Shake-speare Apocryphalypse

I am DEMmed close to finishing up the Authorized aspect of My Shake-speare Project--with only one Absolutely Accepted play to go (Henry VII), two Maybe Kinda Sorta Accepted plays (The Two Noble Kinsmen and Edward III), and the poems. Which is pretty exciting, as the chances that I will finish this project before I die are now pretty good.

But that Edward III play...that was where The Trouble began. Some time ago I was cross-checking my Royal Shakespeare Society "chronological"* list of plays against some other perspectives, and I happened to notice that the Wikipedia list included this so-called Edward III, which had not appeared on the RSC list. I reluctantly added that play to my TO DO list. But this opened up a whole other section of Shake-speare Plays to me...a section I had sniffed at previously, but dismissed...perhaps out of hand. Because there were other Other plays. I didn't put a whole lot of time into looking into it for a long time, but now that The End Is Nigh, I decided to see just how many Other Plays are we talking about here?

Oy vey...I'm kind of sorry I asked. Check out these tables of contents:

And the book I got from the public library...William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen with Jan Sewell and Will Sharpe...listed two other plays not included in either of those collections: The Spanish Tragedy and Double Falsehood, or The Distressed Lovers. 

I did some cross referencing, and between the three collections I came up with this "complete"** list:

1  A Yorkshire Tragedy

2  Arden of Faversham

3  Double Falsehood, or The Distressed Lovers

4  Edmund Ironside

5  Faire Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester

6  Mucedorus (A Most pleasant Comedie of Mucedorus the Kings Sonne of Valentia, and Amadine the Kinges daughter of Aragon)

    Pericles

7  Sir Thomas More

8  The Birth of Merlin

9  The Comedie of Faire Em

10 The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine

11 The Life and Death of The Lord Cromwell

12 The Life of Sir John Oldcastle

13 The London Prodigal

14 The Merry Devil of Edmonton

15 The Puritan or the Widow of Watling Street (also known as The Puritan Widow)

16 The Reign of King Edward the Third

17 The Second Maiden’s Tragedy

18 The Spanish Tragedy

     The Two Noble Kinsmen

19 Thomas of Woodstock

(I didn't include The Red Ones in my count because they had already been subsumed into The Official Plays.)

Yowza. Now...it seems to be that at least some of the plays on that list can't be Shake-speare's. I mean...The Spanish Tragedy? So far as I know Thomas Kyd already bought that house. But of course, OCD reader that I am, there is a part of me that wants to read all 19 of those plays...and any others that crop up in the future. (But please, no, Lord.) 

And it could be easily done, even without going down to Highway 61, as you can acquire

The Complete Works and Apocrypha of William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and More on Kindle for $1.99

and

Shakespearean Apocrypha by William Shakespeare on Kindle for 99¢

which would get everything except The Spanish Tragedy and Double Falsehood, or The Distressed Lovers. 

For that matter, you can find all of these plays on-line for free, but Kindle reading is so much easier, y'know?

So. There I am. Right now I am not feeling it for The Apocrypha. But maybe if I finish up The Official (-ish) plays and take a little breather I could give it a go. 

I don't know, Ange. What do you feel like doing?























* As I've said elsewhere, any proposed chronology is at least partially bullshit. No one knows when the plays were written. There are no diaries, no manuscripts, etc. There is some evidence...but sometimes scholars just made some shit up because they wanted to fit everything into their pre-conceived scheme. 

** I am already starting to feel antsy. Are there MORE Other Plays out there? Please, no! Enough is enough!