Authorship
The manuscript is a complicated text containing many layers of collaborative writing, revision, and censorship. Scholars of the play think that it was originally written by playwrights Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle and some years later heavily revised by another team of playwrights, including Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker, and William Shakespeare.
The most common identifications for the six hands:
- HAND S – Anthony Munday, the original manuscript;
- HAND A – Henry Chettle;
- HAND B – Thomas Heywood;
- HAND C – A professional scribe who copied out a large section of the play;
- HAND D – William Shakespeare;
- HAND E – Thomas Dekker.
Munday, Chettle, Dekker, and Heywood wrote for the Admiral's Men during the years before and after 1600, which may strengthen the idea of a connection between the play and that company. Shakespeare, in this context, seems the odd man out. In his study of the play, Scott McMillin entertains the possibility that Shakespeare's contribution might have been part of the original text from the early 1590s, when Shakespeare may have written for the Lord Strange's Men.
Read more about this topic: Sir Thomas More (play)
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