SINCE the publication of F. L. Lucas's four-volume edition of The Complete Works of John Webster (London, 1927), claims have been made for Webster's authorship of several works that Lucas did not include. The two longest of these are A Speedy Post (1625), a collection of model letters attributed on the title page to ‘I. W. Gent.’, and The Valiant Scot, an historical tragedy about the resistance of William Wallace to Edward I, published in a quarto of 1637 as by ‘J. W. Gent.’ The South African Webster scholar R. G. Howarth was the first to suggest that the initials should in each case be expanded as ‘John Webster’.1 Charles Forker, author of the one indispensable study of Webster, rejects Howarth's arguments about the play, but is inclined to suspect that he was right about A Speedy Post.2 Some data on the use of connectives in Webster's unaided, collaborative, and doubtful works may aid assessment of Howarth's ascriptions. David J. Lake showed that early modern authors differed in their choices between such variants as while, whilst, and whiles, between and betwixt, and among and amongst.3 1 R. G. Howarth, ‘A Requiem by John Webster’, in A Pot of Gillyflowers: Studies and Notes (Cape Town, 1964), 24–6; ‘The Valiant Scot as a Play by John Webster’, Bulletin of the English Association, South African Branch, ix (1965), 3–8. Howarth announced a ‘forthcoming volume’ of New Attributions to John Webster in which he would publish his arguments for Webster's authorship of A Speedy Post, but this did not eventuate: see his ‘A Commendatory Sonnet by John Webster’, English Studies in Africa, ix (1966), 109–16, at 114 n. 5. The sonnet, subscribed ‘I. W.’, is probably by John Weever, who, like the anonymous poet, has recourse to clumsy inversions. 2 Charles R. Forker, Skull Beneath the Skin: The Achievement of John Webster (Carbondale and Edwardsville, Illinois, 1986), xi. In his edition of The Valiant Scot (New York, 1980), 32–54, George F. Byers gave reasons for rejecting Howarth's claim, but without considering the possibility that The Valiant Scot is a collaborative work. 3 David J. Lake, The Canon of Thomas Middleton’s Plays (Cambridge, 1975), 12–13, Table 1.1 (between 252 and 253), 273–8.