Acting Shakespearean

This thesis examines the patterns of character agency in Lewis Theobald’s Double Falsehood and in both the collaborative and individual works of William Shakespeare and John Fletcher. Drawing on Jeffery Masten’s evaluation of collaborative works as a separate authorial category, I argue that, given the assertion that Theobald’s play is based on the lost History of Cardenio by Shakespeare and Fletcher, Double Falsehood should thematically resemble the two established collaborative works by Shakespeare and Fletcher, The Two Noble Kinsmen and King Henry VIII.

The distribution of agency in the Shakespeare and Fletcher collaborations is markedly different than the distribution of agency in Shakespeare’s late individual works and Fletcher’s early individual works. The distribution of agency in Double Falsehood does more closely resemble the pattern of the collaborative works, both reinforcing Masten’s argument and offering an explanation for why the play feels Shakespearean.