Book excerpt: Discovered in 1973, the manuscript for this unpublished and untitled Jacobean play is transcribed in five hands. A long romance on the life and deeds of Tom a Lincoln, or the Red Rose Knight, it dates from around 1611 and appears to contain allusions to or echoes of Henry IV, Hamlet, King Lear, and Shakespeare's late plays. One scene is imitated from Thomas Heywood's Rape of Lucrece (1608), and this, together with the evidence of its vocabulary, raises the possibility that the play was written by Heywood. How much of the play is parody is not certain. In this edition, Proudfoot describes the manuscript and hands in detail, and provides contexts for the play's genre and authorship. There are texts of eleven other short pieces in the manuscript, including memoranda, and poems in English and Welsh.