John Fletcher (1579–1625) was an English playwright. A writer of Jacobean tragicomedies, he wrote some fifteen plays with Francis Beaumont, including The Maid’s Tragedy (1610–11.)
Born in Rye, Sussex, Fletcher entered Benet College, now Corpus Christi College-Cambridge, and died of the plague in 1625. Much of his writing was in collaboration with Francis Beaumont, Philip Massinger, William Rowley, and Shakespeare.
The best of Fletcher’s own plays are The Faithful Shepherdess (1609,) which ranks as a pastoral, with Ben Jonson’s Sad Shepherd and John Milton’s Comus, The Humorous Lieutenant (1619,) and Rule a Wife and Have a Wife (1624,) on the favorite theme of conjugal mastery.
The ten plays Fletcher and Beaumont collaborated on include the romantic comedy Philaster (1610,) A King and No King (1611,) and The Maid’s Tragedy (1611,) generally considered their best work. Collaboration with Shakespeare probably resulted in Two Noble Kinsmen (c.1613; a melodramatic version of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale) and Henry VIII.
Columbia University’s William Worthen Appleton wrote Beaumont and Fletcher: A Critical Study (1956.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Fletcher
Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate.
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
—John Fletcher
Topics: Mankind, Man
Go far—too far you cannot, still the farther. The more experience finds you: and go sparing. One meal a week will serve you, and one suit, Through all your travels; for you’ll find it certain. The poorer and the baser you appear, The more you look through still.
—John Fletcher
Topics: Potential, Possibilities
Deeds, not words shall speak me.
—John Fletcher
He who goes to bed, and goes to bed sober,
Falls as the leaves do, and dies in October;
But he who goes to bed, and goes to bed mellow,
Lives as he ought to do, and dies an honest fellow.
—John Fletcher
Oh love will make a dog howl in rhyme.
—John Fletcher
Topics: Love
He never is alone that is accompanied with noble thoughts.
—John Fletcher
Topics: Solitude
Weep no more, nor sigh, nor groan,
Sorrow calls no time that ‘s gone;
Violets plucked, the sweetest rain
Makes not fresh nor grow again.
—John Fletcher
Topics: Sadness
The greatest attribute of heaven is mercy;
And ’tis the crown of justice, and the glory …
—John Fletcher
Topics: Mercy
O woman, perfect woman! what distraction
Was meant to mankind when thou wast made a devil!
—John Fletcher
Topics: Women
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