The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 22.0338 Sunday, 11 December 2011
From: Ward Elliott <
Date: December 9, 2011 9:24:45 PM EST
Subject: RE: SHAKSPER: Collaboration
Here are my five favorite references on what Shakespeare wrote and how you could tell:
Vickers, Brian. Shakespeare, Co-author: a Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002a.
Jackson, MacDonald P. “Early Modern Authorship: Canons and Chronologies.” In Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture. G. Taylor, and Lavagnino, John. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 80-97, 2007.
Taylor, Gary. “The Canon and Chronology of Shakespeare's Plays.” in William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. S. W. Wells, Taylor, Gary, et al., Oxford: Clarendon Press: 69-144, 1987.
Chambers, E. K. William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930.
Elliott, Ward E. Y., and Valenza, Robert J. “Oxford by the Numbers: What are the Odds that the Earl of Oxford Could Have Written Shakespeare’s Poems and Plays?” Tennessee Law Review 72(1): 323-453, 2004. http://www.cmc.edu/pages/faculty/welliott/UTConference/Oxford_by_Numbers.pdf
All of these are broad surveys of many works. The best way to get into the specifics of schools of thought on any given work, such as Titus Andronicus, is to contact people working on it directly. I would start with Jackson, Vickers, and Taylor, and also check with Hugh Craig and Marina Tarlinskaja – and also survey what conventional old-optics scholars have had to say about where the Shakespeare parts start and end.
Yours,
Ward Elliott
Burnet C. Wohlford Professor of American Political Institutions
Claremont McKenna College