John Fletcher
baptized December 20, 1579, Rye,
Sussex, England
died August 29, 1625, London
English Jacobean dramatist who collaborated
with Francis Beaumont and other dramatists on
comedies and tragedies between about 1606 and
1625.
His father, Richard Fletcher, was minister of
the parish in which John was born and became
afterward queen’s chaplain, dean of
Peterborough, and bishop successively of
Bristol, Worcester, and London, gaining a
measure of fame as an accuser in the trial of
Mary, Queen of Scots, and as the chaplain
sternly officiating at her execution. When not
quite 12, John was apparently admitted pensioner
of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and two
years later became a Bible clerk. From the time
of his father’s death (1596) until 1607 nothing
is known of him. His name is first linked with
Beaumont’s in Ben Jonson’s Volpone (1607), to
which both men contributed encomiums.
Fletcher began to work with Beaumont probably
about 1607, at first for the Children of the
Queen’s Revels and its successor and then (from
c. 1609 until Beaumont’s retirement in 1613)
mainly for the King’s Men at the Globe and
Blackfriars theatres. After 1613 he often
collaborated with or had his plays revised by
Philip Massinger, who actually succeeded him in
1625 as chief playwright of the King’s Men;
other collaborators included Nathan Field and
William Rowley. Throughout his career he also
wrote plays unaided. He died in the London
plague of 1625 that killed some 40,000 others;
the antiquarian John Aubrey claimed that he had
lingered in the city to be measured for a suit
of clothes instead of making his escape to the
country.
The canon of the Beaumont and Fletcher plays
is approximately represented by the 52 plays in
the folio Fifty Comedies and Tragedies… (1679);
but any consideration of the canon must omit one
play from the 1679 folio (James Shirley’s
Coronation) and add three not to be found in it
(Henry VIII, Sir John van Olden Barnavelt, A
Very Woman). Of these 54 plays not more than 12
are by Beaumont or by Beaumont and Fletcher in
collaboration. Another 3 were probably
collaborations with Beaumont and Massinger. The
others represent Fletcher either unaided or in
collaboration with dramatists other than
Beaumont, principally Massinger.
The masterpieces of the Beaumont and Fletcher
collaboration—Philaster, The Maides Tragedy, and
A King and No King—show, most clearly in the
last, the emergence of most of the features that
distinguish the Fletcherian mode from that of
Shakespeare, George Chapman, or John Webster:
the remote, often pseudohistorical, fairy-tale
setting; the clear, smooth speech rising to
great emotional arias of declamatory rhetoric;
the basically sensational or bizarre plot that
faces the characters with wild “either–or”
choices between extremes and that can be
manipulated toward a sad or a happy ending as
the playwrights choose; the sacrifice of
consistency and plausibility in characterization
so that patterns can be made out of constantly
shifting emotional states and piquant situations
can be prolonged.
Of Fletcher’s unaided plays, The Faithfull
Shepheardesse, The Mad Lover, The Loyall
Subject, The Humorous Lieutenant, Women Pleas’d,
The Island Princesse, and A Wife for a Moneth
(all between c. 1608 and c. 1624) are perhaps
the best. Each of these is a series of
extraordinary situations and extreme attitudes,
displayed through intense declamations. The best
of these are perhaps The Loyall Subject and A
Wife for a Moneth, the latter a florid and
loquacious play, in which a bizarre sexual
situation is handled with cunning piquancy, and
the personages illustrate clearly Fletcher’s
tendency to make his men and women
personifications of vices and virtues rather
than individuals. The best of Fletcher’s
comedies, for urbanity and consistency of tone,
is probably The Wild-Goose Chase, a play of
episodes rather than of intricate intrigue, but
alive with irony and easy wit.
Lastly, there are the Fletcherian plays in
which others besides Beaumont had a hand. Wit at
Several Weapons is a comedy that might have been
written wholly by Thomas Middleton; and The
Captaine (to which Beaumont may, however, have
contributed) is a lively, complex play of sexual
intrigue, with tragic dilemmas too. Notable
among the numerous plays in this group are The
False One and The Beggars Bush. The former is an
original, incisive, and moderately subtle
treatment of the story of Caesar and Cleopatra,
which may well have aided John Dryden to compose
All for Love and for which the greater credit
goes to Massinger. The latter is worth reading
for its “version of pastoral,” which genially
persuades the audience that it is better to be a
country beggar than a tyrannical king.
