SOURCE: "Beaumont and Fletcher's Earliest Work," in Court and Country Politics in the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 56-80.

In the following essay, Finkelpearl considers early influences on Beaumont and Fletcher, including the inspiration of private Jacobean theater and the example of Marston. Finkelpearl also provides a close reading of their "remarkably accomplished" first play, The Woman Hater.

Ovidian Politics: Gi; Ovidian Politics: salmacis And Hermaphroditus =~ Ssalmacis And Hermaphroditus

At the precocious age of seventeen Beaumont published his first poem, the Ovidian epyllion Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. Despite its obvious dependence on Venus and Adonis and especially Hero and Leander, this tenfold expansion of Ovid's hundred lines displays astonishing sophistication and technical proficiency. It deserves scrutny in its own right, as several recent studies have demonstrated, but here I want to show how it foreshadows Beaumont's earliest play and his subsequent writing.

Ashley H. Thorndike...