of his generation, as Shakspere's does of the generation preceding.

The drama went on in the course marked out for it by Shakspere's
example, until the theaters were closed, by Parliament, in 1642. Of
the Stuart dramatists, the most important were Beaumont and Fletcher,
all of whose plays were produced during the reign of James I. These
were fifty-three in number, but only thirteen of them were joint
productions. Francis Beaumont was twenty years younger than Shakspere,
and died a few years before him. 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 {128} 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. Dryden said that after the
Restoration two of their plays were acted for one of Shakspere's or
Jonson's throughout the year, and he added, that they "understood and
imitated the conversation of _gentlemen_ much better, whose wild
debaucheries and quickness of wit in repartees no poet can ever paint
as they have done." Wild debauchery was certainly not the mark of a
gentleman in Shakspere, nor was it altogether so in Beaumont and
Fletcher. Their gentlemen are gallant and passionate lovers, gay
cavaliers, generous, courageous, courteous--according to the fashion of
their times--and se