Valentinian

by John Fletcher

John Fletcher was born in December, 1579 in Rye, Sussex. He was baptised on December 20th.As can be imagined details of much of his life and career have not survived and, accordingly, only a very brief indication of his life and works can be given.Young Fletcher appears at the very young age of eleven to have entered Corpus Christi College at Cambridge University in 1591. There are no records that he ever took a degree but there is some small evidence that he was being prepared for a career in the church. However what is clear is that this was soon abandoned as he joined the stream of people who would leave University and decamp to the more bohemian life of commercial theatre in London. The upbringing of the now teenage Fletcher and his seven siblings now passed to his paternal uncle, the poet and minor official Giles Fletcher. Giles, who had the patronage of the Earl of Essex may have been a liability rather than an advantage to the young Fletcher. With Essex involved in the failed rebellion against Elizabeth Giles was also tainted.By 1606 John Fletcher appears to have equipped himself with the talents to become a playwright. Initially this appears to have been for the Children of the Queen's Revels, then performing at the Blackfriars Theatre. Fletcher's early career was marked by one significant failure; The Faithful Shepherdess, his adaptation of Giovanni Battista Guarini's Il Pastor Fido, which was performed by the Blackfriars Children in 1608. By 1609, however, he had found his stride. With his collaborator John Beaumont, he wrote Philaster, which became a hit for the King's Men and began a profitable association between Fletcher and that company. Philaster appears also to have begun a trend for tragicomedy. By the middle of the 1610s, Fletcher's plays had achieved a popularity that rivalled Shakespeare's and cemented the pre-eminence of the King's Men in Jacobean London. After his frequent early collaborator John Beaumont's early death in 1616, Fletcher continued working, both singly and in collaboration, until his own death in 1625. By that time, he had produced, or had been credited with, close to fifty plays.

Genres: Drama

118 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1614

About the author

John Fletcher (1579-1625) was an English playwright and one of the most prolific and influential dramatists of the early seventeenth century, whose career bridged the Elizabethan theatrical tradition and the drama of the Stuart Restoration. He emerged as a major figure in London theatre in the first decade of the 1600s, initially writing for the Children of the Queen’s Revels and soon becoming closely associated with the King’s Men. Fletcher’s early education at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, appears to have prepared him for a clerical career, but like many of the university-trained writers of his generation he gravitated instead toward the commercial stage. His rise was closely tied to his celebrated partnership with Francis Beaumont, with whom he developed a distinctive form of tragicomedy that proved enormously popular. Their collaboration produced several of the period’s most successful plays, including Philaster, The Maid’s Tragedy, and A King and No King, works that helped define Jacobean taste through their blend of romance, political tension, and emotional intensity. Following Beaumont’s withdrawal from writing, Fletcher became increasingly central to the King’s Men and, after the death of William Shakespeare, effectively succeeded him as the company’s principal playwright. During this period he collaborated with Shakespeare on plays such as Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, while also producing a large body of work either alone or with other dramatists, most notably Philip Massinger. Fletcher’s drama is marked by technical fluency, flexible verse, and a keen sense of theatrical pacing, and he showed particular mastery in tragicomedy and comedy of manners, genres that would dominate the Restoration stage. Although some of his early experiments, such as The Faithful Shepherdess, initially failed to find an audience, he quickly adapted his style and achieved sustained popularity, with multiple plays performed at court and revived frequently after his death. During the Commonwealth, scenes from his works circulated widely as short theatrical drolls, and following the reopening of the theatres in 1660, Fletcher’s plays were staged more often than those of any other playwright. Over time, however, his reputation declined as Shakespeare’s stature grew, and by the eighteenth century only a handful of his comedies remained in regular performance. Modern scholarship has emphasized both the scale of Fletcher’s output and the complexity of authorship within his canon, which reflects extensive collaboration and has prompted detailed stylistic analysis. Despite fluctuations in critical standing, Fletcher remains a key transitional figure in English drama, whose influence shaped both his contemporaries and the theatrical traditions that followed.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

3-12-25 This is going up a star, having just read it out loud with Reading Early Plays.

I'm not sure it's a masterpiece, but it's certainly a tour de force. Fletcher's first solo play since The Tamer Tamed, and it's like a deranged riff on Shakey's Roman plays, with four totally cracking parts, and some little ones that are worthwhile as well.

But what is brilliant on re-reading is the character of Maximus: his wife is raped by the Emperor, so he goes "I could use this!" (like you do); gets his noble BFF framed so the whole Empire turns against the Emperor, and then he becomes the Emp himself.

What is also utterly brilliant, and modern, is the court of royal enablers, who know that Valentinian is going to rape Lucina, and they deliberately set her up. I cannot think of a single member of the current British Royal family or American President whose court might behave like this.

It does go on a bit: our reading was over three hours, so it could do with a few cuts, but it has some cracking lines as well. So, worth reading, but probably out loud.

* * *
original review:
What makes The Tragedy of Valentinian different is that, like a lot of Fletcher, it doesn't really go where you're expecting: there are some curves which you go "wow!"

There's a point where the expectation is that it's going to be Women Beware Women, then Cymbeline, then it slips into a soft Titus, then the Rape of Lucrece, then a bit of the Revenger's Tragedy, then swerves into Julius Caesar (with maybe a bit of Hamlet), then into the Spanish Tragedy.

What it seems to be is an exploration of the effects of rape of all the people around, not just the person raped, where all the characters have different responses, and Maximus (Lucina's husband) has the strangest reaction of them all. Is it a play about trauma? It seems to be. And the response of the rapist's wife is fascinating, and strangely convincing, defending her husband's "honour" against those who would impugn it.

What it isn't is a "Tragedy of Valentinian": there is nothing noble about Valentinian from start to finish, so nowhere for him to fall from, except untrammelled power. It may be "tragedy of monarchy" and it is a twisted Revenge Tragedy.

So I don't think this is Fletcher's best, but I would love to see it live. I can see it working really well on the stage.

[Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of Fletcher's best solo plays, though the unbelievably long dying speeches take some adjusting to - and are hard work to perform! Based on actual events of the Late Western Empire, but with a few weird twists to add the necessary Jacobean elements of poison and bizarre killings, this has some stunning scenes. Valentinian is a wonderful, carpet-chewing villain, and Maximus, who agrees with his wife that after rape suicide is her only option, dies suitably gruesomely at the end. (Historically he was stoned to death by his own soldiers, but this way works for me!).

Read as part of the Shakespeare Institute's "Extra Mile" online readathon in the increasingly bizarre lockdown autumn of 2020.