Francis Beaumont

Francis Beaumont , 1584?-1616, English dramatist. Born of a distinguished family, he studied at Oxford and the Inner Temple. His literary reputation is linked with that of John Fletcher , with whom he began collaborating about 1606. Their plays are noted for plot symmetry, refined taste, and provocative sexual situations. The plays usually ascribed to him as sole author are The Woman Hater (published 1607), the burlesque Knight of the Burning Pestle (c.1607), Philaster (c.1609), and The Maid's Tragedy (c.1610). After his marriage in 1613 he retired to his estate in Kent and ceased writing for the stage.

Bibliography: See biography by L. Bliss (1987); studies by G. C. Campbell (1972) and M. Baldwin (1974).

Beaumont, Francis (1584–1616), collaborated with Fletcher in dramatic works from about 1606 to 1613 (for a list of their plays, see under Fletcher, J.). His earliest known play, The Woman Hater, a Jonsonian comedy of humours, was probably performed 1605, published 1607; recent linguistic analysis assigns some scenes in this to Fletcher, whereas The Knight of the Burning Pestle (?1607) is now generally considered to be Beaumont's alone.

Dryden, in Of Dramatick Poesy (1668), pays tribute to the success of the Beaumont and Fletcher plays on the Restoration stage, and comments that both writers had ‘great natural gifts improved by study; Beaumont especially being so accurate a judge of plays that Ben Jonson, while he lived, submitted all his writings to his censure, and, 'tis thought, used his judgement in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots’. In the 17th cent. opinion tended to ascribe the tragic scenes in the collaborative effort to Beaumont, the comic to Fletcher, but modern critics reject this neat division, and are themselves divided about attribution. (See under Fletcher for further details.)