Sh.'s Handwriting (1879, Reviews and Discussions); B. Nicholson, The Plays of S. T. M. and Hamlet (1884, 6 N. Q. x. 423); C. R. Baskervill, Some Parallels to Bartholomew Fair (1908, M. P. vi. 109); W. W. Greg, Autograph Plays by A. Munday (1913, M. L. R. viii. 89); L. L. Schücking, Das Datum der pseudo-Sh. S. T. M. (1913, E. S. xlvi. 228); E. M. Thompson, Shakespeare's Handwriting (1916) and The Autograph MSS. of Anthony Munday (1919, Bibl. Soc. Trans. xiv. 325); P. Simpson, The Play of S. T. M. and Sh.'s Hand in It (1917, 3 Library, viii. 79); J. D. Wilson and others, Sh.'s Hand in the Play of S. T. M. (1919, T. L. S. 24 April onwards); W. J. Lawrence and others, Was S.T.M. ever Acted? (1920, T.L.S. 1 July onwards); M. A. Bayfield and E. M. Thompson, Shakespeare's Handwriting (1921, T. L. S. 30 June, 4 Aug.).
The play has been dated c. 1586 and c. 1596, in both of which years there were disturbances with some analogy to the 'Ill May Day' of the plot, and an early date has been regarded as favoured by mentions (ll. 1006, 1148) of Oagle a wigmaker, since men of the name were serving the Revels Office in this and similar capacities from 1571 to 1585 (Feuillerat, Eliz., passim), and by the appearance as a messenger in a stage-direction (Greg, p. 89) of T. Goodal, an actor traceable with Berkeley's men in 1581 and with the Admiral's or Strange's in the plot of The Seven Deadly Sins, c. 1590-1. But Goodal may have acted much longer, and the Admiral's men had business relations with a 'Father Ogell' in Feb. 1600 (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 300). Greg, after comparing Munday's script in the play with other and better datable examples of that script, inclines to put it 'between 1596 and 1602, say 1598-1600', and Sir E. M. Thompson, on a further review of the same evidence, suggests 1592 or 1593. This, however, involves putting the MS. of John a Kent and John a Cumber (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Munday) back to 1590, which, although palaeographically possible, is inconsistent with evidence pointing to its production by the Admiral's in 1594. Certain parallels with Julius Caesar and Hamlet might suggest the latter part of the possible period, although the parallel suggested by Schücking with Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed is too slight to bear out his date of 1605-8, and the attempt of Fleay (ii. 312; Shakespeare, 292) to identify the play with the Abuses of Paul's in 1606 is guess-work. Jonson's apparent debt to S. T. M. in Bartholomew Fair, pointed out by Baskervill, is also in favour of a latish date. Obviously the mention of 'Mason among the Kings players' (l. 1151) does not prove a Jacobean date, as Henry VIII had players. No actor of the name in either reign is known, although an Alexander Mason was marshal of the royal minstrels in 1494 (Collier, i. 45). Account must be taken of the support given by Sir E. M. Thompson to the theory of R. Simpson and Spedding that three of the added pages are in the hand of Shakespeare. This is based on a minute comparison with the few undoubted fragments, almost entirely signatures, of Shakespeare's writing. Both hands use 'the native English script' and are 'of an ordinary type', without marked individual character 'to any great extent', although slight peculiarities, such as 'the use of the fine upstroke as an ornamental adjunct to certain letters', are
