SOURCE: Leonard, Pauline Gertrude Wiggin. An Inquiry into the Authorship of the Middleton-Rowley Plays. Boston: Ginn, 1897, 59 p.

In the following excerpt, Leonard takes exception with critics who have claimed that Rowley played an insignificant role in the plays he co-wrote with Thomas Middleton.

Having considered the character of the scenes of these plays written by Middleton in comparison with that of the scenes contributed by Rowley, the reader is almost inevitably hurried to the conclusion that Rowley's contribution to the plays written in this partnership was a comparatively insignificant one, and that their remarkable excellence is largely, if not wholly, due to Middleton's genius. Indeed this has been the common opinion, and even Mr. Swinburne, who seems to be disposed to do full justice to Rowley, having remarked in connection with A Fair Quarrel that his part in it is easy for any tyro in criticism to unify...