Sir Thomas More (play) - Evidence For Shakespeare's Contribution

Evidence For Shakespeare's Contribution

The suggestion that passages in Hand D were by Shakespeare was first made in 1871 by Richard Simpson. It was supported and disputed over a long period on the evidence of literary style and Shakespeare's distinctive handwriting. The lines in Hand D "are now generally accepted as the work of Shakespeare." If the Shakespearean identification is correct, these three pages represent the only surviving examples of Shakespeare's handwriting, aside from a few signatures on documents. The manuscript, with its numerous corrections, deletions and insertions, enables us to glimpse Shakespeare in the process of composition.

The evidence for identifying Shakespeare as Hand D is of various types:

• Handwriting similar to the six existing signatures of Shakespeare;
• Spellings characteristic of Shakespeare;
• Stylistic elements similar to Shakespeare's acknowledged works.

The original perceptions of Simpson and Spedding in 1871-2 were based on literary style and content and political outlook, rather than palaeographic and orthographic considerations. Consider one example of what attracted attention to the style of Hand D.

First, from Sir Thomas More, Addition IIc, 84-7:

For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,

With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,

Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes

Would feed on one another.

Next, from Coriolanus, I,i,184-8:

What's the matter,

That in these several places of the city

You cry against the noble Senate, who

(Under the gods) keep you in awe, which else

Would feed on one another?

Thirdly, Troilus and Cressida, I,iii,121-4:

And appetite, an universal wolf

(So doubly seconded with will and pwer)

Must make perforce an universal prey,

And last eat up himself.

Finally, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, II,i,26-32:

3rd Fisherman:...Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.

1st Fisherman: Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up

the little ones. I can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly

as to a whale: 'a plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him,

and at last devour them all at a mouthful.

Many features like this in the Hand D addition to Sir Thomas More first attracted the attention of Shakespeare scholars and readers, and led to more intensive study from a range of specialized perspectives.