With 18 Additional Plays

Beaumont, Francis (1584-1616); Fletcher, John (1579-1625)

Fifty Comedies and Tragedies. Written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. All in one volume. Published by the Authors Original Copies, the Songs to each Play being added.

London: printed by J. Macock [and H. Hills], for John Martyn, Henry Herringman, Richard Marriot, MDCLXXIX. [1679]

$6,500

Folio: 36 x 22 cm. [10], 280, 279-578, 557 pp. [*]2 (lacking blank leaf [*]1), A-Z4, Aa-Zz4, Aaa-Zzz4, Aaaa-Dddd4, Eeee2, A-Z4, Aa-Zz4, Aaa-Zzz4, Aaaa4 (with final blank)

SECOND COLLECTED EDITION, including 18 plays not appearing in the first. With the full-paged portrait of Fletcher by Marshall bound before the title page. Title page printed in red and black. Bound in contemporary mottled calf, rebacked. With the early ownership inscription of "Ed. Monckton" on title. An excellent copy bound in contemporary mottled calf, rebacked, with old repairs to the corners.

"We know relatively little of Beaumont and Fletcher's lives, and still less of their collaboration. Like Shakespeare, they became legendary in their lifetimes, and being almost as famous as their older contemporary their legend is almost as misty. The actual concept of collaboration became an essential part of the legend. Aubrey's notorious jotting, made several decades after both authors were dead, retails some of the gossip: 'They lived together on the Banke side, not far from the Play-house, both batchelors; lay together - from Sir John Hales, etc.; had one wench in the house between them, which they did so admire; the same cloathes and cloake etc. between them.'

"In 1607 [Fletcher] joined Beaumont in writing commendatory verses for Jonson's 'Volpone', and he may have revised Beaumont's 'the Woman Hater' before its publication in the same year. His own first published play, 'The Faithful Shepherdess', written in 1608, was prefaced like 'The Woman Hater' by a commendation from Jonson. His regular collaboration with Beaumont probably began in 1608 when he was twenty-seven and Beaumont twenty-two. Their first joint play, 'Cupid's Revenge', was written, like the other early plays, for a boys' company, and they went on to write 'Philaster' in 1609 for Shakespeare's company, the King's Men, who were more or less their sole employers thereafter. Aubrey's jotting refers to this and the next few years, which produced altogether about six joint plays. From about 1613, when Beaumont dropped out, Fletcher collaborated successively with Shakespeare, Massinger, Field and Rowley, until his death in 1625.

"'Philaster' is one of the most ambitious works of literary collaboration ever written. Its aim was no less the translation of the high literary and educational designs of Sidney's 'Arcadia' into commercial drama, and the aim was directed by not one but a pair of authors. It was, moreover, a hybrid work not only as a collaborated play but as a new type of tragicomedy. The aim hit a mark of sorts in creating a fashion which Stuart audiences appreciated for thirty years, and which made Beaumont and Fletcher the only authors besides Shakespeare and Jonson to be granted the accolade of a posthumous collection of their plays in folio."(Andrew Gurr, 'Philaster')

Pforzheimer 54; Wing B-1582