He was the son of a judge of the Common Pleas. His
collaborator, John Fletcher, a son of the bishop of London, was five
years older than Beaumont, and survived him nine years. He was much the
more prolific of the two and wrote alone some forty plays. Although the
life of one of these partners was conterminous with Shakspere's, their
works exhibit a later phase of the dramatic art. The Stuart dramatists
followed the lead of Shakspere rather than of Ben Jonson. Their plays,
like the former's, belong to the romantic drama. They present a poetic
and idealized version of life, deal with the highest passions and the
wildest buffoonery, and introduce a great variety of those daring
situations and incidents which we agree to call romantic. But, while
Shakspere seldom or never overstepped the modesty of nature, his
successors ran into every license. They sought to stimulate the jaded
appetite of their audience by exhibiting monstrosities of character,
unnatural lusts, subtleties of crime, virtues and vices both in excess.
Beaumont and Fletcher's plays are much easier and more agreeable reading
than Ben Jonson's. Though often loose in their plots and without that
consistency in the development of their characters which distinguished
Jonson's more conscientious workmanship, they are full of graceful
dialogue and beautiful poetry.
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