Fact 203: Are there any surviving play manuscripts that contain William Shakespeare's handwriting?

Fact 203: Are there any surviving play manuscripts that contain William Shakespeare's handwriting?

The answer is surprisingly yes, there is only one (this in it self is surprising because Shakespeare used a scribes to make copies of his completed play manuscripts) this manuscript is in fact the only surviving literary, play manuscript that contains William Shakespeare's handwriting and only on three pages of the manuscript have been identified and professionally conformed to be Shakespeare's handwriting. The play manuscript is called The Book of Sir Thomas More, and it is owned by the British Library.

The play was originally first written by Anthony Munday (the amount of times I had to change it back from Monday to Munday, is impressive to say the least).

Anthony Munday wrote the play sometime between 1596 and 1601 although it was not allowed to be preformed because the Master of the Revels, (Edmund Tilney), refused to allow the play of Sir Thomas More to be performed.

 it is thought that this was was because Edmund Tilney was worried that the play could provoke riots and civil unrest in the streets of London.

 The play is about the life of Sir Thomas More born on the 7th of February 1478 and (was executed and) died on the 6th of July 1535, Thomas More was a Tudor lawyer who was sentenced to death for refusing to recognise Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the Church in England.

The reason Shakespeare's handwriting is in the play is because After Queen Elizabeth I death in 1603, Shakespeare and three other playwrights were chosen to edit the play manuscript. Shakespeare’s additions include 147 lines in the middle of the action scene, in which Thomas More is called on to address an anti-immigration riot on the streets of London Shakespeare writes a gripping speech for the actor of Thomas More to says to the aggressive mob (while facing the audience), the crowd are calling for the immigrations "strangers" to be banished, the actor of More's relies on human empathy to make his point: if the rioters were suddenly banished to a foreign land, they would become "wretched strangers" too, and equally vulnerable to attack.