Early Modern Collaboration and Theories of Authorship

About halfway through the 1998 film shakespeare in love , a group of players and hired extras, under the critical eye of the theater owner Philip Henslowe, begins rehearsing a new play at the Rose. While Henslowe observes the process with a simultaneously proprietary and befuddled air, his financial backer, the apothecary Fennyman, comes to ask him about the play's progress. Suddenly Fennyman notices a tall, handsome figure bustling about, shouting both instructions and thanks. “Who is that?” the skeptical Fennyman asks. The movie audience knows that it is Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard's version of Will Shakespeare, assembling the cast for his play. “Nobody,” replies Henslowe. “The author” (Norman and Stoppard 49-50).