What Is Early Modern Dramatic Collaboration?

Abstract

Abstract In this article we scrutinise the anti-theatrical bias implicit in attempts to distinguish between Shakespeare and his collaborators; we attempt a taxonomy of the many different forms that collaborative practice took in the early modern theatre; and we examine the extent to which scholarly attitudes to early modern dramatic collaboration, particularly the tendency to see it as a vertical hierarchy rather than horizontal partnership, are shaped by modern ambivalence to academic collaboration in the humanities.