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Collaborative Plays by Shakespeare and Others

Collaborative Plays by Shakespeare and Others is an AHRC funded research project taking place within the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies and the CAPITAL Centre at the University of Warwick.

Shakespeare's fellow-actors John Hemings and Henry Condell selected 36 plays for inclusion in their authorised folio edition of his plays. He may therefore be assumed to have been principal author of these plays, though several centuries of scholarship has revealed an element of collaborative authorship/revision in some of them. Two further collaborations, Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen, have such strong claims, both external (early attribution) and internal (stylistic analysis) to Shakespearean co-authorship that they are included in all modern editions of the Complete Works.

There is, however, a fascinating body of other plays for which there are grounds to believe in an element of Shakespearean involvement.

Over three years, the project team will be working on a new edition of some of the non-canonical plays, traditionally known as The Shakespeare Apocrypha, which have some claim towards Shakespeare's hand. This edition will act as a companion volume to the RSC Complete Works of William Shakespeare (2007) edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen.