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Printer's corrected proofs: 24 leaves, printed rectos only, in maroon card wrapper, titled by the printer and inscribed, "Corrected proofs", all pages present except half-title and title-page verso (copyright page), Alan Anderson's manuscript corrections on 12 pages, two variant title-pages. The published edition was limited to 135 copies. "I was surprised to find later in life how severely the edition used at school was bowdlerised. Indeed, on re-perusal of the play the rudery still comes as a novelty. 'I would not so much make water but in a sink-a-pace' (I, iii, 127), for example, was a phrase entirely omitted. One sees that this would have initially aroused what Mr Frankie Howerd would call unseemly titters . . ." The author wrote to the printer, 8 November 1984, "George [Sims] has persuaded me that you might be interested to see this, though he himself has knowledge of it only through hearsay! As you can see by its dog-eared state, it has been to a few periodicals, but it never found a home. It does fall between a few stools, and I'm now so fed up with it I can no longer tell whether it is really interesting to the ordinary reader of the Bard, as intended. Perhaps its merit as far as you are concerned is that it poses some problems of setting. Be bloody, bold and resolute! I mean do not hesitate to return it." Then, 19 March 1985, "You have done a superb job, and any doubts about the value of the text are swallowed up by the design and printing.". Seller Inventory # 32M100199
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