The Canon of Thomas Middleton's Plays: Internal Evidence for the Major Problems of Authorship

by David J. Lake

• ISBN13: 9780521134620
• ISBN10: 0521134625
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-03-11
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

'Only numbers can annihilate.' This book sets out to solve by statistics the many problems of disputed authorship that surround the work of Thomas Middleton, one of the greater Jacobean dramatists. The internal evidence used is all of an objective nature: 201 items of linguistic evidence have been checked through a corpus of 132 plays by 35 playwrights contemporary with Middleton. Extensive tables make it clear at a glance which features are comparatively rare in the period, and which features link disputed plays to undoubted work. Strong evidence is provided for the authorship of 12 plays. Among other things, Dr Lake shows that there is 99 per cent statistical confidence for the conclusion that The Puritan and The Revenger's Tragedy were written by Middleton rather than by anyone else alive in the early seventeenth century; that, on the other hand, Blurt is by Dekker alone, and The Spanish Gipsy by Dekker and Ford; and that The Family of Love was probably revised by the pirate-poet Lording Barry.

Table of Contents

Preface

Sources: a statement

Symbolization

Abbreviations of series and periodical titles

Preliminaries

Earliest Middleton

Additions to the early canon

Later Middleton

A problem play of doubtful date

Summary of conclusions

Appendices

Main data tables

Grades of run-on lines:a verse test for The Revenger's Tragedy

Middleton's works other than plays

Dekker, Chapman, Marston: works other than plays

Middleton in Shakespeare: Timon of Athens

Bibliography

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