But Beaumont and
Fletcher's pages are corrupt. Even their chaste women are immodest in
language and thought. They use not merely that frankness of speech which
was a fashion of the times, but a profusion of obscene imagery which
could not proceed from a pure mind. Chastity with them is rather a
bodily accident than a virtue of the heart, says Coleridge.
Among the best of their light comedies are _The Chances, The Scornful
Lady, The Spanish Curate_, and _Rule a Wife and Have a Wife_. But far
superior to these are their tragedies and tragi-comedies, _The Maid's
Tragedy, Philaster, A King and No King_--all written jointly--and
_Valentinian_ and _Thierry and Theodoret_, written by Fletcher alone,
but perhaps, in part, sketched out by Beaumont. The tragic masterpiece
of Beaumont and Fletcher is _The Maid's Tragedy_, a powerful but
repulsive play, which sheds a singular light not only upon its authors'
dramatic methods, but also upon the attitude toward royalty favored by
the doctrine of the divine right of kings, which grew up under the
Stuarts. The heroine, Evadne, has been in secret a mistress of the king,
who marries her to Amintor, a gentleman of his court, because, as she
explains to her bridegroom, on the wedding night,
I must have one
To father children, and to bear the name
Of husband to me, that my sin may be
More honorable.
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