TY - JOUR
T1 - “Hands off proud stranger”
T2 - Shakespeare versus Multiple Authorship in Performance
AU - Panjwani, Varsha
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - In 2005, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) launched the Gunpowder season. The idea was to present plays that were rarely revived but were "dynamite" in their own day. One of the productions was the multiple author play, Thomas More. This unique play exists in manuscript and is believed to have been jointly authored by Anthony Munday, Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, possibly Thomas Heywood, and William Shakespeare. These attributions have not gone unchallenged. Scholars have especially debated the Shakespeare authorship with experts both for and against the ascription. For the purpose of this article, it does not matter whether the attribution of a part of this play to Shakespeare is correct. Rather, the paper is concerned with the aftermath of such an identification, that is, what happens to a performance once Shakespeare is pitted against (or is imagined as working with) other authors in writing a play? It also does not matter whether Shakespeare truly had a hand in the entire play or only in a speech. What is significant is that Gregory Doran, the mastermind behind the Gunpowder season, believed that Thomas More's riot-subduing speech (see below) is "universally credited to Shakespeare" (xii) and Ann Slater gave the same verdict in the programme of the production when she singled out this speech and its effect on the listeners as a "scene Shakespeare unquestionably added to the play". This article discusses what happens to the production of a jointly authored play when the creative team identifies one part of it as Shakespeare's.
AB - In 2005, the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) launched the Gunpowder season. The idea was to present plays that were rarely revived but were "dynamite" in their own day. One of the productions was the multiple author play, Thomas More. This unique play exists in manuscript and is believed to have been jointly authored by Anthony Munday, Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, possibly Thomas Heywood, and William Shakespeare. These attributions have not gone unchallenged. Scholars have especially debated the Shakespeare authorship with experts both for and against the ascription. For the purpose of this article, it does not matter whether the attribution of a part of this play to Shakespeare is correct. Rather, the paper is concerned with the aftermath of such an identification, that is, what happens to a performance once Shakespeare is pitted against (or is imagined as working with) other authors in writing a play? It also does not matter whether Shakespeare truly had a hand in the entire play or only in a speech. What is significant is that Gregory Doran, the mastermind behind the Gunpowder season, believed that Thomas More's riot-subduing speech (see below) is "universally credited to Shakespeare" (xii) and Ann Slater gave the same verdict in the programme of the production when she singled out this speech and its effect on the listeners as a "scene Shakespeare unquestionably added to the play". This article discusses what happens to the production of a jointly authored play when the creative team identifies one part of it as Shakespeare's.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80054943341&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Article
SN - 0040-5523
VL - 65
SP - 41
EP - 54
JO - Theatre Notebook
JF - Theatre Notebook
IS - 1
ER -