Beaumont, Francis and John Fletcher | Philip J. Finkelpearl (essay date 1990)
Philip J. Finkelpearl (essay date 1990)
SOURCE: "Beaumont and Fletcher's Earliest Work," in Court and Country Politics in the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 56-80.
[In the following essay, Finkelpearl considers early influences on Beaumont and Fletcher, including the inspiration of private Jacobean theater and the example of Marston. Finkelpearl also provides a close reading of their "remarkably accomplished" first play, The Woman Hater.]
OVIDIAN POLITICS: SALMACIS AND HERMAPHRODITUS
At the precocious age of seventeen Beaumont published his first poem, the Ovidian epyllion Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. Despite its obvious dependence on Venus and Adonis and especially Hero and Leander, this tenfold expansion of Ovid's hundred lines displays astonishing sophistication and technical proficiency. It deserves scrutny in its own right, as several recent studies have...
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