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Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Ay, to the proof: did Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew have two authors?
Stage | The Guardian: Since the 18th century, scholars have suspected that William Shakespeare was not the sole author of The Taming of the Shrew. Now dramatic evidence of the hand of his fellow great dramatist Christopher Marlowe has been discovered in “groundbreaking” research.
2 comments:
Elizabeth Purnell
said...
Like the article states over and over, Marlowe is not associated with comedy. Shakespeare has works that cover a range of genres, but all of Marlowe’s works to his name are very dramatic and often dark. It would be surprising if he did co-write Taming of the Shrew, because it doesn’t seem up his alley at all. If this is definitely to be confirmed, it will allow Marlowe’s legacy to expand as a writer and boost his reputation. On another note, I think it’s very interesting how researchers went about trying to identify the co-writer of this work. I am not one for analysis, because it takes a while and makes my brain hurt. However, these researchers have analyzed the text from structure and content, and are essentially profiling Shakespeare and his co-writer through their writing. That is what is so fascinating to me.
I've discovered recently that people are very set on believing that every Shakespeare play was written by him alone. We really ignore the few plays that are widely accepted to have two authors, like Pericles. This always leads me into thinking about the "genius-status" surrounding Shakespeare and many other artists. Don't get me wrong, Shakespeare's plays are very intelligently written and I love them, but there's a mysteriousness about him that allows people to project things that we don't know are true. There's very little evidence of Shakespeare's writing process, so there is a lot of room for the possibility of collaborators. It goes back to our idea of what success can be, I think. We, as a modern audience, don't think that Shakespeare can be as mythically successful if he has a collaborator. I always find that there's something about artists that were alive long ago that encourages us to believe that they were isolated geniuses, when in reality they were humans with collaborators and outside inspiration.
2 comments:
Like the article states over and over, Marlowe is not associated with comedy. Shakespeare has works that cover a range of genres, but all of Marlowe’s works to his name are very dramatic and often dark. It would be surprising if he did co-write Taming of the Shrew, because it doesn’t seem up his alley at all. If this is definitely to be confirmed, it will allow Marlowe’s legacy to expand as a writer and boost his reputation. On another note, I think it’s very interesting how researchers went about trying to identify the co-writer of this work. I am not one for analysis, because it takes a while and makes my brain hurt. However, these researchers have analyzed the text from structure and content, and are essentially profiling Shakespeare and his co-writer through their writing. That is what is so fascinating to me.
I've discovered recently that people are very set on believing that every Shakespeare play was written by him alone. We really ignore the few plays that are widely accepted to have two authors, like Pericles. This always leads me into thinking about the "genius-status" surrounding Shakespeare and many other artists. Don't get me wrong, Shakespeare's plays are very intelligently written and I love them, but there's a mysteriousness about him that allows people to project things that we don't know are true. There's very little evidence of Shakespeare's writing process, so there is a lot of room for the possibility of collaborators. It goes back to our idea of what success can be, I think. We, as a modern audience, don't think that Shakespeare can be as mythically successful if he has a collaborator. I always find that there's something about artists that were alive long ago that encourages us to believe that they were isolated geniuses, when in reality they were humans with collaborators and outside inspiration.
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