Phineas Fletcher

Phineas Fletcher (8 April 1582 – 13 December 1650) was an English poet, elder son of Dr Giles Fletcher, and brother of Giles the Younger. He was born at Cranbrook, Kent, and was baptized on 8 April 1582.

He was admitted a scholar of Eton, and in 1600 entered King's College, Cambridge. He graduated B.A. in 1604, and M.A. in 1608, and was one of the contributors to Sorrow's Joy (1603). His pastoral drama, Sicelides, or Piscatory was written (1614) for performance before James I, but only produced after the king's departure at Kings College.

He had been ordained priest and before 1611 became a fellow of his college, but he left Cambridge before 1616, apparently because certain emoluments were refused him. He became chaplain to Sir Henry Willoughby, who presented him in 1621 to the rectory of Hilgay, Norfolk, where he married and spent the rest of his life.

Phineas Fletcher wrote throughout his life. At his death he left behind a body of literature larger than that of his Renaissance contemporaries: in fact, his work rivals in size the canons of Spenser and Milton. The collected works of Phineas Fletcher include three volumes of religious prose, an epic,an epyllion, a drama, several medium-length verse narratives, pastoral eclogues, verse epistles, epithalamia, hymns, psalms, translations, various songs, occasional pieces, lyrics, and devotional poems. In scope, variety, and quality, his writings are second to none of that age.

In 1627 he published Locustae, vel Pietas Jesuitica (The Locusts or Apollyonists), two parallel poems in Latin and English furiously attacking the Jesuits. Grosart saw in this work one of the sources of Milton's conception of Satan. Next year appeared an erotic poem, Brittain's Ida, with Edmund Spenser's name on the title page. It is certainly not by Spenser, and is printed by Grosart with the works of Phineas Fletcher. Sicelides was printed in 1631.

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