New Shakespeare

New Shakespeare
Name	New Shakespeare
Caption	Title page representation
Author	Anonymous / Various theories
Country	United Kingdom
Language	Early Modern English
Subject	Drama, Poetry
Genre	Tragedy, Comedy, History
Pub date	c. late 16th–early 17th century

New Shakespeare is a disputed corpus of plays and poems attributed to a canonical Early Modern dramatist and associated collaborators. The corpus is central to debates involving attribution, textual transmission, editorial practice, and reception across institutions such as the Stationers' Company, the Globe Theatre, the King's Men, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the British Library.

Overview

The corpus traditionally appears alongside works printed by Edward Blount, William Jaggard, John Heminge, Henry Condell, and Isaac Jaggard. Scholarly attention intersects with figures and bodies including Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, Francis Bacon, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, Mary Sidney, and Thomas Kyd. Textual witnesses survive in quartos, folios, and promptbooks held at repositories such as the Bodleian Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the National Archives (UK), the Vatican Library, and the Library of Congress.

Origins and Authorship Theories

Authorship debates reference proponents and critics across generations: supporters invoking William Shakespeare are opposed by candidates like Christopher Marlowe advocates, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford partisans, Francis Bacon theorists, and suggestions involving Roger Manners, 5th Earl of Rutland, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, and Anne Hathaway. Stylometric studies led by researchers at Cambridge University, Oxford University, Harvard University, Yale University, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago employ computational analysis originally influenced by methods from Noam Chomsky, Frederick Mosteller, and David Wallace. Documentary claims draw on records from the Court of Star Chamber, the Privy Council of England, the Blackfriars Theatre, and the Admiral's Men. Competing hypotheses cite correspondences with manuscripts in collections associated with William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, John Heminges, Henry Condell, and scribal hands like Ralph Crane.

Major Works and Textual Corpus

The corpus includes histories, tragedies, comedies, and poems commonly compared with texts by Ben Jonson, John Webster, Thomas Middleton, George Peele, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, Thomas Dekker, Robert Greene, Kyd, and John Lyly. Specific items often discussed alongside the corpus include quartos of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Antony and Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Henry V, Richard II, and Measure for Measure. Manuscripts and printed editions reference printers such as John Benson, Nicholas Okes, Thomas Creede, Richard Field, Valentine Simmes, and William Stansby. Performance records involve venues like The Rose (theatre), Swan Theatre, Theatre (Shoreditch), Blackfriars, and patrons including Earl of Southampton and Lord Chamberlain's Men.

Critical Reception and Influence

Critical discourse links major critics and historians: A. C. Bradley, Samuel Johnson, Sir Edmund Chambers, Harold Bloom, E. K. Chambers, G. Wilson Knight, Stephen Greenblatt, Jonathan Bate, Claire McEachern, T. S. Eliot, Northrop Frye, F. R. Leavis, Frank Kermode, and Geoffrey Hartman. Debates over canonicity engage institutions such as the Royal Society, British Museum, National Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, and academic journals including The Times Literary Supplement, The Edinburgh Review, and Modern Language Quarterly. The corpus impacted playwrights and poets like Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard, Bertolt Brecht, Antonin Artaud, W. H. Auden, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and George Bernard Shaw.

Editions and Scholarly Studies

Major editions and projects involve editors and centers: the Oxford University Press's The Oxford Shakespeare, the Cambridge University Press's series, the Arden Shakespeare by Methuen Drama, the RSC Shakespeare editions, and critical work from the Folger Shakespeare Library. Editorial principles engage figures such as Sir Henry Green, John Dover Wilson, Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, Michael Neill, Emma Smith, Rosalind Miles, Jonathan Bate, and Peter Holland. Scholarly methodologies reference palaeography at the Society of Antiquaries of London, digital humanities projects at King's College London, MIT, and KCL Centre for Textual Studies, and archival discoveries catalogued by the National Archives (UK) and the British Library's Manuscripts Department.

Adaptations and Cultural Impact

Adaptations span theatrical, cinematic, televisual, and musical forms carried out by companies and creators including the Royal Shakespeare Company, Globe Theatre (London), National Theatre (UK), directors like Peter Brook, Trevor Nunn, Franco Zeffirelli, Baz Luhrmann, Orson Welles, Kenneth Branagh, Akira Kurosawa, and actors such as Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Ian McKellen, Ralph Fiennes, Judi Dench, Dame Maggie Smith, David Tennant, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Helena Bonham Carter. Film and television adaptations appear via studios and platforms including BBC Television, Warner Bros., Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Netflix, HBO, and festivals like the Venice Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival. Musical and operatic treatments involve composers and institutions such as Benjamin Britten, Verdi, Giacomo Puccini, Philip Glass, Lincoln Center, and the Metropolitan Opera.

Category:Elizabethan plays Category:English Renaissance literature