Fletcher's Fathers

In this short essay I consider, in a speculative and exploratory fashion, some ways in which questions of paternal lineage, influence, and debt might generate new readings of Fletcher's plays. The first section focuses on Fletcher's father as well as his uncle Giles Fletcher and how their influence might be seen or imagined in some of Fletcher's plays, especially The Elder Brother and The Loyal Subject. The second section experiments with pulling Fletcher away from his father, and from politics, by looking at an apocryphal, humorous, biographical anecdote that might help us to imagine the playwright as we seldom see him: alone.