Draft of Act One of a script for a play written by Burgess based on the second tetralogy of Shakespeare’s History plays, titled "Sir John Falstaff va alla guerra", or "Sir John Falstaff goes to war".

The extant script is largely an adaptation of Henry VI, Part 1 with a couple of scenes from the end of Richard II at the beginning. All scenes including Falstaff were largely kept while the action of the rest of Shakespeare’s plays are either condensed, modified or removed.

A hand-drawn illustration by Burgess accompanies his notes for the setting of Act one, and Burgess has also made minor (handwritten) adjustments to the text.

Open

A photocopy of this script has been made and is filed alongside the original text.

With some damage (e.g. to pages 10-17) due to the use of metal fasteners, and slight evidence of burn damage to pages 13-37.

A 2-page overview of the extant script was created by Sam Jermy in 2020, and is available to researchers on request. The overview includes a narrative description of the events of Burgess’s script and where from Shakespeare these scenes have been adapted from, as well as a short description of what changes have been made to adapt these scenes.