Moliere, the French Shakespeare

17^th February 1673 was the day on which the “French Shakespeare”, Molière, died. Although he did not have the variety of output that the English Shakespeare had, his influence on the drama of his native land was every bit as great.

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin was born in Paris in 1622. He became an actor and adopted the name Molière as his stage name when aged about 22, possibly to spare his father the shame of having an actor in the family.

He came to royal notice in 1658 when he performed one of his own plays before King Louis XIV and this led eventually to his company of players becoming “The King’s Troop”. By this time he was already writing, directing and acting in plays, mainly comedies, that were proving to be highly popular.

Although his personal preference was for tragedy, the demand was for farce and comedy and this was where his talents seemed to lie. Among his many “hits” were “Tartuffe” (1664), “Le Misanthrope” (1666), “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme” (1670) and “Le Malade Imaginaire” (1673).

It was during a performance of the last of these plays that Molière was taken seriously ill just as the curtain was about to fall. Ironically, the main character of the play, which Molière was playing, is a hypochondriac, but Molière’s illness was real enough. He was rushed to his home from the theatre but died within an hour from pulmonary tuberculosis – he had probably contracted it during a spell in a debtor’s prison when he had been much younger and now it had finally caught up with him at the age of 51.

Some of his plays had poked fun at the Church, and it took the intervention of the King for him to be allowed a burial in consecrated ground, which was in any case usually denied to members of the acting profession. The Church authorities reluctantly gave way but insisted that the funeral should take place at night so as not to attract attention.

© John Welford

T S Eliot, poet and playwright

Thomas Stearns Eliot was born on 26^th September 1888 in St Louis, Missouri, USA, the seventh and easily the youngest child of Henry Ware Eliot, a businessman, and Charlotte Champe Stearns, a teacher and amateur poet.

After being schooled at Smith Academy he went to Harvard University in 1906, although he was only moderately successful as a student, despite discovering the world of poetry.

In 1910 he spent a postgraduate year in Paris at the Sorbonne, where he was introduced to European culture and the conflicting philosophical and political ideas of the age. He returned to Harvard in 1911 to undertake a doctoral level study of philosophy.

He had already started to write some of his best-known poems at this stage, including “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”, “Portrait of a Lady” and “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”.

His philosophical studies were wide-ranging, but he became particularly interested in exploring states of consciousness. This led him to study Eastern thought as well as Western, and to be critical of the emerging subjects of psychology and sociology. Among those who influenced him at Harvard were William James, Bertrand Russell and George Santayana.

The influence of his studies on the poetry he wrote at that time can be seen from the themes of madness and unreality that pervade such works as “The Descent from the Cross”, but he found this work to be sterile and unsatisfying.

In 1914 Eliot travelled to Europe, firstly to Germany and then to Britain, his plans being somewhat changed by the outbreak of war. Ezra Pound was shown some of Eliot’s manuscript poems and was greatly impressed, visiting Eliot in London.

Eliot was also introduced to Vivien Haigh-Wood, and they were married in June 1915, which nearly caused a rift with his parents. This weakening of family ties, plus the separation caused by the war, led Eliot to see his future as belonging on the eastern side of the Atlantic. Despite finishing his doctoral thesis, he was unwilling to travel to Harvard to defend it, and so never became “Dr Eliot”.

Eliot needed to support himself in London, starting with teaching and moving on to reviewing and lecturing. He eventually obtained a more regular income by joining Lloyds Bank, which had a need for his foreign language skills. This in turn gave him the impetus to resume his career as a poet, and “Prufrock and Other Observations” was published in late 1917.

Eliot’s connections, particularly with Bertrand Russell who had offered the Eliots their first married home, enabled him to meet some of the brightest stars of the English intellectual firmament of the time. These included members of the Bloomsbury Group, as well as W B Yeats and Wyndham Lewis.

1920 saw the publication of “The Sacred Wood”, a volume of critical essays that proved to be highly influential in shifting the focus of English criticism for the 20^th century.

However, things now took a turn for the worse. Eliot’s father had died in 1919, thus removing the chance for father and son to be reconciled. Vivien’s health deteriorated, and Eliot found the strain too much for him. He therefore, in 1921, took three months out to recuperate, spending part of the time in Switzerland.

This gave him the opportunity he needed to finish a project that had been brewing since 1914 and had been taking shape for a couple of years. The was to be “The Waste Land”, an avant-garde work for the Jazz Age, using highly original rhythmic devices and countless literary, historical and mythological allusions to achieve deep emotional insights. It therefore had much in common with Joyce’s “Ulysses”, which was published in book form in the same year, 1922.

Eliot was invited to become the first editor of a new literary magazine, “The Criterion”, and in 1925 he joined the board, as literary editor, of publishers Faber and Faber, which was the chance he needed to turn his back on banking. From this position, Eliot was able to exert a considerable influence on the British poetry scene in the 20^th century.

Eliot now underwent two conversions. One was to the Church of England, into which he was baptised in 1927, and the other was to Great Britain, taking British citizenship in the same year.

His religion, like his politics, now took a distinctly conservative tone as he aligned himself with the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England. He took his religion very seriously, becoming a churchwarden and giving lectures at church events.

His poetry also turned more towards religious themes (although religion had always been present in much of his work to date). Notable poems from this time include “The Journey of the Magi”, “A Song for Simeon” and “Ash Wednesday”.

The writing of drama began to dominate Eliot’s literary output from about 1934, although “Sweeney Agonistes” had been started (it was never finished) as early as 1923.  His first completed dramas had overtly religious themes, namely “The Rock” in 1934 and “Murder in the Cathedral” in 1935, both commissioned by Anglican bishops.

His later plays were designed more for the commercial theatre, notable ones being “The Family Reunion” in 1939 and “The Cocktail Party” in 1949.

Just as “The Waste Land” had been precipitated by a crisis in Eliot’s personal life, the same could be said of his other “greatest work”, namely “Four Quartets”.  He found it impossible to maintain full marital relations with Vivien from about 1928, and in 1930 he decided to separate from her, although this was against her will. Vivien was eventually committed to a mental hospital in 1938. Thomas became very friendly with an old flame of his, Emily Hale, especially when she spent the summer of 1934 in the Cotswolds and they visited the abandoned manor house of Burnt Norton together. However, divorce was out of the question for the convinced high Anglican, and so Thomas and Emily never married.

“The Criterion” ceased publication on the outbreak of war in 1939, and Eliot’s war service consisted of being an air raid warden. His sombre mood at a sombre time led to his writing of the Quartets, “Burnt Norton” (finished back in 1935) being followed by “East Coker” (1940), “The Dry Salvages” (1941) and “Little Gidding” (1942).

The Quartets marked the virtual completion of Eliot’s poetical works, as he concentrated after the war on drama and criticism. The latter included the influential “Notes Toward a Definition of Culture” in 1948.

Eliot was recognised far and wide as a leading light of the literary scene both before and after the Second World War, accepting invitations to give prestigious lecture series on both sides of the Atlantic, and receiving a multitude of academic and other honours. These included the Order of Merit and the Nobel Prize for Literature, both in 1948.

Vivien died in 1947, and Thomas married his secretary in 1957. He died of emphysema on 4^th January 1965, aged 76.  His ashes were buried at East Coker, the ancestral home of the Eliot family, and a memorial service was held for him in Westminster Abbey.

When one considers the life of T S Eliot, the impression is of a deeply philosophical, religious, conservative, and above all serious man. It is therefore a surprise to realise that he was also the author of a very unserious collection of poems, namely “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats”. These whimsical, light, funny and very “human” poems seem totally out of keeping with the author of “The Four Quartets”, especially when one appreciates that “Old Possum” was written at about the same time (1939 to be precise).

However, it is as the originator of the text for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical “Cats” that most people will know the work of one of the greatest poets and playwrights of the 20^th century.

© John Welford

Francis Beaumont: a playwright from the Age of Shakespeare

Francis Beaumont was a leading playwright of the Shakespearean era, although his name is generally coupled with that of another playwright, namely John Fletcher, such that many more people have heard of “Beaumont and Fletcher” than of Francis Beaumont himself . 

Early years

His exact date of birth is unknown, although it was probably in late 1584. The reason for the uncertainty is the lack of a baptismal record for him, and the reason for this is that the Beaumont family were Catholics at a time when to be Catholic was a very dangerous thing. A Catholic baptism would have had to be carried out in secret.

The Beaumonts were a prominent Leicestershire family, Francis’s father being a judge. Francis entered an Oxford college in February 1597, aged 12, but had to leave the following year when his father died. In 1600 he was admitted to the Inner Temple (one of the four Inns of Court) where his two brothers were already established. However, it does not appear that he ever seriously considered taking up the law as his career.

Instead, he was far more interested in writing poetry and plays. His early poems showed great promise, and he was praised by, among others, Ben Jonson.

His first play written for the public stage was “The Knight of the Burning Pestle”, which was written in only eight days and is today Beaumont’s best-known solo play. It features a “play within a play” and the stage device of people who are apparently audience members becoming involved in the action on stage. A grocer and his wife interrupt the prologue of “The London Merchant”, a love story, to insist that their apprentice has a part and that the play should be a chivalric romance. The two themes become intermingled and the whole production becomes a satire on the theatrical conventions of the time. The influence of “Don Quixote” is also very strong.

Unfortunately for Beaumont, his audience was not ready for this degree of stage sophistication and it was not well received. Beaumont never attempted anything of such an avant-garde nature again, but the upside of this failure was that it drove him towards forging a partnership with another “failed” playwright, namely John Fletcher. 

Beaumont and Fletcher

At first, the partners wrote plays for the “children’s” acting companies that comprised, for example, the “Children of St Paul’s” who were recruited from the boy choristers of St Paul’s Cathedral. However, from about 1610 they moved their allegiance to the professional “King’s Men” company at the Globe Theatre. According to John Aubrey, the two lived together in a house near the theatre, sharing everything including their “wench”.

It is not easy to work out which plays produced during this time were collaborations between the two men, which were written on their own, and which in collaboration with other playwrights. Joint authorship was very common at a time when demand from the playhouses for new work was incessant. It is known, for example, that Fletcher worked with Philip Massinger, William Rowley and William Shakespeare, among others. However, it is not apparent that Francis Beaumont collaborated with anyone other than John Fletcher. 

It has been reckoned that nine plays can be reliably cited as being by “Beaumont and Fletcher”, five of them written for the Children’s companies and four for the King’s Men. The “Children’s” plays comprised four comedies and a tragedy. Only one of the plays, a comedy, had much impact. This was “The Scornful Lady”, the popularity of which probably derived from its sanctioning of the vulgar manners of young “men about town”, in their pursuit of women, given that the audiences would have contained many who fell into that category. 

The four “King’s Men” plays were of higher quality, and it is on two of them that the lasting reputation of Beaumont and Fletcher depends. “Philaster” (1609) is a romance set in a royal court, featuring many plot twists and turns and a hero in the mould of Hamlet, whose actions are often far from noble and who lacks the virtues that a prince should have, as well as being indecisive. The play appears to question the principle that kings are divinely ordained to rule, which was strongly maintained by King James I, but that did not prevent the play from being performed at Court.

“The Maid’s Tragedy” (1610-11) also features an unworthy king, who maintains that his divine right gives him the power to tyrannise those around him and force them to sacrifice their own romantic desires to satisfy his will. The plot is intricate, with several memorable scenes, and much of the verse is of the highest quality. 

There has been considerable debate over what form the collaboration between Beaumont and Fletcher took, with some critics saying that Beaumont wrote the tragic scenes and Fletcher the comic ones, although this has been strongly disputed. Another thought has been that Beaumont acted merely as Fletcher’s editor, and others have maintained that Beaumont wrote the scenes based on Fletcher’s plots. The question is still far from a definitive answer.

In 1613 Francis Beaumont renewed his acquaintance with the Inner Temple by writing a masque to be performed by its members (and those of Gray’s Inn) for the forthcoming marriage of Princess Elizabeth to Frederick, the Emperor Palatine. As all royal marriages are political, it is not surprising to find that the masque contains references to the political and dynastic themes of the day.

Francis Beaumont was married in 1613 to Ursula Isley, and they had two daughters. However, it would appear that at some time during the same year he suffered a stroke, which virtually put paid to his career as a writer. He lived for another three years and died on 6^th March 1616, probably aged 31 or 32. He was buried in Westminster Abbey in what was to become known as Poet’s Corner.

The reputation of Beaumont and Fletcher has fluctuated considerably during the 400 or so years since Beaumont’s death, as has that of virtually all the playwrights of Shakespeare’s age (and shortly after) who were not Shakespeare. It is noticeable that many of the plays in which Francis Beaumont had a hand featured extravagant plots that are less likely to appeal to modern audiences than to those of his own day. Those plays of Shakespeare that are equally of their age (such as Coriolanus) are also not among the most popular today. Whether the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, and of Francis Beaumont alone, will ever recover the position they once held remains to be seen, but is unlikely. 

© John Welford