"[2] It is believed to contain the original music of the song "Come Away, Hecket" as heard in Thomas Middleton's play The Witch which was used in William Shakespeare's Macbeth.

[4] John Stafford Smith suggested a date "about the year 1620" for the two songs ("Ist for a grace" and "You herralds of Mrs hart") he printed in his compilation Musica Antiqua.

[5] Duckles mistakenly took this date to refer to the entire manuscript,[2] an assumption continued by Cutts.

[1] In the introduction to the facsimile edition, Jorgens emended this misinterpretation, stating that scholars date the manuscript between 1620 and 1630.

[6] She noted a problem posed by the song "Like to the damask rose": If the composer attribution of Henry Lawes is accepted, the appearance of this song in a manuscript from the 1620s pushes back the composer's reputation ten years before to most musicologists' understanding of his career.

Beneath that is the note: "my Cosen Twice Leffte this Booke with me when shee went to Broisil which is to be returne to her AGhaine when she Come to Glost."

[9] Assuming the songs were copied for her use, Spink surmised that Twice must have been a good singer whose music master (the copyist of the manuscript) was "a man of taste."

At some point she traveled to Bristol where she left the manuscript with her cousin, the writer of this inscription (whose name is unknown).

The whereabouts of the manuscript are then unknown for nearly two centuries until Smith included selections in his collection Musica Antiqua.

It is not known whether Edward Francis Rimbault purchased the volume directly from the sale of Smith's estate, but it eventually came into his possession.

[13][11] After Rimbault's death in 1876 followed by the auction of his estate in 1877, the manuscript was one of about 600 lots purchased by Philadelphia-born financier Joseph W. Drexel, who had already amassed a large music library.

Cutts questioned why it was removed, surmising the reason might have been for the song on its verso, "Haue you seen ye"?

[15] Due to its poor physical state, Drexel 4175 was rebound by conservators Carolyn Horton & Associates in 1981.

49 (li), "Deare doe not your faire beuty wronge" is the only song to have a composer attribution, that of Robert Johnson.

Cutts notes that all these plays were produced by King's Men, the repertory company to which Shakespeare belonged and for which Johnson wrote music from 1608-1617.

"[18] Cutts used this evidence to underscore his theory that this song was an inspiration for the witches' scene in Macbeth.