SHAKESPEARE: HENRY IV, PART 1

MS 1627
MS Short Title SHAKESPEARE: HENRY IV, PART 1
Text WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: HENRY IV, PART 1, ACT II, SCENES 1 AND 3. A LITERARY PARALLEL OR ACTOR'S PART
Description MS in English on paper, Oxford or London, ca. 1586-1600, 1 f., 18x12 cm, single column, (16x10 cm), 29-32 lines of blank verse in a good, fluent, full English secretary script, ruled around in red ink with speakers' names outside the rules, no dividers but with stage directions boxed.
Binding Oxford, 1586 or later, calf with triple blind fillets, original sewing on 4 cords with characteristic Oxford hatch-marks in blind on the lower edges, with the Shakespeare leaf as 2 endleaves, now separated.
Context Endleaves of Homer: Odyssea, 3rd edition, C. Gessner, ed., Genève 1586, Adams 794.
Provenance 1. Bloomsbury, London, 14.1.1988:27; 2. Patrick King, Stratford, Bulletin 15(1989):96; 3. Quaritch cat. 1120(1989):89; 4. Pickering & Chatto, London, cat. 676:105, and cat. 693:19; 5. Sotheby's 21.7.1992:20; 4. Quaritch and Pickering & Chatto, London.
Commentary The only extant contemporary literary parallel or Actor's part in manuscript of any of Shakespeare's plays. Only 2 more manuscripts from Shakespeare's lifetime are known: (1) 2 stanzas of Venus and Adonis copied by Henry Collins before Dec. 1596, in Cambridge University Library, MS 3.29 F. 63v, and (2) the curious 'Dering Manuscript', ca. 1613-23, conflating 1 Henry IV, and 2 Henry IV by selecting consecutive scenes, in Folger-Shakespeare Library.
Published Freeman, Arthur: The "Tapster Manuscript": An Analogue of Shakespeare's Henry the Fourth Part One; in: Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths, eds: English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700. Vol. 6. London 1997, pp. 93-105.
Exhibited The Bibliophile Society of Norway's 75th anniversary. Bibliofilklubben 75 år. Jubileumsutstilling Bok og Samler, Universitetsbliblioteket 27.2 - 26.4.1997.
Mentioned H.R. Woudhuysen: Manuscripts at Auction: January 1989 to December 1990; in: Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths, eds: English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700. Vol. 3. London 1992.
Place of origin England
Dates ca 1586 - 1600