'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 84
Page xii
... never tested his claim against negative evidence ; he worked with atom- istic verbal units , instead of comparing longer sequences of language and thought ; and he failed to notice that even where the anonymous poet used words that ...
... never tested his claim against negative evidence ; he worked with atom- istic verbal units , instead of comparing longer sequences of language and thought ; and he failed to notice that even where the anonymous poet used words that ...
Page xiii
... never been dropped , and despite many detailed criticisms of his work - Foster still maintains that he is right , his critics completely wrong . — Since Foster used many more different approaches than Taylor , I have had to devote ...
... never been dropped , and despite many detailed criticisms of his work - Foster still maintains that he is right , his critics completely wrong . — Since Foster used many more different approaches than Taylor , I have had to devote ...
Page xvi
... never was . These and other features allow us to dismiss it as unShakespearian . Who , then , wrote the Elegye ? In Part II I present the case , in three stages , for John Ford's authorship . In chapter 9 I first review the biographical ...
... never was . These and other features allow us to dismiss it as unShakespearian . Who , then , wrote the Elegye ? In Part II I present the case , in three stages , for John Ford's authorship . In chapter 9 I first review the biographical ...
Page xviii
... never done in the statistical methods favoured in recent authorship studies, by drawing on my analysis of Ford's poems and prose works, with their fusion of Christian and Stoic ethics. A word such as 'steadiness' is not simply a ...
... never done in the statistical methods favoured in recent authorship studies, by drawing on my analysis of Ford's poems and prose works, with their fusion of Christian and Stoic ethics. A word such as 'steadiness' is not simply a ...
Page 5
... never . The difference is not negligible . Taylor's arrangement gives us a ten - line stanza of which six lines have an internal rhyme , but only four lines rhyme at the line - ending ( breeding / proceeding ' , ' ever / never ' ) . The ...
... never . The difference is not negligible . Taylor's arrangement gives us a ten - line stanza of which six lines have an internal rhyme , but only four lines rhyme at the line - ending ( breeding / proceeding ' , ' ever / never ' ) . The ...
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