FT.com / Arts & Weekend – The play wot Shakespeare wrote: How often do you hear “Sir Thomas More” mentioned, let alone staged? Yes, I’m not talking about the man, but about the play about the man. A play that Shakespeare afficionados may already know what co-written by our favorite man in Stratford. Although this play may never have been staged in Shakespeare’s time, it is the only surviving play to feature Shakespeare’s own authenticated handwriting.
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I tried to write a long comment on the handwriting topic, being a handwriting analyst myself. I couldn’t get the system to post it. The short version is that there is an insufficient sample of exemplar writing to declare the Hand D contribution that of WS.
Signature writing is not used for comparison to nonsignature writing. The possible words “by me” above the signature in Will’s will is just not enough. I believe that Hand D is probably that of WS, but I hold that based on literary analysis and circumstantial evidence rather than on the conclusion of a handwriting analyst.
Opens up a whole can of worms does this.
We need to remember there will certainly be chunks of ‘the’ plays which came from other writers (or actors) and that our modern view of copywrite and authorship was totally alien to Willy and his contemporaries.