PLOT Structure in Peele's Plays as a Test of Authorship
Arthur M. Sampley · PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America · 1936
Sir Edmund Chambers writes that “Peele's hand has been sought in nearly every masterless play of his epoch.” The evidence advanced for such attributions has usually consisted mainly of parallel passages and verbal tests, with the result that plays as different in structure as The Troublesome Reign of King John and King Leir have been fathered upon Peele by the same critic. Most scholars have been inclined to overlook the importance of structure as a means of determining authorship, though the dramas of Jonson and Shakespeare structure appears to be as much a constant as style or characterization. It is the purpose of this paper to show that Peele's known plays reveal a fairly constant type of structure, and that this type can be used as a determinant in considering the authorship of anonymous plays.