Authorship Attributions in Middleton’s Canon: Collaboration, Revision, and Shakespeare Ascriptions

Thomas Middleton collaborated with Shakespeare on Timon of Athens, and there have been arguments for his revising hand in Macbeth, Measure for Measure, and, more recently, All’s Well that Ends Well and Titus Andronicus. Middleton was a deeply collaborative dramatist, but he worked during a period when publishers seldom listed each contributing author on play title pages, indeed when many plays were published anonymously or sometimes even falsely ascribed. Attempts to delimit Middleton’s dramatic canon have therefore often relied on internal evidence. This essay offers a historical account of approaches towards distinguishing Middleton’s style in authorship attribution studies, using The Revenger’s Tragedy as a case study. Just as that play was erroneously attributed to Cyril Tourneur, Middleton’s A Yorkshire Tragedy was falsely assigned to Shakespeare in the Stationers’ Register and in texts of the play. Having provided these examples of dramas restored to Middleton’s oeuvre, the essay progresses to the Shakespeare plays suspected as having been co-authored or revised by Middleton. Although attribution studies can be a fiercely contested discipline, this essay emphasises their value in deepening knowledge on early modern play composition.