The influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere

Preface

This volume is based on a portion of a dissertation on "Some Contemporary Influences on Shakspere," which 'was presented to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University to fulfill a requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. That dissertation dealt with the relations of As You Like It to pastoral and Robin Hood plays, and of Hamlet to tragedies of revenge, as well as with the influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere's romances. This last division has been rewritten and considerably enlarged and forms this volume. My conclusions in regard to the indebtedness of the romances to the contemporary drama are thus offered without the support which might perhaps have been afforded by the co-ordinate investigations.

A study, however, of Shakspere as an adapter requires less apology now than it would have four years ago when I first began this work. Shaksperean criticism has made a decided advance since then toward the adoption of the point of view and methods of historical criticism. Mr. Sidney Lee's discussion of the sonnets as a representative of a current literary form has opened the field and pointed the way for future students of the plays. My incentive to a historical study came entirely from the lectures of Professor Barrett Wendell at Harvard University and from his suggestive study, William Shakspere. While the hypothesis in regard to the influence of Beaumont and Fletcher with which I began my work was the immediate result of my reading and, so far as I know, has never been advanced before, whatever merit there may be in the general method and point of view of this essay is due to the instruction and example of Mr. Wendell. I venture to hope that, however my conclusions may be estimated, the investigation on which they are based will be of some interest in illustrating the application of the historical method to the study of Shakspere.

In condensing the results of my work for publication, it has been necessary to omit some investigations not closely connected with the main thesis and merely to note the results of others. Among these

PREFACE.

This volume is based on a portion of a dissertation on "Some Contemporary Influences on Shakspere," whicli 'was presented to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University to fulfill a requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. That dissertation dealt with the relations of As You Like It to pastoral and Robin Hood plays, and of Hamlet to tragedies of revenge, as well as with the influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere's romances. This last division has been rewritten and considerably enlarged and forms this volume. My conclusions in regard to the indebtedness of the romances to the contemporary drama are thus offered without the support which might perhaps have been afforded by the co-ordinate investigations.

A study, however, of Shakspere as an adapter requires less apology now than it would have four years ago when I first began this work. Shaksperean criticism has made a decided advance since then toward the adoption of the point of view and methods of historical criticism. Mr. Sidney Lee's discussion of the sonnets as a representative of a current literary form has opened the field and pointed the way for future students of the plays. My incentive to a historical study came entirely from the lectures of Professor Barrett Wendell at Harvard University and from his suggestive study, William Shakspere. While the hypothesis in regard to the influence of Beaumont and Fletcher with which I began my work was the immediate result of my reading and, so far as I know, has never been advanced before, whatever merit there may be in the general method and point of view of this essay is due to the instruction and example of Mr. Wendell. I venture to hope that, however my conclusions may be estimated, the investigation on which they are based will be of some interest in illustrating the application of the historical method to the study of Shakspere.

In condensing the results of my work for publication, it has been necessary to omit some investigations not closely connected with the main thesis and merely to note the results of others. Among these

IV PREFACE.

are a discussion of the Revels companies, 1601-1611, additional notes on the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher after i6ri, an alphabetical list of plays acted 1601-1611, some tables illustrating the use of colloquialisms, of 'em and them, and various verse tests.

Like every other student in the history of the drama, I owe much to the books of Mr. Fleay. I have found many occasions to differ with him and to criticise his methods, but I have also had abundant opportunity to admire his extensive knowledge and brilliant inductions. My indebtedness to Mr. Wendell's book on Shakspere is apparent; in expressing my thanks I wish I could also indicate the extent of my obligations to his friendly and stimulating criticisms and suggestions made while my investigation was in, progress. I am also greatly indebted for helpful criticism to Professor George L. Kittredge, to whom I have frequently turned for suggestion and guidance, and to Mr. Jefferson B. Fletcher, and Professor George P. Baker.

ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE.

CONTENTS,

CHAPTER. PACE.

I. Introduction i

II. Introduction to Chronoi<ogy and Stage History, 9

A. Biographies.

B. Connection with Theatrical Companies.

C. The Plague and the Closing of the Theaters.

D. The Occupancy of Blackfriars.

E. The Revels Companies.

1^. Shakspere and Beaumont and Fletcher, writing

for the King's men.

G. The Evidence of folios, quartos, and verse tests. H . The " em-them " test.

I. Court Masques and Chronology.

III. Chronoi,ogy of Shakspbrb's Romances . . 30

IV. Chronology and Discussion of Henry VIII and

Thb Two Noble Kinsmen 35

V. Chronoi,ogy of thb Pi<ays of Beaumont and

Fl<BTCHER 57-

VI. The Drama, i6oi-i6ii 96

VII. General Characteristics of the Romances op

Beaumont and Fletcher 109

VIII. General Characteristics of Shakspbre'S Romances 133

IX. Cymbeline and Philaster 152

X. A Winter's Tale and The Tempest .... 161

XI. Conclusion 167

Appendix. Pericles 171

BIBLIOGRAPHICAIv NOTE.

Texts.

Shakspere's plays. "Globe Edition." W. G. Clark and W. A.

Wright. All line references are to this edition. "The Two Noble Kinsmen." Ed. by Harold Littledale. New

Shakspere Society. Series II. 7, 8. 15. London, 1885. Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. " Works." Ed. by Rev. Alexander Dyce. II vols. London, 1843. Page references are to this

edition.

" Works." Ed. by George Darley. Routledge's " Series of the Old

Dramatists." 2 vols. This edition is used when there is no

reference to Dyce.

Criticai< Works, Etc.

The following list includes only those books or articles which are

repeatedly referred to and often in abbreviated form. Where

the abbreviations are not evident they are given in this list.

Other books referred to are named in full in the foot notes. A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, i$s9-'64Z- F. G-

Fleay. 2 vols. London, 1891. Referred to as Chr. When no

page number is given, the reference is invariably to the play

under discussion and can be found without difficulty. A Chronicle History of the London Stage, 1^59-1642. F. G. Fleay.

London, 1890. H. of S.

A Chronicle History of the Life and Work of William Shakespeare.

Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. J. O. Halliwell Phillipps.

Sixth Edition. London, 1886. H. P. Outlines. A Life of William Shakespeare. Sidney Lee. London and New

York, 1899.

A History of English Dramatic Literature. A. W. Ward. 3 vols.

New and revised edition. London, 1899.

History of English Dramatic Poetry to the time of Shakespeare, and

Annals of the Stage. J. Payne Collier. 3 vols. London, 1874.

Abbreviated, Collier.

A New Variorum. Edition of Shakespeare . H. H. Furness. Philadelphia. The Tempest.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAIv NOTB. VU

The Diary of Philip Henslowe from IS97 to i6og. J. Payne Collier. London. For the Shakespeare Society, 1845. //. D.

Annates or a Generall Chronicle of England. Begun by John Stow. Continued to 1631 by Edmund Howes. London, 1631. Stow.

The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth. New edition in 3 vols. John Nichols. London, 1823.

The Progresses, Processions of King fames the First, etc.

John Nichols. 4 vols. London, 1828.

Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels at Court. P. Cunningham. For the Shakespeare Society. Loudon, 1842.

William Shakspere. A Study in Elizabethan Literature. Barrett Wendell. New York, 1894.

Quellen Studien zu den dram,a Ben fonson's, fohn Marston's und Beaumont und Fletcher'' s. Miinchener Beitrage VI. E. Koeppel. Erlangen und Leipzig. 1895.

Die Englischen Maskenspiele. Alfred Soergel. Halle, 1882. Francis Beaumont. A Critical Study. G. C. Macaulay. London, "1883.

Introduction

In considering the question of Shakspere's indebtedness to two of his contemporaries, we can have no better starting point than the earliest known reference to Shakspere as a dramatist, a passage written by a contemporary play-wright, Robert Greene.

"For there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Ty get's heart wrapt in a Player's hide, supposes that he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as is the best of you: and being an 2i!o$xA-a.\je. Johannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie." ^

Although no one believes that in our sense of the word Shakspere was a plagiarist, Greene's accusation contains an element of truth worth keeping in mind.

There is no doubt that Shakspere began play-writing by imitating or re-vamping the work of others. Titus Andronicus and Henry VI, so far as they are his, are certainly imitative of other plays of the time, while Richard II and Richard III show the influence of Marlowe's tragedies, and Love's Labour's Lost, the influence of I^yly's comedies. During the period that he was learning his art and experimenting with various kinds of plays, it is generally recognized that he was indebted to the dramatists and the dramatic conventions of his time.

After this early experimental period, however, his indebtedness to his contemporaries has received little notice. In fact, the idea that Shakspere in his maturity imitated, adapted, or to any considerable extent made use of the work of his fellow dramatists, has to most students seemed absurd. His plays are so immensely superior to those of his contemporaries that, when resemblances have been noticed, critics have been wont to say: 'Shakspere must have originated this and the other man copied it.' There is a fallacy here which we must avoid; for the mere fact that Shakspere's work is the better by no means proves that it is the original, and in general we may well question if his superiority so much disproves as conceals his indebtedness to his contemporaries.

Whatever he touched, he transformed into a permanent work of art; but it is no less true that in his work of transformation

1 Greene's Groatsworth of Wit. 1592.

or creation he was working under the same conditions as his fellow play-wrights. He was an actor, and a theater-owner, conversant with all the conventions of an Elizabethan theater and practically interested in the stage fashions and stage rivalries of his time. He made plays that paid, situations that held the interest of the audiences, characters that were effective in London theaters. He must have understood and been influenced by the stage demand whose varying wants he and his fellow dramatists were engaged in supplying. As in the case of any other Elizabethan dramatist, we may be reasonably sure that the final character of his work must have been partly determined by definite objective causes. Moreover, since he sometimes wrote in co-operation with and, doubtless still oftener, in competition with other dramatists, and since many of these were writers of great originality, it is almost inconceivable that his work was not directly influenced by theirs.

Still further, there is much clear evidence of his use of contemporary conventions and dramatic forms. It will be remembered, for example, that he continued to write chronicle-histories even after tljat form had been ridiculed as antiquated and that Hamlet and Lear contain traces of the "tragedy of blood" type. A closer adherence to current forms can be seen in the relation between the Merchant of Venice and the Jew of Malta or in the many points of similarity between Hamlet and the other Elizabethan tragedies dealing with the theme of blood-revenge. Characters, too, are often clearly developments of types familiar on the stage; as, for example, lago is a development of the conventional stage villian. Such facts as these have been frequently noticed and commented upon, but even they have not led to any careful investigation of Shakspere's indebtedness to his contemporaries.

Such investigation finds encouragement not only in Shakspere's relation as a play-wright to his fellow play-wrights, but also in the almost invariable law of art forms that the developer excels the innovator. We know that no one wrote any English dramas until a long period of miracle and morality plays had prepared the way. We know that we can trace the rise and development of a number of dramatic forms in the thirty years preceding Shakspere's first masterly work. We know that the Elizabethan literature in general and the history of its drama in particular were characterized by experiment, invention, and discovery. In the history of dramatic art, then, in a period characterized by an abundance of new forms, it is only natural to expect that the genius who brought many of these to their highest perfection should not have been so much an innovator as an adapter. We may naturally expect that Shakspere's transcendent plays owe a considerable debt to the less perfect but not less original efibrts of his contemporaries.

In this investigation I have undertaken to study some of Shakspere's plays in connection with the conventions and fashions of the Khzabethan theater. I have also undertaken the study of these plays in connection with similar plays by his contemporaries. I have by no means exhausted the field of possible contemporary influences. Any one play, I believe, shows almost countless eflfects of preceding plays; and only the most exhaustive study of Shakspere's work could treat adequately of his total indebtedness. Aiming at definiteness rather than completeness,.! have merely considered the influence on Shakspere of one current and popular dramatic form. I •/ have taken as a point of departure some of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher and studied their possible influence on Cymbeline, the Tempest, and the Winter' s Tale.

Beaumont and Fletcher began to write plays toward the end of Shakspere's dramatic career; and by the time of his withdrawal from the stage, they were probably the most popular play-wrights of the day. The popularity of their plays seems, indeed, to have been established almost at the start and to have continued well into the eighteenth century. Nor was their literary pre-eminence less readily recognized; their work was thought worthy of being classed with Shakspere's by poets and critics from Webster to Dryden. Even in the opinion of critics to-day, two or three of their masterpieces, the Maid's Tragedy in particular, can well contest with any other Elizabethan tragedies for the rank next to Shakspere's. Moreover, even from our modern point of view, it is easy to find qualities in many of their plays, such as their variety of situations and their surprising climaxes, which made them better acting plays, greater stage successes even than Shakspere's.

Our main interest in Beaumont and Fletcher's work to-day is, however, probably an historical one. Their work marks a new development in the Elizabethan drama, and their influence "^ is seen in nearly all the dramatists from 1610 to 1640, to say nothing of those of the Restoration. A few of the well known facts of their lives will at once suggest some of the marked distinctions which separated them from the earlier dramatists.

In the first place, Beaumont and Fletcher were gentlemen of birth and breeding; they numbered, as we learn from dedications and commendatory verses, many friends among the gentlemen and noblemen of the day; they had little in common with the Bohemian actor-play-wrights of Elizabeth's reign. They have, indeed, been accused by Coleridge of being " servile /wr.? divino royalists. ' ' Their political opinions are not so much in evidence as this accusation would indicate, but the tone of their work is decidedly the tone of the fashionable world.

In the second place, as became friends of Jonson, they began writing with considerable notion of the rules and requirements of dramatic art. This is, perhaps, best illustrated by a few lines from Beaumont's verses on Jonson's Volpone}

"I would have shown " To all the world, the art, which thou alone, " Hast taught our tongue, the rules of time, of place, " And other rites, delivered with the grace " Of comic style, which only, is far more "Than any English stage hath known before."

Fletcher, too, in the address to the reader prefixed to the Faithful Shepherdess, shows a similar critical knowledge of the rules of his art. Many of their plays, also, satirize the faults of the contemporary drama, and the Knight of the Burning Pestle abounds in ridicule of the absurdities of the popular plays of the day. They placed themselves, then, in opposition to the vulgar taste of the time, and were conscious of the demands of a refined taste and a requiring art.

Nevertheless, there is by no means an absolute disconnection between their plays and the plays of the preceding half-century. Although we shall have occasion to dwell on the novelty of their plays, they are, of course, far from being new. Possibly, there is scarcely a situation or a character which might not be traced back to an early original ; certainly, there is no play which separates itself entirely from relationship with its Elizabethan predecessors. Indeed one needs to make but a cursory study of the Elizabethan drama to convince oneself that this is true of all plays as late as 1600. The fcontinuity of theatrical tradition is rarely broken. The girl in doublet and hose, the deep-dyed villain, the braggart coward, the faithful friend, can all be traced at least as far back as the earliest days of the drama. A situation or a plot once successful was sure to be copied and varied and developed. However much the Elizabethan dramatists studied and pictured human life, they also kept closely in touch with theatrical conventions.

A single example may be permitted to illustrate these observations. In 1566, a play, Palamon and Arcyte, was performed before Queen Elizabeth at Oxford; and among other things concerning it, we learn from Wood's Ms." ' ' There was a good part performed by the the Lady Amelia, who for gathering her flowers prettily in a garden there represented and singing sweetly in the time of March, received eight angels for her graciousrewardby her Majesty's command." There, perhaps, was the germ of a situation used over and over again in later plays and adapted by Shakspere into the scene in which Perdita distributes her flowers in the Wifiter's Tale.

Beaumont and Fletcher, like Shakspere and all other Eliza-

^Nichols' Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, I.

bethan dramatists, took their material where they could find it, and availed themselves of whatever had found favor on the stage. There can be no doubt, however, that their plays seemed very different to the spectators of their day from any which preceded. This is true of their comedies, with which as a class we shall have little to do, and it is still more true of their tragi-comedies and tragedies which I shall include by the term romances.-' In the period 1600-1615 there are certainly few plays by other authors that resemble these romances. They are nothing like the revenge plays which were prevalent at the beginning of the period, nor the "tragedies of blood ' ' of Webster and Tourneur, nor Chapman's Bussy d'Ambois and Byron, nor the classical tragedies of Jonson and Shakspere. Neither are they like Macbeth, Othello, or Lear, tragedies which deal with one main emotion and center about one character. If they differ from the plays which immediately preceded or were contemporary with them, they differ still more from the earlier chronicle-histories or tragedies. Beaumont and Fletcher, in fact, created a new dramatic form, the ^ heroic romance. I shall later endeavor to establish this assertion by showing how their romances differ from all other plays of the time and how closely they themselves adhere to a definite type. For the present, we may well enough rest on a statement which no one will deny, that their romances were distinguished by much that was new in situations, plots, characters, and poetic style.

The production of such a series of plays within a few years of each other must certainly have influenced contemporary play -writing. And our knowledge of Shakspere surely justifies us in suspecting that no dramatist was more ready than he to make use of whatever was popular and suited to his purpose on the stage.

It becomes a significant fact, then, that at just about the time Beaumont and Fletcher's romances appeared, Shakspere, who had for a number of years been chiefly engaged on his tragedies, began writing a series of plays differing from any he had previously written and perhaps, also, best designated as romances. The common name ' romance ' indicates a real resemblance. We saw a moment ago that Beaumont and Fletcher's romances differed markedly from almost all the notable tragic plays of their period; they have, however, at least a class resemblance to Cymbeline , the Winter's Tale, and the Tempest. Especial prominence giv en to a sentimental love ,- story, a rap id iJUCLLb&iuu uf LiaylC ijlluations, a nappy endi ng, are -example^ ot resemblances which must occur to everyone.

1 Typical examples are : Philaster, Four Plays in One, Thierry and Theodoret, Cupid's Revenge, A King and No King, The Maid's Tragedy.

Critics have, in fact, specifically noted the similarities between Philaster and Cymbeline^

Moreover, there is an abrupt change from Shakspere's previous work to his romances. Sometime between 1601 and 1608 he wrote the series of tragedies from Hamlet to Antony and Cleopatra; sometime between 1608 and 161 2, he wrote Cymbeline, the Winter's Tale, and the Tempest. There were other plays probably during these two periods — Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, Pericles, Timon — but some of these are not wholly Shakspere's, and all are of more doubtful date. They perhaps indicate periods of weakness in creative power, of searching after new forms, ^ but they cannot be classified under either of the groups above — the great tragedies or the romances. These two groups are absolutely distinct; they difier enormously in general effect. Still further, this transition from the tragedies to the romances was accomplished in one or two years at most; for the student of Shakspere's art, therefore, the hiatus has not been an easy one to bridge.

The only explanation that I know to have been offered, is that of a subjective change in Shakspere. It is stated that he passed out of a period of life, gloomy, passionate, full of suffering, into one of philosophic calm, renewed optimism, and final reconciliation: or as Mr. Dowden puts it, he passed "out of the depths ' ' and rested ' ' on the heights. ' ' It would be stupid to deny the possibility of such a change. No one imagines that Shakspere's mind was the same when he was writing Hamlet as when he was writing the Tempest; and what actual personal circumstances may have accompanied these varying creative moods is certainly open to conjecture without any possibility of disproof. Such subjective explanations, however, are at best only attempts to interpret the author's moods in terms of the aesthetic effect his work exerts upon us: and they give us few clues as to the actual methods of his creative art. We are on far safer grounds when we study objective influences; and a mere re-insistance on our point of view — the study of Shakspere as an Elizabethan dramatist — must lead to the conclusion that no decided change in the character of his plays would have been likely to take place without some objective cause.

Such a cause for his change from the tragedies to the romances I find in the production at about the same time of a series of romances by Beaumont and Fletcher. I think, also, that Shakspere's romances show definite evidences of the influence of Beaumont and Fletcher. In order to establish any probability for these opinions, there is necessary ( i ) an examination of the dates of Shakspere's and of Beaumont and Fletcher's

iSee B. Leonhardt. Anglia 8.

^ See William Shakspere by Barrett Wendell, p. 334.

romances in order to determine if the latter preceded, and (2) an examination of such of Beaumont and Fletcher's romances as date early enough in order to discover their distinguishing characteristics, and a like examination of Shakspere's three romances in search of indications of Beaumont and Fletcher's influence.

In addition to these two principal investigations there are some minor ones involved by them. The rather general opinion that both Shakspere and Fletcher are concerned in the authorship of Henry VIII and the Two Noble Kinsmen, is important in its bearing on the investigation of Fletcher's influence on Shakspere. We shall consider, therefore, the dates, the authorship and the possible collaboration in these plays. Their discussion, together with that of the lost Cardenio, also attributed to Fletcher and Shakspere, will be included for convenience in the first main division of the investigation, that of the chronology of the plays. Pericles is often spoken of as a precursor of Shakspere's romances and must therefore receive at least brief consideration. This will be postponed to the appendix.

Inasmuch as in investigating the chronology of the Beaumont-Fletcher plays I shall take Mr. Fleay's conclusions as a basis, some of his theories must first be considered, and with them some matters of the stage history of the period and some general methods used in the subsequent investigation. As this introduction to the Beaumont-Fletcher chronology also, in some details, affects the Shakspere chronology, it will precede the latter as well as the former.

An examination of the plays acted in the eight or ten years preceding the romances will also be necessary in order to determine to what extent they were innovations 011 contemporary practice.

In discussing the characteristics of the romances of Beaumont and Fletcher and their influence on Shakspere's we should naturally expect to find in Cymbeline, probably the earliest of the latter, more distinct traces of the influence of Beaumont and Fletcher than in the Winter's Tale and the Tempest ; for in these later plays Shakspere, once accustomed to the new style of drama, would more completely transform it. I shall, therefore, consider separately the influence of Philaster on Cymbeline, and in still another chapter discuss the Winter's Tale and the Tempest.

My investigation, therefore, will be presented in the following somewhat arbitrary order.

(I.) I. Introduction to the chronology of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher and the stage history of 1605-1615.

2. Chronology of Shakspere's three romances.

3. Chronology and discussion of Henry VIII, the Two Noble Kinsmen, and Cardenio.

4. Chronology of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher.

6. General characteristics of the romances of Beaumont and Fletcher.

7. General characteristics of Shakspere's romances.

8. Cymbeline and Philaster.

9. A Winter's Tale and the Tempest. 10. (Appendix). Pericles.

In spite of the somewhat wide latitude of the investigation, its two main objects must not be lost sight of: (i) to show that so far as dates and facts of stage history are concerned, it is entirely possible that the Beaumont- Fletcher romances may have influenced Shakspere, and (2) to show a probability that they did definitely influence his romances.

chapter ii. Introduction to Chronology and Stage History

Before attempting to fix the dates of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, it is necessary to understand the few facts known of their lives and reputations as dramatists and to discuss a few important features of the stage history of the time. In discussing the separate plays, I shall take as a basis the conclusions of Mr. Fleay in his Chronicle of the English Drama; and these conclusions rest so often on his special theories in regard to the general stage history that, in order even to understand his dates for the plays, those theories must be carefully examined.

A . Biographies.

Francis Beaumont, third son of Judge Beaumont of Grace Dieu in lyeicestershire, was born about 1585 and died March 6, 1616. He was admitted gentleman commoner at Broadgates Hall, Oxford, in 1597, and was entered at the Inner Temple, I/Ondon, Nov. 3, 1600. Salamis a.nA Hermaphrodite, 1602, may possibly have been written by him. He was married, possibly about 1613,^ and left two daughters (one, a posthumous child). He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

John Fletcher, son of Richard Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol, was baptized at Rye in Sussex, where his father was then minister, Dec. 20, 1579, and died of the plague Aug. 25, 1625. He was entered as a pensioner at Bene't College, Cambridge,

It is not known just when Fletcher came to I^ondon or when he began writing plays or when he first became acquainted with Beaumont. Davenant in a prologue to the Woman Hater at a revival, evidently alluding to Fletcher, declares that ' ' full twenty years he wore the bays: " this would place the beginning of his play- writing 1604-5. In 1607, both he and Beaumont prefixed verses to Volpone (acted 1605.) Beaumont addresses Jonson as ' ' my dear friend, ' \ praises him for teaching ' ' our tongue the rules of time, of place, ' ' and shows a characteristic scorn of the audiences of the day. Fletcher also classes himself among Jonson' s friends and speaks of the latter' s foes. In 1607, then, they were well acquainted with Jonson and