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Few sets of foul papers actually exist from the era in question. Of the relatively small number of dramas that are extant in manuscript,E. K. Chambers provides an extensive (though not exhaustive) list of fifty plays and masques in manuscript or manuscript fragments; Chambers, Vol. 4, pp. 404-6. the majority are from the ;'' '' Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt .''
In a rare direct reference to foul papers and fair copies, Robert Daborne mentions both in a November 1613 letter to theatrical manager Philip Henslowe : "I send you the foul sheet and the fair I was writing"Spelling, punctuation modernized; Chambers, Vol. 3, p. 194; Halliday, p. 174. — which appears to indicate that Daborne prepared a fair copy of his working drafts as he wrote.

The best example of a set of foul papers from Shakespeare's era is the MS. of '' Sir Thomas More .'' Most of the play texts in the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays are thought to have been set into type from foul papers that were sometimes used as promt-books by the Prompter — which seems to show that Shakespeare rarely if ever prepared his own fair copies of his plays.


NOTES



SOURCES

  • Chambers, E. K. ''The Elizabethan Stage.'' 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.

  • Halliday, F. E. ''A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964.'' Baltimore, Penguin, 1964.



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