The partnership of Fletcher and Shakespeare in the writing of these two plays has been questioned, but as to their collaboration in a third, _Henry VIII_, there is not much possibility of doubt. In the conception of the leading characters Shakespeare is present, and in many of their finest lines, and specifically in at least five scenes; while Fletcher appears in practically all the rest. The play was acted by the King's Men at the Globe on June 29, 1613, and was included as Shakespeare's by his judicious editors and intimate friends, Heming and Condell, in the folio of 1623.
[Illustration: BEN JONSON From the miniature belonging to Mr. Evelyn Shirley]
During these years of fruition the friendship with Jonson, who was writing at the time for both the companies to which our young dramatists gave their plays, continued apparently without interruption. It is attested by commendatory verses written by Beaumont for _The Silent Woman_, which was acted early in 1610, and by verses of both Fletcher and Beaumont prefixed to Jonson's tragedy of _Catiline_, published in 1611. On the latter occasion Beaumont commends Jonson's contempt for "the wild applause of common people," and declares that he is "three ages yet from understood;" while Fletcher even more enthusiastically avers,--
Thy labours shall outlive thee; and, like gold Stampt for continuance, shall be current where There is a sun, a people, or a year.
The generous and graceful response of Ben to the reverence of the younger of the twain appears in a tribute the date of which is uncertain, but which was included by the author among his _Epigrams_, entered in the Stationers' Registers, 1612.
How I doe love thee, Beaumont and thy Muse, That unto me dost such religion use! How I doe feare my selfe, that am not worth The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth! At once thou mak'st me happie, and unmak'st; And giving largely to me, more thou tak'st. What fate is mine, that so it selfe bereaves? What art is thine, that so thy friend deceives? When even there, where most thou praisest mee, For writing better, I must envie thee.
Since Jonson was not given to indiscriminate laudation of his contemporaries in dramatic production, we may surmise that this tribute to the art of Beaumont follows rather than precedes the appearance of _Philaster_, and of perhaps both _The Maides Tragedy_ and _A King and No King_. And whether there is any basis or not for the tradition handed down by Dryden[80] that Beaumont was "so accurate a judge of plays that Ben Jonson, while he lived, submitted all his writings to his censure, and, 'tis thought, used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots,"--there is here evidence, sufficiently convincing, of the high esteem in which "the least indulgent thought" and the large "giving" of the brilliant and independent gentleman-dramatist were held by the acknowledged classicist and dictator of the stage.