The date is significant if we are to understand the place of the folio version of Every Man In in Jonsonʼs stylistic and theatrical development. The choices most favoured in the on-going debate are some time around 1605 and 1612. In 1923 E. K. Chambers argued for the first date, noting that the revival at court on 2 February 1605 would have provided Jonson with an occasion for revision. Internal clues to support this date are, however, not very substantial. Bobadillʼs recounting of his presumed exploits at Strigonium ‘some ten years nowʼ (3.1.92ff.) alludes to the Battle of Graan or Êstergom in Hungary, recaptured from the Turks in 1595; but we need to consider that Bobadill is spinning a lie of epic proportions, and that when Brainworm, disguised as a wounded veteran, has his turn to recount his military career, he goes back all the way, in both quarto and folio texts, to the sieges of Aleppo (1516) and Vienna (1529). Internal evidence about the Turkish Grand Signor is no more substantial. Wellbredʼs letter to young Knowell promises him a present ‘our Turkey company never sent the like to the Grand Signorʼ (1.2.69–70), which might have seemed especially relevant around after Christmas 1605, when a large gift was made to the Sultan, but this possible date has the disadvantage of coming after the court performance in February 1605. Moreover, payments to the Sultan were made in 1583 and 1593, and Dekkerʼs The Wonderful Year (1603) alludes familiarly to New Yearʼs gifts ‘more in number and more worth than those that are given to the great Turk or the Emperor of Persiaʼ.
Several seeming references to Queen Elizabethʼs reign are found in the quarto text, which persist into the folio version: ‘I arrest you iʼthe Queenʼs nameʼ (F1, 4.11.18), ‘Keep the peace . . . in Her Majestyʼs nameʼ (4.11.33), ‘You must not deny the Queenʼs justiceʼ (5.5.16). Did Jonson deliberately retain these phrases as anachronistic touches consistent with the performance, years later, of a play ‘acted in the year 1598ʼ, as the folio title-page announces? Or do they suggest revision before 1603 or shortly after? The evidence is inconclusive. The thorough-going removal of oaths from the folio text is offered by Herford and Simpson as evidence of a conforming with the Act against Abuses of Players passed in 1606, in preparation for folio publication. They argue for a date around 1612, after Jonson had finally declared himself in Epicene (1609) and The Alchemist (1610) to be an observer of the London scene. In 1612 Jonson was actively involved in preparation for the folio of 1616 and, moreover, was not busy writing masques for the court. The style of revision seems late to Herford and Simpson.
Unquestionably, at any rate, Jonsonʼs decision to move the locale of Every Man In to London is an integral part of his growing fascination with London as the place where he wished to locate dramatic action. Every Man Out of His Humour (1599), though not explicitly set in London, lays the playʼs central scene in St Paulʼs Cathedral, where knowledgeable London citizens gathered to learn the latest gossip about their city. The revision of Every Man In is best seen as a part of Jonsonʼs evolving dramatic career in city comedy.
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Here's another straw in the wind, David. At 3.1.70-73 in the quarto text, Thorello worries about why his servant Piso is reluctant to swear an oath, thinking he must have some secret reservation: 'He is no puritan, that I am certain of' (line 73). In the folio text this becomes 'He is no precisian, that I am certain of, / Nor rigid Roman Catholic' (3.3.88-9). This may well suggest that the revision was made after 1610, when, in the aftermath of the assassination of Henri IV of France, Catholics were required to take an Oath of Allegiance to King James. This became a matter of conscience for recusants who were anxious about the way the Oath forced them to choose between loyalty to the crown and to the Pope. Jonson himself reconverted from Catholicism to Protestantism around this time, probably as a direct result of these events. The idea that only a fanatical puritan or a 'rigid Roman Catholic' would hold out against an oath is a view that he is likely to have subscribed to after 1610.
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