pp. 21-32 are blank, 25-32 are unopened.

There is no external evidence of authorship, dating or provenance. Marginal references to the Arcadia on fols. 4v-7 refer to one of the editions published between 1621 and 1638. For a description of the manuscfipt and a reprint of the text, see John Buxton ‘A draught of… Arcadia’, Historical Essays 1600-1750, presented to David Off, eds.H. E. Bell and R. L. Ollard (1963), pp. 60-7. Buxton dates the manuscript on internal evidence as having been written between Winter 1641/2 and May 1646. He gives its provenance as acquired by Bertram Dobell at the beginning of the 20th century and subsequently by himself, c. 1950. The manuscript was exhibited in the 1954 Sidney Exhibition at the Bodleian Library (item 23). The text of the poem was first printed in 1961 at the Bibliography Room in the New Bodleian.