Were the plays a collaborative weaving?

[ro...@theshakespearepapers.com]

I received this message via email from Frank Hall and asked permission
to post it here:

Thank you for your excellent book. As a teacher of Shake-speare in
Waldorf high schools for many years, I have always kept the authorship
question open to my students, due to meagre direct documentation
supporting the actor, possibly play broker, as author. You have
considered the anonymous quartos with original insight -- Pembroke's
Men performed several. Mary Sidney's psalms certainly have the diction
and rhythmic flow of the Bard. And so much more. My question stems
from Henslowe's diary, which includes the titles of some Shake-speare
plays with payments to circles of London playwrights -- Caesar's Fall,
May 1602, with 5 pounds to "Monday, Drayton, Mydelton, and the rest."
A few authors so paid have their hands in the Sir Thomas More
manuscript. You well know such poems as "Poet-Ape" and "To our English
Terence" which evidence the Shake-speare canon as a collaborative
weaving. My question is this : Was Mary Sidney the Genius-Heart of the
Shake-speare writers' Circle at Wilton House, or was she the prime
Writer with secondary helpers, or was she the primary editor of
various quartos and the First Folio? How much of Shake-speare is One
Voice, possibly Mary Sidney's, and how much is his great work a Choir
of single voices brought to supreme accord?

[ro...@theshakespearepapers.com]

Also from Frank Hall, in response to my query asking to post his
question:

Thank you for your comment about my question as to the extent of
collaboration in the Shake-speare canon. Please understand that I
respect and appreciate your detailed and insightful research, and I
cannot imagine that Richard III with its women characters and children
characters does not include Mary Sidney's authorial involvement. Your
reading of the Sonnets is innovative and provocative, especially
considering Mary's brother's sonnets stylistically and thematically.
Bacon and Oxford fade away as soloists, I think, when one includes
your take on the Sonnets and the women characters in the plays. I am
close to certain that The Wilton House Circle wrote or largely the
Shake-speare canon. (This goes back to A.J. Evans' The Magic Circle,
although the author does not explore Mary Sidney in detail, as you
have done.)

[ro...@theshakespearepapers.com]

In reply to the often-asked question about whether Mary Sidney might
have been sole author or a collaborative author, or even general
editor, this is my thought: I've spent many years studying these
plays, teaching them, writing about them, speaking about them,
charting them. They are so consistent in style (which matures through
the years) and in the use of motifs, underlying symbology, rhetorical
figures, poetic devices, prose vs. verse vs. rhyme, dramatic
structure, portrayals of men and women, depth of characters, etc.,
that I've come to the conclusion that the plays and sonnets are the
work of one person. I don't see any reason why they might not be.

However, there are several plays that seem to have parts added on,
such as Pericles and Henry VIII, and I can't say I believe Timon of
Athens is authored by the same writer (for a number of reasons on
which I'll expound some other time). Some scholars claim these plays
were co-authored, but the added parts are clearly *added,* which
doesn't imply co-authorship to me; there is nothing mutual in someone
adding things to your play after you've turned it in.

The plays that are considered to be co-authored are very very early or
very very late, and I see no scholarship that makes me believe the
additions were added with cooperation from the original author. As an
example, Christopher Marlowe's play, Dr. Faustus, has an A version and
a B version with a difference of 676 lines. Yet no one claims that
Marlowe had a co-author for the added lines -- Marlowe was dead and
the lines were added later.

Some people have expressed the opinion that one person wouldn't have
had the time to write this many works of this quality. But I have
written, researched, designed, indexed, and produced almost 55 books
in less than twenty years, while raising three kids as a single mom.
Of course I wasn't writing the greatest works in the English language,
but neither did I have someone else doing the laundry, shopping,
cooking, cleaning, taking care of sick kids, paying the rent, etc etc
etc. If I could produce as much work as I did while taking care of
myself and three kids, I see no reason why a brilliant, educated,
motivated woman (wth 200 servants!) couldn't write 35 plays in 30
years.

Another reason I believe they are the work of one person is because,
as an author of many books, I have had co-authors. It's not easy.
Except for my books co-authored with John Tollett, I've had to rewrite
most sentences of other co-authors to bring them up to my standards (I
write technical books). With someone as brilliant/educated/skilled as
Mary Sidney, I can't imagine that she would have the patience to
upgrade the work of all others who might want to work with her.

And my last thought is that if an entire group of people were authors,
they couldn't keep it a secret for so long. The Elizabethans were
fanatical note writers, diary keepers, gossipers. For the group at
Wilton House, which changed and evolved over the years, to keep a
secret among so many people for so many years just seems contrary to
human nature.

Now, this is all just my opinion, obviously! I'm very curious to see
what others think.