In Defence of Kyd: Evaluating the Claim for Shakespeare’s Part Authorship of <i>Arden of Faversham</i>

Authors

  • Darren Freebury-Jones Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21825/aj.v7i2.9736

Abstract

MacDonald P. Jackson first argued for Shakespeare’s part authorship of Arden of Faversham in his university dissertation in 1963. He has devoted several articles to developing this argument, summarized in his monograph Determining the Shakespeare Canon (2014). Jackson’s part ascription has led to the inclusion of the domestic tragedy in The New Oxford Shakespeare. However, Jackson and his New Oxford Shakespeare colleagues have either dismissed or neglected the evidence for Thomas Kyd’s sole authorship presented by other scholars. This essay focuses primarily on Jackson’s monograph and argues that the evidence for adding the play to Kyd’s canon, encompassing phraseology, linguistic idiosyncrasies, and verse characteristics, seems solid.

Author Biography

Darren Freebury-Jones, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Darren Freebury-Jones is Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies (International – USA) at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon. His 2016 doctoral thesis examined Thomas Kyd’s influence on Shakespeare’s early plays and he is one of the editors for the first edition of Kyd’s collected works since 1901. He has also investigated the boundaries of John Marston’s dramatic corpus as part of the Oxford Marston project. His recent and forthcoming work on the plays of authors such as Shakespeare, Kyd, Lyly, Marlowe, Peele, Nashe, Marston, Dekker, Fletcher, and others can be found in a range of peer-reviewed journals. 

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Published

2018-12-13

How to Cite

Freebury-Jones, D. (2018). In Defence of Kyd: Evaluating the Claim for Shakespeare’s Part Authorship of <i>Arden of Faversham</i>. uthorship, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.21825/aj.v7i2.9736

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 2 (2018)

Section

Attribution and Elizabethan drama: qualitative versus quantitative methods

License

Copyright (c) 2018 Darren Freebury-Jones

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