Reflections on Co-Creativity in Early Modern Drama

Abstract While co-authorship was common practice in early modern drama, poetological treatises remain silent about it. They speak about the poet but not about collaboration. It is, hence, one of the aims of this article to arrive at conceptualisations of co-authorship through immanent reflections of co-creativity and authorial interaction. In particular, we will show that stylistic practices form an essential part of such reflections, which also helps us dissociate style from the identification of individual authorship. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster, or Love Lies A-Bleeding have been chosen to show how juxtapositions and adaptations of style in both single-authored and co-authored works reveal practices of collaboration in early modern theatre. As a result of our investigation, elements of a poetics of collaborative playwriting will emerge.