The Ms. Play, Anna Bullen

Abstract

An anonymous MS. play, Anna Bullen, now at the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery [HM973] and hitherto unnoticed, offers, upon examination, interesting similarities to the play upon the same subject by John Banks, Vertue Betray'd: Or, Anna Bullen. The MS. is written upon paper bearing an eighteenth-century watermark, and is written in an eighteenth-century hand. The MS. seems to be, not an original play, but either a copy or an adaptation of some other play, as is shown: (1) by the careful noting of an hiatus of one or two lines in the first speech by Northumberland in Act i, Scene 2 [verso leaf 5]; (2) by the scratching out of occasional words and the substitution of the proper synonym, asExpos'd and naked to the probing light [verso leaf 25];and (3) by the frequent complete or incomplete erasure of errors in wording, orthography, and chirography.