Shakespeare

The fact that certain scenes in the play, particularly those concerning the wooing of the Countess of Salisbury by the monarch, are more accomplished than others, has raised the question once more of collaboration with unnamed dramatists. Shakespeare is supposed, at various times of his career, to have collaborated with Jonson and Fletcher, Peek and Munday, Nashe and Middleton. There is no reason at all why he should not have done so. It has been estimated that between one-half and two-thirds of all plays written during Shakespeare’s lifetime were composed by more than one hand. Some plays were written by as many as four or five different authors. That is why plays tended to be the property of the company or the playhouse rather than of an individual. The emphasis was upon speedy and efficient production. It is even possible that writers formed groups or syndicates for the writing of dramas, on the same pattern as the roving bands of medieval illuminators, the members of which specialised in different aspects of the art of painting. Collaboration between dramatists was a familiar and conventional procedure, in other words, with various acts going to various hands or plot and sub-plot being given separate treatment. There were some writers who specialised in comedy, others in pathos. Shakespeare was the exception, perhaps, in the sense that he excelled in all branches of the dramatic art. He may have been exceptional, too, in retaining proprietorship of his own plays. There is of course also the possibility that passages or scenes were added to his plays at a later date by other writers. This may have happened, for example, with Macbeth and with Othello.

Collaboration in its most extreme form is represented by the extant manuscript of a play entitled Sir Thomas More, that has been tentatively dated to the early 1590s. It is the one play in which there is evidence of Shakespeare’s handwriting. The authenticity of this fragment of 147 lines, written in what has become known as “Hand D,” has been disputed by palaeographers over the years. But the weight of proof now seems to tilt in Shakespeare’s favour; the spellings, the orthography, the abbreviations, all bear his characteristics. The key is variability. Shakespeare’s spelling, and his formation of letters, change all the time. He capitalises the letter “c,” and tends to use old-fashioned spelling; he veers between a light secretary hand and a heavier legal hand. There are signs of haste and, in the course of that rapidity, a certain indecision.

In the scene that Shakespeare was called upon to write, the titular hero of the drama, Thomas More, speaks to certain citizens of London about to riot against the presence of foreigners in the city. It is likely that, after the success of the scenes of rebellion in The First Part of the Contention, he was considered to be “good” at crowds. We may refine this further by noting that Shakespeare excelled at scenes in which authority confronts disorder where, by the use of colloquialisms and other devices, the figure of authority is able to communicate with the discomfited crowd. Once more it suggests the duality of his genius.

He is also believed to have written a passage in which More soliloquises on the dangers of greatness; again it appears that the dramatist already had a reputation for meditative reflection by renowned or noble characters. The history plays would have left just such an impression. The chief author of Sir Thomas More was Anthony Munday, but one of the other collaborators has been identified as Henry Chettle – the same Chettle who was obliged to apologise for Greene’s animadversions on Shakespeare in Groats-worth of Witte. If it was a small world, it was also forgiving.

Sir Thomas More seems not to have been performed, perhaps because it was too close in matter to certain London riots of 1592, and is now remarkable only for the presence of Shakespeare’s handwriting. The subject of Shakespeare’s handwriting is in itself important, since there is now no other means of tracing his physical presence in the world. We might note, for example, that in each of six of his authenticated signatures he spells his surname differently. He abbreviates it, too, as if he were not happy with it. It becomes “Shakp” or “Shakspe” or “Shaksper.” The brevity may, of course, equally be a sign of speed or impatience. The best analysis of one signature suggests that its inscriber “must have been capable of wielding the pen with dexterity and speed. The firm control of the pen in forming the sweeping curves in the surname is indeed remarkable … a free and rapid, though careless, hand.”⁴