Beggars' Bush

Beggars’ Bush: Folger MS J.b.5 presents a semi-diplomatic edition of a seventeenth-century manuscript copy of the popular Jacobean play associated with John Fletcher, Philip Massinger and Nathan Field. Preserved in the Folger Shakespeare Library, MS J.b.5 predates the earliest printed edition and offers a valuable witness to the play’s textual and theatrical history. The edition situates the manuscript in relation to the 1647 folio version, reassessing questions of authorship, source transmission and scribal practice. By examining the manuscript as an artefact in its own right, the study challenges assumptions about theatrical promptbooks and early modern play circulation. It also considers the implications of this version for understanding audience, performance and textual authority. Making this material available to a wider readership, the volume contributes to scholarship on early modern drama and manuscript culture.