ABSTRACT
Shakespeare was fortunate-he did not die at the age of 29, like Marlowe, or at 35, like Kyd, or in miserable poverty, in and out of debtors’ prison, like Chettle, or desperately ill and devoured alive by lice, like Greene. Shakespeare died at the ripe old age of 52, having steadily worked during 25 years for the same theater company in which he was one of the major shareholders. He was also much more talented than his playwright colleagues. All these conditions explain the uninterrupted flow of plays that Shakespeare composed during more than two decades. He created the core of the plays solo, but sometimes with co-authors, as did other poets, Shakespeare’s contemporaries who wrote for the stage. He sometimes, alone or with other playwrights, also refurbished older plays for a new production: competing theater companies needed fresh repertoire. Shakespeare invented most plots, but not infrequently based his works on an earlier play or poem (cf. Stern 2012), such as The Taming of The Shrew (if it followed The Taming of A Shrew), Richard III, King John, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. Titus Andronicus has links with Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy: a father’s real or feigned madness and his revenge for his children’s death.
