# Why are Shakespeare plays Two Noble Kinsman and Henry VIII not included in many Complete Shakespeare Works? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** theater-stage-dance\ **Created:** [October 23, 2022, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663 "2022-10-23T11:14:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2022, 11:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/1 "2022-10-23T11:14:00Z")
Why are the last of Shaksspeae plays “The Two Noble Kinsman” and “Henry VIII” not included in many Complete Shakespeare Works? ---
**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2022, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/2 "2022-10-23T11:55:58Z")
Sorry about the misspelling. Why are the two Shakespeare plays “The Two Noble Kinsmen” and “Henry VIII” not included in many Complete Shakespeare Works? Were they only recently added to the corpus of Shakespeare plays? I have several complete works and only recently did I discover that they were missing his last plays. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2022, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/3 "2022-10-23T12:17:17Z")
Is the authorship disputed? ---
**Author:** ![nofloyd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nofloyd/32/2870_2.png) [@nofloyd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nofloyd)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2022, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/4 "2022-10-23T12:18:06Z")
Dunno if these are the only two Shakespeare works, but both are considered to be collaborations with John Fletcher. > **[About Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen | The Folger SHAKESPEARE](https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/the-two-noble-kinsmen/about-shakespeares-the-two-noble-kinsmen/)** > > In "About Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen," experts Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine introduce the play's plot, major themes, historical context, and more. > **[AI 'reveals Shakespeare and Fletcher’s different roles in Henry VIII'](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/nov/26/ai-reveals-shakespeare-and-fletchers-different-roles-in-henry-viii)** > > Czech academic Petr Plechac has run tiny pieces of text through a new algorithm that he says identifies their distinct contributions ---
**Author:** ![nofloyd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nofloyd/32/2870_2.png) [@nofloyd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nofloyd)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2022, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/5 "2022-10-23T12:27:00Z")
So Fletcher replaced Shakespeare as [house playwright](https://nosweatshakespeare.com/resources/era/contemporaries/john-fletcher-playwright/) I would think many sets of Shakespeare do contain these works too. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2022, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/6 "2022-10-23T16:26:09Z")
_Henry VIII_ is in my 1950s edition; _Two Noble Kinsmen_ is not. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2022, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/7 "2022-10-24T04:46:32Z")
They do now, but I remember them being added. When I was a kid, _Pericles_ wasn’t included, either. But, slowly, certain stylistic tricks have made it clear (to experts) that Shakespeare was involved. Others that are likely to be added are, _Edward III_ (certain scenes are obviously by a much more skillful playwright than the rest, and those scenes seem to be, not only better than the rest, but better in a Shakespearean way), _Sir Thomas More_ (an anonymous manuscript in several hands; one of them, “Hand D”, looks the way we think Shakespeare’s hand looked, and the writing is not only very good, but on a subject that Shakespeare took quite seriously), and _Double Falshood;_ or, _The Distrest Lovers_, which was definitely written by Lewis Theobald in 1727, but which appears to be based on a lost play by Shakespeare and Fletcher, _Cardenio_ (which in turn was based on about four chapters of _Don Quixote_). ---
**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2022, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/8 "2022-10-24T09:01:33Z")
Thanks John\_W.Kennedy. I’ll look out for newer Complete Shakespeare editions. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2022, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/9 "2022-10-24T11:18:50Z")
Awaiting **fretful porpentine** weighing in… I suspect many “Complete Works” are based on the first folio (a copy of which I happened to see the other day in the NYPL.). ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2022, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/10 "2022-10-24T12:51:15Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > Awaiting **fretful porpentine** weighing in… If you want @Fretful_Porpentine to weigh in, it might help to @ her. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2022, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/11 "2022-10-24T12:54:05Z")
My father’s edition (1940’s) and mind (1980’s) both contain Henry VIII, but not Two Noble Kinsmen. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2022, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/12 "2022-10-24T17:51:02Z")
Somebody called? As @nofloyd says, both plays were almost certainly written in collaboration with John Fletcher, and TNK took a long time to be definitively accepted as part of the Shakespearean canon. It wasn’t included in the First Folio, the first near-complete published edition of Shakespeare’s plays, which was compiled by fellow-actors who knew him well. _Pericles,_ another play Shakespeare wrote in collaboration (possibly with a disreputable fellow named George Wilkins, we’re not absolutely sure), was also not included in the First Folio and is similarly left out of some older editions of Shakespeare’s works. However, it was published under Shakespeare’s name during his own lifetime, so it found an easier road to acceptance by editors than TNK, where the question wasn’t really considered settled until the advent of modern-day, computer-assisted stylometric analysis. _Henry VIII_, however, _was_ printed in the First Folio and has always, as far as I know, been included in the vast majority of editions of the complete works, as some of the other posts in this thread indicate. The OP might have seen an edition where the editor decided to leave it out because of doubts about its authorship, but this would have been more of an eccentric personal decision than a regular practice. (In more recent times, the eccentric personal decisions have tended to run in the opposite direction, toward the inclusion of doubtfully-authored plays like _Edward III_ or _Arden of Faversham_.) FWIW, my experience of watching _Pericles_ in the theater is that at [the moment when Shakespeare enters the house](https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/pericles/act-3-scene-1/), you KNOW – the flow of the language and imagery is so different from the stiff bits that have come before. With TNK and Henry VIII it’s less obvious, both because Fletcher was a more skilled playwright than Wilkins-or-whoever, and because the playwrights seem to have collaborated more closely. Still, you can identify the differences in style if you know what to look for. Here’s [Act 1, Scene 1](https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/the-two-noble-kinsmen/act-1-scene-1/) of TNK, which is mostly or entirely by Shakespeare. You’ll notice that after the opening song, most of the lines are enjambed, meaning that they don’t end with a punctuation mark – breaks between sentences and clauses tend to occur mid-line instead. The author also tends to verb nouns (Give us the bones / Of our dead kings, That we may chapel them") and to employ startling, unconventional images (“no longer time / Than a dove’s motion when the head’s plucked off”). Compare [Act 2, Scene 5](https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/the-two-noble-kinsmen/act-2-scene-5/), which is probably Fletcher’s work: there’s some enjambment here, but it occurs less frequently, and the language and imagery are more conventional: a strong man is compared to Hercules, hidden virtue to the sun breaking through clouds. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2022, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/13 "2022-10-24T21:52:09Z")
Sort of tangentially, what’s the verdict on Troilius and Cressida? When I saw it, all of the bits about the Heroes seemed to be Fully Shakespeare, but the bits about the romance felt like a tacked-on placeholder, like Shakespeare was saying “Note to self: Write in a romance sub-plot here”, but that he never got to finish it. Is there any contemporary record, or scholarly consensus, about that play being unfinished? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2022, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/14 "2022-10-24T22:03:48Z")
> [@Mk\_VII](#): > > _Henry VIII_ is in my 1950s edition; _Two Noble Kinsmen_ is not. > [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > My father’s edition (1940’s) and mind (1980’s) both contain Henry VIII, but not Two Noble Kinsmen. > [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > _Henry VIII_, however, _was_ printed in the First Folio and has always, as far as I know, been included in the vast majority of editions of the complete works Likewise, my 1975 Weathervane edition (ISBN 0-517-20976-4) includes _Henry VIII_ but not _Two Noble Kinsmen_. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2022, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/15 "2022-10-24T22:06:39Z")
Possibly! Some texts of the first quarto of T&C, printed in 1609, begin with an epistle, evidently written by someone other than Shakespeare, that describes it as “a new play, never stalled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar.” If this is accurate, it may not have been staged at all, but, of course, we don’t know _why._ It’s possible that Shakespeare abandoned a work in progress, or that the Master of Revels refused to license it. It’s also possible that it had been performed in some private setting (noble household, university or law school) but not in public, or that it was performed in public after its publication but not before, or that the author of the epistle was simply making stuff up. And, just to make things more complicated, there’s another version of the same 1609 quarto edition that includes a title page that does say it was staged by the King’s Men at the Globe, as one might expect of a new Shakespeare play, and that version, oddly, seems to have been printed _first_. It’s super-weird. As is the whole play. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2022, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-shakespeare-plays-two-noble-kinsman-and-henry-viii-not-included-in-many-complete-shakespeare-works/973663/16 "2022-10-26T22:02:25Z")
My (actually grandma’s) 1950s edition also includes a scene from _Sir Thomas More._