John Fletcher: Father of the English Tragicomedy
John Fletcher (1579-1625) was a playwright of the English Renaissance who flourished during the Jacobean Era (1603-1625). The author of over 50 plays, he is known for developing the genre of tragicomedy in English literature, and for his collaborations with playwright Francis Beaumont (1585-1616) – together, Fletcher and Beaumont wrote some of the most important tragicomedies of the era including Philaster (circa 1609), The Maid's Tragedy (1609), and A King and No King (1611). It is now generally accepted that Fletcher worked closely with William Shakespeare (1564-1616) in the last year of his career, co-writing Shakespeare's plays Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and the now lost Cardenio. Fletcher, whose popularity rivaled Shakespeare's at the peak of his career, took over as the house playwright for Shakespeare's acting company, the King's Men, and continued in that capacity until his death from the plague in August 1625.
Early Life
John Fletcher was born in the town of Rye in Sussex, England, sometime in December 1579 and was baptized on 20 December. His father, Richard Fletcher, was an Anglican clergyman known to be a "tough-minded preacher, militant in faith" (Wells, 196). As the Dean of Peterborough Cathedral, the elder Fletcher was closely involved with the trial and execution of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, in February 1587; on the scaffold, he entreated the condemned queen to return to Protestantism and prayed for her soul with such vigor that it seemed he was "determined to force his way into the pages of history" (Fraser, 584). A few days later, when Queen Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603) expressed remorse over the execution, Dean Fletcher chided her for her doubts and called for her to go even further in the persecution of her Catholic enemies. With the patronage of the powerful Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex (1565-1601), he became Bishop of London in 1595, a position he held until his death on the evening of 15 June 1596 – smoking a pipe of tobacco in his Chelsea home, Bishop Fletcher apparently turned to a servant and sternly said, "Boy, I die," before dropping dead on the spot (Wells, 196).
Following the bishop's death, John Fletcher and his seven siblings were sent to live with their uncle Giles, a poet and minor diplomat at the queen's court. Giles Fletcher was also connected to the Earl of Essex but lost much of his influence at court after Essex's failed rebellion and ultimate execution in 1601. In the meantime, John was being educated as a dramatist; in 1591, at the age of eleven, he enrolled at Corpus Christi College at Cambridge and, two years later, had become a Bible clerk. Nothing is known of his life between then and the publication of his first play in 1607, but it is likely that he was encouraged by his uncle Giles and cousin Phineas, both poets, to pursue a literary career. Fletcher's first play, The Woman Hater, or the Hungry Courtier, was written in 1606 for the Children of Paul's, a company of boy actors who performed the play once and disbanded shortly afterwards (boy acting troupes had been very popular in Elizabethan theatre). The play was not written alone, but in collaboration with Francis Beaumont, with whom Fletcher would form a productive partnership and a close friendship.
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⇒ John Fletcher: Father of the English Tragicomedy
