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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to the company, that they were then transcribed for the purpose of the promptbook, and that the originals thus superseded were in due course released for publication.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.
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