V
In the winter of 1600-01, four plays from the repertoire of Philip
Henslowe's company, the Admiral's Men, found their way to London
publishers: The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, The Death
of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, Look About You, and The
Shoemakers' Holiday. In each case, Henslowe appears to have sold
the dramatists' foul papers.[39] This
suggests a course of events in which the playwrights delivered their foul
paper manuscripts to the company, that they were then transcribed for the
purpose of the promptbook, and that the originals thus superseded were in
due course released for publication. In January of 1601, the publisher
Thomas Bushell came into possession of another Admiral's play:
Doctor Faustus. The body of evidence presented in this essay
is incompatible with the commonly held view that Bushell was given a
memorially reconstructed version of the play. Instead, we now have reason
to believe that the manuscript
that Bushell had acquired, and that Valentine Simmes would subsequently
print, was the original foul papers of Marlowe and his collaborator.
