John Fletcher

Thierry and Theodoret John Fletcher

Thierry and Theodoret is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators that was first published in 1621. Thierry and Theodoret bears a significant relationship with the 1611 Beaumont/Fletcher play A King and No King: two kings in each play, one of whom in each case is a somewhat furious ranter, the queen mother who loathes her son. Nineteenth-century critics like Charles Lamb and Edmund Gosse rated Thierry and Theodoret highly, as "the best of Fletcher's tragedies." Some critics have commented on the historical anachronisms that were common in English Renaissance drama but are notably glaring in Thierry and Theodoret. The play's plot is based on the careers of Frankish rulers of the late 6th and early 7th centuries, Brunhilda of Austrasia and her grandsons Theuderic II and Theudebert II (transformed in the play into Brunhalt and her sons Thierry and Theodoret), but their soldiers are armed with muskets, and the characters observe the gods of Ancient Greece.