The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher

by Sandra Clark

This is an analysis of sexual themes in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, both in the context of the Jacobean theatre and in the light of modern readings of sexuality and gender during the English Renaissance. Sandra Clark challenges commonly-held perceptions of Beaumont and Fletcher's work. The book is intended for undergraduate and graduate courses on Renaissance literature, Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, tragicomedy, gender and genre in the Renaissance.

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 1993

About the author

SANDRA CLARK is Reader in Renaissance Literature at Birkbeck College at the University of London. She has previously taught at the University of Toronto and the Open University. She has written books and articles on the Elizabethan pamphleteers, early modern English playwrights including Shakespeare, Webster and Beaumont and Fletcher, and on the broadside ballad.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book on the most important dramatists of the seventeenth century (three times as popular as Shakespeare till about 1690) and how they have been misjudged because their sexualities have looked a bit 'queasy'; this book thematises the different attitudes to such themes as chastity, gender, power, misogyny etc, to show how Fletcher and his collaborators approach these themes, and how wide and varied they are.

I think the book is fascinating, but I disagree on a number of points with it. Just because the hero of a Fletcher play is a misogynist (and a lot of them are) does not mean the play is (Fletcher and his heroes are very often at odds in all sorts of attitudes), and she seems to be largely missing the irony and verfremdungs that Fletcher brings to his characters: an enormous number of the men in these plays are just a bit rubbish, and he knows it.

Yes, they are written in a patriarchalist world, but the women in these plays are pushing against the boundaries of that world like the billy-o. Just because they end with conservative patriarchy restored does not make that Fletcher's idea of paradise. On the contrary, we have seen (in the plays) the problems that creates if a single thing goes wrong with that: patriarchy only works if all the men are noble, worthy, flexible, forgiving, open-minded and honourable; how often does that happen?

All sorts of alternatives are presented in these plays: Clark thinks they are presented in order to be dismantled; I think they are presented because Fletcher does not think the current system works (for anyone).