'Counterfeiting' Shakespeare: Evidence, Authorship and John Ford's Funerall Elegye'Counterfeiting' Shakespeare addresses the fundamental issue of what Shakespeare actually wrote, and how this is determined. In recent years his authorship has been claimed for two poems, the lyric 'Shall I die?' and A Funerall Elegye. These attributions have been accepted into certain major editions of Shakespeare's works but Brian Vickers argues that both attributions rest on superficial verbal parallels; both use too small a sample, ignore negative evidence, and violate basic principles in authorship studies. Through a fresh examination of the evidence, Professor Vickers shows that neither poem has the stylistic and imaginative qualities we associate with Shakespeare. In other words, they are 'counterfeits', in the sense of anonymously authored works wrongly presented as Shakespeare's. He argues that the poet and dramatist John Ford wrote the Elegye: its poetical language (vocabulary, syntax, prosody) is indistinguishable from Ford's, and it contains several hundred close parallels with his work. By combining linguistic and statistical analysis this book makes an important contribution to authorship studies. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 86
Page xii
... cited parallels in Shakespeare , but he made at least three major errors : he failed to check the claimed parallels against the work of other poets working between 1590 and 1620 , and so never tested his claim against negative evidence ...
... cited parallels in Shakespeare , but he made at least three major errors : he failed to check the claimed parallels against the work of other poets working between 1590 and 1620 , and so never tested his claim against negative evidence ...
Page xiii
... cited an Elizabethan play as evidence that Shakespeare was regularly described as a plagiarist : in fact , it proves the opposite , that he was often plagiarized . He quoted Charles Barber to support his claim that Shakespeare was ...
... cited an Elizabethan play as evidence that Shakespeare was regularly described as a plagiarist : in fact , it proves the opposite , that he was often plagiarized . He quoted Charles Barber to support his claim that Shakespeare was ...
Page xv
... cited the late plays – where the difference between ' W. S. ' and Shakespeare is glaring – but moved back to Shakespeare's much earlier poems . Foster did not cite other available evidence from the poem's prosody – its use of hexame ...
... cited the late plays – where the difference between ' W. S. ' and Shakespeare is glaring – but moved back to Shakespeare's much earlier poems . Foster did not cite other available evidence from the poem's prosody – its use of hexame ...
Page xvii
... cited individual words where I could show them to be rare or even unique to Ford , and not used by Shakespeare . Otherwise I have limited my claims to longer units of discourse, verbal sequences that also show recurring thought- Preface ...
... cited individual words where I could show them to be rare or even unique to Ford , and not used by Shakespeare . Otherwise I have limited my claims to longer units of discourse, verbal sequences that also show recurring thought- Preface ...
Page xxiv
... cited for the first time are given in full in the text or notes . Those referred to more often are listed in the Bibliography ( pp . 554ff ) , and are cited in the short form , e.g. , ' Greg 1955 ' . Journal titles are always ...
... cited for the first time are given in full in the text or notes . Those referred to more often are listed in the Bibliography ( pp . 554ff ) , and are cited in the short form , e.g. , ' Greg 1955 ' . Journal titles are always ...
Contents
1 | |
PART I Donald Fosters Shakespearean construct | 55 |
PART II John Fords Funerall Elegye | 261 |
Appendices | 467 |
Notes | 509 |
Bibliography | 554 |
Index | 563 |
Other editions - View all
'Counterfeiting' Shakespeare: Evidence, Authorship and John Ford's Funerall ... Brian Vickers No preview available - 2009 |
'Counterfeiting' Shakespeare: Evidence, Authorship and John Ford's Funerall ... Brian Vickers No preview available - 2002 |
Common terms and phrases
Abrams abstract ascription attribution authorship studies Brian Vickers canon Christes Bloodie Sweat cited critics Cyrus Hoy death Dekker described diction discussion Donald Foster doth dramatist edition editors Elegy Elegye's Elizabethan Elliott and Valenza English essay evidence fair Fames Memoriall figure Ford's plays Ford's poems Foster claimed frequently Funeral Elegy Funerall Elegye Golden Meane hendiadys Henry instances John Ford Laws of Candy linguistic literary Love's Sacrifice Lover's Melancholy mind modern Monsarrat Mountjoy never Noble noun occurs opinion Oxford passage percent Perkin Warbeck phrase poem's poet poet's poetry praise prose published punctuation readers recurs refer Renaissance rhetoric rhyme Richard sample scenes scholars sequence Shakespeare's authorship Sonnets stanza statistics style stylistic Sun's Darling syntactical syntax Taylor tests thee Thomas thou tion usage verb verse line Vickers virtue vocabulary William Peter William Shakespeare Witch of Edmonton words writing wrote youth