Biography EssayFrancis Beaumont and John Fletcher began to work together as dramatists around 1606- 1607, and in the course of the next half-dozen years wrote some of the most successful plays of the ...
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The English playwright Francis Beaumont (ca. 1584-1616) was one of the major comic dramatists of the Jacobean period. Much of his work was done in collaboration with John Fletcher.Francis Beaumont was...
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The following essay discusses Francis Beaumont and his frequent collaborator, John Fletcher.Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher began to work together as dramatists around 1606-1607, and in the course ...
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The seventeenth-century editions of Francis Beaumont's poems include unattributed verse by other authors; thus, the canon is uncertain. For example, the 1653 edition and later collections include "A S...
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In the following essay, Thorndike provides an over-view of Beaumont and Fletcher's romances, considering their structure, characterization, style, and stagecraft.
Six plays by Beaumont and F...
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In the following essay, originally published in 1936, Fermor places Beaumont and Fletcher in the context of Jacobean drama, addressing questions of genre, character construction, and thematic developm...
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In the following essay, Waith provides a detailed critical survey of Beaumont and Fletcher's tragicomedies, finding in them an essential "pattern of dramatic entertainment."
Th...
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In the following essay, Kirsch considers the display of dramaturgical artifice in the works of Beaumont and Fletcher, finding it beneficial to the comedies, but detrimental to the dramatists' t...
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In the following essay, Finkelpearl considers early influences on Beaumont and Fletcher, including the inspiration of private Jacobean theater and the example of Marston. Finkelpearl also provides a c...
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In the essay below, Gossett examines how the tradition of court, masques influenced the tragicomedies of Beaumont and Fletcher.
The masque has recently received new critical attention. Books on the...
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In this essay Mizener argues that rather than seeking to imbue A King and No King with moral significance, Beaumont and Fletcher simply aimed to "generate in the audience a patterned sequence o...
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In the essay below, Turner asserts that A King and No King presents an immoral value system in which "indulgence becomes not only respectable but very nearly sanctified."
Many of our ...
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In the following essay, Woodson counters previous critical estimations of A King and No King, arguing that the play presents a "morally coherent dramatic sequence. " Beaumont and Fletche...
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In the essay that follows, Kirsch examines the artificiality of the characters and situations in Beaumont and Fletcher's work.
Indebted to both [Giovanni Battista] Guarini and [Ben] Jonson, ...
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TO THE READER
If you be not reasonably assured of your knowledge in this kind of poem, lay down the book, or read this, which I would wish had been the prologue. It is a pastoral tragi-comedy, which ...
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In the following essay, Turner examines The Faithful Shepherdess, Philaster, and A King and No King in light of tragicomic depictions of heroism and "extravagant passion."
In The Fait...
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In the following essay Adkins regards Beaumont and Fletcher's treatment of the commons in Philaster as indicative of the "shifting political current" in the Jacobean period.
Th...
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In the essay below, Wilson counters assertions by previous critics that Shakespeare's Cymbeline was modeled after Philaster. He accounts for similarities between the plays by stressing that the...
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In the following essay, Danby explores the ways in which Philaster reflects the concerns and tastes of an aristocratic audience.
After all, Beaumont and Fletcher were but an inferior sort of Shake...
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Francis Beaumont
Francis Beaumont
Critical Essay by Ashley H. Thorndike
