Unvolving the Mysteries of the Melbourne Manuscript

The Melbourne Manuscript is an anonymous Stuart manuscript preserving 144 lines of a play-scene in draft form, which was discarded and used to wrap a packet of letters. This essay produces a new diplomatic edition of the manuscript, updating Antony Hammond and Doreen DelVecchio’s 1988 text, and the first modernized, annotated edition. It gives an explanation of the editorial decisions associated with both versions. The essay introduces the context of the manuscript’s discovery and the scholarly debate surrounding its authorship, summarizing the key arguments to date and putting forward a new suggestion. The authorship debate has dominated academic discussion of this manuscript to date; this essay offers the first full-scale literary analysis of this richly worked literary text.