He had an excellent wit, which the back-friends to Stage-plays will say, was neither idle, nor well imploy’d. For he and Francis Beaumont Esquire, like Castor and Pollux, (most happy when in conjunction), raised the English to equal the Athenian and Roman theater; Beaumont bringing the ballast of judgement, Fletcher the sail of phantasie, both compounding a Poet to admiration.
THOMAS FULLER: The History of the Worthies Of England (1662)
His father witnessed as a priest the execution of Mary Stuart in 1587 and later became Bishop of London. Fletcher studied at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (where Marlowe had also been a student), but was forced to abandon his studies when his father died bankrupt in 1596. Never wealthy, he wrote frenetically to earn a living: some fifteen plays with Beaumont and sixteen as sole author. In The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed (1611) he challenged the notion of male supremacy, inverting Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. He collaborated with Massinger, Rowley, Middleton, Jonson and Chapman; and also with Shakespeare in The Two Noble Kinsmen (1634) and the lost Cardenio, since the former has both their names on the title-page, and the latter is stated as being by both of them in the Stationers’ Register of 9 September 1653. Fletcher’s role in Henry VIII is more contentious. The play was printed as Shakespeare’s by the editors of the Folio, and it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that the idea of dual-authorship was mooted. He succeeded Shakespeare as principal writer to the King’s Men. Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays were collected in folio – an honour bestowed otherwise only on Jonson and Shakespeare. According to Aubrey, he died of the plague: ‘John Fletcher, invited to goe with a Knight into Norfolke or Suffolke in the Plague-time 1625, stayd but to make himselfe a suite of Cloathes, and while it was makeing, fell sick of the Plague and dyed.’
The authorship of The Woman Hater, which has reached a wider audience through the settings of ‘Come sleepe, and with thy sweet deceiving,/Lock me in delight a while’ by Warlock and Gurney, remains disputed. Fletcher’s name was written on Garrick’s copy of the anonymous first edition (1607), but was later scratched out and replaced by Beaumont’s. Neither ascription provides for more than a single writer. The 1648 edition states that the play was ‘written by John Fletcher, Gent.’, while an edition from 1649, which announces the title as The Woman Hater, or The Hungry Courtier, attributes it to Beaumont and Fletcher jointly. Recent critics are equally divided.
Take, oh take those lips away,
that so sweetly were forsworne,
And those eyes: the breake of day
lights that doe mislead the Morne;
But my kisses bring againe, bring againe,
Seales of loue, but seal’d in vaine, seal’d in vaine.
Hide, oh hide those hills of Snow,
which thy frozen blossome bears,
On whose tops the Pinks that grow
are of those that April wears,
But first set my poor heart free,
Bound in those icy chains by thee.
(Bantock, Brian, Britten, Bush, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Chausson, Cowen, van Dieren, Dring, Fortner, Gurney, Jeffreys, Killmayer, Maconchy, Parry, Plumstead, Reichardt, Rubbra, Somervell, Thompson, Vaughan Williams, Warlock)
Lay a garland on my hearse
Of the dismal yew,
Maidens willow branches beare,
Say I died true,
My love was false, but I was firme,
From my houre of birth.
Upon my buried body lay
Lightly gently earth.
Come sleepe, and with thy sweet deceiving,
Lock me in delight a while,
Let some pleasing Dreames beguile
All my fancies, that from thence
I may feele an influence,
All my powers of care bereaving.
Though but a shaddow, but a sliding,
Let me know some little Joy!
We that suffer long anoy
Are contented with a thought
Through an idle fancie wrought:
O let my joyes, have some abiding.
(Gurney)
Orpheus with his Lute made Trees,
And the Mountaine tops that freeze,
Bow themselues when he did sing.
To his Musicke, Plants and Flowers
Euer sprung; as Sunne and Showers,
There had made a lasting Spring.