Book Review: Brian Vickers. <em>Shakespeare, Co-Author: A Historical Study of Five Collaborative Plays</em>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Abstract

Shakespeare, Co-Author is unique among attribution studies, in that it isn't one, in the strictest sense. Instead, Brian Vickers devotes the majority of the book to a survey of the attribution scholarship that has been done on Shakespeare's co-authored plays since the early nineteenth century to the present. While Vickers claims in his preface that 'I have not attempted to write a history of Shakespeare authorship studies ... here I am only interested in the pertinent arguments that scholars have made, addressing the concrete evidence ... and using valid methodologies' (x), Shakespeare, Co-Author is essentially a reconstruction of the developments in authorship studies and a mapping out of the scholarly tradition. The endeavor is both worthwhile and necessary. The truth of the matter is that the history of attribution/authorship studies has been a fractured one, with attributionists often, as Vickers periodically notes, working in isolation, unaware of each others' contributions to the field. If one pays attention to the dates of Vickers' sources, one can observe that these studies often skip entire generations, as the tradition shifts in and out of vogue in academic circles-with the result that many of these studies quickly become obscure, difficult to track down, and cavalierly disregarded or rejected. Vickers collects these studies and revitalizes them, demonstrating their enduring relevance to the authorship debate and the (in some cases) remarkable continuity between their arguments. But this is a partisan history. Vickers unabashedly approaches the issue from the perspective of the attributionists, and consequently his agenda in Shakespeare, Co-Author is not just to reconstruct the history of attribution studies, but to prove the attributionists right. He amasses this body of scholarship in order to demonstrate the efficacy of various tests of attribution and, concomitantly, to defend the divisions of authorship they have adduced in Shakespeare's co-authored plays. In championing the attributionists, Vickers opposes the Shakespeare 'conservators', those who attempt to preserve for Shakespeare sole domain over these disputed plays. I share Vickers' frustration with critics and editors who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that the great genius Shakespeare would deign to collaborate with his fellow playwrights. Such blind bardolatry is naïve; it presents a skewed picture of Shakespeare's practices and position in the theatre, and hence does a disservice to both Shakespeare scholarship and Renaissance theatre history. But as Vickers presents the issue, one either supports attribution or is labeled a fundamentalist-there is no middle