I
IN 1986 there was discovered in the muniments room at Melbourne Hall, Derbyshire, the manuscript fragment of a play apparently written during the early decades of the seventeenth century. A single sheet of paper, folded once, contains 144 lines of text covering its four pages. It had been wrapped around a packet of Sir John Coke's correspondence. Coke had been Charles I's secretary of state. (1)
The dialogue of the dramatic remnant involves Alessandro de' Medici, Duke of ...