for supposing that Fletcher had any hand in it. The ‘Noble Gentleman,’ 1647, was licensed on 3 Feb. 1625–6. It is impossible to assign to Fletcher any portions of this poor play. Still worse is the ‘Faithful Friends,’ which was entered in the ‘Stationers' Register,’ 29 June 1660, as a work of Beaumont and Fletcher. Weber printed it in 1812 from a manuscript which is now preserved in the Dyce Library.
The ‘Two Noble Kinsmen’ is stated on the title-page of the first edition, 1634, to have been written by Fletcher and Shakespeare. It is difficult to ascribe to Shakespeare any share in the conduct of the plot, but it is infinitely more difficult to conceive that any other hand wrote the first scene (with the opening song), Arcite's invocation to Mars (v. 1), and the description of the accident that resulted in Arcite's death (v. 4). Outside Shakespeare's later plays there is nothing that can be compared with these passages. To Fletcher belong acts ii., iii. (with the exception of the first scene), iv., and v. 2. Mr. Boyle has shown that Massinger had a hand in the ‘Two Noble Kinsmen,’ and some of the Shakespearean portions have suffered from Massinger's interpolations. There is no reason for supposing that Shakespeare and Fletcher worked together on this play. Shakespeare's contributions may have been written (towards the close of his career) for a revival of the old play of ‘Palamon and Arsett,’ mentioned by Henslowe in 1594, and these ‘additions’ may have come into the hands of Fletcher and Massinger after Shakespeare's death.
It is generally agreed that Fletcher was largely concerned in the authorship of ‘Henry VIII.’ That play in its present state appears to be in the main a joint production of Fletcher and Massinger, composed about 1617, some Shakespearean passages (notably the trial-scene of Catherine) having been incorporated. Wolsey's famous soliloquy, ‘So farewell to the little good you bear me’ (iii. 2), and his parting words to Cromwell, may be safely attributed to Fletcher, who must also be held responsible for Cranmer's somewhat fulsome prophecy at the close of the play. The ‘History of Cardenio,’ entered by Humphrey Moseley in the ‘Stationers' Register,’ 9 Sept. 1653, as a joint work of Fletcher and Shakespeare, is to be identified with the lost play ‘Cardano’ or ‘Cardema,’ acted at court in 1613. Late seventeenth-century entries in the ‘Stationers' Register’ carry no authority so far as Shakespeare is concerned.
A comedy, the ‘Widow,’ composed about 1616, was printed in 1652 as the work of Jonson, Fletcher, and Middleton. It was attributed to the three dramatists on the authority of the actor Alexander Gough, but appears to belong wholly to Middleton.
Fletcher was buried on 29 Aug. 1625 at St. Saviour's, Southwark. ‘In the great plague, 1625,’ says Aubrey (Letters written by Eminent Persons, vol. ii. pt. i. p. 352), ‘a knight of Norfolk or Suffolk 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 died. This I had from his tayler, who is now a very old man, and clarke of St. Mary Overy's.’ Sir Aston Cokaine, in his ‘Epitaph on Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. Philip Massinger,’ wrote that Fletcher and Massinger were buried in the same grave. Dyce supposed that ‘the same grave’ means nothing more than ‘the same place of interment,’ but there is no reason why the words should not be accepted in their literal sense.
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.’
Beaumont and Fletcher's plays were collected in 1647, fol., prefaced by various copies of commendatory verses; and a fuller collection appeared in 1679, fol. An edition in 10 vols., commenced by Theobald and completed by Seward and Sympson, was published in 1750; another, under the general editorship of the elder Colman, appeared in 1778, 12 vols.; an edition by Weber in 14 vols. followed in 1812; and in 1840 George Darley wrote an introduction to the 2-vol. edition. The latest, and by far the best, edition is that of Alexander Dyce, 11 vols. 1843–6.
[Dyce has collected the scanty material for Fletcher's biography in the memoir prefixed to vol. i. of his edition of Beaumont and Fletcher; and his prefatory remarks before the various plays supply full bibliographical and other details. Mr. Fleay in his Shakspere Manual, which must be regarded as a tentative essay, and in papers contributed to the New Shakspere Society's Transactions, has rendered very valuable aid towards distinguishing Fletcher's work from the work of Beaumont and others.
