Some measure of Shakespeare’s personal success during this period may be gained from the ascription to him of works not now believed to be his; Locrine and Thomas Lord Cromwell were published in 1595 and 1602 respectively as by ‘W.S.’; in 1599 a collection of poems, The Passionate Pilgrim, containing some poems certainly by other writers, appeared under his name; so, in 1606 and 1608, did The London Prodigal and A Yorkshire Tragedy. Since Shakespeare’s time, too, many plays of the period, some published, some surviving only in manuscript, have been attributed to him. In modern times, the most plausible case has been made for parts, or all, of Edward III, which was entered in the registers of the Stationers’ Company (a normal, but not invariable, way of setting in motion the publication process) in 1595 and published in 1596. It was first ascribed to Shakespeare in 1656. When this edition of the Complete Works first appeared, we said that if any play deserved to be added to the canon, this was it. Since then the scholarly case for Shakespeare having written part, or even all, of the play has grown, and we reprint it here according to its conjectural date of composition.

4. King James I (1566-1625): a portrait 1621) by Daniel Mytens

In August 1608 the King’s Men took up the lease of the smaller, ‘private’ indoor theatre, the Blackfriars; again, Shakespeare was one of the syndicate of owners. The company took possession in 1609. The Blackfriars served as a winter home; in better weather, performances continued to be given at the Globe. By now, Shakespeare was at a late stage in his career. Perhaps he realized it; he seems to have been willing to share his responsibilities as the company’s resident dramatist with younger writers. Timon of Athens, tentatively dated to early 1606, seems on internal evidence to be partly the work of Thomas Middleton (1580-1627). Another collaborative play, very successful in its time, was Pericles (c. 1607-8), in which Shakespeare probably worked with George Wilkins, an unscrupulous character who gave up his brief career as a writer in favour of a longer one as a tavern (or brothel) keeper. But Shakespeare’s most fruitful collaboration was with John Fletcher, his junior by fifteen years. Fletcher was collaborating with Francis Beaumont on plays for the King’s Men by about 1608. Beaumont stopped writing plays when he married, in about 1613, and it is at this time that Fletcher began to collaborate with Shakespeare. A lost play, Cardenio, acted by the King’s Men some time before 20May 1613, was plausibly ascribed to Shakespeare and Fletcher in a document of 1653; All is True (Henry VIII), first acted about June 1613, is generally agreed on stylistic evidence to be another fruit of the same partnership; and The Two Noble Kinsmen, also dated 1613, which seems to be the last play in which Shakespeare had a hand, was ascribed to the pair on its publication in 1634. One of Shakespeare’s last professional tasks was the minor one of devising an impress—which has not survived—for the Earl of Rutland to bear at a tournament held on 24 March 1613 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the King’s accession. An impresa was a paper or pasteboard shield painted with an emblematic device and motto which would be carried and interpreted for a knight by his squire; such a ceremony is portrayed in Pericles (Sc. 6). Shakespeare received forty-four shillings for his share in the work; Richard Burbage was paid the same sum ‘for painting and making it’.

The Drama and Theatre of Shakespeare’s Time

Shakespeare came upon the theatrical scene at an auspicious time. English drama and theatre had developed only slowly during the earlier part of the sixteenth century; during Shakespeare’s youth they exploded into vigorous life. It was a period of secularization; previously, drama had been largely religious in subject matter and overtly didactic in treatment; as a boy of fifteen, Shakespeare could have seen one of the last performances of a great cycle of plays on religious themes at Coventry, not far from his home town. 1567 saw the building in London of the short-lived Red Lion, and in 1576 the Theatre went up, to be rapidly followed by the Curtain: England’s first important, custom-built playhouses. There was a sudden spurt in the development of all aspects of theatrical art: acting, production, playwriting, company organization, and administration. Within a few years the twin arts of drama and theatre entered upon a period of achievement whose brilliance remains unequalled.

The new drama was literary and rhetorical rather than scenic and spectacular: but its mainstream was theatrical too. Its writers were poets. Prose was only beginning to be used in plays during Shakespeare’s youth; a playwright was often known as a ‘poet’, and most of the best playwrights of the period wrote with distinction in other forms. Shakespeare’s most important predecessors and early contemporaries, from whom he learned much, were John Lyly (c.1554-1606), pre-eminent for courtly comedy and elegant prose, Robert Greene (1558-92), who helped particularly to develop the scope and language of romantic comedy, the tragedian Thomas Kyd (1558-94),and Christopher Marlowe (1564-93), whose ‘mighty line’ put heroism excitingly on the stage and who shares with Shakespeare credit for establishing the English history play as a dramatic mode. As Shakespeare’s career progressed, other dramatists displayed their talents and, doubtless, influenced and stimulated him. George Chapman (c.1560-1634) emerged as a dramatist in the mid-1590s and succeeded in both comedy and tragedy. He was deeply interested in classical themes, as was Ben Jonson (1572-1637), who became Shakespeare’s chief rival. Jonson was a dominating personality, vocal about his accomplishments (and about Shakespeare, who, he said, ‘wanted art’), and biting as a comic satirist. Thomas Dekker (c.1572-1632) wrote comedies that are more akin to Shakespeare’s than to Jonson’s in their romantic warmth; the satirical plays of John Marston (c.1575-1634) are more sensational and cynical than Jonson’s. Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) brought a sharp wit to the portrayal of contemporary London life, and developed into a great tragic dramatist. Towards the end of Shakespeare’s career, Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625) came upon the scene; the affinity between Shakespeare’s late tragicomedies and some of Fletcher’s romances is reflected in their collaboration.

The companies for which these dramatists wrote were organized mainly from within. They were led by the sharers: eight in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men at first, twelve by the end of Shakespeare’s career. Collectively they owned the joint stock of play scripts, costumes, and properties; they shared both expenses and profits. All were working members of the company. Exceptionally, the sharers of Shakespeare’s company owned the Globe theatre itself; more commonly, actors rented theatres from financial speculators such as Philip Henslowe, financier of the Admiral’s Men. Subordinate to the sharers were the ‘hired men’—lesser actors along with prompters (‘bookholders’), stagekeepers, wardrobe keepers (‘tiremen’), musicians, and money-collectors (‘gatherers’). Even those not employed principally as actors might swell a scene at need. The hired men were paid by the week. Companies would need scribes to copy out actors’ parts and to make fair copies from the playwrights’ foul papers (working manuscripts), but they seem mainly to have been employed part-time. The other important group of company members were the apprentices. These were boys or youths each serving a formal term of apprenticeship to one of the sharers. They played female and juvenile roles.