Who were Ralph Crane and Edward Knight and why should we care? Did the edition of Shakespeare’s play that you are studying morph lovingly from his quill pen to the text you are holding in front of you on the subway? Not really. In Elizabethan times, a working draft of a play was called a “foul copy.” Once completed in its embryonic form by a scribbling poet, it would be transformed by a scribe or multiple scribes into a “fair copy” which would be used to provide a prompt book