Collaboration and Influence on Shakespeare's Plays

That Shakespeare Life

When Shakespeare was writing plays in the 16th to early 17th century, he was participating in an industry that was both established, as well as rapidly evolving. Shakespeare himself ushered in innovation for the theater industry, while the bard, along with his contemporaries, equally embraced long held traditions that included shamelessly copying one another’s work. Acknowledging that copying someone’s work was industry standard for Renaissance England raises some questions about plagiarism, as well as who should get the credit for writing a particular story. Our guest this week, Darren Freebury Jones, has visited with us before to look at the influences of Thomas Kyd and even Robert Greene on the works of William Shakespeare, and Darren is back again this week to share with us the theater industry he has uncovered for his latest book, Borrowed Feathers, where he uses you’ll remember we called “textual sleuthing” in an earlier episode, to examine production, influence, authorship, and collaboration amongst playwrights such as Lyly, Kyd, Fletcher, and of course, Shakespeare. We are delighted to welcome Darren back to That Shakespeare Life again this week to talk with us about what it looked like to be a colleague in the theater industry for the 16th century, what constituted industry standard when you were writing plays, and how much influence a modern lens looking backwards at history has had on what we think we know about how Shakespeare produced his works.

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