BEAUMONT, FRANCIS

born c. 1585, , Grace-Dieu, Leicestershire, Eng. died March 6, 1616, London English Jacobean poet and playwright who collaborated with John Fletcher on comedies and tragedies between about 1606 and 1613. The son of Francis Beaumont, justice of common pleas of Grace-Dieu priory, Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, Beaumont entered Broadgates Hall (later Pembroke College), Oxford, in 1597. His father dying the following year, he abruptly left the university without a degree and later (November 1600) entered London's Inner Temple-again, however, without much enthusiasm for legal studies, becoming instead a frequenter of the Mermaid Tavern. In 1602 there appeared the poem Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, generally attributed to Beaumont, a voluptuous and voluminous expansion of the Ovidian legend, marked by a long-winded and fantastic diffusion of episodes and conceits. At the age of 23 he prefixed to Ben Jonson's Volpone (1607) some verses in honour of his "dear friend" the author. John Fletcher contributed verses to the same volume, and, by about this time, the two were collaborating on plays for the Children of the Queen's Revels. According to John Aubrey, a 17th-century memorialist, "They lived together on the Banke side, not far from the Play-house, both batchelors; lay together . . .; had one wench in the house between them . . .; the same cloathes and cloake, &c., betweene them" (Brief Lives). Their collaboration as playwrights was to last for some seven years. In 1613 Beaumont married an heiress, Ursula Isley of Sundridge in Kent, and retired from the theatre. He died in London in 1616 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. As a playwright, Beaumont remains a shadowy figure whose contributions to drama are not as clear as Fletcher's. Of the 54 plays with which their names or the names of their other collaborators are associated, one or two were written by Beaumont alone and only 9 or 10 were written by Beaumont and Fletcher in collaboration. Beaumont's hand also probably appears in three other plays written together with Fletcher and Philip Massinger. Beaumont's unaided work, The Knight of the Burning Pestle, parodies a then popular kind of play-sprawling, episodic, with sentimental lovers and chivalric adventures. It opens with The Citizen and his Wife taking their places on the stage to watch "The London Merchant"-itself a satire on the work of a contemporary playwright, Thomas Dekker. Citizen and Wife interrupt, advise, and insist that their apprentice should take a leading part. In it, Beaumont indulgently satirizes bourgeois naivet about art. The play, however, was not immediately popular. In the three masterpieces of the Beaumont and Fletcher collaboration-The Maides Tragedy, Philaster, and A King and No King-Beaumont is assumed to have been the controlling hand, since the plays manifest a firmer structure than Fletcher's single or collaborative efforts. Attempts to disentangle the various shares of Beaumont and Fletcher in any given work are complicated by the fact that Beaumont sometimes revised scenes by Fletcher, and Fletcher edited some of Beaumont's work. Additional reading The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, ed. by Arnold Glover and A.R. Waller, 10 vol. (1905-12, reissued 1969), was previously the standard text; it is now being superseded by The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, ed. by Fredson Bowers (1966- ). Lee Bliss, Francis Beaumont (1987), is a biography and critical introduction. Eugene M. Waith, The Pattern of Tragicomedy in Beaumont and Fletcher (1952, reissued 1969), claims that Beaumont and Fletcher significantly stylize experience and relates their work to the Roman art of declamation and to the classical controversiae. Two other critical works are Lawrence B. Wallis, Fletcher, Beaumont & Company, Entertainers to the Jacobean Gentry (1947, reissued 1968); and William W. Appleton, Beaumont and Fletcher (1956). Ian Fletcher, Beaumont and Fletcher (1967), is a brief, appreciative monograph. Major Works: The dates of composition given here for the individual plays are largely conjectural.Poems (1640), with additions (1653).Play by Beaumont unaided. The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607).Plays by Beaumont and Fletcher in collaboration. The Woman Hater (1606); Philaster (1608-10); The Coxcombe (1608-10); The Maides Tragedy (1608-11); The Captaine (1609-12); A King and No King (1611); Cupids Revenge (1611); The Scornful Ladie (1613-17); Loves Pilgrimage (?1616); The Noble Gentleman (c. 1625).Plays by Beaumont, Fletcher, and Philip Massinger. Thierry and Theodoret (date of composition unknown, printed 1621); The Beggars Bush (1622?); Loves Cure (revived 1625?).