Yes, in three or four cases two plays by one author were registered at one time. That fact did not arise from any “confinement” of the Register to such a purpose, however, but from random circumstances unrelated to the purposes of the Register itself. Walter Burre registered his rights to both Sejanus and Volpone on October 3, 1610, for example, simply as a matter of convenience. He had purchased those rights from another stationer in a single transaction. The rights to publish two plays by Lyly, Campaspe and Sappho and Phao, plus two other works, were once held by stationer Thomas Cadman, but apparently had been transferred to William Broome. After Broome’s death, the rights of his widow in those four works apparently were contested, perhaps by Cadman himself. The widow’s rights were confirmed in a decision by the Company’s Court of Assistants, a decision reflected in a registration of all four works on April 12, 1597.
Even a casual perusal of the Register will show that no single author was required for simultaneous registration of multiple copies. A substantial majority of such entries into the Register concern works by different authors. In most of those cases the different authors are actually named in the entries. Other times we know or may reasonably infer that the authors were different people. Here’s a good example: On September 13, 1610, John Wright entered, and paid the twelve pence double fee, for both “The tragicall history of the horrible life and Death of Doctor Ffaustus, written by C.M.” and a sermon, “religious meditations of the Deathe of Christ Jesus.” The sermon’s author isn’t identified, but I’m guessing he wasn’t Marlowe.
Nothing in Eld’s registration suggests that Revenger’s Tragedy and A Trick were written by a single author. The two plays had come to Eld from different sources. His publication of Revenger’s Tragedy states that play was acted by the King’s Company. His publication of A Trick, that it was acted by the Children of Paul’s. Eld just happened to register both plays at the same time.
That takes us to the end of the external and genuinely objective evidence. By the standard of proof in civil cases, “more probable than not,” the evidence says Tourneur. Then we are left to deal with the murky and unfathomable evidence of subjective impression. Without reference to the external evidence, the subjective evidence leaves us, I think, no clear answer.
Many more accomplished readers of plays than I have concluded that one author wrote both The Revenger’s Tragedy and The Atheist’s Tragedy. They have done so on the grounds of styles, themes, sensibilities and methods of verbalization. My book about Kyd’s Hamlet may add further weight to their conclusions. The book will show, I hope, that The Atheist’s Tragedy burlesques Kyd’s play. Tourneur sets out there to flip the important events in Kyd’s play upside down, and to parody Kyd’s pious moralities. The result, although beyond my book’s scope to show, was a tragedy with a macabre and deeply discomforting, but nevertheless very droll, sense of humor. A sensibility some will detect in The Revenger’s Tragedy.
I include under the category of subjective evidence the many studies attributing The Revenger’s Tragedy to Middleton based on statistical analysis of selected mannerisms attributed by the studies’ authors to Middleton. Middleton partisans prefer to classify this evidence as objective. It is not. In every critical respect this evidence depends upon underlying subjective judgments made by the studies’ authors. This isn’t the place fully to deconstruct the methodological flaws in these attribution studies. I want only to touch upon two key points.
My first point concerns the universe of plays used by the studies’ authors to provide the base sample for identifying Middleton mannerisms. Jackson explains how the base universe was arrived at. External contemporary evidence supports attribution of five plays to Middleton: A Game at Chess, Your Five Gallants, A Trick to Catch the Old One, The Witch, and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Yet the base universe for attribution studies consists not only of those five, but of seven more. One of them, A Mad World My Masters, at least has the initials “T.M.” to back it. The remaining six, More Dissemblers Besides Women, Women Beware Women, No Wit No Help like a Woman’s, The Mayor of Quinborough, Michaelmas Term, and The Phoenix, lack any external contemporary support. They are included in the base universe, Jackson explains, on the grounds that “scholars have accepted [their attributions’] accuracy because of the clear internal connections among all twelve plays.”
Well, no, you can’t do that. Inclusion of the other seven plays in the sample universe based on their internal characteristics is an analytic error which logicians would classify as illicit process. The conclusion, that these seven plays are by Middleton, is incorporated into the major premise that Middleton’s authorship of plays may be determined based on internal mannerisms in the sample universe. Conclusions about Middleton’s authorship based on inference from mannerisms may correctly be drawn only from mannerisms found in the five plays for whose authorship we have solid objective evidence. A practical effect of the analytic error in these studies is significantly to inflate the importance of the mannerisms in common between the objectively supported sample and the spurious additions, and among the spurious additions themselves.
Without the use of illicit process, it might still be possible to admit the seven other plays to the sample universe of plays probably by Middleton based on attributions of the plays to him made in the Restoration. If, however, the seven plays are admitted on that basis, a related problem then arises. The Restoration evidence for Middleton’s authorship of A Mad World My Masters, Michaelmas Term, and The Phoenix comes from attribution of those plays to him in the lists of Archer and Kirkman. (Mad World is also supported by “T.M.” on the 1608 title page, but initials alone, as many “W.S.” examples show, are unreliable evidence.) Archer and Kirkman identify as Middleton’s, in addition, The Family of Love and Blurt, Master Constable. Attribution studies exclude those plays from the sample universe based, yes, on their internal characteristics. That cannot legitimately be done if the sample universe is to be constructed from objective evidence that includes Restoration testimony.