“THE GREATEST DRAMATIC MONUMENT THAT TIME AND HUMANITY HAVE PRODUCED”: 1647 FIRST EDITION OF BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER’S PLAYS

BEAUMONT, Francis, and FLETCHER, John. Comedies and Tragedies Written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. Never printed before, And now published by the Authours Originall Copies. London: Printed for Humphrey Robinson… and for Humphrey Moseley, 1647. Folio (8-1/2 by 12-1/2 inches), contemporary full dark brown paneled calf rebacked in calf gilt, raised bands, red morocco spine label. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition of the collected plays of Beaumont and Fletcher—the third great folio collection of Elizabethan drama after Jonson’s (1616) and Shakespeare’s (1623)—with engraved frontispiece portrait of Fletcher by William Marshall, in contemporary calf covers.

“Almost equal in importance in English literature to the First Folio of Shakespeare” (Rosenbach 25: 7). The playwrights Beaumont and Fletcher were regarded in their time as two men so closely in harmony as to constitute one mind: “Beaumont bringing the ballast of judgement, Fletcher the sail of phantasy… He who has not perused Beaumont and Fletcher can have no complete idea of the riches of English poetry” (Allibone I, 150-151). No collected edition of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays appeared before this posthumous one, which is dedicated by ten actors to Philip, Earl of Pembroke, and is introduced to the reader by the dramatist James Shirley. “This edition, which is said to have been edited by Shirley though the amount of revision he did is not known, contains all of the hitherto unpublished plays by Beaumont and Fletcher [emphasis ours] except the Wild-Goose Chase, the manuscript of this last having been lost” (Pforzheimer 53). Portrait by Marshall in second state, as usual. CBEL I: 632. Greg III, 1013-18. Wing B1581. Bookplates. Early owner signature on title page, with inscription on verso.

Frontispiece mounted, with two-inch tear to upper corner supplied in facsimile; last six leaves repaired along outer margin, with just a few words and some parts of border supplied in neat facsimile. Repaired closed tear to title page, minor spotting and tanning to text, light expert restoration to extremities of binding. A very good copy, attractive in contemporary paneled calf boards.