British Library Posts Digitized Manuscript Believed To Be In Shakespeare's Handwriting

The British Library won't go so far as to say that the manuscript they've recently digitized and posted on their website absolutely contains the handwriting of William Shakespeare, just that three pages "have been identified as Shakespeare's, based on handwriting, spelling, vocabulary and the images and ideas expressed."

And if those factors add up to reality, the library now offers anyone with Internet access a glimpse of the only known surviving play script containing The Bard's handwriting.

Funnily enough, the play in question isn't even his. SIR THOMAS MORE, about the life of Henry VIII's chancellor, was originally written by Anthony Munday sometime between 1596 and 1601. However, the Master of the Revels, Edmund Tilney, whose role included stage censorship, refused to allow it to be performed. It's suspected he was worried that the play's depiction of riots would provoke civil unrest on the streets of London.

After the Queen's death in 1603, Shakespeare was brought in to revise the script, along with three other playwrights. His additions include 147 lines in the middle of the action, in which More is called on to address an anti-immigration riot on the streets of London. The Lord Chancellor delivers a speech a mob demanding so-called "strangers" be banished:

The passage reads, in part:

You'll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in lyam
To slip him like a hound; alas, alas, say now the King,
As he is clement if th'offender mourn,
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you: whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbour? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, Spain or Portugal,
Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers, would you be pleas'd
To find a nation of such barbarous temper
That breaking out in hideous violence
Would not afford you an abode on earth.
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, not that the elements
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But charter'd unto them? What would you think
To be us'd thus? This is the strangers' case
And this your mountainish inhumanity.

In addition to Shakespeare, there are additions written by Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood and an anonymous copyist. There is no evidence the play was ever performed or published.

Click here to see all four pages on The British Library's website.

Of course, plays are meant to be acted, not just read. Below is Sir Thomas More's speech as performed by the great Sir Ian McKellen.