Did Not Rowley Merely Revise Middleton?

Abstract

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 Certainty of Uncertain Knowledge: The Collaborative Authorship of <em>The Changling</em>

“…Dunkel, who suggests that Rowley was the re-writer of Middleton's play, rather than an actual collaborator. 13 Symons divides the authorship of the play in something like the familiar way, but has also a vision of a unified play that is the work of two playwrights working together:…”