For over thirty years students of the drama have apparently accepted Miss P. G. Wiggin's monograph, An Inquiry into the Middleton-Rowley Plays, as a statement of the individual shares of Thomas Middleton and William Rowley in writing A Fair Quarrel, The Changeling, and The Spanish Gipsy. Though Miss Wiggin considered styles and methods of writing, she differentiated between the contributions of the two authors, whose names appear on the title pages, principally by means of verse tests. In each of the plays Miss Wiggin assigns the opening and closing scenes to both authors, the main plot to Middleton, and the minor action to Rowley. Curiously enough, however, the minor action of each play seems to me to present striking similarities to Middleton's dramatic method in his comedies of London life.
The Revenger's Tragedy was long regarded as the work of Cyril Tourneur, but in recent years scholars have vigorously denied his authorship. Though this discussion has demonstrated the weakness of the case for Tourneur, it has not thus far resulted in establishing general agreement as to the true author of the play.
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