VI - ILL MAY DAY. SCENES FROM THE PLAY OF SIR THOMAS MORE

Summary

NOTE ON THE TEXT

The following is an attempt to supply a consecutive and more or less readable text of the insurrection scenes of More after they had undergone extensive revision and were in the form in which, so it is contended, they were submitted to the Censor. His comments thereon will be found in the footnotes. The original is written in four several hands which differ widely from one another not only in appearance but in their habits of spelling, punctuation and all graphic details. Only complete normalization could have produced a uniform text, and in this the whole character of the original would have been lost. Some lack of uniformity in the following pages was judged a lesser evil: at the same time an attempt has been made to avoid mere eccentricity. The very erratic distinction in the use of English and Italian script, in which two out of the four hands indulge, has been ignored; contractions, particularly common in D, have been expanded. In the use of capital letters and to a lesser extent of punctuation some latitude has been allowed: for instance speeches have been made to begin with a capital and end with a stop and proper names have been capitalized: at the same time it has been sought to preserve the general usage of each hand in these respects.