Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

Sandra Clark (Birkbeck, University of London)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.03: English Writing and Culture: Renaissance (Elizabethan and Jacobean periods) , 1485-1625.
Vol. editors: William M. Hamlin (Washington State University), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University), Ema Vyroubalova (Trinity College Dublin)

Dates

Born 1579
Died 1625
Activity 1604-1625

Places

Born in England
Active in England

Activities

Primary

Playwright / Dramatist

Resources

Beaumont and Fletcher's Works

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Francis Beaumont, the third son of a justice of the Common Pleas, was born into a distinguished Leicestershire family with Catholic affinities, probably at Grace Dieu, site of a dissolved priory. At the age of 12 in 1597 he was admitted to Broadgates Hall, Oxford, with his two bothers, Henry and John; he took no degree there, and in 1600 went on, as earlier generations of his family had done, to the Inner Temple, where, like many other well-connected young men of the time, he developed interests in poetry and drama rather than the law. His first literary production seems to have been the verses signed F. B. prefaced to his brother John's mock-heroic poem

The Metamorphosis of Tobacco

in 1602, soon followed by his precociously brilliant erotic epyllion,

Salmacis and Hermaphroditus

,…

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1678 words

Citation: Clark, Sandra. "Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 June 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=315, accessed 27 November 2024.]