Determining the Shakespeare Canon: Arden of Faversham and A Lover's Complaint

289 Pages·2014·2.52 MB·English

by  MacDonald P. Jackson

DETERMINING THE
SHAKESPEARE CANON

DETERMINING
THE
SHAKESPEARE
CANON
ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM AND
A LOVER’S COMPLAINT
MACDONALD P. JACKSON
1
1
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Acknowledgements
This book incorporates, in substantially revised form, material previ-
ously published in the following journals: Archiv für das Studium der neu-
ren Sprachen und Literaturen, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England,
Memoria di Shakespeare, Modern Language Review, Notes and Queries, Papers of
the Bibliographical Society of America, The Shakespearean International Yearbook,
The Shakespeare Newsletter, Shakespeare Quarterly, and Shakespeare Studies.
The specific articles and notes are those listed in the Bibliography under my
name and with Arden of Faversham or A Lover’s Complaint in the title.
I have been helped by several scholars, who have commented on particu-
lar chapters in one or other of their versions, answered specific questions,
exchanged research findings with me, discussed principles of attribution,
solicited articles or reviews, or, whether directly or indirectly, offered encour-
agement: Jonathan Bate, Brian Boyd, Doug Bruster, John Burrow, Susan
Cerasano, Rosy Colombo, Hugh Craig, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Gabriel
Egan, Ward Elliott, Helen Hargest, Gil Harris, the late Charles H. Hobday,
Roger Holdsworth, Peter Holland, the late Trevor Howard-Hill, John Jowett,
John Kerrigan, Arthur Kinney, Roslyn L. Knutson, Tom Lockwood, David
McInnis, Tom Merriam, Will Sharpe, Tiffany Stern, Marina Tarlinskaja, and
Gary Taylor. Alan Lee of the University of Auckland’s Statistics Department
kindly gave advice about the probability tests I have used. Paul Vincent stand-
ardized references to Shakespeare’s works, compiled the bulk of the Bib-
liography, and spotted typos in my manuscript before I submitted it to OUP.
I am grateful to all those mentioned and also, for many excellent suggestions,
to the anonymous readers for the Press and for the journals listed above.
My student-days’ interest in the authorship of Arden of Faversham was
reawakened when I was invited by Barry Gaines to a seminar on ‘The
Shakespeare Apocrypha’ that he chaired at the Shakespeare Association of
America conference in Atlanta in 1993; Christa Jansohn and Dieter Mehl
encouraged me to submit the consequent paper to Archiv. Then in 2002
Auckland graduate student Jayne Carroll completed a fine MA thesis that
vi Acknowledgements
appeared to confirm my belief that Shakespeare had a share in the domes-
tic tragedy. In 2005 I delivered at the School of Advanced Study at the
University of London the S. T. Lee Visiting Professorial Fellow’s lecture,
which reported on the findings now recorded in Chapter 1. I should not
have had that opportunity without the support of Brian Vickers, for which
I thank him. It has been disconcerting to find myself arguing against his
views on both Arden of Faversham and A Lover’s Complaint. In the intro-
duction to his Shakespeare, ‘A Lover’s Complaint’, and John Davies of Hereford
(2007), Sir Brian avers that in writing his book claiming the poem for
Davies, ‘One personal problem I faced was that the two most convinced
proponents of Shakespeare’s authorship, Kenneth Muir (in 1964) and
MacDonald Jackson (in 1965) were scholars I had long admired.’ I must
here return the compliment. Sir Brian’s huge contribution to scholarship
on Shakespeare and his contemporaries commands admiration. But I think
he is wrong about Arden of Faversham and A Lover’s Complaint. His book
provided the stimulus for my undertaking almost all the research on the
Complaint described in mine.
I am indebted to Jacqueline Baker for putting my proposal for this book
before OUP’s Delegates, to Rachel Platt for getting publication under way,
to Jo North for her meticulous copy-editing, to Vijayalakshmi Kumar for
her work as project manager, to Daphne Lawless for compiling the index,
and to Nicole Jackson for supporting me in every possible way.
Of course, responsibility for the arguments and conclusions in this book
is mine alone.
Contents
List of Tables ix
References and Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
PART ONE ARDEN OF FAVERSHAM
1. Shakespeare and the Quarrel Scene in Arden of Faversham 9
2. Reviewing Authorship Studies of Shakespeare and his
Contemporaries, and the Case of Arden of Faversham 40
3. Gentlemen, Arden of Faversham, and Shakespeare’s Early
Collaborations 60
4. Parallels and Poetry: Shakespeare, Kyd, and Arden of Faversham 85
5. Arden of Faversham: Counter-arguments and Conclusions 104
PART TWO A LOVER’S COMPLAINT
6. A Lover’s Complaint: Phrases and Collocations 129
7. Spellings in A Lover’s Complaint as Evidence of Authorship 141
8. Neologisms and ‘Non-Shakespearean’ Words in A Lover’s
Complaint 169
9. A Lover’s Complaint, Cymbeline, and the Shakespeare
Canon: Interpreting Shared Vocabulary 184
10. A Lover’s Complaint: Counter-arguments and Conclusions 207
Appendix 1: Literature Online Data for Chapter 1 219
Appendix 2: Literature Online Data for Chapter 2 237
Appendix 3: Literature Online Data for Chapter 3 240
viii Contents
Appendix 4: Literature Online Data for Chapter 6 245
Appendix 5: Control Test for Chapter 7 250
Bibliography 252
Index 265
List of Tables
1.1. Summary of LION links to Arden Quarrel Scene 21
1.2. Summary of LION links to Doctor Faustus samples 25
1.3. Summary of LION links for Shakespeare and Marlowe 26
1.4. Multiple links between Arden Quarrel Scene and Lucrece 35
1.5. Multiple links between Arden Quarrel Scene and 2 Henry VI 36
2.1. Summary of LION links to Arden’s dream, 6.6–31 55
2.2. Multiple links between Arden and Venus and Adonis 57
3.1. Numbers of rare phrases and collocations linking Arden’s Quarrel
Scene to Shakespeare’s early collaborations 70
3.2. Summary of LION links to Arden, 14.1–76 73
3.3. Compound adjectives in Arden of Faversham 77
7.1. Contrast between Davies and Shakespeare in use of selected forms 163
8.1. Types and tokens in Shakespeare poems 173
8.2. Latinate neologisms in selected Shakespeare works 174
8.3. All neologisms in selected Shakespeare works 176
8.4. Peculiar words in Shakespeare poems 177
8.5. Thisted–Effron scores 179