Shakespeare, Co-Author: A Historical Study of the Five Collaborative Plays [Hardcover]

Brian Vickers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0199256535 | ISBN-13: 978-0199256532

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 of Titus Andronicus, Timon of Athens, Pericles, Henry VIII, and The Two Noble 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"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 York Times

"[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

About the Author

Brian Vickers is Chair of English Language and Literature, Centre for Renaissance Studies, Zurich.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 9, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199256535
• ISBN-13: 978-0199256532
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,951,498 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impeccable Scholarship from Vickers, April 17, 2010

By 

Smilin' Jack "N/A" (Carrizozo, New Mexico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shakespeare, Co-Author: A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays (Paperback)

Brian Vickers deftly reviews and summarizes the most relevant aspects of 200 years of scholarship surrounding the five most likely candidates for collaborations in the Shakespeare canon (excluding I Henry VI and Edward III on the grounds that he could not identify the co-authors of those works), exposing just how poor the arguments for single-authorship have been. In most cases, editors of recent editions have simply ignored most or all of the massive amount of scholarship that has accrued to these five plays -- often misunderstanding or misrepresenting the evidence when they do deign to mention it, usually dismissing it as representing spurious attempts at "degeneration" of the canon. The most impressive chapter here is devoted to examining the arguments for George Wilkins' co-authorship of Pericles; these were expanded upon by MacDonald P. Jackson in his book Defining Shakespeare: Pericles as a Test Case. Vickers aptly demonstrates how foolish the current New Cambridge edition of Pericles (edited by Doreen DelVecchio and Antony Hammond) is when dealing with this subject -- if you need a copy of this play, get the current Oxford version instead. (The Amazon reviewers who defend the New Cambridge edition, it can be safely assumed, haven't read either this book or Jackson's.) Vickers very patiently and expertly lays out the case for each play, and I can't imagine any living scholar more adept at this task. Though very technical at times, Shakespeare Co-Author is a profitable experience for the general reader wanting to know more about not just Shakespeare and stylometry, but Elizabethan/Jacobean dramatic collaboration as a whole.

Now that Vickers has apparently discovered Kyd and Shakespeare collaborated on Edward III, we should expect a grand sequel to this book soon.