The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare | Fletcher, John
Fletcher, John(1579–1625), dramatist. Like his collaborator Francis Beaumont, Fletcher was born into a well-connected family, but was driven to writing for the stage by financial need. Again like Beaumont, he did badly at first. His first play, an experiment in pastoral tragicomedy called The Faithful Shepherdess (1609), was a box-office failure, although it was admired by poets such as Ben Jonson and George Chapman, who contributed commendatory verses to the first edition, and later John Milton, who echoed it in Comus. He preceded the printed version with a preface ‘To the Reader’, which defines tragicomedy for the benefit of the uncomprehending Jacobean public: ‘A tragicomedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy, which must be a representation of familiar people, with such...
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