Author: Gabriel Egan, Professor of Shakespeare Studies, De Montfort University

In Shakespeare’s time, about a quarter of all plays were collaboratively written by two or more dramatists. Christopher Marlowe’s classic work Doctor Faustus was first performed in the 1580s or early 1590s but only published in 1604, 11 years after his death. The dramatists Samuel Rowley and William Bird were paid in 1602 to write new additions to the play. However, researchers have long suspected that the original play was not written by Marlowe alone. Its broader comic parts, largely in prose, have been thought to be the work of a second writer who never got the credit they deserved.…