Thomas Lord Cromwell

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Thomas Lord Cromwell is an Elizabethan history play, depicting the life of Thomas Cromwell, the minister of Henry VIII.

The play was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on Aug. 11, 1602, and was published in quarto later the same year (Q1) by bookseller William Cotton. The title page of Q1 specifies that the play was acted by The Lord Chamberlain's Men, and attributes the play to a "W. S." A second quarto (Q2) was printed in 1613 by Thomas Snodham. The Q2 title page repeats the data of Q1, though the Lord Chamberlain's Men are now the King's Men (the name change having occurred in 1603).

The "W. S." of the quartos was first identified as William Shakespeare when the play was added to the Shakespeare Third Folio in 1664. Modern scholars reject the Shakespearean attribution; speculation has shone on Wentworth Smith and William Sly as possible alternatives. Individual critics have also suggested Thomas Heywood and Michael Drayton as possible authors—suggestions unsupported by evidence.

[edit] Reference

• C. F. Tucker Brooke, ed., The Shakespeare Apocrypha, Oxford, the Clarendon Press, 1908.