Editing Edward III (play) (section)

==Authorship==
[[File:Edward III Second Quarto.jpg|thumb|The 1599 Second Quarto of the play]]
''Edward III'' has only been accepted into the canon of plays written by Shakespeare since the 1990s.<ref>Dunton-Downer, Leslie. Riding, Alan. ''Essential Shakespeare Handbook''. Publisher: DK 2004, p. 97 {{ISBN| 978-0789493330 }}</ref> In 1596, it was published anonymously, which was common practice in the 1590s (the first Quarto editions of ''[[Titus Andronicus]]'' and ''[[Richard III (play)|Richard III]]'' also appeared anonymously). Additionally, Elizabethan theatre often paid professional writers of the time to perform minor [[Script doctor|additions and emendations to problematic or overly brief scripts]] (the additions to the popular but brief ''[[Doctor Faustus (play)|Doctor Faustus]]'' and Shakespeare's own additions on the unperformed ''[[Sir Thomas More (play)|Sir Thomas More]]'' being some of the best known). No [[holograph]]ic manuscript of ''Edward III'' is extant.

The principal arguments against Shakespeare's authorship are its non-inclusion in the ''[[First Folio]]'' of Shakespeare's plays in 1623 and being unmentioned in [[Francis Meres]]'s ''Palladis Tamia'' (1598), a work that lists many (but not all) of Shakespeare's early plays. Some critics view the play as not up to the quality of Shakespeare's ability, and they attribute passages resembling his style to imitation or plagiarism.<ref name = "slat">Stater, Elliot, ''The Problem of the Reign of King Edward III: A Statistical Approach'', Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 7–9.</ref> Despite this, many critics have seen some passages as having an authentic Shakespearean ring. In 1760, noted Shakespearean editor [[Edward Capell]] included the play in his ''[[Prolusions]]; or, Select Pieces of Ancient Poetry, Compil'd with great Care from their several Originals, and Offer'd to the Publicke as Specimens of the Integrity that should be Found in the Editions of worthy Authors'', and concluded that it had been written by Shakespeare. However, Capell's conclusion was, at the time, only supported by mostly German scholars.<ref>Melchiori, p. 1.</ref>

In recent years, professional Shakespeare scholars have increasingly reviewed the work with a new eye, and have concluded that some passages are as sophisticated as any of Shakespeare's early histories, especially ''[[The Life and Death of King John|King John]]'' and the ''[[Henry VI (play)|Henry VI]]'' plays. In addition, passages in the play are direct quotes from [[Shakespeare's sonnet]]s, most notably the line "lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds" ([[sonnet 94]]) and the phrase "scarlet ornaments", used in [[sonnet 142]].<ref>Melchiori, George, ''King Edward III'', Cambridge University Press, 28 Mar 1998, p.&nbsp;94.</ref>

[[Stylistics (linguistics)|Stylistic]] analysis has also produced evidence that at least some scenes were written by Shakespeare.<ref>M. W. A. Smith, 'Edmund Ironside'. ''Notes and Queries'' 238 (June, 1993):204–05.</ref>{{NoteTag|Thomas Merriam's article in ''[[Literary and Linguistic Computing]]'' vol 15 (2) 2000: 157–186 uses [[stylometry]] to investigate claims that the play is a reworking by Shakespeare of a draft originally written by [[Christopher Marlowe|Marlowe]].}} In the ''Textual Companion'' to the [[Oxford Shakespeare|''Oxford Complete Works of Shakespeare'']], [[Gary Taylor (English literature scholar)|Gary Taylor]] states that "of all the non-canonical plays, ''Edward III'' has the strongest claim to inclusion in the ''Complete Works''"<ref>Wells, Stanley and Gary Taylor, with John Jowett and William Montgomery, ''William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion'' (Oxford University Press, 1987), p.&nbsp;136.</ref> (the play was subsequently edited by William Montgomery and included in the second edition of the ''Oxford Complete Works'', 2005). The first major publishing house to produce an edition of the play was Yale University Press, in 1996;  [[Cambridge University Press]] published an edition two years later as part of its [[New Cambridge Shakespeare]] series. Since then, an edition of the [[Riverside Shakespeare]] has included the play, as has the [[Arden Shakespeare]] in its Third Series (2017).<ref>{{cite web |title = King Edward III |url = https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/king-edward-iii-9781903436387/ |website = Bloomsbury Publishing |access-date=11 August 2017 }}</ref> The [[Oxford Shakespeare]] series has published an edition.<ref>{{cite book |title=William Shakespeare: The Complete Works |last=Shakespeare|first=William|publisher=[[Clarendon Press]]|year=2005|isbn=9780199267170|editor-last=Wells|editor-first=Stanley|edition=2nd|location=Oxford |editor-last2=Taylor|editor-first2=Gary|url-access=registration |url = https://archive.org/details/completeworks0000shak_f0m2 }}</ref>

Giorgio Melchiori, editor of the New Cambridge edition, asserts that the play's disappearance from the canon is probably due to a 1598 protest at the play's portrayal of the Scottish. According to Melchiori, scholars have often assumed that this play, the title of which was not stated in the letter of 15 April 1598 from [[George Nicolson]] ([[Elizabeth I]]'s [[Edinburgh]] agent) to [[Lord Burghley]] noting the public unrest, was a comedy (one that does not survive), but the play's portrayal of Scots is so virulent that it is likely that the play was banned—officially or unofficially—and left forgotten by Heminges and Condell.<ref>Melchiori, 12–13.</ref>

The events and monarchs in the play would, along with the two [[Henriad|history tetralogies]] and ''[[Henry VIII (play)|Henry VIII]]'', extend Shakespeare's chronicle to include all the monarchs from [[Edward III of England|Edward III]] to Shakespeare's near-contemporary [[Henry VIII of England|Henry VIII]]. Some scholars, notably [[Eric Sams]],<ref>Sams, Eric. ''Shakespeare's Edward III: An Early Play Restored to the Canon'' (Yale UP, 1996)</ref> have argued that the play is ''entirely'' by Shakespeare, but today, scholarly opinion is divided, with many researchers asserting that the play is an early collaborative work, of which Shakespeare wrote only a few scenes.

In 2009, [[Brian Vickers (academic)|Brian Vickers]] published the results of a computer analysis using a program designed to detect plagiarism, which suggests that 40% of the play was written by Shakespeare with the other scenes written by [[Thomas Kyd]] (1558–1594).<ref name=vickers>{{cite web |url = http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/article6870086.ece |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20091104084822/http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/article6870086.ece |url-status = dead |archive-date = 4 November 2009 |title = Computer program proves Shakespeare didn't work alone, researchers claim |work=Times of London |first=Jack |last=Malvern |date=2009-10-12 }}</ref>  [[John Jowett]] and [[Richard Proudfoot]] and [[Nicola Bennett]], while not rejecting the possibility of Kyd's authorship, find that the evidence is insufficient.  Citing Jowett's ''Shakespeare and the Text'',<ref>Oxford, 2007</ref> Proudfoot and Bennett<ref>''King Edward III''. Arden Shakespeare Third Series. Ed. John Proudfoot and Nicola Bennett. London: Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 58–60</ref> identify multiple assumptions made in the attribution, crediting the first three to Jowett: that Kyd's known [[Work of art|oeuvre]] (consisting of only ''[[The Spanish Tragedy]]'', ''[[Soliman and Perseda]]'', and an English translation of French playwright [[Robert Garnier]]'s ''[[Cornélie (play)|Cornélie]]'') is a sufficient body of evidence for comparison, that "rarity" of [[n-gram]] patterns is definable and doubtlessly characteristic, and that scenes within collaborative plays are always by one author acting alone. Proudfoot and Bennett add to these that selection bias prejudges outcome, making the methodology only somewhat more sophisticated than "parallel passage" strategies of old despite the inclusion of more text in the analysis. They cite in-progress work by Martin Mueller to digitally analyse 548 plays published between 1562 and 1662 for n-grams,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://scalablereading.northwestern.edu/|title=Scalable Reading – Scalable Reading NUsites site|website=scalablereading.northwestern.edu}}</ref> but also note that some playwrights and plays of the era are known only by their names, that anonymous plays could be written by authors whose work is unknown to scholars of drama of the period, and that there was a dramatic increase in the publication of plays starting in 1593, when the practice became normalised for successful plays.  Based on Mueller's work, the top ten plays with n-gram links to ''Edward III'' range from 6% to 4%:

# ''[[Henry VI, Part 3]]'' (Shakespeare)
# ''[[Edward II (play)|Edward II]]'' (Marlowe)
# ''[[Henry VI, Part 1]]'' (Shakespeare, possibly with [[Thomas Nashe]], Kyd, and/or Marlowe)
# ''[[Alphonsus, King of Aragon]]'' ([[Robert Greene (dramatist)|Robert Greene]])
# ''[[Richard III (play)|Richard III]]'' (Shakespeare)
# ''[[Tamburlaine]], Part 1'' (Marlowe)
# ''[[King John (play)|King John]]'' (Shakespeare)
# ''[[A Knack to Know a Knave]]'' (anonymous)
# ''Tamburlaine, Part 2'' (Marlowe)
# ''[[The Massacre at Paris]]'' (Marlowe)

This suggests to them that genre is more significant than author.  They also note that Kyd's plays do not score that high on Mueller's scale, ''[[The Spanish Tragedy]]'' at 24th, ''[[Soliman and Perseda]]'' at 33rd, and ''[[Cornelia (play)|Cornelia]]'' at 121st.<ref>Proudfoot and Bennett, p. 82</ref> They also note that Vickers was working on a wider project to expand the canon of Kyd to include ''Edward III'', ''[[Arden of Faversham]]'', ''[[Fair Em]]'', ''[[King Leir]]'', and parts of ''Henry VI, Part 1''.<ref>Proudfoot and Bennett, p. 84</ref>  Marcus Dahl did n-gram research on Nashe's works and found seven links in ''[[Summer's Last Will and Testament]]'', 24 links in ''[[Christ's Tears Over Jerusalem]]'', thirteen links in ''[[The Unfortunate Traveller]]'', and four links in ''[[The Terrors of the Night]]''.<ref>Proudfoot and Bennett, pp. 87–88</ref>  Proudfoot and Bennett argue that Nashe's access to the library of [[Sir Robert Cotton, 1st Baronet, of Connington]], would have given Nashe access to Froissart and other sources of the play. They note<ref>Proudfoot and Bennet, p. 86</ref> that the only reference to Froissart in all of Shakespeare's canonical work is in the first act of ''Henry VI, Part 1'', which many scholars now attribute to Nashe.  Nashe was known primarily as a playwright, but ''Summer's Last Will and Testament'' is his only theatrical work of undisputed authorship still extant.<ref>Proudfoot and Bennett, p. 87</ref>  Proudfoot and Bennett also suggest that Nashe's possible co-authorship need not have been dialogue writing, but structuring the plot. "It will be apparent", they write, however, <blockquote>that the attempt to identify Nashe as a putative partner in writing ''Edward III'' is wholly conjectural, anchored to the few known facts of his familiarity with Froissart and perhaps by phrasal links with the verbal text of ''Edward III''. If this hypothesis has any interest, then it may be in confronting the question of how the selection of material from Froissart for ''Edward III'' came to be as it is and not otherwise. The fact that it is purely speculative may serve to illustrate the tantalising gap that remains between the playtext that has survived and the attempt to locate it among what little is known of the writers and players who brought it into being.<ref>Proudfoot and Bennet, p. 88</ref></blockquote>

[[Charles R. Forker]]'s analysis of ''[[The Troublesome Reign of King John|The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England]]'' (2011) assesses that anonymous play as being by [[George Peele]], and ''Edward III'' as stylistically different from that of Peele.  Nevertheless, [[Tucker Brooke]] identified Peele as the author of ''Edward III'' in 1908, and [[Lois Potter]] did so in 2012. "Any case for Peele", write Proudfoot and Bennett,<ref>p. 85</ref> "would take as its point of departure the fact that his known plays share several concerns with ''Edward III'':  ''[[David and Bethsabe]]'' revolves around adulterous love and its consequences; the action of ''[[Edward I (play)|Edward I]]'' dramatises the creation of the title of [[Prince of Wales]] (of which the Black Prince was only the third holder); while ''[[The Battle of Alcazar]]'' dramatises sixteenth-century warfare—the anachronistic model for the battle narratives in ''Edward III'', with their [[Pike (weapon)|pikes]] and naval gunnery."

Proudfoot and Bennett's arguments, particularly those pertaining to statistical analysis of n-grams, are countered by Darren Freebury-Jones, who provides a sustained analysis of the evidence in favour of Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd as direct collaborators.<ref name="Freebury-Jones, Darren">{{Cite book |author=Freebury-Jones, Darren |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1303076747 |title=Shakespeare's tutor : the influence of Thomas Kyd |date=2022 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=978-1-5261-6474-2 |oclc=1303076747}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Freebury-Jones |first=Darren |title=Shakespeare's Borrowed Feathers: How Early Modern Playwrights Shaped the World's Greatest Writer |date=2024 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=978-1-5261-7732-2 |edition=1st |location=Manchester}}</ref>

[[Harold Bloom]] rejected the theory that Shakespeare wrote ''Edward III'', on the grounds that he found "nothing in the play is representative of the dramatist who had written ''Richard III''".<ref>Bloom, Harold. ''Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human''. New York: Riverhead Books, p. xv.</ref>

=== Attributions ===
* William Shakespeare – [[Edward Capell]] (1760)
* [[George Peele]] – [[Tucker Brooke]] (1908)
* [[Christopher Marlowe]], with [[Robert Greene (16th century)|Robert Greene]], George Peele, and [[Thomas Kyd]] – [[J. M. Robertson]] (1924)
* [[Michael Drayton]] – [[E. A. Gerard]] (1928)
* [[Robert Wilson (dramatist)|Robert Wilson]] – [[S. R. Golding]] (1929)
* William Shakespeare – [[A. S. Cairncross]] (1935)
* Michael Drayton – [[H. W. Crundell]] (1939)
* Thomas Kyd – William Wells (1940)
* Thomas Kyd – [[Guy Lambrechts]] (1963)
* Robert Greene – [[R. G. Howarth]] (1964)
* [[Thomas Heywood]] – [[Moelwyn Merchant]] (1967){{NoteTag|Merchant's introduction to the New Mermaids edition of Marlowe's ''[[Edward II (play)|Edward the Second]]'' ([[Hill and Wang]], 1967) twice mentions Heywood as the author of ''Edward III'' (xvii, xxiv).}}
* William Shakespeare – [[Eliot Slater]] (1988)
* William Shakespeare and one other – [[Jonathan Hope (scholar)|Jonathan Hope]] (1994)
* William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe – [[Robert A. J. Matthews]] and [[Thomas V. N. Merriam]] (1994)
* William Shakespeare – [[Eric Sams]] (1996)
* William Shakespeare and others (not Marlowe) – [[Giorgio Melchiori]] (1998)<ref>Melchiori, p.&nbsp;15.</ref>{{NoteTag|Melchiori (p.&nbsp;35) dismisses the Marlovian character of the play as having been written under the influence of Marlowe's ''[[Tamburlaine (play)|Tamburlaine, Part II]]'', which was recent and popular enough to be fresh in the memory of theatre-goers during the period in which ''Edward III'' was written. Melchiori does not believe that the play is entirely Shakespeare's, but he does not attempt to determine whose the other hands in the play are. He also voices his dislike of the publication of the "hand D" segments of ''[[Sir Thomas More (play)|Sir Thomas More]]'' out of context in many complete Shakespeare editions (ix).}}
* Christopher Marlowe (Acts I, III, and V) and William Shakespeare (Acts II and IV) – [[Thomas Merriam]] (2000)<ref>Thomas Merriam. "''Edward III''", ''[[Literary and Linguistic Computing]]'' 15 (2000), 157–80, cited in William Shakespeare. ''King Edward III''. [[Arden Shakespeare]] Third Series. Ed. Richard Proudfoot and Nicola Bennett. London, Bloosbury, 2017, 82.</ref>
* Thomas Kyd (60%) and William Shakespeare (40%) – [[Brian Vickers (academic)|Brian Vickers]] (2009)<ref name="vickers" />
* George Peele – [[Lois Potter]] (2012)<ref>''The Life of William Shakespeare'', 170, cited in Proudfoot and Bennett, 85.</ref>
* William Shakespeare (Scenes 2, 3, and 12) and others (principal consideration is given to Marlowe, Kyd, Peele and [[Thomas Nashe]], but qualified as "purely speculative" and insisting that even Shakespeare's involvement is conjectural) – Richard Proudfoot and Nicola Bennett (2017)
* Thomas Kyd and William Shakespeare – Darren Freebury-Jones (2022)<ref name="Freebury-Jones, Darren"/>