No dramatist since the day of Kyd and Marlowe has more frequent or violent resort to hyperbole. His heroes call on 'seas to quench the fires' they 'feel,' and 'snows to quench their rising flames'; they will 'drink off seas' and 'yet have unquenched fires left' in their breasts; they 'wade through seas of sins'; they 'set hills on hills' and 'scale them all, and from the utmost top fall' on the necks of foes, 'like thunder from a cloud'; or they 'discourse to all the underworld the worth' of those they love. 'From his iron den' they'll 'waken Death, and hurl him' on lascivious kings. Arethusa's heart is 'mines of adamant to all the world beside,' but to her lover 'a lasting mine of joy'; her breath 'sweet as Arabian winds when fruits are ripe'; her breasts 'two liquid ivory balls.' Evadne will sooner 'find out the beds of snakes,' and 'with her youthful blood warm their cold flesh 'than accede to Amintor's desires. 'The least word' that Panthea speaks 'is worth a life.' 'The child, this present hour brought forth to see the world, has not a soul more pure' than Oriana's. In one of Beaumont's verse-scenes of _The Coxcombe_, Ricardo, reinstated in his Viola's esteem, would have some woman 'take an everlasting pen' into her hand, 'and grave in paper more lasting than the marble monuments' the matchless virtues of women to posterities. And as for Bellario's worth to Philaster,--
'T is not the treasure of all Kings in one, The wealth of Tagus, nor the rocks of pearl That pave the court of Neptune, can weigh down That virtue.
Echoes not of Kyd and Marlowe only, but of Shakespeare from _Romeo_ to _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_, reverberate in the magniloquent hyperbole of Beaumont.
Beaumont has more ejaculations than Fletcher, but fewer optatives. He is chary of rhetorical questions, and his exclamations run by preference into some figured hyperbole. He appeals less frequently than Fletcher to 'all the gods,' but very often to 'the gods,' 'good gods,' 'ye gods,' 'some god.' He refers, in conformity with his deterministic view of life, with particular preference to the 'just gods,' the 'powers that must be just,' the 'powers above,' 'ye better powers,' 'Heaven and the powers divine,' 'you heavenly powers,' the 'powers that rule us'; and all these he uses in attestation. An oath distinctive of him is 'By my vexed soul!' In his hyperboles, Hell and devils play their part; but not in oath so frequently as with Fletcher.