'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
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Page 1
... Once the poem had been published on both sides of the Atlantic , Taylor claimed , ' public reaction to the discovery has been generous and enthusiastic ; I have been overwhelmed by a tidal wave of curiosity . Academic reaction to the ...
... Once the poem had been published on both sides of the Atlantic , Taylor claimed , ' public reaction to the discovery has been generous and enthusiastic ; I have been overwhelmed by a tidal wave of curiosity . Academic reaction to the ...
Page 2
... once disclosed that he had found the initials ' W. S. ' subscribed to over a hundred poems in Jacobean and Caroline verse - miscellanies.5 Is it mere coincidence that these are Shake- speare's initials ? When Taylor penned this ...
... once disclosed that he had found the initials ' W. S. ' subscribed to over a hundred poems in Jacobean and Caroline verse - miscellanies.5 Is it mere coincidence that these are Shake- speare's initials ? When Taylor penned this ...
Page 3
... once a supposedly unique artefact has been identified , within a few weeks a second copy of the poem had been located in the Beinecke rare books collection at Yale , having long been listed in their annotated copy of Margaret Crum's ...
... once a supposedly unique artefact has been identified , within a few weeks a second copy of the poem had been located in the Beinecke rare books collection at Yale , having long been listed in their annotated copy of Margaret Crum's ...
Page 13
... Once we know that ' the is , far and away , the single most common word in Shakespeare ' , appearing over 29,000 times in his work , ' or just about once in every thirty words ' , and that ' the probability of its not appearing in 429 ...
... Once we know that ' the is , far and away , the single most common word in Shakespeare ' , appearing over 29,000 times in his work , ' or just about once in every thirty words ' , and that ' the probability of its not appearing in 429 ...
Page 15
... once dismissed as spurious , because it is awkward . Poor Shakespeare , writing ' Shall I die ? ' as ' a young poet , who was never at his best ( as Campion and Jonson were ) in rhyme , engaged in a tech- nical exercise ... ' ( Taylor ...
... once dismissed as spurious , because it is awkward . Poor Shakespeare , writing ' Shall I die ? ' as ' a young poet , who was never at his best ( as Campion and Jonson were ) in rhyme , engaged in a tech- nical exercise ... ' ( Taylor ...
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