Hand D and the Sir Thomas More Manuscript

The British Library’s claim

In March 2016, the British Library announced a project to digitize its collection of early modern manuscripts, one of which is the collaborative play The Book of Sir Thomas More. According to the British Library’s website at the time, three pages of that play, designated “the Hand D Additions,” constitute “Shakespeare’s only surviving literary manuscript.”

The news release made headlines across the world, The Guardian (15 March 2016), Newsweek (15 March 2016), The Independent (15 March 2016), and, among many local NPR stations, New Hampshire Public Radio (16 March 2016), which ran it under the headline “Only Script In Shakespeare’s Handwriting Urges Compassion For Migrants,” noting that the British Library “has put online the only surviving scrap of a script in Shakespeare’s handwriting, a scene that finds eerily poignant echoes in today’s arguments about refugees and immigration on both sides of the Atlantic.”

The timing was ironic. As the British Library was announcing its digitization project, Diana Price’s research paper on Hand D was published in the University of Florence’s Journal of Early Modern Studies, JEMS 5. The book’s thesis is relevant to the Hand D controversy. From the JEMS article (329–330):

Without the three pages written by Hand D, Shakespeare’s biographical documentation does not include any literary paper trails; that is, he left behind no hard evidence during his lifetime that could support the statement that his occupation was writing. . . . In other words, Shakespeare is the only alleged writer from the time period for whom one must rely on posthumous evidence to support his professional activities as a writer.

Consequently, Price forwarded to the British Library a link to the just-published research paper and expressed the hope that the Library would consider issuing a correction. Unfortunately, the Library decided to leave its categorical claim on its website. The British Library is a respected institution, and the result of the widespread press coverage is that “Shakespeare’s handwriting” in the Sir Thomas More manuscript is well on its way to being fixed in the public perception.

The control-sample problem

For more than 100 years, the Shakespearean academic community has attempted to identify Hand D’s handwriting as Shakespeare’s. But there has always been a problem. The criteria employed to determine the penman of a questioned document (in this case the Hand D Additions) start with establishing a control sample in “the same general class as the questioned writing and as nearly as possible of the same date” (Osborn, 18–19). The “general class” rule ensures an apples-to-apples comparison: that the writings being compared belong to the same species, signature to signature, dramatic manuscript to dramatic manuscript, and so on (JEMS 332). Other “discriminating elements” used by a Forensic Document Examiner involve comparing individual letters and combinations of letters when “written under comparable circumstances” (Huber and Headrick 1999, 249). Yet, as Price points out:

most of the Hand D literature continues to refer only to the early palaeographic case, without comparing [E. Maunde] Thompson’s methods and standards to those of the FDE. (JEMS, 334)

Various Shakespeare scholars have proposed that arguments of palaeography, style, and orthography can converge to support the claim that Hand D is Shakespeare’s. However, arguments based on style and spelling are no substitute for the forensic testing of handwriting. Even if arguments based on stylometrics could prove that parts of Sir Thomas More were written by the author of Hamlet, one would still require a valid control sample to prove that the questioned documents (the Hand D Additions) were penned by Shakespeare himself. The penman might have been, for example, a playhouse scribe who copied pages of dialogue for use in the theater.

The palaeographical argument requires a control sample of handwriting, but in this case that “control sample” is comprised of six irregularly spelled and shaped signatures. The six signatures do not fulfil the “general class” rule of being the same species as a dramatic manuscript. Nor are all the signatures known to be in Shakespeare’s hand; some authorities explain that some of the signatures were likely penned by an attorney’s clerk (Thomas and Cox, 34).

Now consider the Folger Shakespeare Library’s website on the subject. The Folger reproduces the digital image of a Hand D Addition and headline, with acknowledgment to the British Library. But readers who scroll down to the Folger section will find this:

However, we don’t really know what Shakespeare’s handwriting looks like. Six signatures of Shakespeare, found on four legal documents, are the only handwriting that we know for certain are his. This is too small a sample size to make any sort of reliable comparison.

So despite the British Library’s categorical headline, the Folger acknowledges the deficiency in the handwriting argument: the absence of a valid control sample. If the handwriting case cannot be proved because there is no valid control sample, then any arguments “converging” on the case for handwriting cannot compensate for that deficiency. Prof. Paul Werstine summarizes the insufficiency:

Authorship of the work is credited to Hand D, to whom Shakespeare’s works can be assigned only through an argument from ‘cumulative evidence’ – all of which evidence has been dismissed as inconclusive by Shakespeareans themselves. (1999, p. 141)

The quiet downgrade

The British Library suffered a cyber-attack in October 2023, and the links to the Hand D announcement and blog page were broken. As of July 2026, access had not been restored, and previous links to the Hand D announcement remain broken. It has therefore proved difficult to pinpoint precisely when the Library’s language about the Hand D Additions began to change. But by 8 July 2020, the British Library had added qualifiers to its description of the play Sir Thomas More, catalogued as Harley MS 7368:

Title: The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore, by Anthony Munday and others, possibly including William Shakespeare

Scope & Content: A collaborative manuscript play concerning the life of Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), Lord Chancellor, humanist and martyr. Likely to have been written in the 1590s, primarily by Anthony Munday (bap. 1560, d. 1633), playwright and translator, possibly aided by Henry Chettle (d. 1603–07), printer and playwright, with contributions by Thomas Dekker (c. 1572–1632), playwright and pamphleteer, possibly William Shakespeare (1564–1616), playwright and poet, and possibly Thomas Heywood (c. 1573–1641), playwright and poet. The copy has been censored by Edmund Tilney (1535/6–1610), courtier and Master of the Revels.

Primarily in the hand of Anthony Munday (‘Hand S’), the manuscript contains additions and contributions in six other hands: ‘Hand A’: identified as probably that of Henry Chettle. ‘Hand B’: identified as probably that of Thomas Heywood. ‘Hand C’: an unidentified professional scribe. ‘Hand D’: identified as probably that of William Shakespeare. ‘Hand E’: identified as probably that of Thomas Dekker.

Significantly, the categorical claim had been downgraded to “possibly” and “probably.” That change was made quietly, with no fanfare, no global headlines.

(Note: the caption under the Hand D page image claims that Hand D was first “identified” as Shakespeare’s in 1871, but in that instance the word “identified” refers to Richard Simpson’s published guess that Hand D might be Shakespeare’s, an idea he ran up the flagpole, as cited by Pollard in his 1923 collection of essays, pp. 6–8.)

There is more. In the course of attempts to locate the original claims about Hand D, searches in the online catalogue of publications focused on various aspects of the Sir Thomas More manuscript yielded (surprisingly) Price’s 2016 JEMS paper. Price’s research paper is not the only skeptical publication listed in the BL catalogue, but as of July 2026 the BL has not acknowledged the fundamental flaw in the case for handwriting.

Why it matters

The announcement made in 2016 by the British Library has far-reaching consequences. The media headlines legitimized the claim that Shakespeare left behind a manuscript of dramatic scenes in his handwriting, a personal literary paper trail. The academic community has taken advantage of that. Scholars such as Prof. Stanley Wells evidently assume they can continue to make the categorical statements, without qualification, and without even a footnote. Here is what he published in 2023:

… his only surviving literary manuscript, the 180 or so lines that he is believed to have added to the multi-authored play of Sir Thomas More . . . This is the only literary manuscript, indeed the only example of Shakespeare’s handwriting except for a few signatures on legal documents, to have survived. (57–58)

Note that Prof. Wells acknowledges that only “a few signatures” survive to compare to the three pages of questioned handwriting.

Academia has a strong motivation to assign Hand D to Shakespeare:

In his preface, [A.W.] Pollard explained that if it is proved that Shakespeare wrote the Hand D portion of Sir Thomas More, then the theories proposing Oxford, Derby, or Bacon as the author come ‘crashing to the ground’ (1923, v). There’s his agenda, but the subtext is just as significant. If Pollard thought that Hand D could settle the authorship question once and for all, then he was acknowledging that Shakespeare left behind no evidence during his lifetime that proves he was a writer by profession. Otherwise, Pollard would not have needed Hand D to settle the debate. (Price, JEMS, 330)

The case is summarized:

Shakespeare’s handwritten leaves in the Sir Thomas More manuscript would fill an evidentiary vacuum: If Hand D is a written specimen of Shakespeare’s, he not only left behind a literary paper trail, he left one of the highest quality, a manuscript in his handwriting, whether ‘foul papers’ or authorial fair copy. However, the evidence and the arguments based on handwriting, spellings, and assumptions about ‘foul papers’ do not support such conclusions. The handwriting case for Shakespeare as D cannot be made on the available evidence. (Price, JEMS, 348)

Shakespeare is the only writer of consequence from the time period who left behind during his lifetime not one literary paper trail, hard evidence that could support the statement “he was a writer.” And the theory that the Hand D Additions constitute “Shakespeare’s only surviving literary manuscript” remains wishful thinking.

Works cited

Huber, R.A., and A.M. Headrick. Handwriting Identification: Facts and Fundamentals. New York: CRC Press, 1999.
Morris, Ron. Forensic Handwriting Identification: Fundamental Concepts and Principles. London: Academic Press, 2000.
Osborn, Albert S. Questioned Documents: A Study of Questioned Documents with an Outline of Methods. Rochester: Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Company, 1910.
Pollard, Alfred W. Shakespeare’s Hand in The Play of Sir Thomas More: Papers by Alfred W. Pollard, W.W. Greg, E. Maunde Thompson, J. Dover Wilson, and R.W. Chambers. 1923. Reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
Price, Diana. Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography: New Evidence of an Authorship Problem. Paperback edition. Cleveland, OH: shakespeare-authorship.com, 2013.
Price, Diana. “Hand D and Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Literary Paper Trail.” Journal of Early Modern Studies 5 (University of Florence, March 2016): 329–352. PDF.
Price, Diana. “William Shakespeare: Syrian Refugee Advocate?” American Thinker, 6 April 2016.
Thomas, David, and Jane Cox. Shakespeare in the Public Records. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1985.
Wells, Stanley. What Was Shakespeare Really Like? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
Werstine, Paul. “Shakespeare More or Less: A. W. Pollard and Twentieth-Century Shakespeare Editing.” Florilegium 16 (1999): 125–45.