The Plays

Abstract

The term applied to the body of work generally accepted as being entirely or largely by Shakespeare is ‘canon’. The word has recently become controversial in its application to bodies of literature, however, because of its ecclesiastical connotation of ‘sacred’ writing, which suggests mystified reasons for including or excluding particular works. Even the more modest meaning of ‘the recognized genuine works’ of an author raises problems, for the evidence attaching Shakespeare’s name to his plays is, when approached from a certain perspective, slight. The Shakespeare canon as it is generally recognized consists of 37 plays and a number of poems, the best-known of which are the sonnets. Existing in a kind of limbo is The Two Noble Kinsmen on which Shakespeare collaborated with John Fletcher around 1612–13; there is resistance against including it in the canon because it is not entirely or mostly Shakespeare’s. This, however, opens up questions about some plays that have not been excluded; Fletcher almost certainly contributed work to Henry VIII and other hands have been detected, though not necessarily with certainty, in a number of other plays. Since we are dealing with a medium that was essentially collaborative in all its aspects, this clearly raises a number of tricky issues about the meaning of dramatic authorship to which we will come in due course.