In Shakespeare's time collaboration of various kinds between playwrights was the norm rather than the exception. Besides direct collaboration, where two or more writers co-author a play, there were many forms of indirect collaboration, ranging from advice, inspiration, information and feed-back given to the principal author by fellow poets, friends and actors, to actual contributions in the invention of the story and writing of the script. Most of the poets knew each other and the acting companies who performed their plays, and in turn were known by their patrons.

Shakespeare Patronage

The patrons, many of whom formed literary circles of their own, were primarily the nobility, ministers and officials of the sovereign's government, with the sovereign being the supreme patron. The Elizabethan Act of Parliament licensing acting companies (on condition each was patronised by a nobleman) was primarily to provide the queen and her courtiers with professional first class entertainment, with the plays being performed at court. This arrangement was continued by James I. The most renowned literary group of patrons was the Walsingham-Sidney-Pembroke-Essex group, to whom the earl of Southampton belonged. The Shakespeare poems, Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, were dedicated to Southampton, and the Shakespeare Folio of plays to William and Henry, sons of Mary Sidney, the Countess of Pembroke and sister of Sir Philip Sidney.

Shakespeare Collaboration

Shakespeare is thought to have collaborated with at least nine other poets on his own plays, and with other poets on their plays. The collaborators so far identified or conjectured are John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, George Wilkins, John Day, Thomas Heywood, Christopher Marlowe, George Peele, Thomas Middleton and Robert Greene.

Bacon, the ‘Shakespeare’ Leader of Poets and Writers

Francis Bacon was reported as writing plays for the stage, using comedy and tragedy to rescue and renew Philosophy. He was referred to as a secret poet and the leader of the choir of Muses and their disciples, the writers and poets. He was a close friend of Essex and his circle, and was referred to as both Apollo and Pallas Athena, the 'Spear-Shaker' or 'Shake-Spear'. He headed a literary studio of ‘good pens’ who included, amongst others, the poets Ben Jonson, John Lyly, John Florio, John Davies of Hereford, Sir John Davies, George Herbert and George Wither. Ben Jonson is considered to have been the primary person responsible for the introductory pages to the Shakespeare Folio.

The Northumberland Manuscript, a folio containing two Shakespeare plays (before the plays were first published) bound together with other plays, speeches and essays by Francis Bacon, was a production of Bacon's literary studio.

Francis' brother Anthony was, until the latter's death in 1601, a partner in and sponsor of his brother's great work, heading a network of spies and contacts from all walks of life right across Europe, and having his own secretariat that also assisted Francis Bacon.

© Peter Dawkins, 2006; revised September 2008.

(See the author's book, The Shakespeare Enigma)