The autograph MS. of El principe despenado was signed in Madrid November 27, 1602.1 Noteworthy features of the MS. are the great amount of marginal annotation to be found thereon, and the numerous passages which have been boxed off or otherwise marked for omission. Such indications almost certainly do not proceed from the pen of Lope, but are rather the rehearsal notations of some autor who wished to abbreviate the play, omit certain characters from the cast, or otherwise adapt it for presentation on the stage. In no case does the cancellation of a passage give evidence of being prompted by aesthetic motives. In all, some thirty-one passages have been bracketed, comprising 332 verses. It is not usual to find such extensive tampering in Lope's autograph comedias; there is an equal abundance, however, in the autograph of El cuerdo loco, which Lope wrote in the same year as the Principe despenado and which, as we shall see, very probably figured with it in the repertory of the Pedro de Valdés-Antonio de Granados troupe.2