A Yorkshire Tragedy

Alternative title(s): All’s One, or, One of the Four Plays in One
Author(s): Middleton, Thomas (attributed)
Note: Attribution to Thomas Middleton confirmed in Wells’s edition (2007). Attributed to William Shakespeare in the Stationers’ Register (2 May, 1608), and in the title page of the 1608 quarto, and included in the third folio collection of Shakespeare’s plays (1663). Published without naming an author in Cawley and Gaines’ Revels edition (1986).
Date of composition:
  • 1605 (best guess, Wiggins, vol. 5, p. 245)
  • 1605 -1608 (Wiggins, vol. 5, p. 245)
Date of first performance: 1605 - 1608
Date of first publication: 1608
Genre (Annals): Tragedy

Catalogue references: Wiggins: 1484a (Vol. 5)
HIERONIMO/EMOTHE text(s): 1608 quarto transcript
  • 1608 quarto Bradock, Richard Pavier, Thomas single-play print
      ESTC: S106334 22340 523 272a
      EEBO-TCP: A12030 - Folger Shakespeare Library - EEBO record – TCP HTML XML HTML
      Observations: Feldman, Sylvia, ed. A Yorkshire Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. Malone Society Reprints.

  • STC/WING:
  • ESTC:
  • DEEP:
  • Greg:
  • Wiggins:

Early Performances

  • Company: The King’s Men Venue: The Globe playhouse Date: 1608
    Cast:
      Location: Venue type: commercial theatre
      Note: Information from the 1608 quarto title page, which wrongly attributes authorship to William Shakespeare.
      Information source:
    • Company: Venue: Date: 1619
      Cast:
        Location: Venue type: unknown
        Note: Latest date. A copy of the 1619 quarto is marked up so as to raise “the remote possibility of a performance” (Wiggins, vol. 5, p. 247)
        Information source: Wiggins, Martin. British Drama 1533-1642: A Catalogue. Volume 5: 1603-1608. 2015.

      Modern Productions

      • National Theatre Studio. Dir. Stephen Unwin, 1987.
      • Richmond Shakespeare Society. Dir. Gerald Baker, 1997. (called All’s One)
      • Frigarte Theatre, York. Dir. Mark France, 2006.
      • Tough Theatre Company. White Bear Pub, London. 2010.
      • Vile Passeist Theatre, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Dir. Dorian Lang. 2012.

      Modern editions

      • Rasmussen, Eric; Sewell, Jan, ed. A Yorkshire Tragedy. In: Bate, Jonathan; Rasmussen, Eric, ed. William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, pp. 477–501
      • Wells, Stanley, ed. A Yorkshire Tragedy. In: Middleton, Thomas Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 452–466
      • Cawley, Arthur C.; Gaines, Barry, ed. A Yorkshire Tragedy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986. The Revels Plays.
      • Gaines, Barry Joseph A critical edition of 'A Yorkshire Tragedy', a play in the Shakespeare apocrypha. In: . Univ. of Wisconsin, 1971. Unpub. doct. diss. [Abstr. in Dissertation Abstracts International (32), 3248A-9A.].
      • Sturgess, Keith, ed. Three Elizabethan Domestic Tragedies. (Arden of Feversham; A Yorkshire Tragedy; A Woman Killed with Kindness). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969, pp. 318.
      • Brooke, Charles F. Tucker, ed. The Shakespeare Apocrypha. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908.

      Select Bibliography: Criticism

      • Potter, Lois. "'All's one': Cinthio, 'Othello', and 'A Yorkshire Tragedy'". Ed. Lena Cowen. Othello: the state of play. London: Bloomsbury, 2014, p. 45-62.
      • Pearson, Lorna. "'A Yorkshire Tragedy' : a different approach to two familiar cruxes". Notes and Queries. 2012, vol. 4, 59, p. 567-71.
      • Daalder, Joos. "Madness in 'A Yorkshire Tragedy' and 'The Pilgrim'". Ed. Lynch, Andrew; Scott, Anne M. Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context: Essays for Christopher Wortham. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2008, p. 159-174.
      • Hopkins, Lisa. "'A Yorkshire Tragedy' and Middleton's Tragic Aesthetic". Early Modern Literary Studies: A Journal of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Literature. 2008, vol. 3, 8, .
      • Saenger, Michael. "Apocryphal agency: 'A Yorkshire Tragedy' and early modern authorship". Shakespeare Yearbook. 2007, 16, p. 267-91.
      • Gaines, Barry. "The nineteenth-century productions of 'A Yorkshire Tragedy' (1608)". Ed. Esche, Edward J. Shakespeare and his contemporaries in performance. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, p. 293-303.
      • Holdsworth, R. V. "Middleton's authorship of 'A Yorkshire Tragedy'". Review of English Studies. 1994, vol. 177, 45, p. 1-25.
      • Cawley, A. C. "'A Yorkshire Tragedy' Considered in Relation to Biblical and Moral Plays". Ed. Gilman, Donald. Everyman and Company: Essays on the Theme and Structure of the European Moral Play. New York: AMS, 1989, p. 155-168.
      • Braden, Gordon. "A 'Yorkshire Tragedy'". Ed. Bowers, Fredson. Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists. Detroit: Gale, 1987, p. 309-12.
      • Cawley, A. C. "'A Yorkshire Tragedy' and 'Two Most Unnaturall and Bloodie Murthers'". Ed. Jefferson, D. W. The Morality of Art. Essays Presented to G. Wilson Knight by his Colleagues and Friends. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969, p. 102-118.

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