By divers hands

Contrary to the Romantic image of him as a solitary scribbler in a garret, William Shakespeare was a deeply collaborative artist. He wrote his plays for a particular theatre company, tailoring each part to the actor he knew would perform it. He began his career patching up old plays in the existing repertoire and ended it working in partnership with John Fletcher, his chosen successor as company playwright for the King’s Men. Never mind the Keatsian genius with fevered brow; a better comparison for early and late Shakespeare would be the team player banging out scripts in the golden age of Hollywood or, for that matter, in the quick forge and working-house of television sitcom or soap opera.

It is clear from the surviving account books of the theatre impresario Philip Henslowe that collaboration was the norm, solo authorship — which Shakespeare practised in the middle period of his career — the exception.