Shakespeare, Fletcher and “the gain o'th' martialist”

Abstract

In a passage in The Two Noble Kinsmen (1613) usually attributed to Shakespeare, one of the titular kinsmen laments the fate of the (implicitly Jacobean) soldier who has been “flirted / By peace” (1.2.18–19). But where Palamon merely cites “scars and bare weeds” as the paltry “gain o’th’ martialist” (1.2.16) post-war, Shakespeare resigned his soldiers returning from battle to darker fates. Whereas Shakespeare established a tragic narrative in which military greats are unable to adapt to civil society, his erstwhile collaborator saw the “gain o’th’ martialist” and the attendant responsibility for dramatists in very different terms. This essay discusses the ways in which Fletcher rehearsed and re-envisioned these “gains” – primarily in terms of labour, friendship and theatrical intervention – in plays generally understood to be his work, The Captain (1609), The Mad Lover (1612), The Tragedy of Valentinian (1612) and The Loyal Subject (1618).

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