“The image of Shakespeare working in isolation has not been plausible for decades”
Oxford University Press has credited playwright Christopher Marlowe as the co-author of three of Shakespeare’s plays. Dr Paul Edmondson shares his thoughts on the decision
Marlowe is to join Shakespeare on the title pages of Henry VI, Parts One, Two and Three in The New Oxford Shakespeare. How common were writing collaborations? Collaboration takes many different forms – writing one act, adding a scene, or part of one to an already completed work – and was standard practice for playwrights of Shakespeare’s time. Thomas Middleton, Thomas Nashe, John Webster and many others co-wrote drama; Thomas Heywood claimed to have had “a main finger” in 220 plays.
Shakespeare collaborated as a jobbing playwright at the beginning of his career, but from 1594 became a founding shareholder and the leading dramatist for a highly successful theatre company. Most of his plays after 1594 are single authored but he collaborated again towards the end of his career. Doubts over the authorship of Shakespeare’s works aren’t new. What’s different this time? Understanding Shakespeare as an occasional collaborative writer has nothing to do with doubts that he was ever an author in the first place. In fact, knowing he worked with other people rather demolishes any kind of conspiracy theory. Shakespeare has been understood to have been a collaborative writer at least since 1634 when The Two Noble Kinsmen – co-authored with John Fletcher – was published posthumously with both their names on the title-page.
Marlowe’s naming as a collaborator invites biographical considerations about how the two men inspired and competed with each other. The New Oxford Shakespeare suggests that 17 of Shakespeare’s plays show some signs of collaboration and that Shakespeare himself was a collaborator in lesser-known plays – for example, Arden of Faversham. What impact will this have for future scholars of Shakespeare? The image of Shakespeare working only in isolation has not been plausible for decades. What and how he wrote remain significant questions which require complex answers. Collaboration forces us to think about his professional career as a dramatist and does nothing to detract from his genius.