Shakespeare’s Manuscripts

There aren’t any.

Once upon a time, of course, there must have been quite a few. The man pretty much had to put pen to paper at some point. What happened to them? We don’t know.

Some—or many—may have gone up in flames when the Globe burned down in 1613. Others were very likely regarded as waste paper, which was commonly used to wrap things in shops (perhaps someone’s fish & chips came wrapped in Hamlet), to light fires (or to coax banked-down fires into new life), and to stock privies with toilet paper.

There is one manuscript that might contain passages by Shakespeare: Sir Thomas More, in the British Library (Harleian MS. 7368). A growing number of scholars accept a few of the additions to the play as authentically Shakespearean—and there has been much speculation that Shakespeare himself may have written them into the manuscript (which was mostly written by other people).