There is a lack of seriousness of purpose, an increasing tendency to
return, in more morbid spirit, to the sensationalism of the 1580's, and an
anxious straining to attract and please the audiences by almost any means.
These tendencies appear in the plays of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher,
whose reputations are indissolubly linked together in one of the most
famous literary partnerships of all time. Beaumont, however, was
short-lived, and much the greater part of the fifty and more plays
ultimately published under their joint names really belong to Fletcher
alone or to Fletcher and other collaborators. The scholarship of our day
agrees with the opinion of their contemporaries in assigning to Beaumont
the greater share of judgment and intellectual power and to Fletcher the
greater share of spontaneity and fancy. Fletcher's style is very
individual. It is peculiarly sweet; but its unmistakable mark is his
constant tendency to break down the blank verse line by the use of extra
syllables, both within the line and at the end. The lyrics which he
scatters through his plays are beautifully smooth and musical. The plays of
Beaumont and Fletcher, as a group, are sentimentally romantic, often in an
extravagant degree, though their charm often conceals the extravagance as
well as the lack of true characterization. They are notable often for their
portrayal of the loyal devotion of both men and women to king, lover, or
friend. One of the best of them is 'Philaster, or Love Lies Bleeding,'
while Fletcher's 'Faithful Shepherdess' is the most pleasing example in
English of the artificial pastoral drama in the Italian and Spanish style.

The Elizabethan tendency to sensational horror finds its greatest artistic
expression in two plays of John Webster, 'The White Devil, or Vittoria
Corombona,' and 'The Duchess of Malfi.' Here the corrupt and brutal life of
the Italian nobility of the Renaissance is presented with terrible
frankness, but with an overwhelming sense for passion, tragedy, and pathos.
The most moving pathos permeates some of the plays of John Ford (of the