If I argue Thomas North should get credit for Shakespeare’s source-plays, I damn sure better credit my sources as well! So my apologies to Professor Alan Hughes, but on page 117 of Michael Blanding’s “North by Shakespeare,” I am quoted off-the-cuff as saying the following about “The Longleat Manuscript” : “Why would someone take the top of the paper and leave the rest blank unless they were ready to fill it in with dialogue?” This is a very close paraphrase of Alan Hughes, ed., whom I had previously quoted years earlier, with proper citations, in my original essay on the Longleat Manuscript. Unfortunately, while chatting informally, I either forgot to cite my source (I typically don’t include endnotes when speaking) or, more likely, simply suffered a kind of cryptomnesia. My apologies Professor Hughes! Here’s the proper citation:
Alan Hughes, ed., The New Cambridge Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994), 20. PS.
Richard Levin also quotes the corresponding line by Hughes. “The Longleat Manuscript and ‘Titus Andronicus,’” Shakespeare Quarterly, 53:3 (2002): 323-340, 329 – and I also quoted Levin in the same essay.