University of Virginia Library

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

The three plays of the Beaumont and Fletcher canon to be considered in what follows pose authorial problems of considerable complexity, and the linguistic evidence is not always sufficient to account for all the dramatists who appear to be present in them. Two plays, The Captain and Love's Cure, I am now persuaded, contain the work of Beaumont, and should by rights have been treated in section three of this monograph; they bring to a total of fourteen the number of plays in the canon in which Beaumont's work is present. The Captain is, in the main, the work of Fletcher, but Beaumont has, I think, contributed four scenes in Acts IV and V; and, to judge from the diminished occurrence of the Fletcherian ye, he has given the play its final form. Love's Cure, in its extant text, is very largely the work of Massinger, but there are sections of the play which are clearly not Massinger's, and in a detailed examination of the play below, I attempt to show that what the extant text represents is a Massinger revision of a Beaumont and Fletcher original. The Tragedy of Rollo, Duke of Normandy contains the work of Fletcher and Massinger, but it contains as well the work of two other dramatists. Studies of the play's authorship prior to this one have suggested Chapman and Jonson as the dramatists responsible for the non-Fletcher, non-Massinger sections of Rollo, and in my discussion of the play below, I present such linguistic evidence as is available for their presence in it.

The Captain

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

About this play, two things are immediately certain: (1) that Fletcher is not the sole author, and (2) that his share of the play has

been altered in some measure by another. Both these facts are deducible from the evidence of ye in the folio text of the play. From the outset, its occurrence is suspiciously low, and it decreases steadily throughout the play, from a total of 40 times in Act I, to 26 times in Act II, 21 times in Act III, 17 times in Act IV, and 3 times in Act V. But though the low occurrence of ye implies that Fletcher is not responsible for the final form of his share in the extant text of The Captain, I think that all of the play from the beginning through IV,3 is essentially his. To that point, ye is found sprinkled at some rate throughout every scene but three; only in III,1 (where you occurs 8 times), III,6 (you once), and IV,1 (you 9 times) does ye fail to appear. And of these, III,1 certainly contains traces of Fletcher's work. The structure of such a line as Julio's reference to the courtesan Lelia: "I dare see her / Were she as catching as the plague, and deadly" is typically Fletcherian, this being his characteristic manner of phrasing comparisons (cf. The Loyal Subject, II,5: "as bounteous as the aire, and open"; The Humourous Lieutenant, I,1: "as sudden . . . / As arrowes from a Tartars bow, and speeding"; Valentinian, IV,4: "more glorious then my life, and lasting"; Rule a Wife, V,1: "I had thought he had been a Devil. / He made as many noises and as horrible"; The Pilgrim, I,1: "her sweet humor / That is as easy as a calme, and peacefull").

It is, I think, only with the long and important IV,4 that we are in the presence of a second dramatist. The scene contains but a single ye, as against 64 you's. It contains as well all 3 of the play's occurrences of the non-Fletcherian verb form doth. This is the notorious scene between the courtesan and her father, and its authorship has occasioned much interested speculation. It is masterfully done in its kind, and while its kind is not essentially un-Fletcherian, its verse—a regular pentameter measure after the prose exchange of the first 76 lines—to say nothing of the pattern of linguistic preferences which it displays, decidedly is. In seeking the identity of Fletcher's collaborator here, it seems unnecessary, finally, to look beyond Beaumont. Oliphant (The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, pp. 164-167) came to this opinion at last; and even C. M. Gayley (Beaumont, the Dramatist, p. 306), who was inclined to deny Beaumont's presence in The Captain because it displayed "no vestige of his faith in sweet innocence," conceded that if any scene exhibited "his imaginative elevation or his dramatic creativity," it was this one (both Oliphant and Gayley refer to the scene as IV,5, but the folio designation IV,4 is correct). The lines with which Angelo opens the scene—"I cannot keepe from this ungodly woman, / This Lelia, whom I know too, yet am caught"—and the remainder of his speech (an admixture of verse and prose) in which he explains how,

knowing the worst, he yet pursues it, convey precisely that wry sense of human frailty which I will have occasion to note below in Beaumont's handling of a similar occasion in Love's Cure. There are traces of Fletcher's extra-metrical blank verse in IV,4 of The Captain (notably, at the point of Lelia's recognition of her father, where the scene's sole ye occurs), but Beaumont's hand is the predominant one.

The 3 ye's of Act V are contained in the first two scenes. It is probably inevitable that the single ye of V,2 is contained in Clora's speech instructing the maid to empty the contents of a chamber pot on the head of the woman-hating Jacamo. And on this characteristic note, Fletcher's share in the play, so far as the linguistic evidence is concerned, ends. His presence can be traced—in the verse, and in sundry turns of phrase—through the last three scenes, but here his work is inextricably mingled with what I take to be Beaumont's. In V,4, for instance, the manner in which the woman-hating Captain Jacamo is dragged to a chair and forcibly held in it while a young maiden declares her love for him is reminiscent at first of the scene in which Gondarino is tormented by the ladies in V,5 of The Woman Hater, a scene in which Fletcher has been shown to have had a share (SB, XI, 98-99, 106). But where Gondarino is never cast from his humour, Jacamo is won by what he hears (he has thought no woman could love him), and by the end has come to seem less like the egregious misogynist that is, essentially, Beaumont's creation, than one of Fletcher's rough diamonds.

It will be understood that the attribution set forth above is only approximate. Fletcher, as I have already indicated, seems to be present at one point, at least, in Beaumont's IV,4. And Beaumont, to judge from the diminished occurrence of Fletcher's ye, gave the final form to the whole of the play through IV,3, as well as the first two scenes of Act V. If he did not give the final form to the Prologue that follows the text in the 1647 folio (as, to judge from the 2 ye's and the single y', he did not), his presence is nonetheless felt:

Again we are reminded of The Woman Hater: specifically, of what is said in the Prologue prefixed to the 1607 quarto edition of that play (Sig. A2): The theory that The Captain is the joint work of Beaumont and Fletcher need not founder on the Prologue's reference to "the Author." The Prologue to The Woman Hater twice refers to a single author ("he that made this Play," "he, that made this"), and it, as we know, contains the work of both Beaumont and Fletcher (cf. SB, XI, 98-99).

Love's Cure

• Beaumont: III,1,3b (from entrance of Malroda to Malroda's "Do ye ask?").
• Fletcher: II,2a (to first exit of Bobadilla); III,3a (to entrance of Malroda), 5.
• Massinger: I,1,3; IV,1-3a (to entrance of Alvarez, Lucio, Bobadilla), 3c (from entrance of Alguazier to end), 4; V,1-2, 3c (final speech).
• Beaumont and Fletcher: II,1, 2c (from Clara's "No, he do's not" to end); V,3b (from Bobadilla's "I am not regarded" to final speech).
• Fletcher and Massinger: I,2; II,2b (from first exit of Bobadilla to Clara's "No, he do's not"); III,2, 3c (from Malroda's "Do ye ask?" to end), 4; IV,3b (from entrance of Alvarez, Lucio, Bobadilla to entrance of Alguazier).
• Beaumont, Fletcher and Massinger: V,3a (to Bobadilla's "I am not regarded").

The one certainty about the authorship of this play is the presence of Massinger. In the only extant text, that of the 1647 folio, he is responsible for virtually all of Acts I, IV, and V. The great authorial problem which the play poses centers upon the authorship of the non-Massinger scenes, all of which, with the exception of the prose passages of I,2 and V,3b, occur in Acts II and III. Oliphant (pp. 431-432) regarded Love's Cure "as originally written by Beaumont" prior to 1605, "revised by Jonson and another in 1622," and revised again, "this time by Massinger," probably in the early 1630's. There is external evidence for revision in the 1647 folio text of the play, with its alternative title The Martial Maid, and its prologue spoken "At the reviving

of this Play." Oliphant's theory of a Jonsonian revision, however, can be safely dismissed; there is no shred of evidence for positing Jonson's presence in the play. Revised the play has certainly been, and there is no doubt at all that the reviser was Massinger. But it is necessary to assume no more than a single revision to account for the evidences of multiple authorship which the extant text displays if one makes the further assumption that what was revised was, not as Oliphant conjectured, the unaided work of Beaumont, but the joint work of Beaumont and Fletcher.

That Massinger is present in Love's Cure as reviser, and not as one of the original authors, is evident, among other things, from the extent of his share in the extant version. It is not credible that Massinger's contribution to a play written in collaboration with Beaumont and Fletcher prior to 1613 (the date of Beaumont's retirement from the theatre) should far exceed the combined shares of both his more celebrated associates. Then, as one examines the folio text, one comes to see that Massinger's work is not altogether confined to Acts I, IV, and V; there are traces of his presence in Acts II and III as well (notably in II,2 and III,2-3). The play has been re-worked, in some degree, from beginning to end, but it has been re-worked much more extensively in some places than in others. Massinger's revision of the first and the last two acts has been so extensive as to amount to re-writing, though there are faint traces of the original in the prose of I,2, and distinctly clearer ones in that of V,3b. His handling of Acts II and III was much less thoroughgoing; there he has been content to stitch some of his favorite turns of phrase on to a textual fabric clearly not of his own devising.

The linguistic evidence which the folio text affords seems at first glance pitifully scant, but to the practiced eye it tells its story, and its story confirms all that I have just conjectured about the authority of the extant version of the play. It is no accident that all 27 occurrences of ye in the folio text occur either in Act II, Act III, or in the prose passage near the end of Act V which I have designated as V,3b: that is to say, in the non-Massinger portion of the play. The occurrence of hath, which is found in the play 27 times as well, complements the occurrence of ye in a manner that is familiar. The tendency here, as with the joint work of Fletcher and Massinger elsewhere, is to find ye and hath appearing solely in alternating scenes, but seldom together in the same scene. Thus Acts I, IV, and V (excluding V,3b) of Love's Cure contain 20 hath's, no ye's. Of the 7 remaining hath's in the play, Beaumont may be responsible for the two that appear in Act III. But

the 5 hath's that are found anomalously occurring side by side with the 9 ye's of Fletcher's II,2 are almost certainly evidence of Massinger's revising hand.

Massinger, in the scenes to be attributed to him, typically prefers the full pronominal form them to the contraction 'em. His Act I contains 5 them's, no 'em's; his Act IV, 11 them's, 1 'em; his share of Act V, 5 them's, 2 'em's. Elsewhere in the play, the preference is reversed. Act II contains 8 'em's, 4 them's; Act III, 6 'em's, 2 them's; V,3b, 3 'em's, no them's. The play's 6 occurrences of o'th' (which appears thrice as o'the) are all found in Acts II and III. Of the play's 7 occurrences of i'th', 6 are found in Acts II and III, one in Massinger's Act I, where it appears as i'the; and i'the, as I had occasion to note at the very outset of the present study (SB, VIII, 144-145), is the form of the contraction for in the which Massinger appears to prefer on the infrequent occasions when he uses one. The play contains 2 occurrences of contractions in 's for his, a form which is found only 3 times in Massinger's fifteen unaided plays; here both occurrences appear in non-Massinger scenes: one in III, 3a, one in V,3b. The play's 3 occurrences of ha' for have are all contained in Act III. This is a form which occurs in none of Massinger's unaided plays. Elsewhere in the present study (SB, XI, 88 ff.) I have noted Beaumont's use of the form; he is, I think, responsible for its appearance in the extant text of Love's Cure. In the opening section of the present study (SB, VIII, 144-145), I discussed the use of the contraction t' for to as evidence for the work of Massinger. There are 6 occurrences of t' in the folio text of Love's Cure, and all are found in scenes which bear the heaviest stamp of Massinger's presence: one in Act I, 5 in Act IV. Finally, the play contains 2 occurrences of doth, one in III,4, the other in V,3b. Both, I think, point to the presence of Beaumont, who, as I have shown elsewhere (SB, XI, 86 ff.) employs the form with much greater frequency than either Fletcher or Massinger, in whose unaided work doth rarely occurs (cf. SB, VIII, 145).

Thus the linguistic evidence leaves no mystery about what is Massinger and what is non-Massinger in the extant text of Love's Cure. But to determine what, in the non-Massinger portion, is Beaumont, what is Fletcher, what is an inextricable blend of both, and to what extent Massinger the reviser is present in this, the section of the play which he did not re-write, is a harder matter. In so far as one can judge of the original version of Love's Cure on the basis of what remains of it in Acts II and III of the extant text, I think it likely that individual scenes contained much composite writing; at any rate, nearly

every scene of the present Acts II and III shows signs of both Beaumont and Fletcher. With regard to the evidence of the Fletcherian ye in the extant text, one hardly knows whether to marvel that it has survived at all in a play to which, originally, Beaumont might have been expected to give the final form, and which has undergone a subsequent revision by Massinger, or whether to seek in one or both of these alterations an explanation for the form's low rate of occurrence. Doubtless some of Fletcher's ye's have disappeared under Massinger's revising hand. But I think it is significant that as many ye's survive as do, especially in the context of scenes that otherwise bear the strong stamp of Beaumont's presence. If Beaumont has made any attempt to change the Fletcherian ye to you in accordance with his own practice, it has not been a very thoroughgoing one—nothing in the manner of such other Beaumont and Fletcher collaborations to which Beaumont demonstrably gave the final form as The Coxcomb, Philaster, The Maid's Tragedy, and A King and no King. The collaboration in Acts II and III of Love's Cure resembles far more what we have observed of the joint work of the two dramatists in The Woman Hater, where the ye's that mark Fletcher's contribution to Beaumont's play stand forth in conspicuous isolation (cf. SB, XI, 98-99). In this, I think, there is evidence that Love's Cure, in its original form, was one of the earliest of the Beaumont and Fletcher collaborations. Here, as in The Woman Hater, the two dramatists have joined forces without, apparently, deeming it necessary to impose on the finished product any such uniform pattern of linguistic preferences as Beaumont came to impose on their later, more polished collaborations.

There are further connections between this play and the early Woman Hater. In II,1 of Love's Cure, which I think is essentially the work of Beaumont, we are introduced to the character of Lazarillo, the hungry knave. Oliphant (p. 429) is probably right in viewing "the ravenous glutton of this play" as a first sketch of his more fully drawn namesake in The Woman Hater. At least one verbal parallel dealing with the two characters connects the two plays. In II,1 of Love's Cure, Pachieco, Lazarillo's master, instructs his man in the virtues of fasting: "I will make thee immortall, change thy humanitie into dietie, for I will teach thee to live upon nothing" (129a).[*] And Pachieco caps his argument against eating with a bit of syllogistic reasoning:

In Beaumont's II,1 of The Woman Hater, the Count, speaking of the Lazarillo of that play, presents the reverse side of the argument:

But if II,1 of Love's Cure is essentially Beaumont's, there is evidence, however slight, that Fletcher is also present. The scene contains 5 ye's. Three of these occur in two consecutive lines of dialogue: in the Alguazier's "I know you not: what are ye? hence ye base Besegnios," and in Pachieco's reply: "do'ye not know us?" (130a) Whether Fletcher wrote these lines is beyond proof, but I think it probable that he did; and I expect the scene's two remaining ye's—which occur in widely separated speeches, one by Pachieco (129b), one by Lazarillo (130b) — are signs of Fletcher's presence as well.

The action of II,2 falls into three distinct parts: (a) an opening scene of comic horseplay between Lucio and Bobadilla, joined by Clara, which occupies the first 164 lines, to the first exit of Bobadilla; (b) an intermediate scene of 26 lines, during which the stage is cleared of Alvarez, Bobadilla (for the second time), and Lucio, and Vitelli is shown on; (c) a final scene of 106 lines in which Clara and Vitelli declare their mutual love. The scene as a whole contains a total of 9 ye's. Of these, 6 occur in (a), one in (b), and 2 in (c). II,2a is, essentially, the unaided work of Fletcher; II,2b is unaided Fletcher revised by Massinger; II,2c is, essentially, unaided Beaumont. It may be that Massinger is present as reviser in this last section of the scene, as well as in the preceding section (b). And it may be that the original of II,2c contained the work of Fletcher; the 2 ye's that survive in the extant text at this point may be evidence of his presence. The fact that one of these appears in the phrase "My vow hath offerd to ye" (132b), where the Fletcherian ye and the un-Fletcherian hath appear together in the same line, may point to the presence of the revising Massinger. It is the movement of the blank verse in which the whole of the Clara-Vitelli love scene is cast that points to Beaumont as the principal presence in II,2c. The sustained use of verse throughout the last 106 lines of the scene is itself striking, verse having occurred but fitfully amid the prose that predominates, not only through the earlier part of this scene, but through the whole of Act II to this point.

What I take to be Beaumont's blank verse continues through III,1, a scene which I regard as wholly his. Everything about III,2, on the other hand—its content, its large number of extra-metrical blank verse

lines, to say nothing of its 2 ye's—points to Fletcher, revised by Massinger; I see in it no trace of Beaumont. And from considerations of the verse and the vocabulary alone, neither ye nor you occurring in the passage in question, I think Fletcher responsible for the first 22 lines of III,3, to the entrance of Malroda. But what immediately follows can redound to the credit of no one but Beaumont. The courtesan Malroda's finely extravagant speech beginning "Leave your betraying smiles," and Vitelli's reply, with its musing sense of the ridiculousness of human conduct—aiming so high, falling so low, and consistently failing to profit from experience—are the finest things in the play. Malroda's following speech beginning "Do'ye ask?" presumably signals the return of Fletcher. He may, in fact, have returned five and a half lines before this, at the close of Vitelli's afore-mentioned speech. Vitelli concludes with an appeal to the tears of his sometime mistress: This is very close, both in sentiment and in phrasing, to the following from Fletcher's I,3 of The Captain: In any case, Fletcher's hand is decidedly the predominant one through the last 54 lines of the scene, though inevitably what we are dealing with in the extant text is Fletcher revised by Massinger. The dislocated proportion of ye's (found twice) to you's (found 26 times) in III,3c is evidence of Massinger's presence. So is such a tag as Vitelli's "Madnesse transports you," a speech formula distinctly in the Massinger manner. The single ha' in III,3c, with the two additional occurrences of the form in the following III,4, together with the single occurrences of hath and doth in the latter scene, may be traces of Beaumont. But III,4, with its 7 ye's, like the preceding III,3c, is basically Fletcher's, revised by Massinger.

The brief III,5, a prose scene, I attribute to Fletcher on purely verbal grounds. Ye does not occur in it, though you is found 6 times. But the scene provides several verbal parallels with what I regard as Fletcher's work elsewhere in this play. For instance, "fall to brabling" in III,5 echoes "I did never brable" in Fletcher's II,2b. The reference in III,5 to "rug-gownes" sets up verbal echoes in all directions: in

"watch for rug" in IV, 3b, a Fletcher scene as I will presently show, and in two separate passages from what I take to be Fletcher's contribution to II,1: "sate snoaring cheeke by joll with your signiorie in rug at midnight," and "thy beares skin (viz. thy Rug-gowne)." The viz. of the last passage itself has a parallel earlier in the same II,1: in Pachieco's words to the Botcher, "thou art a hider of enormities, viz. scabs, chilblaines, and kibed heeles"; four lines later in the same speech occurs one of the scene's 5 ye's. And so by a circuitous route, the "rug-gownes" of III,5 become associated with the parenthetical viz.'s of II,1, and ultimately with the Fletcherian ye.

Act IV, as I have already stated, has been virtually re-written by Massinger. His presence is clearly evident throughout IV,1-2, and the first 21 lines of IV,3. From the entrance of Alvarez, Lucio, and Bobadilla to the entrance of "Alguazier, Assistente and other Watches" we are dealing, I think, with what is basically the work of Fletcher. This section of the scene—IV,3b—contains no ye's, Massinger having presumably given it its extant form; but verbally the passage is of a piece with Fletcher's work in the play elsewhere. Here we have the aforementioned reference to rug gowns; and Alvarez's threat to his son a few lines later: "I will beat thee dead / Then bray the in a morter, and new [F 1647: now] mold thee," is a direct echo of the same character's similar threat concerning both his children in Fletcher's II,2a: "I will rectifie, / and redeem eithers proper inclination, / Or bray 'em in a morter, and new mold 'em." I think that Massinger is responsible for the remainder of IV,3, all of IV,4, and the whole of V,1-2.

The first 242 lines of V,3 bear strong evidences of Massinger, and yet traces of the original are discernible beneath his revision, and the original would appear to have been, authorially, of a composite nature. Thus Vitelli's boast to Alvarez:

reminds one of Viola's "I have made a story, / Will serve to wast many a winters fier / When we are old," from Beaumont's V,2 of The Coxcomb (114b). And near the end of V,3a there are unmistakable traces of Fletcher. Sayavedra's comment, "A gallant undertaking and a happie" is a Fletcherian line if ever there was one. The schematic pattern of article-adjective-noun-"and"-article-a second adjective is a recurrent feature of Fletcher's rhetoric (cf. e.g., "A hard choice, and a fatall" [Valentinian, III,3]; "A stout man, and a true" [The Loyal Subject, I,3]; "a neat one, and a perfect" [A Wife for a Month, I,2]; "a sweet bud and a beauteous" [Ibid., III,2]; "a new death, and an odious" [Ibid., V,3]; "a right one and a perfect" [Rule a Wife, II,1]; cf. as well Fletcher's work in collaboration: "a goodly protection, and a gracious" [Philaster, IV,1]; "a strange Iustice and a lamentable" [Cupid's Revenge, IV,3]). And Alvarez's words to his daughter a few lines later apropos of her prospective husband—"if he bring not / Betwixt you, boyes that will finde out new worlds, / And win 'em too I'm a false Prophet" (145b) —are stamped with Fletcher's particular brand of jollity.

The passage of 69 lines—extending from Bobadilla's speech beginning "I am not regarded" and continuing to the final speech—has been salvaged from the original. With its 2 ye's, 3 'em's, and single doth, it is best regarded as the composite work of Beaumont and Fletcher. The play's final speech is certainly Massinger's. Vitelli is commenting on Clara's wonderous change from a martial maid to a gentle mistress:

It is the next to last line which points to Massinger as the author of this. If ever a dramatist can be said to have his favorite words, "metamorphosis" is one of Massinger's (cf. The City Madam, IV,4: "What a strange, nay monstrous Metamorphosis"; cf. also The Picture, IV,1; The Guardian, II,3; The Bashful Lover, IV,3). But it is not the occurrence of the word alone that identifies the line as Massinger's; the construction of the line itself, with its "so long" followed by adjective and noun, is typically Massingerian (cf. e.g., "Such a Princesse, / And of so long experienc'd reservednesse" [The Maid of Honour, IV,4]; "my so long try'd loyalty" [The Guardian, III,6]; cf. as well Massinger's work in collaboration: "your so long congealde and flinty hardnesse" [Thierry and Theodoret, IV,2]; "those so long wishd embraces" [The Knight of Malta, IV,1]).

A word should be said of the manuscript behind the extant text. On the evidence of the marginal stage direction "2 Torches / ready" (137a) in III,4, the folio text was printed from a prompt book. It would appear to have been a prompt book prepared either from foul papers or a transcript of these. The long final scene has apparently been marked for two theatrical cuts of, respectively, 19 and 27 lines

which were never actually made in the prompt book, but the cues for which survive in the folio text in the otherwise inexplicable repetition of two speeches. Genevora's line: "Lamorall: you have often sworne / You'ld be commanded by me" (145a) is repeated 19 lines later (145b), where, following Lamorall's answer, her reply "Your hearing for six words" anticipates by 27 lines the point at which it is repeated, this time in a speech of Eugenia's.

Rollo, Duke of Normandy

• Chapman: III,1a (to Edith's "O stay there Duke"), 1c (from entrance of Citizens to end); IV,3.
• Fletcher: II; III,1b (from Edith's "O stay there Duke" to entrance of Citizens), 2; V,2b (from stage direction: "Sophia, Matilda, Aubrey, / and Lords at the doore" to end).
• Jonson: IV,1-2.
• Massinger: I; V,1a (to exit of Hamond).
• Fletcher and Massinger: V,1b (from exit of Hamond to end); 2a (to stage direction: "Sophia, Matilda, Aubrey, / and Lords at the doore").

This play is extant in two quarto editions: the first published in 1639, where it is titled The Bloody Brother, and ascribed to "B. J. F"; the second published in 1640, where the play is called The Tragoedy of Rollo Duke of Normandy, and attributed to Fletcher alone. Each quarto derives from an independent manuscript. The manuscript behind Q2, to judge from the stage direction "A Stoole set out" at the head of III,1 (sig. D3), would appear, as Prof. J. D. Jump, the play's most recent editor, suggests, to have been "either a prompt-book or a manuscript in the direct line of descent from a prompt-book" (Rollo Duke of Normandy, or The Bloody Brother, 1948, p. xii). The manuscript behind Q1, on the other hand, according to Prof. Jump, was "of a more 'literary' type" (p. xiii); it seems, he conjectures, "to have been the work of a scribe who took it upon himself to edit the text," modernizing certain Massingerian idioms and spellings, and almost invariably altering the Fletcherian ye to you (Jump, p. xiv). It is this last point which is of most importance to the present study. Of the 51 ye's that appear in Q2, only 4 are found in Q1. This is typical of Q1 practice with regard to the linguistic forms displayed in Q2. The contraction 'em, for instance, is used 32 times in Q2; it occurs but 18 times in Q1. The contraction i'th' is found 9 times in Q2, but only thrice in Q1. Comparison of the two quarto texts of Rollo provides yet another striking example of what happens when, as in the case of Q1, a work is transmitted through the offices of a scribe who has not seen fit to

reproduce the linguistic forms that stood in his manuscript copy. The authoritative text of the play is, clearly, that of the second quarto, and any account of the formidable authorial problem which the play poses must be based on it.

We are dealing, in Rollo, with the work of four authors, two of whom are demonstrably Fletcher and Massinger. Their shares present no real difficulty. Though the occurrence of ye, even in Q2, seems somewhat low, it is sufficient to show that Fletcher is the author of the whole of Act II; III,2; the last 97 lines of V,2; and a highly charged emotional outburst in the midst of the otherwise non-Fletcherian III,1. In at least two places, there are signs of composite writing on the part of Fletcher and Massinger. Fletcher is almost certainly responsible for Aubrey's speech beginning "I am both waies ruin'd, both waies mark'd for slaughter," near the end of Massinger's V,1. The speech contains neither ye's nor you's, but the extra-metrical blank verse of its first 23 lines is characteristically Fletcherian, as are the repetitions in such a pair of lines as these (V,1,105-6 of Prof. Jump's edition): "Am I afraid of death? of dying nobly? / Of dying in my innocence uprightly?" And yet, by the time the speech has come to an end, it would appear that we are once again in the presence of Massinger:

Here the verse has flowed back into its regular blank verse channels; and the reference to feigning poets is very much in Massinger's manner (cf. The Maid of Honour, IV,4: "Wise Poets faine that Venus coach is draw'n / By doues, and sparrowes"; A New Way to Pay Old Debts, III,3: "beleeve the Poet / Fain'd not but was historicall, when he wrote / Pasiphae was enamour'd of a bull." Massinger makes repeated allusions to the authority of "Poets" or "the Poet." Cf. as well Believe as you List, I,1 and V,1; The City Madam, III,2; The Roman Actor, IV,2; The Parliament of Love, I,4).

I think it likely that Massinger is present as well, together with Fletcher, at the beginning of V,2. Such a line as V,2,26 of Prof. Jump's edition, "The gentle sacrifice of love and service," echoes "this last tryall of my sacrifice / Of loue, and seruice" from III,2 of Massinger's Roman Actor. And Rollo's apostrophe to Edith at V,2,39-41:

employs a number of verbal strands that Massinger frequently associates elsewhere (cf. e.g., "those smooth gales that glide / O're happy Arabie, or rich Sabaea, / Creating in their passage gummes and spices" [The Great Duke of Florence, II,3]; "Like a soft Westerne wind, when it glides o're / Arabia, creating gummes, and spices" [A New Way, III,1]; "Beyond all perfumes or Sabean spices" [The Bashful Lover, I,1]). It is surely significant that ye—which occurs in this scene only 6 times, as against 36 occurrences of you—does not appear in the first 135 lines. All occurrences of the form, together with the scene's 6 occurrences of the contraction 'em, are contained in the last 97 lines of the scene. On the other hand, the single occurrence of hath in V,2 appears at line 38, immediately preceding Rollo's already quoted tribute to Edith. Such linguistic evidence as this, together with the evidence of such verbal parallels as the early part of the scene exhibits with Massinger's acknowledged work, makes it clear, I think, that he has revised in some measure the first 135 lines of Fletcher's V,2 (to the stage direction, that is to say, which has "Sophia, Matilda, Aubrey, / and Lords at the doore").

But Massinger is not present in the play simply as a reviser. He is solely responsible for the whole of Act I, and for all of V,1 with the exception of the aforementioned speech of Aubrey (which is to say, to the exit of Hamond). However, when we have determined the extent of the shares of Fletcher and Massinger in Rollo, we are left with the problem of the authorship of the non-Fletcherian portion of Act III, and the whole of Act IV. The part of the play that is in question here cannot be the work of a single dramatist. The author of III,1a and 1c, and of IV,3 is much given to the use of rhyming pentameter couplets; the author of IV,1-2 employs a regular blank verse measure. In his edition of the play, Prof. Jump (p. xxvii), following the lead of W. Wells, identifies Chapman as the author of III,1a and 1c, and IV,3; following the lead of C. Crawford and R. Garnett, he identifies Jonson as the author of IV,1-2. I will consider the possibility of Jonson's presence in the play first.

Linguistic evidence for Jonson's last five plays is given in tabular form below. I have chosen these five plays as sources of linguistic evidence for Jonson because they represent his dramatic output during the period (1614-1632) to which the composition of Rollo is generally assigned (the play has been variously dated from 1613 to 1625, with the weight of the evidence pointing to the later date [see Jump, pp. xxx-xxxi]). As is well known, Jonson had strong preferences among contractions, and these are apparent in his last five plays no less than in

those, the printing of which he so carefully attended to, published in the 1616 folio edition of his Works. Instead of the more familiar pronominal contraction 'em for them, Jonson regularly uses 'hem. The contractions that appear in other dramatists' work as i'th' and o'th' appear in Jonson as i'the and o'the. He occasionally uses ye and contractions in y', but the more usual contraction for you found in his work is yo'. H'as (for he has) often appears as h'has. He makes frequent use of ha' for have.

With the exception of h'has, all the contracted forms that I have designated as Jonsonian are present in one or the other of the two quartos of Rollo, but they are present only in a very slight degree, and in the case of Q1, in a manner which raises rather more problems than it solves. 'Hem appears twice in the Q1 text of Rollo, once in II,1, once in II,2. And though Fletcher's is the predominant hand in both scenes, both have in fact been claimed for Jonson by G. C. Macauley in the Cambridge History of English Literature (Vol. V, pp. 129, 138). But Macauley's attribution has not, in general, been viewed with favor, and one would be inclined to write off both occurrences of the form as the vagaries of the scribe who prepared the Q1 manuscript, or one of the three or more compositors who, according to Prof. Jump (pp. ix-x), were engaged in setting the 1639 quarto text, were it not for the fact that the 'hem of II,2 (II,2,13 of Prof. Jump's edition) occurs near the beginning of a passage (the Cook's description of a richly laden banquet table) which, within nine lines, has come, as all commentators on the play habitually note, to possess certain affinities with two passages of similar import from Jonson's Neptune's Triumph (lines 89-98 and 185-91), passages that Jonson re-used at, respectively, IV,2,19-29 and III,3,35-40 of The Staple of News. Such elements as the Cook's speech in II,2 of Rollo and the Jonsonian passages share are not, in fact, impressive as evidence for their common authorship, involving as they do conventional descriptions of fortifications in pastry, standing lakes of white broth, and, the ultimate culinary conceit, "Arion on a Dolphin." The Simpsons are probably right in denying Jonson's presence in the scene (Ben Jonson, X, 293-295); still the fact that such a contraction as 'hem should occur at this of all places is at least arresting.[1]

The only other piece of linguistic evidence which the Q1 text of Rollo affords, and which is even faintly suggestive of Jonsonian usage, is the single occurrence of the contraction w' for with, in the phrase 'Ile contend w'yee", near the end of IV,1 (sig. g1v). A. C. Partridge

(The Accidence of Ben Jonson's Plays, Masques & Entertainments, 1953, p. 144) says that Jonson seems to use wi' "before the and you (r), w' only before you in the conventional greeting ["God b'w'you"]." But I note at least one occasion on which Jonson uses w' in something other than the conventional greeting: in the 1631 folio text of Bartholomew Fair, (sig. L4), in the phrase "Came ouer w' you" (V,4,174 of the Herford and Simpson edition, where w' has been emended to w[i]').

When we turn to the text of the second quarto of Rollo, we find such evidence of Jonson's linguistic preferences as is present there to be confined to the first two scenes of Act IV, a fact which in itself might be taken as evidence of something, for these, as the Simpsons affirm (Ben Jonson, X, 295) comprise the only part of the play "which shows any real affinity to Jonson's work." IV,1 displays a single occurrence of yo' for you in the phrase "Yo'have woon upon me" (sig. G2v), and a single occurrence of o'the, Jonson's contraction for o'th'. The scene's 5 hath's and single doth are in accord with Jonsonian usage as well. IV,2 displays a single occurrence of i'the (sig. H2), Jonson's contraction for i'th', and 3 of the play's 4 occurrences of ha' for have. Hath appears 3 times, but doth does not occur. The most significant of these occurrences is, I think, the "Yo'have" of IV,1. The yo' contraction for you is a good deal rarer than might be imagined. Apart from its occurrence in the 1640 quarto text of Rollo, it appears elsewhere in the plays of the Beaumont and Fletcher canon but twice: once in the 1639 quarto of Fletcher's Monsieur Thomas, once in the 1647 folio text of Love's Pilgrimage.[2] Jonson uses the form more often than any other dramatist whose work has been examined in the course of the present study. In the five plays of his represented in the linguistic tables below, yo' does not occur in Bartholomew Fair, and it is found but once in The Staple of News. But it is used 6 times in The Magnetic Lady, 8 times in The New Inn, and 22 times in The Devil is an Ass. In the plays of the dramatists whose work I have considered to this point in

the present study (Massinger, Field, Middleton, Rowley, Webster, Tourneur, and Ford), I note but a single occurrence of yo': in the contraction "yo'are" in the 1633 quarto of Rowley's All's Lost by Lust.

The linguistic evidence for Jonson's share in Rollo, after everything has been said in its favor, is pitifully slight; and yet I think that, taken together with the parallels of phrasing and thought which others have noted between the first two scenes of Act IV of this play and Jonson's acknowledged work, the six occurrences of four Jonsonian contractions (1 yo, 1 i'the, 1 o'the, 3 ha's) in the authoritative Q2 text of IV,1-2 not only serve to support but, in their small way, to strengthen the arguments for Jonson's authorship of these scenes. The occurrence of the w' contraction in the Q1 text of IV,1 might be considered to corroborate, in some slight measure, the linguistic evidence for Jonson displayed in Q2, IV,1-2. What significance, if any, is to be attached to the equivocal 'hem's of Q1, II,1-2, I will not presume to say. The evidential value of both these Q1 contractions is diminished by the fact that neither is altogether unknown elsewhere in the plays of the canon. I note 7 occurrences of w' for with in the 1637 quarto text of Fletcher and Massinger's The Elder Brother, and 'hem is found 4 times in Fletcher's Pilgrim. As for Jonson's other contractions, and the extent to which they have been encountered in the plays considered to this point in the present study: Massinger, as has been observed (SB, VIII, 144, and above, p. 50), sometimes uses i'the; o'the has occurred sporadically in a number of plays, all instances of which have been duly noted in the appropriate linguistic tables. Ha' is found in the work of Beaumont, Field, and Middleton (cf. SB, XI, 88 ff.; SB, XII, 92 ff.; SB, XIII, 82). But no one of these dramatists employs the forms in question as regularly as Jonson does.

The case for Chapman's authorship of the non-Fletcherian portions of III,1 and the whole of IV,3 of Rollo has been stated by William Wells (Notes and Queries, CLIV, 6-9). Mr. Wells has examined the vocabulary of Chapman's acknowledged work, and finds a number of parallels of word and phrase to exist between it and the scenes which he would claim for Chapman in Rollo. Mr. Wells's evidence is of the sort which, viewed piecemeal, seems worthless; when viewed in the aggregate, it amounts to convincing proof. I am personally persuaded that he has established Chapman's presence in the play, and here it remains but to determine what light the linguistic evidence for Chapman's unaided plays sheds on the theory of his partial authorship of Rollo.

Linguistic evidence for four of Champan's acknowledged tragedies,

plus three of his unaided comedies, is given in tabular form below. What is immediately apparent from the evidence of the tables there is that Chapman's linguistic preferences differ markedly from tragedy to comedy. His language in tragedy is notably uncontracted. In the four of them examined below, 'em never occurs, i'th' appears 4 times (once in Byron's Tragedy, once in The Revenge of Bussy d'Ambois, twice in Bussy d'Ambois), o'th' is used once (in Bussy, where it occurs as ath'), h'as is never used, and there are but 2 contractions in 's for his (both in Bussy). As might be expected in such a conservative linguistic pattern as this, there is frequent use of hath and doth in all four tragedies. Ye occurs, to a varying degree in them all: from the 3 occurrences of Byron's Conspiracy, to the 23 occurrences in both Bussy and Bussy's Revenge. In Bussy there is a single occurrence of d'ee. The linguistic pattern displayed by such a comedy as May Day is very different. First of all, hath and doth occur much less frequently than in any of the tragedies, and the language of the comedies becomes, inversely, much more highly contracted. May Day displays 42 occurrences of 'em (plus 2 of 'am, one of 'm, and 2 of 'hem), 7 of i'th', 7 of a'th'/a'the (apparently Chapman's contraction for o'th', which appears once), and a variety of other contracted forms: h'as, 'tas, d'ee, t'ee, w'ee, a for he. The one contraction which Chapman uses regularly in comedies and tragedies alike is t' for to. This is found in all the plays of his that I have examined: 7 times in Byron's Conspiracy, 8 times in Byron's Tragedy, 16 times in Bussy, 12 times in Bussy's Revenge, 18 times in The Gentleman Usher, 3 times in May Day, 4 times in The Widow's Tears. Finally, there is what may be the most distinctive Chapman linguistic form of all: an for on/of, which often occurs in the contraction an't for on/of it. This is found in only four of the seven plays examined here, but the very infrequency of the form in other plays of the period makes it worth noting. There are 7 occurrences of an't in The Widow's Tears, and there are single occurrences of the form in Bussy, Byron's Conspiracy, and May Day; elsewhere in the latter play, an is used for on/of 4 times. It is interesting to find Chapman's contractions appearing in his acknowledged work in collaboration. Thus, in the 1605 quarto of Eastward Ho, there is a single occurrence of an for on on sig. B2v, and a single occurrence of an't for on it on sig. C2v; and Chapman may be responsible as well for the single occurrences of a the and ath for on the that are found, respectively, on sigs. B1 and C1 of that edition.

Since Chapman's style in tragedy is so markedly uncontracted, it is not to be expected that his presumed share of Rollo should contain

anything very positive in the way of linguistic evidence. The best that can be hoped for, indeed, is that it should be just as barren of contracted linguistic forms as his acknowledged tragedies are. The very absence of such linguistic forms will become, in such a case, positive evidence of an author's presence; and when we turn to the portions of Rollo which Wells has assigned to Chapman, we find evidence of just this sort, for it is fair to say that II, 1a and 1c, and IV,3 are among the most uncontracted sections of the play. III,1a contains 2 'em's and 2 i'th's, but thereafter, in the scenes attributed to Chapman, these forms do not occur, nor do such other contractions as o'th', h'as, ha', or 's for his. The 4 hath's of III, 1a are in accordance with Chapman usage in tragedy (hath occurs once as well in III,1c). The single contraction which appears in all the supposedly Chapman scenes is, significantly I think, t' for to. This occurs 10 times in the Q2 text as a whole. The single occurrence of the form in I, 1 is Massinger's (his use of the t' contraction has been discussed in SB, VIII, 144, and above p. 50). The 4 occurrences of t' in IV,1-2 would appear to be Jonson's. The remaining 5 occurrences of t' are all found in the scenes attributed to Chapman: one in III,1a; one in III,1c; 3 in IV,3. The linguistic practice evident here is at one with Chapman's use of t' for to in the seven plays of his unaided authorship examined in the linguistic tables below. The linguistic evidence for Chapman's presence in Rollo would be strengthened if either quarto edition displayed any occurrences of contractions in an for on or of, but neither does.

As with Jonson, so with Chapman: the linguistic evidence for his presence in Rollo is painfully slight; one does not attribute a share in the play to him without a blush. All that can be said in favor of the attribution is that it is made not alone, or even principally, on linguistic grounds. Here the linguistic evidence has served merely to show that the language practices exhibited in the scenes claimed for Chapman on literary grounds are consistent with the language practices displayed in his acknowledged tragedies. That, I would submit, given the nature of those practices, is all that the linguistic evidence can be expected to show. At best, linguistic evidence for Chapman's work in tragedy is bound to be of the sort that can only corroborate, and never prove.

Linguistic Tables for Unaided Plays by Chapman and Jonson[*]

                           

																's			w'	an
	ye	y'	'ee	yo'	hath	doth	'em	'hem	them	i'th'	i'the	a'th'	o'th'	o'the	h'as	his	ha'	t'	with	on/of
Bus.	23	19	1		43	15			56	2		1				2		16		1
Rev.	23	11			37	25			50	1								12
Consp.	3	4			47	17			40									7		1
Trag.	18	6			67	17			64	1								8
Gent.	3	17	15		17	1	4[**]		28	1		1			1		4	18
MD	9	21	15		15	1	45[†]	2	19	7		7[††]	1		1	5	1	3		5
Wid.	18	18			51	6	1[†††]		42	4		9	1		1	13		4		7
BF	6				18	15		111	19	2	110		2	93	1	2	137		2
DA		2		22	21	7		85	15		27			39		4	100		1
SN		1		1	24	14		53	46	2	44		1	57			65
NI	1			8	36	13		39	25	1	59		2	65		1	44
ML		1		6	40	13		36	42	4	40		4	59		4	49

The Captain — F 1647

                                                       

													's
	ye	y'	you	hath	doth	'em	'm	them	i'th'	a'th'	o'th'	h'as	his	ha'
I,i:	5	1	16			1		1				1
-,ii:	9	3	19			5			3
-,iii:	26		87	1		3		6		2
TOTAL: I	40	4	122	1		9		7	3	2		1
II,i:	11	2	23			8		4	1	1		1
—,ii:	15	2	41			6					1		1
TOTAL: II	26	4	64			14		4	1	1	1	1	1
III,i:			8
—-,ii:	3		18	1		2		1			1
—-,iii:	6		44	1		3						1		1
—-,iv:	3	1	37	1		8		1	2
—-,v:	9		13			1
—-,vi:			1						2
TOTAL: III	21	1	121	3		14		2	4		1	1		1
IV,i:			9
—,ii:	9	1	17			2		1	1			1
—,iii:	7		39									1		1
—,iv:	1		64	1	3	10		1	1		1
TOTAL: IV	17	1	129	1	3	12		2	2		1	2		1
V,i:	2		27			3	1						1
-,ii:	1		21					4	1				4
-,iii:			10			1			1
-,iv:			47	1		2			1
-,v:			44	1		3			2				1
TOTAL: V	3		149	2		9	1	4	5				6
TOTAL:	107	10	585	7	3	58	1	19	15	3	3	5	7	2

Love's Cure — F 1647

                                                                 

											's
	ye	y'	you	hath	doth	'em	them	i'th'	o'th'	h'as	his	ha'	t'
I,i:			4	1			2
-,ii:			25	3
-,iii:			38	4			3	1[*]					1
TOTAL: I			67	8			5	1					1
II,i:	5		30			5	2		1[**]
—,ii(a):	6	1	33	2		3	1	1	2[**]
—,ii(b):	1		11
—,ii(c):	2		23	3			1
TOTAL: II	14	1	97	5		8	4	1	3
III,i:		1	10					2
—-,ii:	2		45	1		3		1	1
—-,iii(a):											1
—-,iii(b):			2			1		1
—-,iii(c):	2		26			1						1
—-,iv:	7		52	1	1	1	1	1	2[**]			2
—-,v:			6				1
TOTAL: III	11	1	141	2	1	6	2	5	3		1	3
IV,i:			7
—,ii:			76	3		1	1						3
—,iii(a):			6										1
—,iii(b):			13				1
—,iii(c):			14				9						1
—,iv:			21	1
TOTAL: IV			137	4		1	11						5
V,i:			29				5
-,ii:			23	3
-,iii(a):			31	4		2
-,iii(b):	2		17		1	3					1
-,iii(c):				1
TOTAL: V	2		100	8	1	5	5				1
TOTAL:	27	2	542	27	2	20	27	7	6		2	3	6

Rollo, Duke of Normandy — Q 1640[*]

                                                                                     

																w'
	ye	y'	yo'	you	hath	doth	'm	'em	'hem	them	i'th'	o'th'	h'as	t'	ha'	with
I,i:		1		76	2	1		1		13		1		1
	[ 1]	[1]		[ 67]	[ 2]	[2]		[ 1]		[12]		[1]		[ 2]
TOTAL: I		1		76	2	1		1		13		1		1
	[ 1]	[1]		[ 67]	[ 2]	[2]		[ 1]		[12]		[1]		[ 2]
II,i:	1			16	1			1		1
	[ 1]	[1]		[ 13]					[1]	[ 1]
--,ii:	26			28				9				1
				[ 21]				[ 2]	[1]	[ 2]		[1]
--,iii:	6			20
		[1]		[ 27]
TOTAL: II	33			64	1			10		1		1
	[ 1]	[2]		[ 61]				[ 2]	[2]	[ 3]		[1]
III,i(a):				38	4			2		2	2			1
				[ 34]	[ 4]			[ 2]		[ 2]	[1]			[ 1]
---,i(b):	4			16				1
				[ 19]			[1]
---,i(c):	3			12	1					2				1
				[ 15]	[ 1]					[ 1]
---,ii:	3			25				1
				[ 28]						[ 1]
TOTAL: III	10			91	5			4		4	2			2
				[ 96]	[ 5]		[1]	[ 2]		[ 4]	[1]			[ 1]
IV,i:			1	44	5	1		5		5		2[**]		1
	[ 1]	[1]		[ 41]	[ 4]	[1]		[ 3]		[ 6]				[ 2]		[1]
--,ii:	2			63	3			6		1	7[***]	2		3	3
		[1]		[ 64]	[ 3]			[ 6]		[ 2]	[2]	[1]		[ 1]
--,iii:				5										3
				[ 6]	[ 1]									[ 2]
TOTAL: IV	2		1	112	8	1		11		6	7	4		7	3
	[ 1]	[2]		[111]	[ 8]	[1]		[ 9]		[ 8]	[2]	[1]		[ 5]		[1]
V,i(a):				20	1					1
				[ 20]	[ 1]			[ 1]
-,i(b):[††]
-,ii(a):				18	1								1		1
				[ 18]									[1]
-,ii(b):	6			18				6
	[ 1]			[ 24]				[ 3]		[ 3]
TOTAL: V	6			56	2			6		1			1		1
	[ 1]			[ 62]	[ 1]			[ 4]		[ 3]			[1]
TOTAL:	51	1	1	399	18	2		32		25	9	6	1	10	4
	[ 4]	[5]		[397]	[16]	[3]	[1]	[18]	[2]	[30]	[3]	[3]	[1]	[ 8]		[1]

Notes