Ms. of Sir Thomas More

Shakespeare may have written this page from the manuscript of the much-revised play, The Booke of Sir Thomas More, which the master of the revels refused to license. The 140 lines ascribed to Shakespeare treat More's role as sheriff of London in trying to placate an angry mob of apprentices rioting against foreigners on "Ill May Day" in 1517, an incendiary episode for Shakespeare's contemporaries and one which Tilney, the Master of the Revels, never allowed the players to perform .