'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. |
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Page xviii
... reasons for Taylor's and Foster's suc- cess: their confident use of the media, which in the English-speaking world quickly express frenzied excitement whenever any new work is attributed to Shakespeare , setting up interviews and photo ...
... reasons for Taylor's and Foster's suc- cess: their confident use of the media, which in the English-speaking world quickly express frenzied excitement whenever any new work is attributed to Shakespeare , setting up interviews and photo ...
Page 5
... reason to be divided . Both points suggest that the poem more correctly consists of nine eight - line stanzas . Its proper form is represented by this layout : Shall I die ? Shall I fly Lovers ' baits and deceits , sorrow breeding ...
... reason to be divided . Both points suggest that the poem more correctly consists of nine eight - line stanzas . Its proper form is represented by this layout : Shall I die ? Shall I fly Lovers ' baits and deceits , sorrow breeding ...
Page 6
... reason to follow Taylor's arrangement , and in the subsequent discussion I have restored the eight - line stanza form . It may be convenient at this point to have a complete text of the poem , transcribed from the Rawlinson MS . in ...
... reason to follow Taylor's arrangement , and in the subsequent discussion I have restored the eight - line stanza form . It may be convenient at this point to have a complete text of the poem , transcribed from the Rawlinson MS . in ...
Page 9
... reasons . Of the 429 words in this poem , 162 are rhyme - words , which must be some kind of record - and certainly far ... reason for this peculiar combination of rhyme and metre , the strain of finding words of one or two syllables for ...
... reasons . Of the 429 words in this poem , 162 are rhyme - words , which must be some kind of record - and certainly far ... reason for this peculiar combination of rhyme and metre , the strain of finding words of one or two syllables for ...
Page 28
... reason that it had not been included in the Fellowes collection , English Madrigal Verse . Thomas Morley's Madrigals to five Voyces , Celected out of the best approved Italian Authors ( London , 1598 ) , figured in neither the origi ...
... reason that it had not been included in the Fellowes collection , English Madrigal Verse . Thomas Morley's Madrigals to five Voyces , Celected out of the best approved Italian Authors ( London , 1598 ) , figured in neither the origi ...
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