THE PRACTICE OF THE THEATRES

(a) COLLABORATION AND REVISION

In the prologue to Volpone Ben Jonson wrote:

and this claim to have written his masterpiece so quickly without assistance emphasises a dominant condition of work in the Elizabethan theatre and a resulting practice. The repertory system and competition between the companies, as well as the limited number of theatre-goers, demanded a regular supply of fresh plays; rapidity of composition was essential, and a natural result was collaboration. Jonson himself admitted, when he published his Sejanus, that in that play as acted ‘a second Pen had good share’, but he replaced the work of his collaborator by his own rather than ‘defraud so happy a Genius of his right by my lothed usurpation’. In the collection of plays attributed to the famous partnership of Beaumont and Fletcher there was certainly ‘lothed usurpation’ of the rights of Massinger and others. But, while title-pages rarely name more than two authors, Henslowe's accounts often show three or four, or even five poets, working together on one play.

The demand for fresh plays might also be satisfied in part by the furbishing up of old ones, but the evidence for such revision is not so straightforward. A statement on the title-page that a play has been ‘newly corrected, augmented, and amended’ was often made because an imperfect, pirated version was already in the booksellers' shops.