Collaborating with the Dead

Abstract Early modern dramatic co-authorship is traditionally thought of as a temporally and geographically synchronous process, yet recent advances in authorship attribution have increasingly considered later adapters who reshaped older plays for revival at much later dates. Their additions are often considered detachable from the original text, and scholarship has therefore largely focused on simply investigating the authorship of such alterations. Many plays, however, survive in adapted versions for which the identity of the adapters remains elusive. Analysing these adapters independently of identifiable authorship, this article argues that such adapters actively collaborated with a work's absent originator, supplying additions which pay attention to the play-text as a whole, thereby appropriating an old work for the requirements of a theatre company at much later moments in time.