Excerpt from The Book of Sir Thomas More
Besides the two editions mentioned there exists a photographic facsimile of the manuscript prepared by Mr. R. B. Fleming and issued in a series of Tudor Facsimile d104s. It is the full size of the original and leaves nothing to be desired in the way of technical execution, but of course the covering of tracing paper and the staining of the margins render many passages hopeless for the photographer. What purpose of general utility it was thought that a facsimile of which a large part is absolutely illegible could serve, I do not know, but to me it has proved invaluable, indeed without its help I should have hardly found the present work possible. It is also incidentally of value in preserving intact one or two passages which have since been damaged in the manuscript.
It remains to say something as to the present edition. The rules which govern the editing of the Malone Society’s texts of course forbade any attempt to patch up a compromise between the original and revised versions of the play. On the other hand there were obvious drawbacks to printing the manu script exactly as it stood. After some hesitation therefore I determined to print first the whole of the original text so far as it has been preserved, and then to gather together at the end all the various attempts at revision in so far as they were made on separate leaves and did not merely consist of trifling additions or directions written in the margins of the original sheets. These insertions I have printed in the order in which they at present stand in the manuscript, and have numbered them I - VI. The hand in which any particular passage is written I have indicated in the headline and more minutely in the notes. Any addition or alteration (of a whole word or more) made in a hand different from that of the text of that passage, is distinguished by the substitution of small capitals for lower case type; specific information concerning the hand being added in the notes.
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