Other Literary Forms
John Fletcher apparently wrote very little or no poetry. He may have collaborated with other playwrights in the composition of court masques, but no direct evidence has been introduced identifying his hand in entertainments of that kind.
Achievements
Although John Fletcher wrote many plays alone, he is best known for those he composed in collaboration with Francis Beaumont. In fact, much of the criticism of these playwrights’ work regards them as an inseparable team. This practice has tended to obscure the technical brilliance of Fletcher’s own plays, many of which were revived successfully on the Restoration stage. In their collaboration, however, the two dramatists came to be recognized as the inventors and chief practitioners of a style of drama, tragicomedy that won enthusiastic applause from audiences at the Jacobean public theaters. Fletcher published a definition of the new genre in the preface to one of his earliest plays, The Faithful Shepherdess:A tragi-comedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is inough to make it no tragedie, yet brings some neere it, which is inough to make it no comedie: which must be a representation of familiar people, with such kinde of trouble as no life be questioned, so that a God is as lawfull in this as in a Tragedie, and meane people as a comedie.
Although the play to which this preface was appended proved unpopular with its audience, Fletcher, with the older Beaumont, went on to instant success in Philaster, one of his first collaborative efforts in the new form. This event was also notable because it cemented the playwrights’ connection with William Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men Beaumont and Fletcher continued to write for that company for the rest of their careers.
What attracted Jacobean playgoers to Philaster was its complicated but relatively fresh plot (no sources have been identified), romantic setting, and suspenseful denouement: The heroic prince discovers that the page who has served him faithfully throughout the play is in fact a woman—a woman who is deeply in love with him. The happy ending, however, leaves the audience with a sense of having been manipulated; Beaumont and Fletcher take little care to develop their characters or to motivate action. Even so, Philaster won the playwrights a reputation with the gentlemen and ladies who increasingly made up the audience at the Blackfriars playhouse.
Before Beaumont’s retirement in 1613, he and Fletcher worked together on several other plays, only a few of which were in fact tragicomedies. Other than Philaster, A King and No King is probably the best example of the genre. A King and No King , like many Jacobean plays, depends on the frisson of an incestuous love: The hero believes that he has engaged in intercourse with his sister. As it turns out, the two are not in fact brother and sister, the hero’s parentage having been misrepresented by a deceitful queen. Despite this happy evasion of tragedy, the purpose of titillating the viewers was deftly accomplished. The dramatic rhythm of relaxation and sudden surprise is reinforced by a style of verse that alternates between realistic conversation and high-flown rhetoric. This characteristic of the verse (informal talk that suddenly gives way to elevated poetry) was widely admired by the audiences of Beaumont and Fletcher’s era and by Restoration audiences, for whom the plays became regular revival fare. Indeed, their tragicomedies were staged more frequently in the period from 1660 to 1700 than were the works of William Shakespeare, who was judged too rough-edged, or Ben Jonson, who was regarded as too...
(This entire section contains 1001 words.)
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satiric.
Beaumont and Fletcher also composed tragedies—Cupid’s Revenge, The Maid’s Tragedy—and witty comedies—The Coxcomb, The Scornful Lady—in the Jonsonian vein. These plays demonstrate the versatility and range of these playwrights, but they helped propel the Jacobean stage into decadence. The dominant scene in The Maid’s Tragedy, for example, contains a wedding-night confession by the heroine to her warrior-hero husband that she has been and intends to continue to be the king’s mistress. This situation brings the style and tone of The Maid’s Tragedy perilously close to the realm of soap opera.
After Beaumont’s death, Fletcher continued to work in collaboration, primarily with Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare The plays produced during this period were largely tragedies and tragicomedies that responded to the audience’s desire for spectacular entertainment. The teaming of Fletcher and Shakespeare likewise suggests that the style of tragicomedy developed by Fletcher strongly influenced Shakespeare’s own play production. Romances such as Pericles, Prince of Tyre (pr. c. 1607-1608), The Winter’s Tale (pr. c. 1610-1611), and The Tempest (pr. 1611) display the same fascination for plot turns, type characters, exotic settings, and elevated verse found in Beaumont and Fletcher’s tragicomedies. When left to his own devices, however, Fletcher also turned his hand to comedy that explored the manners of upper-class Englishmen. Most of these plays are distinguished by complicated plots, humorous characters, and witty dialogue. His ease in writing comedy has led many critics to conclude that Fletcher was the author of the comic scenes in the tragicomedies, while Beaumont was responsible for the tragic scenes and characters. Fletcher’s comedies, with their themes of youthful love and sexual combat, caught the fancy of Stuart courtiers and helped to lay the groundwork for the Restoration comedies of manners.
Although he ended his career by composing sophisticated comedies, Fletcher has been recognized by commentators on the Jacobean stage as the innovator of tragicomedy and as the period’s foremost dramatic collaborator. His name seems destined to be linked with that of Beaumont or Massinger in future critical analyses as well. The body of work turned out by Fletcher with his fellow playwrights is truly impressive: some fifty plays in the Second Folio (1679). Considerable time and print have been spent in attempts to determine the relative contributions of each playwright to the comedies, tragedies, and tragicomedies printed in the First and Second Folios—a task that is still going on and may never be satisfactorily completed. As a result, much valuable criticism of the style and content of the individual plays still remains to be done.
Bibliography
Appleton, William W. Beaumont and Fletcher: A Critical Study. Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Press, 1969. Appleton analyzes the early collaborations, then proceeds to a critical investigation, unfortunately too brief, of Fletcher’s independent plays and later collaborations. He discusses the influence and critical reputation of Fletcher in the Restoration and in the 1700’s.
Clark, Sandra. The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: Sexual Themes and Dramatic Representation. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. Examines gender roles and conventions in the dramatic works of Fletcher and Beaumont.
Cone, Mary. Fletcher Without Beaumont: A Study of the Independent Plays of John Fletcher. Salzburg, Austria: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universität Salzburg, 1976. An insightful and thorough survey.
Finkelpearl, Philip J. Court and Country Politics in the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. Considers the plays in connection with the author’s three worlds: the country, the playhouse, and the Mermaid Tavern. Analyzes eight plays in depth for their political relevance. Among the themes discussed are the Anti-Prince, corruption of royal power, and tyrannicide.
Frey, Charles H., ed. Shakespeare, Fletcher, and “The Two Noble Kinsmen.” Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989. A look at the authorship of The Two Noble Kinsmen, an apparent collaboration of William Shakespeare and Fletcher. Bibliography and index.
Gayley, Charles Mills. Beaumont, the Dramatist: A Portrait with Some Account of His Circle, Elizabethan and Jacobean, and of His Association with John Fletcher. 1914. Reprint. New York: Russell & Russell, 1969. Provides in-depth biographical background.
Gossett, Suzanne. The Influence of the Jacobean Masque on the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher. New York: Garland, 1988. An analysis of the Jacobean masque and its influence on the dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher. Bibliography and index.
Leech, Clifford. The John Fletcher Plays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962. This good overview of Fletcher’s dramatic production contains separate chapters on the comedies, the tragicomedies, and the tragedies. Leech discusses Fletcher in connection with William Shakespeare and provides an appendix on dates of plays by these two writers plus Ben Jonson and Philip Massinger. The index is too slight.
McMullan, Gordon. The Politics of Unease in the Plays of John Fletcher. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994. A look at the political and social views held by Fletcher as they manifested themselves in his plays. Bibliography and index.
Pearse, Nancy Cotton. John Fletcher’s Chastity Plays: Mirrors of Modesty. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1973. Pearse attempts to defend Fletcher’s aesthetics and morality and to oppose the contention that Francis Beaumont deserves the credit for all the moral quality of their collaborations. Investigates seventeenth century ideas about chastity and concludes that Fletcher creates chaste women who are greatly concerned with marriage and constancy. Not fully convincing to every reader.
Squier, Charles L. John Fletcher. Boston: Twayne, 1986. A general study which contains individual chapters on the tragicomedies (where his influence and reputation were greatest), the tragedies (where he had little interest or strength), and the comedies(where his real genius appeared). Includes a section on Fletcher’s critical reputation in the last two centuries and on stylistic idiosyncrasies. Annotated bibliography.
Waith, Eugene M. The Pattern of Tragicomedy in Beaumont and Fletcher. Edited by Benjamin Nangle. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1952. Waith believes that patterns began to form in the collaborations by 1608 and were fully developed by 1611 in A King and No King. Identifies eight different elements—ranging from characters to atmosphere—that compose the patterns. This valuable study contains analyses of nine early plays and many later ones. Lengthy index.