Shakespeare, Co-Author A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays [Paperback]

This major new study asks the question, how much do we know about Shakespeare's collaborations with other dramatists? , and sets out to provide a detailed evaluation of the claims made for Shakespeare's co-authorship ofTitus Andronicus,Timon of Athens,Pericles,Henry VIII, andThe TwoNoble Kinsmen. Through an examination of the processes of collaboration and the methods used in authorship studies since the early nineteenth century, Brian Vickers identifies a coherent tradition in attribution work on Shakespeare.

Preface
I. Elizabethan drama and the methodology of authorship studies
1. Authorship in English Renaissance drama
2. Identifying co-authors
II. Shakespeare as co-author
Introduction
3. Titus Andronicus, with George Peele
4. Timon of Athens, with Thomas Middleton
5. Pericles, with George Wilkins
6. Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, with John Fletcher
7. Plot and character in co-authored plays: problems of coordination
Appendix
Bibliography
Index

Brian Vickers...has brought clarity to the old and hotly debated question of Shakespeare's work with co-authors. As a result changes will be made in some future editions of Shakespeare. Vickers's book also gives a good sense of the opposing forces in the co-authorship debate. --The New YorkTimes

[A] magisterial survey of (almost) everything written on the subject of Shakespearean collaboration in the past 150 years. --Jonathan Bate,Times Literary Supplement

Rewarding...sharp glimpses of what it was like to write for the stage in Elizabethan and Jacobean London. Vickers gives an indelible impression of the sheer hunger for plays of London's theatre companies from the 1590s. --John Mullan,The Guardian

A brilliant and irrefutable case for coauthorship defined in strictly empirical terms.... A work of meticulousl£&