Wars and Lechery: Fletcher and the Archive

This paper will consider the uses of archival material in the study of Jacobean drama, in the context of new approaches to life-writing in early modern studies.  It will focus on new material relating to John Fletcher, Shakespeare's successor as resident dramatist for the King's Men, whose biographical record has been simultaneously valorised and neglected.  Tracing stories of the Irish wars, family feuds, adultery and slander, it will ask what is at stake in biographical criticism, and whether the archive has anything new to tell us about Fletcher's plays.

Lucy Munro is a Reader in Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at King's College London.  Her publications include two monographs, Children of the Queen's Revels: A Jacobean Theatre Repertory (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Archaic Style in English Literature, 1590-1674 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and editions of plays by Shakespeare and Wilkins, Sharpham, Brome and Fletcher. Her edition of Dekker, Ford and Rowley's The Witch of Edmonton is forthcoming in 2016, and she is currently working on a book about Shakespeare and the King's Men.