New Oxford Shakespeare to credit Christopher Marlowe as joint author

A new collection of William Shakespeare’s complete works will list Christopher Marlowe as co-author of three plays, marking the most significant acknowledgement of his collaboration with the playwright.

The New Oxford Shakespeare will see Marlowe listed alongside Shakespeare as the author of Henry VI parts 1, 2 and 3.

It follows a research project completed by 23 academics from across the globe, which used traditional scholarship and computerised analysis tools to research the authorship of Shakespeare’s works.

Gary Taylor from Florida State University said that while the “orthodox” view was that the playwright did not collaborate with other writers at all, the past 30 years had seen new research suggest that the amount of collaboration has been underestimated.

“We have been able to verify Marlowe’s presence in those three plays strongly and clearly enough,” he told the Guardian.

Taylor added: ”You can’t say anything about Shakespeare without somebody disagreeing with you… But our knowledge of the past increases by debate of this kind.”

The collection is made up of four volumes, published by the Oxford University Press, which include the complete works in both original and modern spelling, a volume featuring explanatory notes and essays, and an authorship companion with research from the project.

The collection also includes several texts that have never been included in a Shakespeare complete works before, such as Arden of Faversham. It has previously only been attributed to an anonymous writer, but is now listed as being co-written by Shakespeare, with another author yet to be identified.

The four volumes will be published on dates between October 27 and December.