I refer to surviving English manuscript playbooks as Precious Few“ in two senses: there are precious few” of them, because only eighteen survive out of probably 3,000, and these few are precious because they comprise our chief repository for knowing what kinds of manuscripts playwrights delivered to the playing companies and for finding out how the players altered these manuscripts in putting plays into production. These manuscripts thus are not merely antiquarian curiosities; they comprise the major source for theater researchers into staging and production and for revealing to editors what was likely to happen to a manuscript in the playhouse.