Add MS 64078

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: anonymous extracts from 'Henry IV, Part 1', in a manuscript containing notes, attributed to Thomas Harriot, on metaphysics and theology; circa 1594-circa 1603. Copies. The extracts in English, the notes mostly Latin. The Shakespeare extracts, transcribed, volume reversed, on the final flyleaf and paste-down (ff. 47v, 48 and 47 respectively), correspond to approximately sixty-two lines of the Oxford Standard Authors text, edited by W. J. Craig, (1891), as follows: Act I, sc. i, lines 17, 18, 82, 85, 98, 99; sc. iii, lines 1-4, 6-13; Act II, sc. i, lines 55-57, 90, 91, 93-95; Act III, sc. i, lines 13, 16-20, 27-33, 133, 134; sc. ii, lines 40-43, 45, 50-52, 54, 56, 57, 81-83, 124, 125; and Act IV, sc. iii, lines 8, 10-13. That the immediate copy-text was not the first Quarto of 1598 or any subsequent contemporary edition is suggested by non-consecutive ordering of lines within individual passages and the occurrence of otherwise unique readings. Descriptive headings (eg. on f. 47v 'of a Temperat man') added by the compiler and his recasting of speeches into the third person show that these extracts were intended for inclusion under topics in a commonplace book. The upper time-limit for their transcription may be suggested by the substitution at III. ii. 54, of 'Queene' for 'crowned King', which is perhaps a reference to Elizabeth I (d.1603). The lower limit is set by the date of 1594 given to the main work in the manuscript, a series (ff. 3-11) of metaphysical and theological notes in Latin, headed (f. 3) De Deo, that is copied in the same hand as the Shakespearian extracts. This heading was subsequently expanded as follows: - (1) 'Notae ex discursu Thomae Harrioti (Ut Credo) [De Deo]; 'Et Prima Causa & de multis aliis rebus'; - (2) 'Notae ex discussionibus Sorbonicis. Parisi 1594'. Further notes of a similar nature are copied in the same hand on the front cover (f. i). Following the main tract occurs a leaf (ff. 12, 12v) comprising notes, mainly in Latin, on related topics, transcribed in the hand that added headings (1) and (2) above on f. 3, and then thirty-four stubs (ff. 13-46) of excised leaves. On the front paste-down (f. 1v, vol. rev.) occurs part of a letter to 'my Lord' copied or drafted in a female hand of the later 17th century. The back vellum cover (f. ii verso) bears among other jottings the legend 'No 27 DH', written in an 18th- or 19th-century hand. See W. H. Kelliher, 'Contemporary manuscript extracts from Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I', English Manuscript Studies, vol. 1 (1988), pp. 133-181. Purchased, with the aid of grants from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Pilgrim Trust, at Sotheby's, 18 Dec. 1986, lot 14.

Paper; ff. ii+48. 295 x 200mm. Eight gatherings of six leaves each, collated i-viii6 (i2, iii1-viii4 stubs). Watermark: a pot bearing the letters 'CC' (not found in Heawood). Contemporary vellum covers (ff. i, ii) subsequently repaired.

A complete facsimile, incorporating ultra-violet photographs of the Shakespeare extracts, is available for consultation, ref. MS. Facs. *1033.