ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the trends in William Shakespeare criticism that have seen source study gradually marginalized in favor of more theoretically focused methodologies. It suggests that the post-structuralist turn implicitly began the decline for theater historians the decentering of authorship has been productive in ways that foster an alternative appreciation of source study. Noting linguistic echoes between texts has been important to both traditional and newer approaches to source study, but it is not the only approach to source study. To study lost plays as possible sources for surviving drama requires a range of modalities of source study; depending on the nature and extent of the historical evidence bearing witness to these plays' one-time existence. The methodological danger of making assumptions about likely sources for lost plays should, in turn, heighten audiences' and authors' awareness of the assumptions implicitly built into our conjecture about sources for surviving plays.
