John Fletcher: A Critical Reappraisal
Christ Church University, Canterbury
26-27 June, 2015
Keynote Speakers:
- Professor Gordon McMullan (King’s College London)
- Dr Lucy Munro (King’s College London)
- Professor Sandra Clark (Professor Emerita, Institute of English Studies, University of London)
- Professor Clare McManus (University of Roehampton)
It is fair to say that John Fletcher remains an understudied and under-appreciated writer in recent early modern scholarship. Even the very recent success of non-Shakespearean drama in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, and the Swan Theatre’s commitment to staging Shakespeare’s contemporaries, has proved fruitless so far in introducing Fletcher to a new generation of academics and theatre-goers. In the near 390 years since his death, it is now time for a complete re-evaluation of the work of a man who made a considerable impact on Jacobean theatre and society by producing a vast corpus of about 53 plays that challenged, commented on, and critiqued Renaissance England. By investigating Fletcher’s ideas and ideals, apparent in his work, we can gain a significant understanding of Jacobean theatre practices and politics: his career virtually encompassed the entirety of the reign of James I, under whose patronage he worked as Shakespeare’s successor as the resident dramatist of the King’s Men. In short, to study Fletcher is to study the soul of the age.
The conference seeks to bring together leading experts, early career researchers, and postgraduate students working on John Fletcher to reassess his engagement with the ideas, culture, politics, and society of Renaissance England.
This call for papers asks for contributions considering:
- Any aspect of Fletcher’s involvement with the theatre of Jacobean England;
- His use of European literary sources, particularly those of Spanish origin;
- The textual and performance history of his plays;
- His status as a collaborative writer and his working relationship with his more frequent writing partners (Beaumont, Field, Massinger);
- His influences and ideas on politics, gender, and culture;
- The Fletcher ‘canon’ of plays;
- Fletcher’s collaborative plays with Shakespeare;
- Fletcher’s influence on Shakespeare and Shakespeare’s influence on Fletcher;
- The trials and tribulations of editing or staging them in our modern world;
- New approaches to analysing his work as a dramatist.
This is by no means an exhaustive or constrictive list, and we invite contributions for papers that critically re-evaluate and extend our knowledge of a writer whose plays helped shape and redefine the place and importance of the theatre in Renaissance London.
After the sessions in Canterbury, the conference will reconvene for a one day event at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, where the Shakespeare Institute Players will perform an unabridged script-in-hand production of one of Fletcher’s plays. The performance will take place on Saturday 25th July 2015. A conference website will be set up in the next few weeks where delegates and members of the public will be able to vote, from a list of 5 Fletcher plays, for which one they would like to see staged. The play with the most votes will be performed by the Players! We invite people to use the Twitter hashtag #TeamJohnFletcher or to get in touch with us at the email address below to cast a vote. One vote per Twitter account or email address, please!
Please send proposals of no more than 300 words for papers lasting 20 minutes in length to Dr Steve Orman (Canterbury Christ Church University) and José A. Pérez Díez (Shakespeare Institute), conference conveners, at the following email address: johnfletcherconference@gmail.com
The deadline for sending proposals is Friday 9th January 2015.
