is only one line reflecting on his death before the play returns to the romantic plot. Most of the characters in Mucedorus are stock expectations for the genre, offering little depth or originality. Mouse's deafness is a play on the stock comedic fools who often wilfully twist a speaker's words. Printing history Mucedorus was the most frequently reprinted play prior to the Restoration, with 17 quarto texts surviving before the end of the 17th century. Staging history Mucedorus was performed by strolling players as late as the eighteenth century. One such performance, at Witney in Oxfordshire on 3 February 1653 (new style), saw a number of the audience killed and injured when the floor collapsed under the weight of the crowd. A Puritan preacher considered the accident a sign of God's displeasure with play-acting. Relationship to Shakespeare Q3 (1610) of Mucedorus claims that it was in the repertoire of the Globe Theatre: A/Most pleasant/Comedie of Muce-/dorus the Kings sonne of Valen-/tia, and Amadine the Kinges/daughter of Aragon./With the merry conceites of Mouse./Amplified with new additions, as it was/acted before the Kings Maistie at/White-hall on Shroue-/sunday night./By his Highnes Seruantes vsually/playing at the Globe./Very delectable, and full of conceited Mirth./Imprinted at London for William Iones./dwelling neare Holborne Conduit/at the signe of the Gunne./1610./ Starting with this same Q3 and continuing through all subsequent editions, the text of the play is augmented with six additional passages, which are plainly not the work of the original author. Some early critics considered Shakespeare as a potential author of these additions rather than the original play – though even this view is not regarded with favour by the modern scholarly consensus. The play was assigned to Shakespeare in Edward Archer's play list of 1656, published in his edition of The Old Law; it was also bound together with Fair Em and The Merry Devil of Edmonton in a book labelled "Shakespeare. Vol. I" in the library of King Charles II. Notes References Chambers, E.K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923. Hattaway, Michael. "Mucedorus: the Exploitation of Convention." In Elizabethan Popular Theatre: Plays in Performance. Theatre Production Studies ser. London: Routledge, 1982. 129–140 Kozlenko, William, ed. Disputed Plays of William Shakespeare. Hawthorn Books, 1974. Logan, Terence P., and Demzell S. Smith, eds. The Predecessors of Shakespeare: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press,