conjunction with Beaumont, and after the death of the latter, when he depended principally on the exertions of his own unassisted imagination.

The first play, by which the united poets received any extensive reputation, according to a tradition mentioned by Dryden, who lived near enough to the time in which our authors flourished to have received authentic information, was Philaster, or Love lies a-bleeding; and Mr Malone has, with considerable probability, conjectured the first appearance of that drama to have taken place in 1608 or 1609. That the audiences of those days should have been blind to the excellencies of the Woman-Hater will not be thought strange, when we reflect that The Faithful Shepherdess and The Silent Woman were condemned at a time when their respective authors were at the full zenith of reputation. But the excellencies of Philaster were so striking, that they could hardly fail to obtain the applause they are so justly entitled to. The account, however, in the quartos, that the play. was" divers times acted," is not so flattering as we should have expected; but, it must be recollected, that the inhabitants of the metropolis were at that time familiarised with productions of the first rank from the pens of Shakspeare and

Jonson. Macbeth, Lear, Julius Cæsar, and Volpone, had appeared shortly before, and, though Philaster possesses excellencies little inferior to those of the plays just enumerated, they are not of so prominent and striking a nature. A circumstance, which does not seem to have been usual at the time, took place; the present play was performed both at the court-theatre in the Blackfriars, and at the Globe, which was chiefly frequented by the citizens.

We have no account of any plays by our authors having been brought on the stage in the year 1609; but, as there are several which are known to have been written by them conjointly, the dates of which cannot now be ascertained, it is not likely that the year passed without their offering some production to the public. In the year 1610, The Maid's Tragedy is conjectured to have been brought on the stage. The

, Winstanley, whose testimony is unfortunately not of the highest value, relates a well-known anecdote which seems to refer to The Maid's Tragedy. As our poets were planning the plot of one of their tragedies at a tavern, (probably their favourite resort, the Mermaid in Cornhill,) Fletcher was overheard by 'some of the people of the house, to say, "I'll undertake to kill the king." Information was given of this apparently trea. sonable design; but the poet's real purpose being explained to have been the murder of a theatrical monarch, he was dismissed without any further troublesome inquiry.

great excellence of that drama ensured it a favourable reception, and, undoubtedly, contributed in no small degree to extend the fame of the poets, who began to be considered as rivals not unworthy to cope with Shakspeare and Ben Jonson. They were, however, not uniformly successful. Either in this, or one of the years immediately preceding, Fletcher brought on the stage his Faithful Shepherdess, a dramatic pastoral, in which he successfully rivalled the delightful productions of Tasso, Guarini, and Bonarelli. The exquisite beauty of the poetry, combined with as much dramatic effect as could be expected from the nature of the piece, induced his literary friends to augur a degree of success equal to that which the Italian poems, just mentioned, had obtained in their own country: but the work was not calculated for the gross appetite of the vulgar; and, like many of the noblest productions of the stage, it suffered a complete condemnation from the audience. This unjust decision roused the indignation of Fletcher's most illustrious literary friends, and they were anxious to express their admiration of the poem, and the indignant sensations of their minds at the treatment it had received.'

* Vol. IV. p. 6, et seq.

Beaumont, his great associate, addressed a copy of verses to him, which are strongly characteristic of his powers of severe reproof, and, at the same time, of his ardent affection for the poet. He exposes the chicanery which influenced the judges of the pit; the insolent arrogance and pedantic usurpation of some individuals who pronounced the decision, and the contemptible and abject submission of the rest, who looked up to those pedants as infallible oracles: In short, the lively picture which he exhibits of the rules and manner of damning an excellent production, which happened to be unsavoury to the vulgar palate, is, it is to be feared, not only a true portrait of the audiences of those times, but may be applied to those of our own day, making allowance, not only for the change of manners, but for the still more general corruption of taste for the drama, which is an indelible stigma on our contemporaries. Beaumont was ably supported in his defence of this beautiful poem by his friend Ben Jonson, who had himself sufficient reasons to complain of the injustice of popular ignorance, and who, in the following words, ironically characterises these theatrical judges:

The wise and many-headed bench, that sits
Upon the life and death of plays and wits,

(Composed of gamester, captain, knight, knight's man, Lady or pucelle, that wears mask or fan,

Velvet, or taffata cap, ranked in the dark

With the shop's foreman, or some such brave spark,
That may judge for his sixpence,) had, before
They saw it half, damned thy whole play.—

To the testimonies of Beaumont and Jonson, those of Chapman, the translator of Homer, and a dramatic writer of great celebrity at the time, and of Field, both a player and a poet, were added; and Fletcher subjoined three copies of verses to Sir Walter Aston, Sir William Skip, with, and Sir Robert Townshend, and an address to the reader, in which he modestly, (but, at the same time, casting bitter reflections on the ignorance of the auditors, who, he says, expected a comedy of clowns, with their curtail dogs, and the usual amusement of Whitsun-ales, cream, wassel, and morris dances,) informs the lower rank of the public of what description a pastoral comedy is or should be. Eight years after his death, and more than twenty after its original representation, The Faithful Shepherdess was acted before the court with applause, which was followed by a revival at Blackfriars, where the audience had an opportunity of retracting their former unjustifiable censure.