Interesting piece I came across in the Guardian (I know, I know…), about the only surviving piece of handwriting from Shakespeare. It comes from the play The Book of Sir Thomas Moore.
The original play, written by Anthony Munday, was a controversial work which was banned by the censor Edmund Tilney because of fears that it would provoke public unrest. After Queen Elizabeth 1’s death in 1603, though, the play was revisited with a number of writers including Shakespeare brought in to rewrite the play.
The speech, by Shakespeare, that survives, is of Moore rebuking an anti-immigrant crowd in London (England had a wave of Hugenot refugees from France).
A Freelancer in London 