SOURCE: Hedrick, Donald K. “‘Be Rough With Me’: The Collaborative Arenas of The Two Noble Kinsmen.” In Shakespeare, Fletcher and The Two Noble Kinsmen, edited by Charles H. Frey, pp. 45-77. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989.

In the following essay, Hedrick contends that The Two Noble Kinsmen's thematic exploration of the nature of artistic rivalry suggests that Shakespeare did not collaborate in the writing of the play. Hedrick focuses on the play's treatment of the subject of collaboration, and on the relationship between cooperation and competition explored in the play.

To the extent that necessity is socially dreamed, the dream becomes necessary.

—Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

I. Collaboration Versus Authorship

In describing The Two Noble Kinsmen, one might well follow Pierre Macherey's prescription that a literary work be treated as “the product of a specific labor,” thereby avoiding an account of artistic creativity that in...