Imitation or collaboration? Marlowe and the early Shakespeare canon

Authors

  • Gary Taylor Florida State University
  • John V. Nance Florida State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5902/2176148564672

Keywords:

Christopher Marlowe, Imitação, Autoria, Henrique VI Parte I

Abstract

This article suggests that we can stylistically distinguish a dramatist working together with other (collaboration) from one employing another poet’s linguistic patterns (imitation). Considering conceptually that identity is cellular and systemic while imitation is selective and semiotic, we verify three sections of 1 Henry VI in which Shakespeare and Marlowe collaborated.

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Author Biography

Gary Taylor, Florida State University

GARY TAYLOR, Department Chair, Dahl and Lottie Pryor Professor in Shakespearean Literature, Ph.D., Cambridge, is General Editor of the New Oxford Shakespeare, including Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition (2016), Complete Works: Critical Reference Edition (2017), and Authorship Companion (2017). He was also general editor of the Collected Works of "our other Shakespeare," Thomas Middleton (Oxford, 2008), which won the Modern Language Association's biennial prize for a Distinguished Scholarly edition and the Emily Dietz award for outstanding publication in early modern studies; he also co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton (2012), the largest collection of new critical essays on Middleton ever published. The "Middleton Trilogy" is now available in paperback. He general-edited two series published by Palgrave, "Signs of Race" and "History of Text Technologies". He founded the interdisciplinary History of Text Technologies program at FSU, and has written about the practice and theory of editing in various periods and genres; in 2006 he gave the McKenzie lectures at Oxford University on Edward Blount, the chief publisher of the 1623 Shakespeare folio. Taylor's Moment by Moment by Shakespeare (MacMillan, 1985) was the winner of a Choice Award for "Outstanding Academic Book." His other books include a history of Shakespeare's reputation (Reinventing Shakespeare, 1989: "the most ambitious book on Shakespeare ever written", according to a review in Shakespeare Quarterly), a theory of artistic reputations generally (Cultural Selection, 1996: "brilliant insights and beautifully reasoned prose… an original and striking analysis of culture", according to the New York Times Book Review), and "an abbreviated history of Western manhood" (Castration, 2000: "terrific reading," according to Salon.com). He co-edited the first collection of essays on Shakespeare and Fletcher's partially-lost play The History of Cardenio (Oxford, 2012), and the same year his "creative reconstruction" of Cardenio was performed in Indianapolis, where it was also the subject of an international scholarly colloquium, a PBS documentary, and another collection of scholarly essays (Palgrave, 2013). His play has most recently been performed by the Richmond Shakespeare Society (2017). Taylor has also worked to communicate contemporary literary theory and criticism to a mass audience (newspapers, radio, TV, museums and theatres in North America and UK, including three Platforms at the Royal National Theatre, London). He was widely interviewed in 2016 in connection with the New Oxford Shakespeare's identification of Christopher Marlowe as Shakespeare's collaborator on the three Henry VI plays.

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Published

2021-03-11 — Updated on 2022-08-01

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How to Cite

Taylor, G., & Nance, J. V. (2022). Imitation or collaboration? Marlowe and the early Shakespeare canon. Letras, 109–140. https://doi.org/10.5902/2176148564672 (Original work published March 11, 2021)

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Edição Especial - 2/2020: Teatro Elisabetano e Jacobino: estudos textuais, teatrais e críticos

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