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Massinger would have carried out the scene in quite another tone. Some of the Fletcher scenes in this play, in which he has an unusually large share, are surprisingly good, and remind us of Fletcher at his best, in Philaster and the earlier plays. He fails here, as he always does, in the delineation of character. Nowhere is this break-down more characteristic than in Buckingham and Barnavelt.
Here I dined and had a good dinner, and his wife a good pretty woman. There was a young Parson at the table that had got himself drunk before dinner, which troubled me to see. After dinner to Mr. Bowers at Westminster for my wife, and brought her to the Theatre to see "Philaster," which I never saw before, but I found it far short of my expectations. So by coach home. 19th.
He employs her to carry messages to his lady-love, just as Viola, in Twelfth Night, is sent by the duke to Olivia. Philaster is persuaded by slanderers that his page and his lady have been unfaithful to him, and in his jealous fury he wounds Euphrasia with his sword. Afterward, convinced of the boy's fidelity, he asks forgiveness, whereto Euphrasia replies,
Euphrasia could, at any moment, by revealing her identity, have averted the greatest sufferings and dangers from Philaster, Arethusa, and herself, and the only motive for her keeping silence is represented to have been a feeling of maidenly shame at her position. Such strained and fantastic motives are too often made the pivot of the action in Beaumont and Fletcher's tragi-comedies.
Papillon came flying along the terrace, her skirts and waving tresses spread wide in the wind, a welcome intruder. "What are you and Sir Denzil doing in the cold? I have news for my dear, dearest auntie. My lord is in a good humour, and Philaster is to be acted by the Duke's servants, and her ladyship's footmen are keeping places for us in the boxes.
The scenes in which Urania appears are pretty, though inferior to the very similar ones in the nearly contemporary Philaster.
The first play which brought them into esteem, as Dryden says, was Philaster, or Love lies a Bleeding; for, before that, they had written two or three very unsuccessfully, as the like is reported of Ben Johnson before he writ Every Man in his Humour. These authors had with the advantage of the wit of Shakespear, which was their precedent, great natural gifts improved by study.
By comparing Philaster, Epiphanius, and the Pseudo-Tertullian, he recovers Hippolytus, and by comparing his restored Hippolytus with Irenaeus he infers a common authority, probably the lost work of Justin Martyr, or, may we suggest, as remarked above, the work from which Justin got his information.
The account of the death of Simon, however, shows that the author was not Hippolytus from whose lost work Epiphanius and Philaster are proved by Lipsius to have taken their accounts. The Simon of Origen gives us no new information, except as to the small number of the Simonians.
In effect, though Beaumont had a gift of grave sardonic humour which found especial vent in burlesques of the heroic style and in the systematic extravagance of such characters as Bessus, yet he was above all things a tragic poet; and though Fletcher had great power of tragic eloquence and passionate effusion, yet his comic genius was of a rarer and more precious quality; one Spanish Curate is worth many a Valentinian; as, on the other hand, one Philaster is worth many a Scornful Lady.
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