Born, at Rye, Dec. 1579. Possibly “pensioner” of Corpus Coll., Camb., 1591; Bible-Clerk, 1593. Early intimacy with Francis Beaumont. Collaborated with him, 1605–14. Died, in London, Aug. 1625; buried at St. Saviour’s Southwark, 29 Aug. Works: [For plays published under the joint names of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, see supra: Beaumont and Fletcher.] “The Faithful Shepherdess” [1609?]; “The Tragedy of Thierry, King of France” (anon.; possibly by Fletcher), 1621. Posthumous: “The Two Noble Kinsmen” (published in names of Fletcher and Shakespeare; probably by Fletcher [and Massinger?]), 1634; “The Elder Brother” (published in Fletcher’s name; probably written with Beaumont), 1637; “Monsieur Thomas,” 1639; “Wit Without Money” (published in Beaumont and Fletcher’s names; probably by Fletcher), 1639; “Rule a Wife and Have a Wife,” 1640; “The Coronation” (anon.), 1640; “The Night Walker” (with Shirley?), 1640.

Personal

  Meeting once in a Tavern, to contrive the rude draught of a Tragedy, Fletcher undertook to kill the King therein; whose words being overheard by a listener (though his Loyalty not to be blamed herein), he was accused of High Treason; till, the mistake soon appearing, that the plot was only against a Dramatick and Scenical King, all wound off in merriment. Nor could it be laid to Fletcher’s charge, what Ajax doth to Ulysses:

	… Nihil hic Diomede remoto.
	“When Diomede was gone,
	He could do nought alone.”

For, surviving his Partner, he wrote good Comedies himself, though inferiour to the former; and no wonder, if a single thread was not so strong as a twisted one.

  Mr. John Fletcher, poet: in the great plague, 1625, a knight of Norfolk (or Suffolke) invited him into the countrey. He stayed but to make himself a suite of cloathes, and while it was makeing, fell sick of the plague and dyed. This I had (1688) from his tayler, who is now a very old man, and clarke of St. Mary Overy’s.

  Oldwit.—I knew Fletcher, my friend Fletcher, and his maid Joan; I shall never forget him; I have supped with him at his house on the Bankside; he loved a fat loin of pork of all things in the world; and Joan, his maid, had her beer-glass of sack, and we all kissed her; faith, and were as merry as passed.

  A few years ago Fletcher’s name and the date of his death were engraved upon a stone in the pavement of the choir of St. Saviour’s, although the exact spot where his bones lie is not recorded.

The Faithful Shepherdess, 1609

	I, that am glad thy innocence was thy guilt,
	And wish that all the Muses’ blood were spilt
	In such a martyrdom, to vex their eyes,
	Do crown thy murder’d poem: which shall rise
	A glorifièd work to time, when fire,
	Or moths shall eat what all these fools admire.

  If all the parts of this delightful pastoral had been in unison with its many innocent scenes and sweet lyric intermixtures, it had been a poem fit to vie with “Comus” or the “Arcadia,” to have been put into the hands of boys and virgins, to have made matter for young dreams, like the loves of Hermia and Lysander. But a spot is on the face of this Diana. Nothing short of infatuation could have driven Fletcher upon mixing with this “blessedness” such an ugly deformity as Cloe, the wanton shepherdess! Coarse words do but wound the ears; but a character of lewdness affronts the mind. Female lewdness at once shocks nature and morality. If Cloe was meant to set off Clorin by contrast, Fletcher should have known that such weeds by juxtaposition do not set off but kill sweet flowers.

  The author has in it given a loose to his fancy, and his fancy was his most delightful and genial quality, where, to use his own words:—

	“He takes most ease, and grows ambitious
	Thro’ his own wanton fire and pride delicious.”

The songs and lyrical descriptions throughout are luxuriant and delicate in a high degree. He came near to Spenser in a certain tender and voluptuous sense of natural beauty; he came near to Shakespeare in the playful and fantastic expression of it. The whole composition is an exquisite union of dramatic and pastoral poetry; where the local descriptions receive a tincture from the sentiments and purposes of the speaker, and each character, cradled in the lap of Nature, paints “her virgin fancies wild” with romantic grace and classic elegance.

  “The Faithful Shepherdess,” deservedly among the most celebrated productions of Fletcher, stands alone in its class, and admits of no comparison with any other play…. It is impossible to withhold our praise from the poetical beauties of this pastoral drama. Every one knows that it contains the germ of “Comus:” the benevolent Satyr, whose last proposition to “stray in the middle air, and stay the sailing rack, or nimbly take hold of the moon,” is not much in the character of those sylvans, has been judiciously metamorphosed by Milton to an attendant spirit; and a more austere as well as more uniform language has been given to the speakers. But Milton has borrowed largely from the imagination of his predecessor; and, by quoting the lyric parts of the “Faithful Shepherdess,” it would be easy to deceive any one not accurately familiar with the songs of “Comus.” They abound with that rapid succession of ideal scenery, that darting of the poet’s fancy from earth to heaven, those picturesque and novel metaphors, which distinguish much of the poetry of this age, and which are ultimately, perhaps, in great measure referable to Shakspeare.

  Fletcher’s volubility is against more than his metre: he seems often to throw his words at thoughts in the hope of hitting them off by hazard, but he misses them altogether. His light-headed shafts fall short of their mark. When they do touch, however, it is with the irradiating effect if not the force of thunderbolts: this has an inexpressible charm. After all we have heard of “The Faithful Shepherdess,” a fine English Pastoral Drama remains to be written.

  The melody, the romantic sweetness of fancy, the luxuriant and luxurious descriptions of nature, and the true lyric inspiration, of large portions of this drama, are not more striking than the deliberate desecration of its beauty by the introduction of impure sentiments and images. The hoof-prints of unclean beasts are visible all over Fletcher’s pastoral paradise; and they are there by design. Why they are there is a question which can be answered only by pointing out the primal defect of Fletcher’s mind, which was an incapacity to conceive or represent goodness and innocence except as the ideal opposites of evil and depravity. He took depravity as the positive fact of life, and then framed from fancy a kind of goodness out of its negation.

  All the qualities of his dramatic verse, its delightful ease and grace, and its overflowing fancifulness, come out in the lyrical speeches of the “Faithful Shepherdess.” Milton himself, though he put a greater volume of imagination and sound into the measure, never gave it such an airy lightness; and we must look onwards to Shelley’s “Ariel to Miranda” for an echo to these lyrics, still sweeter than their melody, and to his “Music, when soft voices die” for a fellow to “Weep no more.”

General

	Fletcher the Muses darling, and choice love
	Of Phœbus, the delight of every Grove;
	Upon whose head the Laurel grew, whose wit
	Was the Times wonder, and example yet.

	Though when all Fletcher writ, and the entire
	Man was indulged unto that sacred fire,
	His thoughts and his thoughts’ dress, appear’d both such
	That ’twas his happy fault to do too much:
	Who therefore wisely did submit each birth
	To knowing Beaumont, ere it did come forth,
	Working again until he said ’twas fit,
	And made him the sobriety of his wit.
	Though thus he call’d his judge into his fame,
	And for that aid allow’d him half the name,
	’Tis known that sometimes he did stand alone,
	That both the sponge and pencil were his own;
	That himself judged himself, could singly do,
	And was at last Beaumont and Fletcher too.

	Yet what from Jonson’s oil and sweat did flow,
	Or what more easy Nature did bestow
	On Shakespeare’s gentler Muse, in the full grown
	Their graces both appear; yet so, that none
	Can say, here Nature ends and Art begins,
	But mix’d like the elements, and born like twins;
	So interweaved, so like, so much the same,
	None this mere Nature, that mere Art can name:
	’Twas this the ancients meant; Nature and Skill
	Are the two tops of their Parnassus’ hill.

None writes love’s passion in the world, like thee.

  John Fletcher, one of the happy triumvirate (the other two being Jonson and Shakespear) of the chief dramatic poets of our nation in the last foregoing age, among whom there might be said to be a symmetry of perfection, while each excelled in his peculiar way: Ben Jonson, in his elaborate pains and knowledge of authors; Shakespear, in his pure vein of wit, and natural poesy height; Fletcher, in a courtly elegance and genteel familiarity of style, and withal a wit and invention so overflowing, that the luxuriant branches thereof were frequently thought convenient to be lopped off by his almost incomparable companion Francis Beaumont.

	In easy dialogue is Fletcher’s praise;
	He moved the mind, but had not power to raise.

  Fletcher’s ideas moved slow; his versification, though sweet, is tedious, it stops at every turn; he lays line upon line, making up one after the other, adding image to image so deliberately, that we see their junctures. Shakespeare mingles everything, runs line into line, embarrasses sentences and metaphors; before one idea has burst its shell, another is hatched and clamorous for disclosure. Another striking difference between Fletcher and Shakespeare, is the fondness of the former for unnatural and violent situations. He seems to have thought that nothing great could be produced in an ordinary way. The chief incidents in some of his most admired tragedies show this. Shakespeare had nothing of this contortion in his mind, none of that craving after violent situations, and flights of strained and improbable virtue which I think always betrays an imperfect moral sensibility. The wit of Fletcher is excellent like his serious scenes, but there is something strained and far-fetched in both. He is too mistrustful of Nature, he always goes a little on one side of her. Shakespeare chose her without a reserve.

  The sentiments and style of Fletcher, where not concealed by obscurity, or corruption of the text, are very dramatic. We cannot deny that the depths of Shakspeare’s mind were often unfathomable by an audience: the bow was drawn by a matchless hand; but the shaft went out of sight. All might listen to Fletcher’s pleasing, though not profound or vigorous, language; his thoughts are noble, and tinged with the ideality of romance, his metaphors vivid, though sometimes too forced; he possesses the idiom of English without much pedantry, though in many passages he strains it beyond common use; his versification, though studiously irregular, is often rhythmical and sweet. Yet we are seldom arrested by striking beauties; good lines occur in every page, fine ones but rarely: we lay down the volume with a sense of admiration of what we have read, but little of it remains distinctly in the memory. Fletcher is not much quoted, and has not even afforded copious materials to those who cull the beauties of ancient lore.

  No art in the poet, nor accomplishment in the performers, will again restore “A King and No King,” “Philaster,” or “The Faithful Shepherdess” to the répertoire of acting plays. But in proportion as Fletcher departed from the schools of Shakespeare and Jonson, he acquired a lower but more natural tone, and, with less ambition, was really more successful. He was an artist of the second order, constrained to unnatural and spasmodical movements while he remained in the higher regions of art, but moving gracefully and spontaneously when he descended to the lower.

  Of Fletcher, indeed, it is difficult to convey an adequate idea, without running into some of his own extravagance, and without quoting passages which would shock all modern notions of decency. He most assuredly was not a great man nor a great poet. He lacked seriousness, depth, purpose, principle, imaginative closeness of conception, imaginative condensation of expression. He saw everything at one remove from its soul and essence, and must be ranked with poets of the second class. But no other poet ever had such furious animal spirits, a keener sense of enjoyment, a more perfect abandonment to whatever was uppermost in his mind at the moment. There was no conscience in his rakish and dissolute nature. Nothing in him—wit, humor, fancy, appetite, sentiment, passion, knowledge of life, knowledge of books, all his good and all his bad thoughts—met any impediment of taste or principle when rushing into expression. His eyes flash, his cheeks glow, as he writes; his air is hurried and eager; the blood that tingles and throbs in his veins flushes his words; and will and judgment, taken captive, follow with reluctant steps and half-averted faces the perilous lead of the passions they should direct. As there was no reserve in him, there was no reserved power. Rich as were the elements of his nature, they were never thoroughly organized in intellectual character; and as no presiding personality regulated the activity of his mind, he seems hardly to be morally responsible for the excesses into which he was impelled. Composition, indeed, sets his brain in a whirl. He sometimes writes as if inspired by a satyr; he sometimes writes as if inspired by a seraph; but neither satyr not seraph had any hold on his individuality, and neither could put fetters on his caprice. There is the same gusto in his indecencies as in his refinements. Though an Englishman, he has no morality, except that morality which is connected with generous instincts, or which is awakened by the sense of beauty.

  Fletcher was a man of good society from his birth; his gentlemen therefore are all “of the right race.” They commit no solecisms in behaviour; and the garb of their conversations is of gold tissue. He lived in a whitened-sepulchre age, and when it mattered very little how uncleanly was the inside of the cup, provided the exterior did not offend the nostrils of the skin-deep propriety of its aristocracy. They were of “outward show elaborate, of inward less exact.”

  Fletcher is seen at his best in his comedies. Few poets have been endowed with a larger share of wit and fancy, freshness and variety. Such plays as the “Wildgoose-Chase” and “Monsieur Thomas” are a feast of mirth from beginning to end. The “Faithful Shepherdess” is (not excepting Ben Jonson’s “Sad Shepherd”) the sweetest of English pastoral plays; and some of the songs scattered in profusion through Fletcher’s works are hardly surpassed by Shakespeare. In tragedy he does not rank with the highest. “Bonduca” and “Valentinian” are impressive works, but inferior to the tragedies that he wrote with Beaumont, the “Maid’s Tragedy” and “A King and No King.”

  His crown of praise is to have created a wholly new and wholly delightful form of mixed comedy or dramatic romance, dealing merely with the humours and sentiments of men, their passions and their chances; to have woven of all these a web of emotion and event with such gay dexterity, to have blended his colours and combined his effects with such exquisite facility and swift light sureness of touch, that we may return once and again from those heights and depths of poetry to which access was forbidden him, ready as ever to enjoy as of old the fresh incomparable charm, the force and ease and grace of life, which fill and animate the radiant world of his romantic invention. Neither before him nor after do we find, in this his special field of fancy and of work, more than shadows or echos of his coming or departing genius.