New computerised linguistic research has concluded beyond any reasonable doubt that William Shakespeare was the principal author of the history play Edward III, and that the play was a collaboration with Christopher Marlowe, the first time Marlowe's presence in the work has been seriously argued.
Edward III was published anonymously in 1596, and scholars have long suspected that Shakespeare wrote at least a few of its scenes. Dr Rory Loughnane, a reader in early modern studies at the University of Kent and general editor of the Oxford Marlowe editorial project, said the new analysis pushed the case beyond any reasonable doubt. "That's the new finding, that both Shakespeare, now confirmed beyond doubt, and Marlowe, unexpectedly found for the first time, are present in the play, and therefore it represents a newly found collaboration between the two," he said.
Loughnane, who co-authored the research with Brett Greatley-Hirsch, a professor of renaissance literature and textual studies at the University of Leeds, said the discovery had "massive implications for our understanding of the relationship between the two most important dramatists of this period. This changes both the Shakespeare canon and the Marlowe canon and will be of significant international interest."
The researchers used several forms of computerised linguistic analysis, comparing Edward III with works securely attributed to 10 dramatists active between the late 1580s and the mid-1590s. In one test, 23 segments, described as "the lion's share," were identified as written by Shakespeare and nine segments as written by Marlowe, whose works include Doctor Faustus. Rather than assigning individual lines, the analysis examined patterns of language and the distribution of marker words such as "martial," which are typical of Marlowe's plays.
The analysis identifies a speech at the start of scene 13, in which a sudden darkening of the sky alarms the French camp and King Jean says "A sudden darkness hath defaced the sky," as Shakespeare's. A speech from the play's final scene, beginning "Great servitor to bloody Mars in arms, / The Frenchman's terror and his country's fame," is attributed to Marlowe.
Greatley-Hirsch said the strength of the case lay in the convergence of different tests. "What makes the evidence particularly compelling is that we're not relying on a single verbal parallel or statistical test. Different forms of analysis, looking at different features of the language, appear to repeatedly distinguish Marlowe's writing from Shakespeare's within the play."
Edward III did not appear in the 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare's plays. Loughnane had edited the play for the 2016 New Oxford Shakespeare: Complete Works, acknowledging that a couple of scenes were probably his. The new study follows a 2016 finding that Marlowe was a co-author of Shakespeare's three Henry VI plays, indicating what Loughnane described as "a more sustained writing relationship in their mid-to-late 20s." Marlowe died in 1593 aged 29. Loughnane said the pair were not simply rivals. "We have become accustomed to thinking of Marlowe and Shakespeare as rivals... But we now know that their relationship was much more complicated than that."
Loughnane acknowledged a caveat: Shakespeare's authorship of some segments "may overlap with bits of writing he did not do." The full research is due to be published in the Shakespeare Quarterly later this year. Loughnane's book Shakespeare at Thirty is published this week by Princeton University Press, and his exhibition The Making of Marlowe runs until 22 November at the Beaney House of Art & Knowledge in Canterbury.