'The fowle papers of the Authors'

Whether writing alone or in collaboration, dramatists began by writing out their draft, called ‘foul papers’, a term now used generically and incorrectly to mean the last complete, rather than completed, draft of a play in the handwriting of the author or authors. Paul Werstine, among others, has argued that there are no extant foul-copy early modern dramatic manuscripts and attacks Greg’s conception of the company book. However, as N. W. Bawcutt has persuasively demonstrated, Werstine ignores or misinterprets significant evidence in dramatic manuscripts of the period. ¹ The writer who gave the title of ‘Book’ to the wrappers for the Sir Thomas More and John a Kent and John a Cumber manuscripts may have assumed that each text could or would be submitted to the censor, thereby coming to serve as an official licensed copy. Whether that writer also assumed that the text would be used in performance or stored for safekeeping would have depended on a variety of factors, including the practices or experiences of various theatrical personnel. What that writer, and probably the numerous others of those manuscript wrappers which are now lost, means is that the text is as complete as it needs to be at the time.