ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the source study offered by Brian Gibbons in his New Cambridge edition of Measure for Measure. It suggests that source study needs to take William Shakespeare more seriously as a working actor and dramatist seeking to give his theatrical company a commercial advantage by adapting fictional and historical materials to the patterns of popular dramatic types. The chapter explains two examples–the impact of the comedy of prodigality on All's Well that Ends Well and the influence of Elizabethan crime drama on Macbeth–to illustrate Shakespeare's practice of fitting narrative sources to popular dramatic patterns. It discusses All's Well that Ends Well play with a greater emphasis on Shakespeare's changes. Shakespeare's artful reorganization and development of this material is a striking act of creative adaptation that brings it closer to pattern of Elizabethan crime drama, but his task was made easier by the fact that Holinshed's narrative reflects the same mentality as the murder plays.
