Shakespeare’s Additions to Thomas Kyd’s

“Warren Stevenson is a poet as well as a literary critic and a sleuth, and his sensitivity to poetic nuance is on display throughout this short book. In it he sets out to prove that Shakespeare was the author of the forceful and often startling additions that were included in the 1602 addition of Thomas Kyd’s by then famous and oft-quoted play, The Spanish Tragedy. . . .Whether every reader is will be convinced is less important than the undoubted fact that he or she will be intrigued by the journey itself.” - Anthony Dawson, Professor Emeritus, the University of British Columbia & President, the Shakespeare Association of America, 2001-2002

"Authorship-attribution, like other critical methodologies, makes no claim to being an exact science; but, unlike other methodologies, it relies heavily upon intuited certainty or feasible probability. Warren Stevenson’s argument acknowledges the tentative, often unprovable nature of a discipline where—after a process of elimination—the reader is finally left to endorse the author’s educated and sensitive ascription of authorship to specific passages. . .
In Warren Stevenson we have the counter-example of what [Brian] Vickers [who advocates the use of computer software programs in the authorship-attribution field] virtually dismisses as “Human interference” in the process. . . .
. . . when Stevenson makes constructive use of external evidence for his thesis—actors’ pamphlets bibliographical catalogues, diaries, theatre and performance histories—and complements this with his own aesthetic sensibility and judgment, he manages to transcend the merely mechanical effects of a software program and inject a profound empathetic sensibility into his argument.” -Errol Durbach, Professor Emeritus, Theatre Studies, The University of British Columbia for The Eclectic Muse

Foreword by Anthony Dawson
Author’s Prefatory Note
Part One: Jonson, Webster, and the Additions to The Spanish Tragedy 1602
Part Two: Shakespeare’s Hand in The Spanish Tragedy
Part Three: Appendices, Plus the Additions, 1602
Bibliography
Index

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