ABSTRACT
The London Prodigal (1603-5) is often referred to merely as one of the plays misguidedly classed as ‘Shakespeare Apocrypha’. Whoever first had the idea of ascribing it to Shakespeare has done perhaps more of a disservice to the text than he intended, although by this claim he evidently produced some recurring if superficial interest in a play that might otherwise have been largely neglected.1 The play was first printed in 1605; the title page states that it was ‘plaide by the Kings Maiesties seruants’ and names William Shakespeare as author. It was then included in the second imprint of the Third Folio of 1664 and the Fourth Folio of 1685. Its credentials thus seem to be as good as that of any play outside the First Folio. We shall never know whether the first publisher thought of the ascription as a mere salesman’s ploy or whether he seriously believed that Shakespeare had a hand in the composition, but the mere fact of the author’s name appearing on the title page and the light it throws on Elizabethan and Jacobean conceptions of authorship make the play worthy of some attention. The Quarto of 1605 suggests that it was successful on the stage and that the King’s Men may have valued it as highly as other productions by their (by then) best known author. The inclusion in the Third Folio, while not adding any substantial proof to the ascription, at least confirms the early claim and has had a lasting influence on the play’s reception. It seems, therefore, right to revisit the text, though without undue attention to the question of authorship, especially since the whole concept of authorship, as applied to
I See ‘The London Prodigal A Critical Edition in Modern Spelling, ed. Santha Devi Arulanandam (unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Auckland, 1989), and Paul Edmondson, A Critical Edition of ‘The London Prodigal ’ (unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2000). I gratefully acknowledge my debt to this work and to Paul Edmondson’s kindness in letting me make use of it. - On the ‘Shakespeare Apocrypha’ see Christa Jansohn, Zweifelhafter Shakespeare: Zu den Shakespeare-Apokryphen und ihrer Rezeption von der Renaissance bis zum 20. Jahrhundert, Studien zur englischen Literatur, II (Munster, 2000). See especially the valuable bibliography of editions containing Shakespeare apocrypha, 94-113. Even in Germany The London Prodigal was, mainly by reason of its association with Shakespeare and the ‘Prodigal Son Theme’, included in a number of translations and, more than once, adapted for the stage; see ibidem, 29-33.
