Shakespeare's Plays - Dramatic Collaborations

Dramatic Collaborations

Like most playwrights of his period, Shakespeare did not always write alone, and a number of his plays were collaborative, although the exact number is open to debate. Some of the following attributions, such as for The Two Noble Kinsmen, have well-attested contemporary documentation; others, such as for Titus Andronicus, remain more controversial and are dependent on linguistic analysis by modern scholars.

• Cardenio, either a lost play or one that survives only in later adaptation Double Falsehood; contemporary reports say that Shakespeare collaborated on it with John Fletcher.
• Cymbeline, in which the Yale edition suggests a collaborator had a hand in the authorship, and some scenes (Act III scene 7 and Act V scene 2) may strike the reader as un-Shakespearean compared with others.
• Edward III, of which Brian Vickers' recent analysis concluded that the play was 40% Shakespeare and 60% Thomas Kyd.
• Henry VI, Part 1, possibly the work of a team of playwrights, whose identities we can only guess at. Some scholars argue that Shakespeare wrote less than 20% of the text.
• Henry VIII, generally considered a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher.
• Macbeth, Thomas Middleton may have revised this tragedy in 1615 to incorporate extra musical sequences.
• Measure for Measure may have undergone a light revision by Thomas Middleton at some point after its original composition.
• Pericles, Prince of Tyre may include the work of George Wilkins, either as collaborator, reviser, or revisee.
• Timon of Athens may result from collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton; this might explain its unusual plot and unusually cynical tone.
• Titus Andronicus may be a collaboration with, or revision by, George Peele.
• The Two Noble Kinsmen, published in quarto in 1634 and attributed to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare; each playwright appears to have written about half of the text.