Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/233

 "Sir Thomas More" 227 spere's, the question of date remains a difficulty; but, before dealing with that, there are other important matters to be considered. Dr. Greg, in his scholarly and thorough introduction to his edition of the play for the Malone Society, declared that, of the five handwritings to be seen in the alterations to the MS (exclu- sive of Tyllney's), one the one he entitled " C" was that of a scribe, not of an author. With that view I am in entire accord, for reasons that have nothing in common with those actuating Dr. Greg. He was judging by the character of the handwriting I am swayed by the fact that the work in this man's hand is identifiable, on the score of style, with that first of one and then of another of the writers of other portions of the play. This leaves us then apparently with one original author (Mundy) and four revisers. If that view be justified, we have here an extra- ordinary example of the way in which an Elizabethan drama was liable to be hacked by a whole army of revisers; but I shall endeavor to show reasons why that view is not likely to be the right one. Prior to Dr. Greg's edition, of which I cannot speak in terms of too high praise, it had always been assumed that the numer- ous alterations in "Sir Thomas More" had been made in re- sponse to the demand by the Master of the Revels, Sir E. Tyllney, that a portion of the play should be omitted; but the play's latest editor advanced the view, which was, but should not have been, entirely novel, that the MS as we have it is as it was submitted to the Master of the Revels, and that the play was never acted. It may be considered a drawback to the adoption of that view that it implies that all the alterations were made before the play was submitted; but, for all that, it is an infinitely more satisfactory view than the one formerly invariably held, inasmuch as Shak- spere's alteration of the insurrection scene would never have been undertaken after Sir Edmund Tyllney's definite injunction to omit that scene, and because also it must have been recog- nised that his demands could not possibly be met without the entire ruin of the play. I therefore unhesitatingly agree with Dr. Greg on this point. It is true that in one place in the margin of the MS occurs the name of the actor who was to play the part