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Musicke I say the most divine striker of the senses.
--Sir Phillip Sidney, The Defence of Poesie (1595)
Music, according to Italian Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino, "by its nature, both spiritual and material ... at once seizes and claims as its own, man in his entirety."(1) Music is so powerful in the drama of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher that it becomes the direct onstage cause of an attempted murder and suicide, a marriage proposal to a whore, and an attempted gang rape(2)--as well as numerous more subtle changes in the plays' actions. My argument in this paper is not that music in Beaumont and Fletcher's plays is by the composer Robert Johnson--this is not new, although marginally recognized.(3) Rather, evidence points to Johnson's intentionally composing music for the particular plays in which they occur, knowing the details of the dramas as he did so. Consequently, Johnson's songs are such an important element in the plays' actions that ignoring them may lead to an impression that the plays are disjunctive. Beaumont and Fletcher's works contain so much music that some, at least, verge on being what we today call musicals--most notably The Knight of the Burning Pestle. This paper focuses on the contributions of Johnson, not Beaumont and/or Fletcher (about whose authorship there is a long-standing dispute) by examining three of Johnson's songs in detail, within the context of ideology and technique in Renaissance music.(4) When necessary to differentiate between Beaumont and Fletcher, I use Cyrus Hoy's attribution scheme.(5)
There are songs in both of the dramas that Beaumont wrote alone, The Knight of the Burning Pestle and The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. Likewise, all of the fifteen plays that Fletcher wrote alone contain songs. Curiously, extant music is less prevalent in the Beaumont-Fletcher collaboration than in the plays they wrote singly. Of the thirteen plays of collaboration, seven contain songs, either formal art songs or popular tunes, distributed evenly in scenes by Beaumont and by Fletcher: Beggars' Bush, The Captain, The Coxcomb, Cupid's Revenge, Love's Cure, The Maid's Tragedy, and The Woman Hater. The only definitive original songs available from the plays of collaboration are those by Johnson.
Many of the examples of music's playing a seminal role in the action of Beaumont and/or Fletcher's plays involve lust. Lelia's first song in The Captain is a case in point. Described in the list of characters as a "cunning wanton widow"(6) in I.iii, Lelia tries unsuccessfully to catch her suitor Julio, who is both drawn to her charms but repulsed by her reputation. Lelia suggests marriage but Julio gasps, "Married to me?/ Is that your end?" (I.iii.268-69) and quickly departs. Thus far, Lelia has tried to capture Julio with her beauty, the sound of her speaking voice, and her sexual accessibility. These are clearly not enough. When he returns, she has a song prepared,(7) Robert Johnson's "Away delights, goe seeke some other dwelling." (Example 1; see note 8 for a discussion of editorial practice for this and subsequent songs.(8)) According to the style of the time, it would not have been uncommon for this and other songs to be highly embellished.(9)
[Example 1 ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The words alone could lead to an interpretation that the song is about Lelia's evoking pity for herself because Julio has recently been absent, and focuses on banishing delights. It serves to counter her well-deserved reputation as a loose woman. When we add Johnson's music we realize, however, that the song is only superficially about banishing delights; its primary intent is to heighten Julio's lust by camouflaging itself in the melancholy of a solo ayre. This truer purpose emerges in the prominent handling of sexual words, in the song's harmony, and in the song's final inflected melisma (passage where one syllable is set to several notes). In the first verse, the word "dye" (bar 6) is rhythmically long and falls on a strong harmonic resolution. Other such words receiving similar emphasis, particularly through matchings with rhythmically long notes, are "lye" (twice--in bars 9 and 10), "smarts" (bar 13), and the sigh, "Alas" (bars 13-14). The phrases "Lye after lye" (bars 9-10) and "fire their hearts That have been hard" (bars 15-16) flirt ambiguously with sexual undertones.
The words and phrases in the second verse are more emphatically sexual than those in the first; Lelia, having already portrayed herself as a poor, distressed maiden, becomes bolder about her seduction. Besides repeating "dye"--the phrase changes from "For I must die" in the first verse to "For I will die" in the second verse (bars 5-6)--the second verse musically asserts "love shall know me" (bars 3-4), then "overgrow me" (bars 8-9). The latter phrase has virtually the force of a command because it falls harmonically on a major cadence (V-I in the relative major, A[flat]). Apparently even camouflaged virtue is gone by the end of the second verse, which invites, "Alas for pity stay And let us dye" (bars 13-15).
Both the harmony and the inflected melisma in the conclusion emphasize the lascivious nature of Lelia and her song. For example, in the opening statement, "Away delights, goe seeke some other dwelling," (bars 1-4), the harmony (as well as the melody) really goes nowhere, but hovers clingingly with its f minor coloration. A more indicative signal is the ending, "other dwelling," on the dominant in f minor, probably a major chord. Does Lelia really want delights to leave? What she really seems to want is what she insists on, her desire to "dye" (bar 6) (in the sexual sense, but masked as the literal one). This word pairs with a plagal cadence, and repeats in both the first and second verses. The sexual interpretation is furthered by a half cadence on "lye" in bar 10. The pairing of the word "cry" (in the second verse) with major harmony gives a clue to Lelia's real feelings about "poore maids [who] cry" (bars 12-13). The inflected melisma of the cadenza seals Lelia's sexuality, for its chromaticism is traditionally linked with wickedness and sexuality in the Renaissance.(10) In the first verse this inflected melisma (bars 18-19) is on the word "mine." In the second, however, "mine" gives way to "us," in the phrase "men cannot mocke us." Besides death (which is what Lelia solicits in its erotic version), her only hope of not being mocked is to be married--which is exactly what she is trying to achieve with her song. The song asserts that one ("mine") has become two ("us"), depicting in song the achievement of her goal. When the song ends, not only Julio but also his friend Angilo are in love with Lelia. In contrast to his earlier abhorrence at the thought of marrying Lelia, Julio now says, "I'le marry you" (III.iv.161).(11)
Without actually hearing the song, it is hardly possible to appreciate the incredible mastery of Lelia's simultaneously putting forward a persuasive representation of herself as a wronged, grieving maiden and a passionate declaration that she longs to be in bed with Julio. Yet it is just this dual function that makes the song so completely effective. A courtesan presenting herself as such would use a lusty seduction song. Lelia wants a husband, not just a lover. By appealing to Julio's appetite not directly, but under the veil of a high-class melancholic ayre, Lelia is able to present herself as irresistibly marriageable. The mantel of melancholy draws Julio to Lelia and disarms him so thoroughly that her suggestive words of seduction can persuade him to wed her.(12)
The foregoing example has only hinted at the almost-magical potency of songs in the Beaumont-Fletcher dramas, which is remarkable. In earlier Renaissance plays, songs tend to heighten what is already known to be true, whereas in the Beaumont-Fletcher canon, songs can function as agents of decisive change. For example, in Othello, Desdemona's singing her famous "Willow" song heightens but does not change the audience's perception of her as a virtuous, wronged woman.(13) Similarly, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona the song "Who is Sylvia" reinforces and reveals to other characters what the audience already knows--that Proteus is foolishly in love with Sylvia. But in the Beaumont-Fletcher plays, some songs have the capacity to send the course of action in another direction altogether.
In this paper I use internal evidence to demonstrate that Johnson's songs in plays by Beaumont and by Fletcher are integral to the plays. External evidence supports such a conclusion as well. Strictly speaking, the Beaumont-Fletcher collaboration is a misnomer, for, in actuality, we have a three-way relationship between Beaumont (c.1585-1616), Fletcher (1579-1625), and Robert Johnson (c.1583-1633). Johnson, who also wrote highly acclaimed music for Shakespeare, John Webster, and Ben Johnson, was a lutenist and composer employed by the King's Men (earlier known as Lord Chamberlain's Men, the company that first acted The Captain) beginning in 1596 with his indenturing to George Carey who, as Lord Chamberlain, was its patron.(14) It is likely, or at least plausible, that Beaumont and Fletcher went to Johnson with the texts for their songs and explained their dramatic functions. Johnson then, with the approval of the playwrights, wrote music that would best accomplish the dramatic purposes. In the songs here examined most of the detailed text painting(15) applies to first verses, a situation that points to a hypotheses of serial order in composition: first text, then music. Whereas any number of verses can be composed to fit the rhythm of a musical setting, the details of the music are rarely composed (for obvious reasons) to fit the specific meaning of more than one verse of a song. The music can, however, reflect the meaning of multiple stanzas in a more abstract way--often in a cumulative manner.
Beaumont and Fletcher's plays--presumably the complete ones, including music--were so popular that they dominated the English stage for much of the seventeenth century. For example John Dryden calls them "now the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the Stage."(16) However, their popularity faded after their successes in the seventeenth century, and Beaumont and Fletcher have been in nearly total oblivion for centuries. Generations of critics would probably agree with T. S. Eliot's assessment: "The blossoms of Beaumont and Fletcher's imagination draw no substance from the soil, but are cut and slightly withered flowers stuck into sand."(17) In response to Eliot and to those generations of critics, I contend that it is unfair to condemn Beaumont and Fletcher when few people have experienced--seen and heard, not seen or read--a complete play.(18)
The deeply determinative role of music in Beaumont and Fletcher's plays has not been recognized by critics, nor has Robert Johnson been singled out as a contributor. Very few editors include music in their editions of the plays--even though original music survives for several of the songs. Andrew Gurr, an editor who includes more music than most, confides that he had to battle for printing even a relatively few lines in Beaumont's The Knight of...
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