Contested Will by James Shapiro

in his response to the challenge posed by disputed plays – at least until 1790, the year he published his first solo edition of Shakespeare’s works. For in that year, just as he was submitting final pages to the press, the greatest discovery ever made about the Elizabethan stage fell into his hands: the records of Philip Henslowe, owner of the Rose Theatre. Henslowe’s Diary contained almost everything we now know about the staging of plays in Shakespeare’s day: how frequently the repertory changed, how many plays a company bought and performed every year, how much was spent on costumes,even how long it took to write a play. It was an amazing document, and nobody knew it better than Malone, into whose hands it was delivered from Dulwich College, where it had been discovered. The most significant revelation contained within the Diary concerned the collaborative nature of Elizabethan playwriting, at least for the rivals of Shakespeare’s company, the Admiral’s Men, for the overwhelming majority of plays were co-authored, by two, three, four or more playwrights working together.
    Malone excitedly turned its pages looking for evidence that might cast light on the disputed plays that had been attributed to Shakespeare – and was delighted to see that his hunch that Oldcastle was not by Shakespeare had been right: the Dulwich papers proved that it was ‘the joint production of four other poets’ – Michael Drayton, Anthony Munday, Richard Hathway and Robert Wilson. Malone was now in sole possession of evidence that could extend to Shakespeare the possibility of joint authorship. But he couldn’t bring himself to change his mind about Shakespeare’s singularity, free himself from the fantasy that the plays were easily separated mixtures, not compounded on occasion by a pair or more of talented writers working together, one of whom was Shakespeare. Malone even imagined that if a similar ‘account book of Mr Heminge shall be discovered, we shall probably find in it – “Paid to William Shakespeare for mending Titus Andronicus .”’
    Even when confronted with the overwhelming evidence from Henslowe’s Diary , Malone couldn’t break the habit of seeing plays composed by one playwright, then subsequently mended or repaired by another, and so concludes: ‘To alter, new-model, and improve the unsuccessful dramas of preceding writers, was I believe, much more common in the time of Shakespeare than is generally supposed.’ It followed then, that Pericles was ‘new modelled by our poet’ rather than jointly composed. By the same logic, the Second and Third Part of Henry the Sixth are ‘new-modelled’ and ‘rewritten’ by Shakespeare. Malone hastily appended some excerpts from Henslowe’s Diary as his 1790 edition was at thepress. But he had not had a chance to really digest the implications of this find for his understanding of how Shakespeare collaborated, and never seems to have done so.
    I have been hard on Malone in these pages, perhaps unduly so. But I find his inability to step back and see how Henslowe’s Diary might have altered his thinking about authorship deeply frustrating. Malone was clearly committed to a vision of Shakespeare as an Enlightenment figure, always working toward improving, perfecting, the unsuccessful efforts of others – a Mozart to the Salieris of the theatrical world. But what was truly unforgivable was that Malone made sure that nobody else had a chance to read the Diary and offer an alternative account of the stage and of how Shakespeare himself might have written. He not only refused to share the Diary , he wouldn’t even return it to Dulwich. Only after his death many years later would his literary executor find these materials among his papers and return them to their rightful owner – minus a number of literary autographs, which Malone had cut out.
    A great opportunity was