Francis Beaumont Francis Beaumont was a dramatist in English Renaissance Theater.

He was famous for his collaboration with his John Fletcher. Beaumont and Fletcher apparently replaced Shakespeare around 1609 as chief dramatists of the King's Men. In quick succession they wrote Philaster, The Maid's Tragedy, and A King and No King. Beaumont and Fletcher are good in analyzing the popular trend during their time, alter the ideas, and create new ideas lead to the successful of their writings. Next, they wrote Cupid's Revenge, The Coxcomb, The Scornful Lady and The Captain. Francis Beaumont was born as the third son of Sir Francis Beaumont of Grace Dieu, justice of the Court of Common Pleas, at Grace-Dieu, Leicestershire, in 1584. Beaumont entered Broadgates Hall which now is known as Pembroke College, Oxford with his brother, John and Henry at the age of thirteen. However, he left the school without a degree when his father died in 1598. He decided to follow his father footsteps by entering the Inner Temple in London to study law. His career as a lawyer might be short because there is no evidence of him ever practicing law. Later, he discovered that his passion always in literature. So, he became a student of a port and playwright named Ben Jonson. Other then Jonson, Beaumont also acquainted with Michael Drayton and other poets and dramatists. His first work is Salmacis and Hermaphroditus that appeared in 1602. Once, Encyclopedia Britannica has described the work as "not on the whole discreditable to a lad of eighteen, fresh from the popular love-poems of Marlowe and Shakespeare, which it naturally exceeds in long-winded and fantastic diffusion of episodes and conceits." His next work is when he wrote commendatory verses to Jonson's Volpone in 1605. Collaboration with Fletcher might have begun since 1605. The both of them had tasted the real meaning of failure before their collaboration. Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle which was first performed by the Children of the Blackfriars in 1607 and was rejected by an audience. The publisher's letter to the 1613 quarto claims, the play was failed to note "the privies mark of irony about it." They took Beaumont's satire of old-fashioned drama as an old-fashioned drama. The play received a lukewarm reception. The following year, Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess failed on the same stage. In 1609, Beaumont and Fletcher collaborated on Philaster, which was performed by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre and at Blackfriars. The play was a popular success, not only launching the careers of the two playwrights but also sparking a new taste for tragicomedy. Unfortunately, the promising partnership did not last for long. It was ended when Beaumont married an heiress, Ursula Isley of Sundridge, in 1613 and left the stage. Francis Beaumont career stopped when died suddenly of a fever in 1616 and was mourned by many, no exception by his closest friend, Fletcher. Beaumont was buried in Westminster Abbey. The first collected edition of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher came out in 1647.