One of the most compelling moments in Stanley Wells' excellent 2002 book, Shakespeare: For All Time, is his discussion of the manuscript revision done to the anonymous play, Sir Thomas More, which may be Shakespeare's, and thus the only surviving literary work in his handwriting, aside from "half a dozen signatures". Wells explains that the play, never performed in its own time due to difficulties with the censors, contains many striking passages, including the following, which I'll let him introduce (I'll have some thoughts on it tomorrow):

"Since late in the nineteenth century many scholars have believed that one of the revisers was Shakespeare. The principal passage in what is known as Hand D impressively portrays events leading up to the riots of Londoners against foreign immigrants on 'Ill May Day', 1517. More, sent by the authorities as a peacemaker, subdues the rioters in powerful and humane speeches of controlled rhetoric: to the demand that foreigners - 'strangers' - be expelled he responds:

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise

Hath chid down all the majesty of England.

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,

Their babies at their backs, with their poor luggage

Plodding to th' ports and coasts for transportation,

And that you sit as kings in your desires,

Authority quite silenced by your brawl

And you in ruff of your opinions clothed:

What had you got? I'll tell you. You had taught

How insolence and strong hand should prevail,

How order should be quelled - and by this pattern

Not one of you should live an aged man,

For other ruffians as their fancies wrought

With selfsame hand, self reasons, and self right

Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes

Would feed on one another."