TWO NOBLE KINSMEN, THE

This is the first Arden edition of 'The Two Noble Kinsmen'. Largely ignored for centuries because of doubts about its authorship and its subject matter, once considered distasteful, it is surprisingly relevant to many current interests. Lois Potter’s valuable edition gives a full exposition of contemporary claims as to authorship and genre, discussing all the elements of collaborative writing - not only the two authors themselves but their historical, theatrical and literary contexts. She argues that, complex as the collaboration process was, the end product can be discussed as a coherent work because of and not despite the circumstances of its production. Potter supplies new information on sources and, drawing on her extensive experience as a theatre critic, discusses the play’s afterlife and compares a number of recent stagings of the play.