Beaumont and Fletcher. The Knight of the Burning Pestle

Both dramatists came from the higher strata of society. Beaumont was Shakespeare’s junior by twenty years but died in the same year as the older dramatist, at the age of 32. He was the son of a judge and was buried in the Westminster Abbey. A collection of 34 plays was published in 1647 under the names of Beaumont and Fletcher, the number was increased to fifty-two in the second Folio (1679). The problem of the authorship of the so-called Beaumont and Fletcher plays belongs to the most controversial questions. The spirit and attitude in these plays mark a significant change in English Renaissance drama. Shakespeare’s stories are often silly and improbable, yet he tells them without violently offending against truth of character or the truth of life. His plays reveal something essential about man and life. By contrast, the Beaumont and Fletcher playsare saturated with moral unconcern: they present a chain of exciting events designed to produce the maximum of emotional effect. The moral basis has been replaced here by an emotional scale of value. The structure of their plays is extremely skilful. The dramatic material is constructed into theatrically telling situations which lead by a series of surprises to effective climaxes and catastrophes. The characters belong to certain conventional types, such as the sentimental or violent hero; his faithful friend, a blunt (tompa), outspoken (szókimondó) soldier; the sentimental heroine, often a love-lorn maiden disguised as a page to serve the hero; an evil woman defiant (dacos) in her crimes. The theme is often the struggle between love and honour, with high flown ideas of friendship between man and man. Such stock characters and situations foreshadow some of the basic subjects of the heroic drama of the Restoration comedy. Many attempts have been made to separate the work of the two playwrights. Some suggest that Beaumont supplied ‘judgment’ and checked his friend’s exuberance of ‘wit.’ The usual view was that Beaumont is the deeper, more tragic author whose architectonic gift imposed discipline on Fletcher’s fluency. But Beaumont was also a master of the burlesque as is shown by the delightful play, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, usually assigned to Beaumont alone. It is an outpouring of his spirits, composed in eight days in 1607 or 1610, and performed by boy actors.