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It is not so strange that books outlive eras, that sometimes they enter the next era younger and fresher than they were at the time of their creation. It is stranger that books outlive their own authors, not by their longevity, but by their spirit and temperament, that they remain young and daring sometimes to remind us of the spiritual old age of their creators, of their hesitations and torments. Before his death, Voltaire sought the cooperation of the church, of that same church that he denounced in so many of his works. Gogol's "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Comrades" bears little resemblance to the first volume of "Dead Souls," and with "Confession" Tolstoy also denied "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina." In the same way, old Boccaccio condemned "The Decameron" and even became a monk, but "The Decameron" did not suffer from this at all. Books are a magnificent weapon against both the whims and the fluctuations of old age. Good books are for the spiritually young.

It is incomprehensible to us how Fletcher, who according to current criticism cannot even compete with lesser-known playwrights of the time such as Middleton, Webster, or Ford, could throughout the 17th century be counted alongside Shakespeare and Johnson in the "triumvirate of the spirit" and even completely overshadow the name of Shakespeare for at least a generation. This can hardly be explained solely by the "bad taste" of a more elegant and frivolous public, from which - due to the hostility of the Puritan bourgeoisie to the arts and the transition to smaller, closed theatres with correspondingly higher prices - the broad masses, one of the mainstays of Shakespeare's theatre, were gradually excluded. Obviously, Fletcher, with his vision and his themes, responded better to the needs of the time than Shakespeare, with his Renaissance mentality. For Fletcher, although a mediocre poet, is an original and independent mind, and although he outwardly follows the stage technique of Renaissance drama, he is the first who categorically found the way to a new inner form of drama - the Baroque drama. And even those of his own generation who imitated him most could not discover this inner form, but only repeated its external effects. This is the main reason for the great respect paid to him during the time of the nascent Baroque; but it is at the same time and the reason for the extreme disfavor into which he now falls. Baroque drama in England, even in the hands of its greatest representative, John Dryden (1631-1700), is not particularly appreciated by a people nourished on the spirit of Shakespeare's Renaissance theatre, and Fletcher is now regarded not as a pioneer seeking new paths appropriate to his time, but as a renegade from the sound traditions of the Renaissance. Not that any substantial reassessment of Fletcher's work can be expected or even desired. Fletcher is not a great dramatist, but he is an interesting figure: and if his dramas are far inferior to those of Shakespeare, the reason lies rather in the skill of the two dramatists than in the dramatic form itself. The important thing is to understand that this is after all a different kind of drama.