The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 10.1875  Tuesday, 2 November 1999.

[1]     From:   Melissa D. Aaron <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >
        Date:   Monday, 01 Nov 1999 17:01:48 -0700
        Subj:   Re: SHK 10.1861 Plot Inquiry

[2]     From:   Pervez Rizvi <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >
        Date:   Tuesday, 2 Nov 1999 08:30:13 -0000
        Subj:   RE: SHK 10.1861 Plot Inquiry


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Melissa D. Aaron <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >
Date:           Monday, 01 Nov 1999 17:01:48 -0700
Subject: 10.1861 Plot Inquiry
Comment:        Re: SHK 10.1861 Plot Inquiry

>Can someone give me the source of the plot below?  It's likely from a
>short story.  I associate it with the early (late 40s) days of American
>television when classic short stories were often dramatized in half-hour
>shows.  My best recollection is:
>
>A man (in the 20th c., I think) discovers a manuscript containing an
>unknown Shakespearean play, written in S's hand. Unsophisticated, he
>thinks that the best way to cash in on his find is to copy the play and
>offer it to publishers and/or producers as his own work.  The play is
>rejected because of its "old-fashioned" style.  The manuscript itself
>(which would have been worth a fortune on the auction block) is somehow
>destroyed, and the finder ends up with nothing for all his efforts.
>
>Allan Blackman

A version of this (actually a reversal) is the idea behind Michael
Malone's novel *Foolscap*.

Melissa D. Aaron
Dept. of English and Foreign Languages
California Polytechnic State University at Pomona

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Pervez Rizvi <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >
Date:           Tuesday, 2 Nov 1999 08:30:13 -0000
Subject: 10.1861 Plot Inquiry
Comment:        RE: SHK 10.1861 Plot Inquiry

Sounds a bit like the (true) story of Lewis Theobald, who claimed to
have acquired three manuscripts of a Shakespeare play (almost certainly
Shakespeare and Fletcher's lost Cardenio) sometime around the 1720s.
Instead of publishing the manuscripts, he adapted them into a play
called Double Falsehood which was published and performed but never
became popular. The manuscripts are supposed to have perished in a fire
at the Drury Lane theatre.