A Yorkshire Tragedy, first edition

In 1608, Thomas Pavier published the first quarto of A Yorkshire Tragedy bearing the attribution “Acted by his Maiesties Players at the Globe. / Written by VV. Shakspeare.” The play was previously entered in the Stationers' Register, in an entry also including Shakespeare's name. The combination of his explicit name, playing company and theater makes this one of the firmest print attributions to Shakespeare in his lifetime, although most scholars now accept it as a Middleton play.

The quarto was printed by Richard Braddock and includes a second title heading on signature A2r, which reads “ALL’S ONE, / OR, / One of the foure Plaies in one, called / a York-shire Tragedy: as it was plaid / by the Kings Maiesties Plaiers.” The implication that this play was part of a four-play cycle or entertainment may explain its length-- A Yorkshire Tragedy is the shortest extant play from the professional early modern theater. The second title page further implies that it is the larger entertainment that is called A Yorkshire Tragedy, and that the play published here is in fact titled All’s One.

The story dramatises the 1605 scandal surrounding Walter Calverley’s murder of two of his children and attempted murder of his wife, and hews closely to a pamphlet published in that year. The same story was dramatised by George Wilkins in the company’s contemporary The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, and at least one critic has suggested that the two plays may have had a closer relationship in the King’s Men repertory.

Most scholars now accept that the play is the sole work of Thomas Middleton (though some continue to suggest that the first scene, which is narratively and tonally distinct from the rest of the short play, may be by another (Sharpe 2013, 704-10).) The Shakespeare attribution may suggest that Shakespeare had another role in the Four Plays, but this is only speculation.