SOURCE: Frey, Charles H. “Collaborating with Shakespeare: After the Final Play.” In Shakespeare, Fletcher and The Two Noble Kinsmen, edited by Charles H. Frey, pp. 31-44. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989.

In the following essay, Frey examines the issue of collaboration in The Two Noble Kinsmen, arguing that the play exhibits a strategy designed to deflect the audience's attention away from the nature of the authors' collaboration (with each other and/or with their source material) in order to direct attention to the more important collaboration between the producers of the play and the audience.

Collaborate has two main meanings for us: (1) to work with another on a project to be jointly accredited; and (2) to cooperate with the enemy. If Shakespeare collaborated in the writing of The Two Noble Kinsmen (as the title page of the Quarto tells us he did), then to what degree should the project...