Now there is no question here of Beaumont;
and there is no question that the passage here debated has been taken to
the heart of the whole world and baptized in the tears of generations as
no work of Fletcher's has ever been. That Beaumont could have written it
I do not believe; but I am wellnigh assured that Fletcher could not. I
can scarcely imagine that the most fluid sympathy, the "hysteric passion"
most easily distilled from the eyes of reader or spectator, can ever have
watered with its tears the scene or the page which sets forth, however
eloquently and effectively, the sorrows and heroisms of Ordella, Juliana,
or Lucina. Every success but this I can well believe them, as they
assuredly deserve, to have attained.
To this point then we have come, as to the crucial point at issue; and
looking back upon those passages of the play which first suggest the
handiwork of Fletcher, and which certainly do now and then seem almost
identical in style with his, I think we shall hardly find the difference
between these and other parts of the same play so wide and so distinct as
the difference between the undoubted work of Fletcher and the undoubted
work of Shakespeare.
Pages:
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99