New RESEARCH has revealed that a 16th century Oxford student made significant contributions to some of Shakespeare’s best-known plays.
The study shows that Thomas Middleton, who matriculated at Queen’s College in 1548 but never graduated, wrote hundreds of lines in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Measure for Measure.
The research, conducted by 75 scholars worldwide with the help of a computer database, compared words and phrases used in other works by Middleton but not by Shakespeare, as well as allusions to historical events that took place after Shakespeare had written the plays.
Middleton’s contribution is considered so significant that both Macbeth and Measure for Measure are to be included in a new two-volume complete works of Middleton, which will be published next week by Oxford University Press.
For many years it has been suspected that the playwright, who had some success in his own right, contributed to Shakespeare’s work, but recent studies say that Middleton authored many more lines than previously realised.
The research shows that in Shakespeare’s original Macbeth the ‘weird sisters’ were not witches but female fairies or nymphs played by boy actors.
Oxford student was real Will Shakespeare
