Contested Will (10 page)

Only one thing could have arrested all of this biographical speculation: admitting that a surprising number of the plays we call Shakespeare's were written collaboratively. For there's no easy way to argue that a co-authored play, especially one in which it's hard to untangle who wrote which part, can be read autobiographically. The problem of collaboration has bedevilled Shakespeare studies for over three hundred years, ever since the editors of the second impression of the Third Folio, published in 1664, added seven plays to the thirty-six included in the First and Second Folios of Shakespeare's collected works:
Pericles, The London Prodigal, The History of Thomas Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle, The Puritan Widow, A Yorkshire Tragedy
and
The Tragedy of
Locrine
. Though some readers may have believed that these plays didn't feel Shakespearean, there was corroborative evidence for at least some of them on the title pages of quarto editions published during Shakespeare's lifetime.

Things got even messier when editors began to question Shakespeare's authorship of some of the plays that Heminges and Condell had published under his name, and his name only, in 1623. The first to do so was the Restoration dramatist Edward Ravenscroft, who in his 1678 adaptation of Shakespeare's
Titus
Andronicus
wrote that he had ‘been told by some anciently conversant with the stage, that it was not originally his, but brought by a private author to be acted, and he only gave some master-touches to one or two of the principal parts or characters'. When the poet Alexander Pope brought out a major edition of Shakespeare's plays in 1725, he rejected as spurious all seven of the plays that had been added to the Third and Fourth Folios – and admitted to doubts even about some of the canonical plays: ‘I should conjecture of some of the others (particularly
Love's Labour's Lost
, even
The Winter's Tale, Comedy of Errors
, and
Titus Andronicus
), that only some characters, single scenes, or perhaps a few particular passages were of his hand.' Pope concluded that these plays long attributed to Shakespeare ‘were pieces produced by unknown authors'; posterity had assigned these bastard offspring to Shakespeare much ‘as they give strays to the Lord of the manor'.

For a while, at least, the canon continued to shrink. Lewis Theobald questioned the legitimacy of
Henry the Fifth
in 1734. Thomas Hanmer did the same with
Two Gentlemen of Verona
in 1743. Two years later Samuel Johnson deemed
Richard the Second
suspect and soon after Richard Farmer rejected
The Taming of the Shrew
. The
Second
and
Third Part of Henry the Sixth
were challenged as well, with some, like Capell, excusing them (and
King John
) as ‘first drafts', while others, like Bishop Warburton, urged that they be excluded from the canon. While editors at this time knew from the title pages of a handful of mostly Jacobean plays that some non-Shakespearean drama had been jointly written, the
thought never seems to have occurred to them that Shakespeare could have willingly collaborated with other playwrights. Disputed plays, then, were either in or out, Shakespeare's or someone else's.

Malone, like every other editor in his day, was keenly interested in authorship and attribution. He published a dissertation in 1787 on the
Henry the Sixth
plays in which he concluded that the early versions of these plays that survive in quarto –
The Contention
and
The True Tragedy
– were probably written by Robert Greene and George Peele respectively. Committed to examining the disputed plays in a thorough way, he edited and republished for the first time the seven disputed plays appended to the Third Folio. His objective was to distinguish the counterfeit from the real Shakespeare: ‘Though nearly a century-and-a-half have elapsed since the death of Shakespeare, it is somewhat extraordinary, that none of his general editors should have attempted to separate his genuine poetical compositions from the spurious performances with which they have been so long intermixed.' The works were mixtures then, not compounds, easily separated into what was Shakespeare's and what was not. Inclusion in the canon should be based on a principle of how much could be deemed Shakespearean.
Pericles
was included, since ‘if not the whole, at least the greater part of that drama was written by our author', while on similar grounds,
Titus
was definitely out, since Malone didn't believe a single line of it to be Shakespeare's.

Malone stood head and shoulders above his predecessors in his response to the challenge posed by disputed plays – at least until 1790, the year he published his first solo edition of Shakespeare's works. For in that year, just as he was submitting final pages to the press, the greatest discovery ever made about the Elizabethan stage fell into his hands: the records of Philip Henslowe, owner of the Rose Theatre. Henslowe's
Diary
contained almost everything we now know about the staging of plays in Shakespeare's day: how frequently the repertory changed, how many plays a company bought and performed every year, how much was spent on costumes,
even how long it took to write a play. It was an amazing document, and nobody knew it better than Malone, into whose hands it was delivered from Dulwich College, where it had been discovered. The most significant revelation contained within the
Diary
concerned the collaborative nature of Elizabethan playwriting, at least for the rivals of Shakespeare's company, the Admiral's Men, for the overwhelming majority of plays were co-authored, by two, three, four or more playwrights working together.

Malone excitedly turned its pages looking for evidence that might cast light on the disputed plays that had been attributed to Shakespeare – and was delighted to see that his hunch that
Oldcastle
was not by Shakespeare had been right: the Dulwich papers proved that it was ‘the joint production of four other poets' – Michael Drayton, Anthony Munday, Richard Hathway and Robert Wilson. Malone was now in sole possession of evidence that could extend to Shakespeare the possibility of joint authorship. But he couldn't bring himself to change his mind about Shakespeare's singularity, free himself from the fantasy that the plays were easily separated mixtures, not compounded on occasion by a pair or more of talented writers working together, one of whom was Shakespeare. Malone even imagined that if a similar ‘account book of Mr Heminge shall be discovered, we shall probably find in it – “Paid to William Shakespeare for mending
Titus Andronicus
.”'

Even when confronted with the overwhelming evidence from Henslowe's
Diary
, Malone couldn't break the habit of seeing plays composed by one playwright, then subsequently mended or repaired by another, and so concludes: ‘To alter, new-model, and improve the unsuccessful dramas of preceding writers, was I believe, much more common in the time of Shakespeare than is generally supposed.' It followed then, that
Pericles
was ‘new modelled by our poet' rather than jointly composed. By the same logic, the
Second
and
Third Part of Henry the Sixth
are ‘new-modelled' and ‘rewritten' by Shakespeare. Malone hastily appended some excerpts from Henslowe's
Diary
as his 1790 edition was at the
press. But he had not had a chance to really digest the implications of this find for his understanding of how Shakespeare collaborated, and never seems to have done so.

I have been hard on Malone in these pages, perhaps unduly so. But I find his inability to step back and see how Henslowe's
Diary
might have altered his thinking about authorship deeply frustrating. Malone was clearly committed to a vision of Shakespeare as an Enlightenment figure, always working toward improving, perfecting, the unsuccessful efforts of others – a Mozart to the Salieris of the theatrical world. But what was truly unforgivable was that Malone made sure that nobody else had a chance to read the
Diary
and offer an alternative account of the stage and of how Shakespeare himself might have written. He not only refused to share the
Diary
, he wouldn't even return it to Dulwich. Only after his death many years later would his literary executor find these materials among his papers and return them to their rightful owner – minus a number of literary autographs, which Malone had cut out.

A great opportunity was lost. Malone should have known better about collaboration. In fact, he was actively engaged at just this time in an intense collaborative writing project, helping Boswell write and revise his
Life of Johnson
, busily refining the prose, altering the tone, eliminating Scotticisms and so on, going back and forth on a daily basis, in close company with his needy friend. Yet he somehow couldn't imagine Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton working closely like this on
Timon of Athens
, or Shakespeare actively collaborating with Fletcher on
Henry the Eighth, Cardenio
and
The Two Noble Kinsmen.

The likeliest explanation for Malone's refusal to consider the possibility that Shakespeare worked in similar ways – through ‘joint production' or ‘in concert' with other writers, to use his own terms – is that such a view could not be reconciled with his conviction that Shakespeare's works were autobiographical and that Shakespeare himself, if not divine, was at least singular, so much so that a good editor should be able to separate the dross of lesser
mortals from Shakespearean gold. By the time that Henslowe's
Diary
was finally viewed by others – it was eventually transcribed and published by John Payne Collier in 1845 – it was too late. By that point, the notion that Shakespeare was autobiographical, singular and divine was indelibly imprinted on readers and theatregoers. Just how hardened this view became by the mid-nineteenth century is clear when a writer like Henry Tyrrell, in
The Doubtful Plays of Shakespere
, can reject a collaborative ascription on the grounds that ‘It is not probable that the great Shakespeare, the acknowledged poet of the age, the friend of nobles, and the pet of princes, should have united with a dramatist of third-rate reputation.' Joseph C. Hart, one of the earliest to doubt Shakespeare's authorship of the plays, was similarly influenced by the evidence offered in the ‘old Diary' (which he believed in 1848 to have been ‘discovered but a few years ago'). Based on his reading of the
Diary
, Hart concluded that some of the plays attributed to Shakespeare must have been collaborative – but that Shakespeare could therefore have had no hand in them. The critical tradition that extends from Malone through Tyrrell and Hart persists to this day, and the conviction that Shakespeare was a solitary writer whose life can therefore be found in his works cannot comfortably accommodate the overwhelming evidence of co-authorship.

The hunt for information about Shakespeare's life didn't end with Malone. Others soon followed up on his suggestions about where to look for fresh biographical details – so successfully, that in the decades following Malone's death more new facts about Shakespeare's life were discovered than ever before or since. The first were located in Stratford-upon-Avon by a local antiquarian who had time on his hands and the inexhaustible patience to pore through so many old records. R. B. Wheler was rewarded for his efforts with four significant discoveries. Two concerned complicated and profitable real-estate transactions: the unexecuted counterpart
of the conveyance of the old Stratford freehold to Shakespeare by William and John Combe in 1602; and a record of Shakespeare's purchase three years later of half a leasehold interest in a parcel of tithes in Stratford for the huge sum of
£
440 (what an Elizabethan schoolteacher could expect to earn in a lifetime).

Wheler also uncovered a pair of writs, documents noted earlier, that cast light on Shakespeare's moneylending. In 1609, in pursuit of a comparatively minor debt, Shakespeare had John Addenbrooke, a Stratford neighbour, arrested after failing to repay
£
6 and demanded an additional twenty-six shillings in damages. Addenbrooke was released upon providing a surety. A jury was probably empanelled and a verdict was reached in Shakespeare's favour, since, when payment was still not made, a second writ was issued by the Stratford Court of Record – this time against Addenbrooke's surety, Thomas Horneby, a local blacksmith, who was now responsible for both debt and damages. We don't know more than this. Why Shakespeare was so eager to prosecute neighbours over a loan is not known, but it was not the kind of story that pleased his admirers – and coupled with the belated publication of that undelivered letter discovered by Malone decades earlier, in which Richard Quiney asked Shakespeare for a
£
30 loan, a case was building that Shakespeare cared more about cash than art.

The pressure to find the right biographical materials – documents that reinforced rather than undermined what people wanted to believe about Shakespeare – led to new fakes and forgeries, including, in 1811, Richard Fenton's anonymously published
Tour in Quest of Genealogy
in which he describes purchasing at an auction in southwest Wales some books and a manuscript that had been in the possession of ‘an eccentric and mysterious stranger'. The purchase turned out to include ‘a curious journal of Shakespeare, an account of many of his plays, and memoirs of his life by himself'. One of Shakespeare's journal entries answered the question that had long puzzled those who wondered how a young man from rural Stratford could have mastered foreign languages
and was familiar with leading Italian authors: