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Harley MS 7368
- Record Id:
- 040-002053222
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 040-002053222
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000935.0x000382
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165170029.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Harley MS 7368
- Title:
-
The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore, by Anthony Munday and others, possibly including William Shakespeare
- Scope & Content:
-
A collaborative manuscript play concerning the life of Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), Lord Chancellor, humanist and martyr. Likely to have been written in the 1590s, primarily by Anthony Munday (bap. 1560, d. 1633), playwright and translator, possibly aided by Henry Chettle (d. 1603-07), printer and playwright, with contributions by Thomas Dekker (c. 1572–1632), playwright and pamphleteer, possibly William Shakespeare (1564–1616), playwright and poet, and possibly Thomas Heywood (c. 1573–1641), playwright and poet. The copy has been censored by Edmund Tilney (1535/6–1610), courtier and Master of the Revels.
Primarily in the hand of Anthony Munday (‘Hand S’), the manuscript contains additions and contributions in six other hands:
‘Hand A’: identified as probably that of Henry Chettle.
‘Hand B’: identified as probably that of Thomas Heywood.
‘Hand C’: an unidentified professional scribe.
‘Hand D’: identified as probably that of William Shakespeare.
‘Hand E’: identified as probably that of Thomas Dekker.
Annotated in the hand of Edmund Tilney.
Contents:
ff. 1r-2v: Original vellum wrapper, recycled from a 15th-century copy of part of the 12th-century cleric Bernard of Pavia’s Compilatio prima, a collection of papal decrees and canon law (Jowett).
ff. 3r-5v: Original text, in Munday’s hand. Scene 1, line 1, to Scene 4, line 5.
f. 6r: Addition, in ‘Hand A’. Scene 13, line 53, to Scene 13, line 122.
f. 6v: Blank.
f. 7r: Addition, in ‘Hand B’. Scene 4, line 1 to Scene 4, line 81.
f. 7v: Addition, in ‘Hand C’. Scene 5, line 1 to Scene 6, line 3.
ff. 8r-9v: Addition, in ‘Hand D’. Scene 6, line 1, to Scene 6, line 165.
ff. 10r-11v: Original text, in Munday’s hand. Scene 6, line 166, to Scene 8, with replacement text.
f. 11v: Pasted addition, in ‘Hand C’. Scene 8, line 1, to Scene 8, line 21.
ff. 12r-13r: Addition, in ‘Hand C’. Scene 8, line 21, to Scene 8, line 221.
f. 13v: Addition, in ‘Hand C’ and ‘Hand E’. Scene 8, line 222, to Scene 8, line 91.
f. 14r: Original text, in Munday’s hand. Replacement text.
f. 14r: Pasted addition, in ‘Hand C’. Scene 9, line 1, to Scene 9, line 22.
f. 14v: Original text, in Munday’s hand. Scene 9, line 23, to Scene 9, line 96.
ff. 15r-15v: Original text, in Munday’s hand. Scene 9, line 97, to Scene 9, line 264.
ff. 16r-16v: Addition, in ‘Hand B’. Scene 9, line 312, to Scene 9, line 366.
ff. 17r-22r: Original text, in Munday’s hand. Scene 9, line 265, to Scene 17, line 128.
f. 22v Blank.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Harley Collection
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "040-002053222", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Harley MS 7368: The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore, by Anthony Munday and others, possibly including William Shakespeare" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002045828
040-002053222 - Is part of:
- Harley MS 1-7661 : Harley Manuscripts
Harley MS 7368 : The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore, by Anthony Munday and others, possibly including William Shakespeare - Hierarchy:
- 032-002045828[7378]/040-002053222
- Container:
- View / search within Archive / Collection: Harley MS 1-7661
- Record Type (Level):
- File
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://iiif.bl.uk/uv/#?manifest=https://bl.digirati.io/iiif/ark:/81055/vdc_100165170029.0x000001
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1590
- End Date:
- 1604
- Date Range:
- 1590-1604
- Era:
- CE
- Place of Origin:
- England.
- Access:
- Restrictions to access apply please consult British Library staff
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Paper, with stab-stitching holes.
Dimensions: 190-210 x 290-320 mm.
Foliation: ff. 22. 13 original leaves are supplemented by 7 inserted leaves, and 2 additional pasted slips.
Binding: Now mounted in cases. Remains of vellum wrapper (ff. 1r-2v). Formerly (post-1728) bound with Harley MS 7367.
Script: Seven secretary hands.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
Edmund Tilney (1535/6–1610), courtier and Master of the Revels: annotator.
John Murray (1670-1748), book collector: former owner.
Thomas Hearne (bap. 1678, d. 1735), antiquary and diarist: borrowed, 1727.
The Harley Collection, formed by Robert Harley (1661-1724), 1st earl of Oxford and Mortimer, politician, and Edward Harley (1689-1741), 2nd earl of Oxford and Mortimer, book collector and patron of the arts.
Edward Harley bequeathed the library to his widow, Henrietta Cavendish, née Holles (1694-1755) during her lifetime and thereafter to their daughter, Margaret Cavendish Bentinck (1715-1785), duchess of Portland; the manuscripts were sold by the Countess and the Duchess in 1753 to the nation for £10,000 under the Act of Parliament that also established the British Museum; the Harley manuscripts form one of the foundation collections of the British Library.
- Publications:
-
A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1808), vol. 3, p. 528.
‘Harley MS 7368, Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450-1700, ed. Peter Beal, online: http://www.celm-ms.org.uk/repositories/british-library-harley-7000.html [accessed 29 May 2019].
Giles Dawson, ‘Shakespeare’s Handwriting’, Shakespeare Survey, vol. 42 (1990), 119-128.
Reverend Alexander Dyce, ed. Sir Thomas More (London: Shakespeare Society, 1844).
Vittorio Gabrieli and Giorgio Melchiori, ed. Sir Thomas More (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990).
W.W. Greg, ed. The Book of Sir Thomas More, Malone Society Reprints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911).
W.W. Greg, Dramatic Documents from the Elizabethan Playhouses: Stage Plots, Actors’ Parts, Prompt Books, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1955).
T.H. Howard-Hill, ed. Shakespeare and ‘Sir Thomas More’: Essays on the Play and its Shakespearean Interest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
Grace Ioppolo, Dramatists and their Manuscripts in the Age of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton and Heywood (London: Routledge, 2006).
John Jowett, ed. Sir Thomas More (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2011).
Nina Levine, ‘Citizens' Games: Differentiating Collaboration and “Sir Thomas More”’, Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 58, issue 1 (Spring 2007), 31-64.
Thomas Merriam, ‘Determining a Date’, Notes and Queries, vol. 61, issue 2 (2014), 260-265.
Lois Potter, The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 271-74.
Paul Werstine, Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Paul Werstine and the Folger Shakespeare Library, ‘Shakespeare's handwriting: Hand D in The Booke of Sir Thomas More’, Shakespeare Documented, online: https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/exhibition/document/shakespeares-handwriting-hand-d-booke-sir-thomas-more [accessed 29 May 2019].
Martin Wiggins and Catherine Richardson, ‘Sir Thomas More’, in British Drama 1533-1642: A Catalogue. Vol. IV, 1598-1602 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 278-86.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)