In a play. O, I am gone!

We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves,

That, ruin'd, yields no echo. Fare you well!

It may be pain, but no harm, to me to die

In so good a quarrel. O, this gloomy world!

In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness,

Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!

Let worthy minds ne'er stagger in distrust

To suffer death or shame for what is just:

Mine is another voyage. (Dies.)

Pes. The noble Delio, as I came to th' palace,

Told me of Antonio's being here, and show'd me

A pretty gentleman, his son and heir.

Enter Delio, and Antonio's Son.

Mal. O, sir, you come too late!
Delio.

I heard so, and Was arm'd for 't, ere I came. Let us

make noble use

Exeunt.

The pursuit of the reluctant male by the predatory female suggested itself as a fit theme for comedy long before it was dignified in Man and Superman as an exhibition of the Life Force. As Shaw reminds us in his preface, several of Shakespeare's heroines take the offensive in vigorous campaigns to obtain the men of their choice. The wonder that we feel in such instances is not at the spectacle of the heroine flying in the face of tradition, for this she does with disarming grace, but that she should be at such pains to secure a husband so obviously her inferior in brains, as is Bassanio to Portia, in capacity for love, as Proteus to Julia, in everything but birth, as Bertram to Helena. A somewhat similar attitude is conceivable toward Oriana, the heroine of Fletcher's WildGoose Chase. We might cavil, "The WildGoose was n't worth chasing"; Fletcher's reply would be, "That's not the question wasn't the chase amusing?" Without condoning a freedom of speech and insinuation impossible to modern taste, we may avoid the error of judging too severely Fletcher's lighthearted representation of the triple manhunt. To apply the test of morality to this play is to break a butterfly on a wheel. It is a perfect specimen of light comedy as practised by the wittiest and cleverest writer of it in the Elizabethan period. Comedy of manners in any strict sense The Wild-Goose Chase is not. Fletcher makes no effort to hold the mirror up to nature and show

the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." There is here little observation of English life, and no particular attempt to portray manners exactly. In others of his comedies, in Monsieur Thomas and Wit without Money, for example, Fletcher approaches reality more closely. Nor is the play high comedy, as the term is sometimes

applied to the Shakespearean romantic

comedy like Much Ado, for that involves an idealization and a depth of characterization wanting here. It is only necessary to reflect upon the different impressions which Oriana and Viola or Rosalind make on us to perceive the difference; the situations are not dissimilar, but the glamour, the bloom of romance, the ideal reality, so to speak, of the Shakespearean work are altogether lacking. Although the influence of the Jonsonian humor comedy is evident in a figure like Belleur, comedy of humors presupposes a satirist's point of view, which Fletcher has

not. Comedy of intrigue it might be called, though the name is too inclusive to be of much help in attempting a definition. The sole purpose of this play is to entertain, and light comedy is perhaps as good a name as can be found to describe it.

As in Philaster, the main interest of the play is in plot rather than in the characters. The plot is much slighter, but there is the same ingenuity of complication, the same use of surprise and suspense, the same development of episode at the expense of character, as for instance when Oriana reveals herself at the end of act IV. That part of the action, indeed, in which Oriana feigns madness in order to move Mirabel's heart to pity, the soft prelude to love, is strongly reminiscent of the method of tragicomedy. Neither the other characters nor the audience are let into Oriana's secret: she confesses that none set her on, nor any knew or even dreamed what she meant. Her adherents and sympathizers are as thoroughly deceived as Mirabel, and Fletcher plays on their emotions, and ours, to beguile us into a false sympathy which he exploits to its utmost before laughing it away. In this respect, the situation

differs from the rest of the series of tricks composing the plot, for in all the others we are forewarned and are thus in a position to get the full comic flavor of the play of crosspurposes. The general criticism might be made of the plot that the scheming is rather too obvious. It is credible that Mirabel should have been deceived once, even twice, but that he should for a third time be hoodwinked passes belief. The devices employed by each side, moreover, are so much of one kind that the artificiality of structure is as apparent as in the case of Mother Bombie. The Wild-Goose is finally caught by the same sort of disguise that he had once before unmasked, and that he had himself unsuccessfully tried when he tricked out his English courtesan as a fine lady to advance Pinac in Lillia Bianca's esteem. It is, however, unreasonable to demand that work so obviously intended merely for diversion should stand close inspection, and the action moves forward so clearly through its plots and counterplots, the pace is so brisk and the interest so unflagging, that we are willing for the hours' traffic of the stage to accept the story at its face value.

two

Dryden in a well-known passage in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy says of Beaumont and

in

Fletcher: "They understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better [than Shakespeare]; whose wild debaucheries and quickness of wit in repartees, no poet before them could paint as they have done. ... I am apt to believe the English language in them arrived to its highest perfection." The Wild-Goose Chase might well serve as a text for Dryden's comment. It was perfectly adapted to the audience before which it was produced in 1621, the gay, witty, cynical group of the Jacobean court. In its accurate reflection of the tone of the court it resembles the comedy of manners more closely than in its presentation of the manners themselves. It is not a play which a Puritan could see without abhorrence, nor which a modern Puritan can read with pleasure. Truly, these tine ladies and gentlemen of Fletcher's have little of the reticence in speech which we associate with breeding. The men are rakes by habit, and the women rakes at heart; Rosalura and Lillia Bianca are "honest the Elizabethan sense, and all too honest, we should say to-day, in the freedom with which they express their desires. "Why should we be ashamed to speak what we think?" queries Lillia. But the sprightly gaiety of dialogue and the smooth rapidity of the verse can delight us as they delighted Fletcher's auditors and as they delighted Dryden. The action moves fast from one amusing situation to the next, and the verse keeps pace with it. There are few speeches of any considerable length (only seven of more than fifteen lines); the dialogue consists mainly of thrust and parry, two or three lines to a speech. No pause, no time for reflection, simply a mitrailleuse gunfire of wit, with no quarter asked or given. For work of this sort Fletcher's light, easyrunning verse is admirably suited. What in other writers is a device occasionally introduced for variety, the use of lines of eleven (or more) syllables, is with him a habit, a conscious artifice intended to banish rhetorical formality and to replace it with a flexi

bility giving the effect of colloquial prose. The proportion of lines running over the ten-syllable norm is so extraordinarily large that it is no exaggeration to call the verse hendecasyllabic. The familiar ease of such a style is enhanced by a limpid clearness of expression, a simplicity of vocabulary and absence of poetic adornment, meriting Dryden's praise of the language. No blank-verse dialogue but Fletcher's resembles more the matchless prose of Congreve and Sheridan.

The mention of Congreve recalls the importance of Fletcher's work as pointing the way for Restoration comedy. The WildGoose Chase was one of the first plays revived on the reopening of the theaters in 1660 and its gay abandon pleased the audience of those days immensely. (Pepys, who saw it January 11, 1667, calls it a very famous play, but was disappointed in it.) We need not underrate the influence of Molière on Restoration comedy in order to appreciate what it owes to Fletcher. The atmosphere-frivolous, cynical, sophisticated, frankly immoral is closer to that of Fletcher than it is to Molière's. The characters of this play are precisely those of the later period-fine ladies and gentlemen, sure of themselves, witty, and free of speech. The action, where the whole business of life is centered in amorous intrigue, foreshadows that of half a hundred Restoration plays. Mirabel in name and nonchalance prefigures his more famous namesake of The Way of the World, and his capitulation is as wittily contrived and his promised reformation as little convincing as those of the typical Restoration hero. The slightness of plot, the emphasis on dialogue, the repartee, the brilliance of style, received from the Restoration dramatists the sincerest flattery of imitation. quhar, indeed, remade this play as The Inconstant, not improving upon the original in the process. Through the Restoration writers and Sheridan, Fletcher's influence is yet alive in society comedy.

Far

DE GARD, a noble staid Gentleman, that, being newly lighted from his travels, assists his sister Oriana in her chase of Mirabel the Wild-Goose.

LA CASTRE, the indulgent father to Mirabel. MIRABEL the Wild-Goose, a traveled Mon

sieur, and great defier of all ladies in the way of marriage, otherwise their much loose servant, at last caught by the despised Oriana.

PINAC, his fellow-traveler, of a lively spirit,

and servant to the no less sprightly Lillia Bianca.

BELLEUR, Companion to both, of a stout blunt humor, in love with Rosalura. NANTOLET, father to Rosalura and Lillia

Bianca.

customs.