's A Very Woman was revised by Massigner and re-licensed as his work.[4]

If the prologue, with its reference to a play in fashion "some twenty yeare agoe," was spoken at the revival of 1626, then the original date of The Noble Gentleman would be around 1605-6, thus according perfectly with the period of Beaumont's early work. Apart from the occurrence of ye, the linguistic pattern that emerges from the play as a whole closely resembles that of The Woman Hater, another of Beaumont's early and—in its original form—unaided plays which was printed in 1607. Certainly the pattern is, in almost every respect, a decidedly un-Fletcherian one. The total occurrence of hath and doth throughout the play (39 and 23 times respectively) comes close to approximating Beaumont's record use of these forms in The Woman Hater. And the preference for them to the contracted 'em apparent in that play is paralleled here; for 30 instances of them in The Noble Gentleman, there are but 7 of 'em. Ye occurs a total of 38 times in the play, and it is found at least once in all but three of the play's sixteen scenes. The manner in which the Fletcherian ye thus comes to be grafted on to a basic linguistic pattern that fairly abounds with hath's, doth's, and them's makes for something of an anomaly in the plays of the canon.

In attributing the respective shares of the two dramatists, I have specified as the work of Beaumont and Fletcher those scenes in which the Fletcherian revisions seem to have been most extensive. Since ye is not unknown in the work of Beaumont, one cannot consider every occurrence of the form in The Noble Gentleman to have been introduced by Fletcher. But it will be understood that, in designating certain scenes as Beaumont's own, I by no means exclude the possibility that Fletcher has made certain stylistic revisions in these as well. It is only that here Beaumont's original work seems less altered than in those scenes where revision has been specifically indicated.

Philaster

• Beaumont: I, 2; II, 1, 3, 4a (to Pharamond's entrance); III; IV, 3-6; V, 1-2, 3a (to King's exit), 5.
• Fletcher: I, 1; II, 2, 4b (from Pharamond's entrance to end); IV, 1-2; V, 3b (from King's exit to end), 4.

Fletcher's share in Philaster is more considerable than in either The Maid's Tragedy or A King and no King, but here again it is overshadowed by Beaumont's, and once again Beaumont's is the controlling hand. Like the other two plays, Philaster exhibits 7 occurrences of ye, 5 of which occur in Fletcher's scenes, 2 in Beaumont's. And as is elsewhere the case in certain of the Beaumont-Fletcher collaborations, the only trace of Fletcher's linguistic pattern that is evident is his general avoidance of third person singular verb forms in -th. Where hath is found 10 times in Beaumont's portion of the play, it appears but thrice in Fletcher's. And while doth does not appear

at all in Fletcher's share, it occurs 6 times in Beaumont's. Them is found more frequently than the contracted form in the Beaumont portion, but here again the contraction (which, with one exception, is spelled 'um throughout the play, as in A King and no King) is used at an almost equal rate in the shares of both dramatists (14 times in Beaumont's, 13 times in Fletcher's) and so can afford no evidence for a distinctive linguistic preference. This is the case with the other contractions that have tended to distinguish Fletcher from Massigner; their rate of occurrence in Philaster, as elsewhere in the Beaumont and Fletcher collaborations, is virtually identical in the shares of both dramatists.

The Scornful Lady

• Beaumont: I, 1; II, 1; V, 2.
• Fletcher: I, 2; II, 2-3; III; IV; V, 1, 3-4.

Perhaps because Fletcher's share of the play is the larger, the features of his linguistic pattern emerge somewhat more clearly than is generally the case in his collaborations with Beaumont. Ye appears a total of 31 times in the play: 29 times in scenes by Fletcher, twice in scenes by Beaumont. The Fletcherian portion displays as well 14 instances of y', a form which does not appear in Beaumont's share. Fletcher's use of them (4 times) is once again greatly overshadowed by his use of the contracted form, which occurs 4 times as 'em, 20 times as 'um. Other contractions associated with Fletcher are present in abundance: i'th' (20 times), o'th' (6 times), h'as (7 times), 's for his (3 times). But certain at least of these same linguistic forms are to be found in the three scenes assigned to Beaumont: a single instance of 'em and 6 of 'um (to 3 instances of them), 3 occurrences of i'th', one of o'th'. Beaumont's share displays 6 occurrences of hath and 2 of doth. In Fletcher's share, doth—as is so often the case—does not appear, but hath is used to the un-Fletcherian total of 9 times.

Though Beaumont's share in the actual authorship of the play is decidedly subordinate to Fletcher's, I think there is no doubt that he is responsible for the final form of the extant text. Only thus can I account for the apparently reduced occurrence of ye. If Fletcher is indeed responsible for as much of the play as I credit to him, the supposition would be that originally ye occurred at a much higher rate. The very fact that the form appears to the extent that it does is, I think, to be interpreted as evidence that Fletcher was here the principal collaborator. The Maid's Tragedy and A King and no King afford examples of how, when Fletcher's share was confined to a few scenes, such ye's as he could manage to introduce in such a comparatively small portion of the whole all but disappeared under Beaumont's revising hand.

Thierry and Theodoret

• Beaumont: III; V, 1.
• Fletcher: I, 1; II, 2-3; IV, 1; V, 2.
• Massigner: I, 2; II, 1, 4; IV, 2.

Linguistically, the play can be divided into three distinct parts. That of Fletcher's authorship exhibits 21 of the play's 22 occurrences of ye. Those scenes in which ye is found reveal as well a strong preference for the contracted 'em to the full pronoun them. In the Fletcherian portion, them is used but once, while the contraction occurs 21 times; 3 times as 'em, 18 times as 'um. The play's single instance of o'th' is found in Fletcher's V, 2. Such other contractions as i'th', h'as, and 's for his do not appear in the first quarto text. Hath, in Fletcher's share of the play, occurs 3 times, doth once.

Ye does not occur in any of these scenes assigned to Massinger. There are here but 2 occurrences of 'em, to 18 uses of them, so reversing, in Massinger's usual fashion at this period of his career (prior to 1621), the Fletcherian preference.[5] Though doth does not occur in Massinger's share of the play, hath appears 10 times. The play's 2 instances of t' are found in Massinger's II, 1 and IV, 2.[6]

The linguistic evidence to be derived from Beaumont's share of the play demonstrates in little a tendency that can be observed in virtually all of his work: a tendency to employ together such distinctive linguistic forms as ye, hath, doth, and 'em, without using any of these to any very marked degree. In his share of Thierry and Theodoret there are single instances of ye, hath, and doth, while 'em and them are used 6 times each.

The manner in which the play's 18 occurrences of the pronominal contraction 'um are all to be found in scenes by Fletcher is worthy of notice. The use of the form in Fletcher's unaided work has already been discussed;[7] it appears throughout the first quarto text of Rule a Wife, and the manuscript—prepared from Fletcher's foul papers—of Bonduca. Further evidence for associating the form with Fletcher is afforded by three of the plays—including The Scornful Lady—considered in this section of the present study. The three instances of 'um in Cupid's Revenge are found in scenes assigned to Fletcher. And the three occurrences of the form in The Woman Hater appear in scenes which, if not of Fletcher's original authorship, were certainly re-worked by him. Finally, the fact that in Thierry and Theodoret both Beaumont and Massigner employ the more usual contraction 'em, while all occurrences of 'um are confined to Fletcher's share of the play, is certainly striking.

And yet to regard the form as distinctly Fletcherian is to involve oneself in certain real difficulties, as the evidence of three other plays considered in the present section makes clear. In both A King and no King and

Philaster, 'um is to be found in abundance throughout the shares of Beaumont and Fletcher alike. And while in The Scornful Lady, 'um appears 20 times in the Fletcherian portion, it appears 6 times in scenes assigned to Beaumont. Since Philaster and A King and no King are largely Beaumont's work, and since presumably all three plays were given their final form by him, it is hard to see how 'um could have found its way into scenes of his authorship if, as the evidence of Thierry and Theodoret implies, 'um was the contraction favored by Fletcher, while 'em represented the preference of Beaumont.

The evidence of the first quarto text of Thierry seems valid enough, and there is no reason to attribute the variant forms to the separate practices of two compositors, or to the caprice of a single one. The occurrence of 'em and 'um does not coincide with bibliographical units of the printed text, but with separate scenes of the play itself. Thus while Beaumont's V, 1 contains 5 'em's and no 'um's, Fletcher's V, 2 exhibits 4 'um's and no 'em's. When, in Fletcher's I, 1, the two forms are found together in the same scene, both 'em's appear on signatures (B1v and B2v) which contain respectively two and three 'um's. From this it might be argued, especially since the occurrence is near the beginning of the play, that the compositor was faithfully trying to reproduce the less familiar contraction that stood in his copy, but twice failed to do so and inserted the more usual 'em instead. That 'um was the less familiar of the two contractions, and one not always preserved by compositors, is evident from the fact that, with one exception, all occurrences of the form in the plays of the Beaumont and Fletcher corpus appear only in quarto texts. 'Um appears in the text of only one play (Wit at Several Weapons) included in the first folio. In the second folio texts of plays printed from quartos in which 'um appears, the contraction is regularly changed to 'em. A notable example of this is the second folio text of Rule a Wife, printed from the 1640 quarto (the only quarto edition of the play). The 27 instances of 'um in the quarto appear in the second folio as 'em.

To conclude, on the evidence of the manuscript of Bonduca, and the quarto texts of Thierry and Theodoret and Rule a Wife (and, to a lesser extent, the quarto texts of Cupid's Revenge and The Woman Hater), there is reasonably good evidence for regarding the pronominal contraction 'um as a distinct feature of Fletcher's linguistic usage, but until an explanation is furnished for the occurrence of the form in the Beaumont portion of Philaster, A King and no King, and The Scornful Lady, one is hardly justified in doing so.

The Woman Hater

• Beaumont: I; II; III, 2-4; IV, 1; V, 1, 3-4.
• Beaumont and Fletcher: III, 1; IV, 2-3; V, 2, 5.

Published in quarto in 1607, the play was the first in the Beaumont and Fletcher corpus to appear in print. It is essentially Beaumont's, and in all

probability represents an early work of his unaided authorship. Beyond any doubt, however, at least five scenes had been revised by Fletcher by the time the play was printed, for these are noticeably stamped with pronominal ye's, a fact which at once renders them conspicuous amid the rest of the play, and affords evidence of Fletcher's fondness for the form even at this early date. In the five scenes where Fletcher's hand is present, ye occurs a total of 76 times; elsewhere in the play it occurs but twice. The linguistic pattern that emerges from the play as a whole—excluding these five scenes —is decidedly non-Fletcherian. In it, hath is used 75 times, doth 21 times. There is evident here a strong preference for the full pronoun them over the contracted form which occurs once as 'em, thrice as 'am, the last a form which has occurred twice in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. There are single instances of i'th', o'th', and 's for his. The pattern—putting aside the very high occurrence of hath and doth—is typical of Beaumont, with his eclectic taste in contractions, but his tendency to use none to a marked degree.

Apart from ye, it would be difficult to determine whether or not such other linguistic forms as are exhibited in the scenes revised by Fletcher are to be traced to him. The 11 instances of hath found here seem rather excessive for Fletcher, though the same five scenes display but a single use of doth. And in view of what has already been said regarding the contraction 'um, it may be significant that the 3 instances of the form in the play appear in scenes where the Fletcherian ye is conspicuously present.

Beggars' Bush — 1647

[Figures in square brackets are based on the Lambarde Manuscript in the Folger Shakespeare Library]

                                                                                             

	ye	y'	'ee	you	hath	doth	'em	'um	them	i'th'	i'the	o'th'	o'the	h'as	's his	ha'
I, i:				54	5				9
	[3]			[47]	[5]				[8]
-, ii:				38	2		2		7
	[1]			[38]	[2]		[1]		[8]
TOTAL: I				92	7		2		16
	[4]			[85]	[7]		[1]		[16]
II, i:	1			37	2	3	2		3	5		1	2			3
	[4]	[1]		[32]	[2]	[3]	[2]		[3]	[4]				[1]		[2]
--, ii:				3					1							3
				[3]					[1]							[2]
--, iii:	4			64		1	3			1	1		1
		[3]		[62]		[1]	[3]			[1]	[1]
TOTAL: II	5			104	2	4	5		4	6	1	1	3			6
	[4]	[4]		[97]	[2]	[4]	[5]		[4]	[5]	[1]			[1]		[4]
III, i:	26			16		1	3				1			1
	[28]		[1]	[8]		[1]	[3]			[1]		[1]
---, ii:	27			14			7				1			1
	[25]		[2]	[13]			[5]		[2]	[1]				[1]
---, iii:	29			35			7				1	1			2
	[33]	[1]		[30]			[6]	[1]		[1]		[1]			[2]
---, iv:	10	1		17
	[13]	[1]		[15]
TOTAL: III	92	1		82		1	17				3	1		2	2
	[99]	[2]	[3]	[66]		[1]	[14]	[1]	[2]	[3]		[2]		[1]	[2]
IV, i:	14			13			2
	[16]			[9]			[1]		[1]
---, ii:	11			9			1
	[13]			[7]			[1]
---, iii:	2			15			1					1
	[4]			[10]			[1]		[1]			[1]
---, iv:	21			16			7
	[27]			[10]			[5]		[1]
---, v:	12			19					1					1
	[13]			[16]			[1]							[1]
TOTAL: IV	60			72			11		1			1		1
	[73]			[52]			[9]		[3]			[1]		[1]
V, i:	1			28	4		7		1		2	1				2
	[6]			[23]	[3]		[6]		[2]	[1]						[2]
--, ii (a):				20
				[20]
--, ii (b):				37	2		4		4		3		1			4
	[5]			[31]	[2]		[4]		[3]	[2]		[1]				[3]
TOTAL: V	1			85	6		11		5		5	1	1			6
	[11]			[74]	[5]		[10]		[5]	[3]		[1]				[5]
TOTAL:	158	1		435	15	5	46		26	6	9	4	4	3	2	12
	[191]	[6]	[3]	[374]	[14]	[5]	[39]	[1]	[30]	[11]	[1]	[4]		[3]	[2]	[9]

The Coxcomb — F 1647

                                                             

	ye	y'	you	hath	doth	'em	'um them	i'th'	i'the	o'th'	o'the	h'as	's his	ha'
I, i:			29	1
-, ii:		1	30		1	2	2						1	2
-, iii:			8					1		1
-, iv:						1	1
-, v:			16			1		1					1
-, vi:	2		26			1
TOTAL: I	2	1	109	1	1	5	3	2		1			2	2
II, i:	2		83	2				3	1
--, ii:		1	40				2
--, iii:	1		20					1
--, iv:			17		1		4				1
TOTAL: II	3	1	160	2	1		6	4	1		1
III, i:			48		1							1
---, ii:			20				1					1
---, iii:	1		57			3	2			1
TOTAL: III	1		125		1	3	3			1		2
IV, i:			3
--, ii:		1	36	1			1	1	1
--, iii:			30	1			2					1
--, iv:	1		27				1			1
--, v:			5			1
--, vi:			13	1				1
--, vii:			16	1				2
--, viii:			13			1		1			1
TOTAL: IV	1	1	143	4		2	4	5	1	1	1	1
V, i:			36				5
--, ii:			57				2	1					1
--, iii:			79	2	2	4	12		1
TOTAL: V			172	2	2	4	19	1	1				1
TOTAL:	7	3	709	9	5	14	35	12	3	3	2	3	3	2

Cupid's Revenge — Q 1615

                                 

	ye	y'	you	hath	doth	'em	'um them	i'th'	i'the	o'th'	a'th'	h'as	's his	ha'
I, i:			6			7	1		1				1	1
-, ii:			3	1		2
-, iii:			9	1	1	1		1	1
-, iv:	1		18	1		3	2	1		1		1	1
TOTAL: I	1		36	3	1	13	3	2	2	1		1	2	1
II, i:
--, ii:			71			4
--, iii:			8				2				1		1
--, iv:			13							1		1	7	1
--, v:			2				1
--, vi:	3		15			1
TOTAL: II	3		109			5	3			1	1	1	8	1
III, i:			2
---, ii:			82				1
---, iii			3
---, iv:	1		31			3	1

                       

TOTAL: III	1	118			3		2
IV, i:		63		1	2		1	3	1
--, ii:	2	10	1	1			1	1	1[*]
--, iii:	2	21			3	2					1
--, iv:		6			2		2
--, v:	1	36			5		1	1		1
TOTAL: IV	5	136	1	2	12	2	5	5	1	2	1
V, i:		19					1	2						5
--, ii:	3	6					1	1
--, iii:		63	2		2	1	1
TOTAL: V	3	88	2		2	1	3	3						5
TOTAL:	13	487	6	3	35	3	16	10	3	4	2	2	10	7

A King and no King — Q 1619

                                           

	ye	y'	you	hath	doth 'em	'um	them	i'th'	o'th'	a'th'	h'as	's his	ha'
I, i:			105	5	1	8	2	3	1	2	1	2	1
-, ii:			16
TOTAL: I			121	5	1	8	2	3	1	2	1	2	1
II, i:		2	88		1	4	2	1
--, ii:			39			4	3	1				1
TOTAL: II		2	127		1	8	5	2				1
III, i:	2		97	1	1	2	1
---, ii:	1		25			4	2		1
---, iii:			34	1		3	1
TOTAL: III	3		156	2	1	9	4		1
IV, i:			26			2
--, ii:		1	35			4
--, iii:		1	32				1	1	4	4			1
--, iv:			24			9	3
TOTAL: IV		2	117			15	4	1	4	4			1
V, i:			41			3		1		2	1	1
--, ii:			30			1
--, iii:	3		28			1	3	1		2	1		2
--, iv:	1		94			4	3					1
TOTAL: V	4		193			9	6	2		4	2	2	2
TOTAL:	7	4	714	7	3	49	21	8	6	10	3	5	4

The Knight of the Burning Pestle — Q 1613

               

	ye	y'	you	hath	doth	'em	'um	them	i'th'	o'th'	a'th'	h'as	's his	ha'
Induction:			37	4			8
I:	1		87	7	1	6[8]	5	2	1	2	1	2
II:	1		63	6	1	1	5					4	9
III:	1		90	13	6	3	12	4					1
IV:			66	5	2	1[**]	5	1		1			3
V:			81	2	2			1	1	1			1
TOTAL:	3		424	37	12	11	36	8	2	3	1	7	13

Love's Pilgrimage — F 1647

                                                 

	ye	y'	you	hath	doth	'em	'um them	i'th'	o'th'	o'the	h'as	's his	ha'
I, i (a:)			1			1		1					1
-, i (b):			3			2
-, i (c):			89	2		6	1	1	2		3	1	11
-, i (d):			4			2	1	1	1		4	2
-, ii:	19		51	1
TOTAL:	19		148	3		11	2	3	3		7	3	12
II, i:	27		13			2
--, ii:	33		32			12		2	2
--, iii:	14	1	17			6
--, iv:	14		6			6
TOTAL:	88	1	68			26		2	2
III, i:	3		2
---, ii:	41		32			4			1			1
---, iii:	19		17	1		5		1	2
TOTAL: III	63		51	1		9		1	3			1
IV, i:	2		58			5	1
--, ii:			64	2		8	1
TOTAL: IV	2		122	2		13	2
V, i:			8			1				1		1
--, ii:			1	2								1	1
--, iii:			9										1
--, iv:		1	120	3	1	11	2	2						7
TOTAL: V		1	138	5	1	12	2	2		1		2	9
TOTAL:	172	2	527	11	1	71	6	8	8	1	7	6	21

The Maid's Tragedy — Q 1619

                                   

	ye	y'	you	hath	doth	'em	'um them	i'th'	o'th'	h'as	's his	ha'
I, i:			16	3	1	1	4
-, ii:	1		37	2	1	2	9	1				1
TOTAL: I	1		53	5	2	3	13	1				1
II, i:	1		58	2		3[*]	2					1
--, ii:			21			1	2			2		1
TOTAL: II	1		79	2		4	4			2		2
III, i:		5	68	3	1	1	2					1
---, ii:		1	47	2			1					3
TOTAL: III		6	115	5	1	1	3					4
IV, i:	1	2	47	3		2	2			1		2
--, ii:	3		63	3		2	2		1		1	5
TOTAL: IV	4	2	110	6		4	4		1	1	1	7
V, i:			19			2
--, ii:	1		13
--, iii:			30	2	1	2	1
TOTAL: V	1		62	2	1	4	1
TOTAL:	7	8	419	20	4	16	25	1	1	3	1	14

The Noble Gentleman — F 1647

                                             

	ye	y' you	hath	doth	'em	'um them	i'th'	o'th'	h'as	's his
I, i:	7	43	2	1		4
-, ii:	5	10	2	1		1			1
-, iii:	2	20			2	1				1
-, iv:	1	4							1
TOTAL: I	15	77	4	2	2	6			2	1
II, i:	4	62	5	3	1	3
--, ii:	2	60	7	10	1	4	1
TOTAL: II	6	122	12	13	2	7	1
III, i:	1	8	1			2
---, ii:	3	19				1	1	1		1
---, iii:		15	2			1
---, iv:	2	23	2	2		3				1
TOTAL: III	6	65	5	2		7	1	1		2
IV, i:		1
--, ii:		9						1
--, iii:	1	56	4		1	1
--, iv:	1	38				4	1
--, v:	1	21	1			1
TOTAL: IV	3	125	5		1	6	1	1
V, i:	8	90	13	6	2	4	1
TOTAL: V	8	90	13	6	2	4	1
TOTAL:	38	479	39	23	7	30	4	2	2	3

Philaster — Q 1622

                                                       

	ye	y'	you	hath	doth	'em	'um	them	i'th'	i'the	o'th'	h'as	's his	ha'
I, i:		4	76	2			1	6				1	1
-, ii:			35				2	5
TOTAL: I		4	111	2			3	11				1	1
II, i:			8		2			1
--, ii:	1		51	1			3							1
--, iii:		1	10		1			1		1
--, iv: (a):		3	12				2				1
--, iv (b):	1		29				4
TOTAL: II	2	4	110	1	3		9	2		1	1			1
III, i:			47		2		3	7
---, ii:	1	1	30	2			2	2	1			1
TOTAL: III	1	1	77	2	2		5	9	1			1
IV, i:	1	1	2						1			1	1
--, ii:			2				1
--, iii:			1					2
--, iv:		2	18					1					1
--, v:			26									1
--, vi:	1		19	1			4	1						2
TOTAL: IV	2	3	68	1			5	4	1			2	2	2
V, i:
--, ii:			9	1
--, iii (a):		1	20	3			1	3
--, iii (b):	2		12				3	5	1				2
--, iv:			29				1	1
--, v:			44	3	1	1		1
TOTAL: V	2	1	114	7	1	1	5	10	1				2
TOTAL:	7	13	480	13	6	1	27	36	3	1	1	4	5	3

The Scornful Lady — Q 1616

                                       

	ye	y'	you	hath	doth	'em	'um	them	i'th'	o'th'	a'th'	h'as	's his	ha'
I, i:	1		86	4	2	1	3	2	2
-, ii:		1	28	1			2	1			1	4	1
TOTAL: I	1	1	114	5	2	1	5	3	2		1	4	1
II, ii:	1		50				1	1		1
--, ii:			37						3			1
--, iii:			33	1			2					1
TOTAL: II	1		120	1			3	1	3	1		2
III, i:	5	3	134	1			1	2	1	2		1
---, ii:	9	4	62				3	1	3	2				1
TOTAL: III	14	7	196	1			4	3	4	4		1		1
IV, i:	9	2	137	3			5		4		1		2	1
--, ii:		1	23			3	5		2
TOTAL: IV	9	3	160	3		3	10		6		1		2	1
V, i:	1		47	1		1			5
--, ii:			91	2			2		1					1
--, iii:	1	2	20
--, iv:	4	1	73	2			2		2	2
TOTAL: V	6	3	231	5		1	4		8	2				1
TOTAL:	31	14	821	15	2	5	26	7	23	7	2	7	3	3

Thierry and Theodoret — Q 1621

                                     

	ye	y'	you	hath	doth	'em	'um	them	i'th'	o'th'	a'th'	h'as	's his
I, i:	9	48	2		2	6
-, ii:		9	3				1
TOTAL: I	9	57	5		2	6	1
II, i:		48	7		2		13
--, ii:		4
--, iii:	1	23			1	6			1
--, iv:		60					2
TOTAL: II	1	135	7		3	6	15		1
III, i:	1	64	1		1		2
---, ii:		11		1
TOTAL: III	1	75	1	1	1		2
IV, i:	2	42	1			2	1
--, ii:		38					2
TOTAL: IV	2	80	1			2	3
V, i:		76			5		4
--, ii:	9	28		1		4		1
TOTAL: V	9	104		1	5	4	4		1
TOTAL:	22	451	14	2	11	18	25	1	1

The Woman Hater — Q 1607

                                               

	ye	y'	you	hath	doth	'em	'um	them	i'th'	o'th'	a'th'	h'as	's his	ha'
I, i:		2	8	4	1			1
-, ii:			2	1				1
-, iii:		1	56	13	3			5		1
TOTAL: I		3	66	18	4			7		1
II, i:		2	66	24	11			7
--, ii:			8
TOTAL: II		2	74	24	11			7
III, i:	13	2	12											2
---, ii:			11	6		1		1
---, iii:	1		5	6	1						1		1
---, iv:			34	3		1[*]		3
TOTAL: III	14	2	62	15	1	2		4			1		1	2
IV, i:			26	4	4			15
--, ii:	13		6	1			1	1			1[**]
--, iii:	18		38	3				1	1
TOTAL: IV	31		70	8	4		1	17	1		1
V, i:	1		20	11	1	2[*]		3	1
-, ii:	9	1	16	3				1
-, iii:			8
-, iv:			4	3				3
-, v:	23	1	42	4	1		2	9				1
TOTAL: V	33	2	90	21	2	2	2	16	1			1
TOTAL:	78	9	362	86	22	4	3	51	2	1	2	1	1	2

Notes