Without entry in the Stationers’ Register, Catiline His Conspiracy was first published by Walter Burre in 1611. The title page reads as follows:
CATILINE / his CONSPIRACY. / VVRITTEN / by / BEN: IONSON. / --His non Plebecula gaudet. / Verum Equitis quoq[ue], iam migrauit ab aure voluptas, / Omnis, ad incertos oculos, & gaudia vana. / LONDON, / Printed for Walter Burre. / 1611.
The printer is unknown (though STC conjectures it might have been William Stansby). Walter Burre was a London stationer who, like most of his contemporaries, liked to publish religious texts and other didactic works that would sell well among London’s book-buying public. He published Edmund Scott’s An Exact Discourse of the . . . East Indians in 1606. He entered in the Stationers’ Register, in 1616, a translation of St Francis of Sales’s Introduction to a Devout Life, though he then transferred the rights to John Spencer in 1630. His large-folio publications included John Donne’s Pseudo-Martyr (1610) and Sir Walter Ralegh’s incomplete History of the World (1614). At the same time, during his twenty-four-year-long career he published some eight plays, four of them by Jonson. Burre seems to have had a knack for turning failed stage plays, whether for adult actors or boys’ companies or private performers, into successful publications. Thus Catiline in 1611 afforded a challenging opportunity for Burre, one in which Jonson must have been happy to collaborate with the publisher. Earlier, Burre had published Jonson’s Every Man In His Humour and The Fountain of Self-Love, or Cynthia’s Revels, both in 1601; and he was to publish The Alchemist in 1612 (having registered it in 1610). Among his non-Jonson plays were Thomas Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament in 1600 (the play not having been publicly staged), Thomas Middleton’s A Mad World My Masters in 1608, Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle in 1613 (another stage failure, despite its appeal today), and Thomas Tomkis’s Albumazar in 1615 (never having been publicly staged).
To compensate for his risk in publishing unpopular plays, Burre adopted various strategies aimed at appealing to the Inns of Court crowd and other sophisticates, much as Richard Bonian and Henry Walley had done in their 1609 quarto of Troilus and Cressida, proclaiming, in a publishers’ blurb introduced into the play’s second ‘state’ of printing, that this play had never been ‘staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar’, nor ‘sullied with the smoky breath of the multitude’. Burre’s strategies in Q Catiline were to highlight various features provided to him by Jonson that declared the piece to be a tragic ‘poem’ for the cognoscenti: a Latin epigram on the title page, a dedication of the work to an aristocratic patron committed to supporting works of the highest sophistication, commendatory poems lauding the play for its classical rigour, the massing of characters’ names at the head of each scene without further indication of entrance or exit, omission of a speech prefix at the commencement of each scene (since the speaker is understood to be the character first named in the massed entry), the supply of a disembodied chorus to each act other than act 5, the printing of the whole (as in texts of Seneca’s plays) without any hint of staging, a Roman font for proper names like CETHEGVS or GABIONIVS, composition of the dialogue in studiously regular iambic pentameter verse throughout, arrangement of half-lines in such a way as to make clear how the half-lines are to be paired, marginalia that are ambivalently stage directions and a kind of commentary (e.g. ‘He answers with fear and interruptions’, 5.3.55), long acts without marking of scene intervals (though scene breaks are implicit in acts 3-5 and are marked accordingly in this edition), and so forth. Jonson had used the same severely classical and ‘continental’ format in his quartos of Fountain (1601), Poetaster (1602), and Sejanus (1605); and of course Jonson chose this same format for the plays in the 1616 folio. On the other hand, some earlier plays in quarto (such as Every Man Out, 1600, and Every Man In, 1601) had adopted the more ‘English’ style of marking entrances and exits.
Ample press-correction observable in extant copies of Q Catiline attests to Jonson’s characteristic interest in ensuring that the printed text represent his dramatic and literary genius as accurately as possible. For instance, at 1.1.160 (B3r 29) the revised state (as embodied in Cambridge University Library Syn. 7.61.12) introduces the word ‘their’ into a line that in the uncorrected state is metrically deficient; the revised state reads ‘So threatened with their debts as they will now’. At 1.1.268 (B4v 33) Jonson seems to have corrected ‘They had’ to ‘They’had’. At lines 1.1.531-2, in the opening lines of the chorus to act 1 (C4v 14), a normal capital ‘C’ is made large. At 4.2.25 (4.84 in H&S , I1v 26 in the quarto), ‘So lately aimed at, not an hour sithence’ is changed to ‘So lately aimed at, not an hour yet since’. Some other corrections in state 2 may well have been normal corrections by a proofreader, but some at least bear witness to the author’s careful intervention. As H&S show, the corrections are especially numerous in the inner forme of gathering I, and many of these look authorial. The corrections here may also suggest that Jonson, for all his clinical accuracy, had limited time to devote to press-correction; he devoted minute attention to this gathering that he seemingly did not have for other portions of the text. Was he particularly concerned about this part of the text because it is situated in act 4, which had encountered such hostility on stage? (For a detailed collation of press-corrections, see at the end of this essay.)
Q Catiline collates as follows, in fours, with three leaves of O: A1, title page; A1v , blank; A2r-v Dedication to the Earl of Pembroke; A3 ‘To the Reader in Ordinary’ and ‘To the Reader extraordinary’; A3v a commendatory poem by Francis Beaumont and another by John Fletcher, extending over onto A4; A4 the conclusion of Fletcher’s poem and another by Nathan Field; A4v ‘The names of the Actors’; B to O3v the text of the play. The running title throughout is ‘CATJLINE’.
As shown by its printing history, Q is, on the whole, a reliable text and close to the way Jonson wanted it to be. Clearly Jonson regarded this as an especially important play in his corpus, perhaps indeed his best play to date. The epistles ‘To the Reader in Ordinary’ and ‘To the Reader extraordinary’, not included in F1 , bespeak Jonson’s hope of living eternally as a famous author in the opinion of those rare and learned readers who are capable of judging with knowledge and taste. ‘Nothing is more dangerous than a foolish praise’, he insists, pointing to those ‘ordinary’ readers and audiences who, for the most part, ‘commend out of affection, self-tickling, an easiness, or imitation’. The infinitely more exacting task is to ‘judge only out of knowledge’. Jonson thus pins his hope for futurity on a carefully printed text that will be read and appreciated by those few who know how to judge wisely.
These comments seem to have been occasioned by the first audience’s negative response to Catiline in 1611, especially to Cicero’s oration in the fourth act. Francis Beaumont’s commendatory poem too implies that Jonson had not ‘itched after the wild applause of common people’ but had instead ‘squared [his] rules by what is good’. Jonson’s dedication to the Earl of Pembroke, printed in both Q and F1, reinforces the point by urging to the Earl that ‘Posterity may pay your benefit the honour and thanks, when it shall know that you dare, in these jig-given times, to countenance a legitimate poem. I must call it so, against all noise of opinion, from whose crude and airy reports I appeal to that great and singular faculty of judgement in Your Lordship, able to vindicate truth from error.’ Nathan Field picks up on Jonson’s acerbic reference to ‘these jig-given times’ when he comments, in defence of Catiline, ‘But in this age, where jigs and dances move, / How few are there that this pure work approve!’ Leonard Digges, in his verses prefixed to the second 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s poems, observes with regret that the audiences who loved Julius Caesar were not up to the more astringent beauties of Catiline: ‘When some new day they would not brook a line / Of tedious (though well-laboured) Catiline’. Edmund Gayton, in his Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixote (1654), may be alluding to Jonson’s second tragedy when he describes how ‘the only laureate of our stage, having composed a play of excellent worth but not of equal applause, fell down upon his knees and gave thanks that he had transcended the capacity of the vulgar’ (p. 271). Gayton's testimony needs to be regarded with suspicion, however. He was only three years old when Catiline was first staged in 1611, and he proved to be an unreliable reporter of events in later life. If Jonson said something of the sort, the ‘vulgar’ for him presumably would have included some well-educated audiences as well, who should have known better: as the epigraph from Horace’s Epistles (2.1.186-8) puts the matter, on both the Q and F1 title pages, ‘Such writings as these are displeasing to the plebs; even with the knightly class pleasure has migrated from the ear to fickle eyes and the vacant delights of spectacle.’
A text thus carefully prepared in 1611 in a classical format could also serve as a suitable basis for the folio text of 1616. The title of the 1616 text is as follows:
CATILINE / HIS / CONSPIRACY. / A Tragœdie. / Acted in the yeere 1611. By the / Kings MAIESTIES / Seruants. / The Author B. I. / HORAT. / -- His non plebecula gaudet: / Verum equitis quoq[ue], iam migrauit ab aure voluptas / Omnnis, ad incertos oculos, & gaudia vana. // LONDON, / Printed by VVILLIAM STANSBY. // M. D C. XVI.
This text of 1611 was printed from a revised copy of the quarto, marked up presumably by Jonson with a fairly small number of changes, attesting to Jonson’s essential faith in the play he had written and to his firm insistence that his most classically accomplished play achieve success in print that had been withheld from the play by an unfriendly theatrical audience. Posterity did indeed, at least for a time, vindicate Jonson’s hope: Catiline experienced a considerable currency in the Restoration and eighteenth century, enjoying a success that had been denied at first to Jonson in Catiline and also to his earlier tragedy, Sejanus, hissed off the Globe stage in 1604 after delays in public performance owing to the plague and the death of Queen Elizabeth.
Given Jonson’s wish to include Catiline in the folio essentially as originally written, and given the hostility to the play as presented at the Globe, Jonson’s intent in preparing Catiline for folio publication seems to have been one of preservation and improved accuracy. No pressures of censorship, such as had borne down on him in Poetaster (1602) and Epicene (published 1616, in F1), were at issue in this instance. Hence the substantive changes from Q to F1 in the dialogue are relatively minor. A listing of such substantive changes can make the point graphically:
1.1.32 Thy parricide, late, on thine owne onely sonne, (F1); Q has ‘naturall’ for ‘onely’.
1.1.34-5: worse, then they, / That blaze that act of thy incestuous life, (F1); Q has ‘fame’ for ‘blaze’
1.1.37: I leaue the slaughters that thou diidst for me, ( F1); Q has a comma after 'slaughters'
1.1.71: Whilst, what you doe, may strike them into feares, (F1); Q has ‘doth’ for ‘may’
1.1.98 Who’s there? AVR. ’Tis I. CAT. AVRELIA? AVR. Yes. CAT. Appeare, (F1); Q HAS ‘AVR.’ for the second ‘CAT.’
1.1.163 And make our house the safe-guard: like, for those, (F1); Q has ‘their’ for ‘the’
1.1.190 Though, on their shoulders, necks, and heads you rise. (F1); Q has ‘by’ for ‘on’
1.1.420 And you’d not rather still be slaues, then free. (F1); Q has ‘you had’ for ‘you’d not’
1.1.425 Differring hurts, where powers are so prepar’d. (F1); Q has ‘most’ for ‘so’
1.1.429 VAR. I, and the meanes, to carry vs through? CAT. How, friends! (F1); Q has ‘through.’ for ‘through?’
1.1.482 High, in your faces. Bring the wine, and bloud (F1); Q has ‘’i’ for ‘in’
1.1.499 AVT. And mine. VAR. And mine. CET. Swell mee my bowle yet fuller. (F1); Q has ‘Crowne’ for ‘Swell’
2.1.39 FVL. Thou dream’st all this? GAL. No, but you know she is, madam, (F1); Q has ‘dreampt’st’ for ‘dream’st’
2.1.49 FVL. And doth dance rarely? GAL. Excellent! So well, (F1); Q has ‘So,’ for ‘So’
2.1.57 She is in yeeres. FVL. Why, GALLA? For it is. (F1); Q has a speech prefix, ‘GAI.’, before ‘For’, corrected to ‘GAL.’ in Q2 and F2
2.1.110 But foure o’ the other. LICINIVS, LONGINVS, (F1); Q has ‘of’ for ‘’o’
2.1.111-12 GALBA, and CORNIFICIVS will give way. / And CICERO they will not choose.(F1); Q has ‘way,’ for ‘way.’
2.1.119 As ‘t would be, if he obtain’d it! A meere vpstart, (F1); Q has ‘it?’ for ‘it!’
2.1.221 CVR. Then, take my gowne off, for th’encounter. FVL. Stay sir, (F1); Q has ‘the’encounter’ for ‘th’encounter’
3.1.23 Held shut vp, with all ramparts, for themselues, (F1); Q has ‘rampires’ for ‘ramparts’
3.1.146 Which CATO, and the rout haue done the other? (F1); Q has ‘That’ for ‘Which’
3.1.161 Or the least bird from muiting on my head. (F1); Q has ‘muting’ for ‘muiting’
3.1.214 Of noisome citizens, whereof thou art one (F1); Q has ‘thou’rt’ for ‘thou art’; F2 emends to ‘thou’art’
3.2.56 F reads ‘when ‘twas’, Q ‘when’t was’
3.2.73 (3.307) Ile vnder-take, my lord, he shall be won. (F1); Q has ‘will’ for ‘shall’
3.2.143 (3.377) And FVLVIA come i‘the rere, or o’the by? (F1); Q has ‘on’ for ‘’o’
3.2.146 (3.380) It was a silly phant’sie of yours. Apply (F1); Q has ‘seely’ for ‘silly’
3.3.66 (3.555) Now, out of Asia. CAT. Therefore, what we intend (F1); Q has ‘we’intend’ for ‘we intend’
3.3.75 (3.564) ’Twas MARIVS standard, in the Cimbrian warre, (F1); Q has ‘Was’ for ‘’Twas’
3.3.77 (3.566) Shall still be so: for which one ominous cause, (F1); Q has ‘omenous’ for ‘ominous’
3.3.208 (3.397) Laugh, and lye downe? FVL. No, Faith, SEMPRONIA, (F1); Q has ‘downe.’ for ‘downe?’
3.3.240 (3.729) To betray headie husbands; rob the easie: (F1); Q has ‘strangle head-strong’ for ‘betray headie’
3.5.19 (3.814) Poor, misse-led men. Your states are yet worth pitty, (F1); Q has ‘misled’ for ‘misse-led’
4.2.5 (4.64) What may be happy, and auspicious still (F1); Q has ‘Which’ for ‘What’
4.2.14 (4.73) And wake you from a sleepe, as starke, as death. (F1); Q has ‘dead’ for ‘starke’
4.2.33 (4.92) See, how his gorget ’peeres aboue his gowne; (F1); Q has ‘peeres’ for ‘’peeres’
4.2.61 (4.120) Those excellent gifts of fortune, and of nature, (F1); Q has ‘Nature’ for ‘nature’
4.2.323 (4,382) On the AVRELIAN way. I know the day (F1); Q has ‘On th’’ for ‘On the’
4.2.426 (4.485) They would be forc’d themselues, againe, and lost (F1); Q has ‘runne’ for ‘forc’d’
4.4.17 (4.616) Are th’Ambassadors come with you? SAN. Yes. (F1); Q has ‘the’Ambassadors’ for ‘th’Ambassadors’
4.5.51 (4.757) And aske the second bolt, to be throwne downe, (F1); Q has ‘charge’ for ‘bolt’
4.6.34 (4.814) SAN. But what’ll you doe with SEMPRONIA? CIC. A states anger (F1); Q has ‘A State’ for ‘A states anger’
5.1.43 And these will wish more hurt to you, then they bring you. (F1); Q has ‘to’you’ for ‘to you’
5.3.52 (5.137) : But truely I was drawne in (F1); Q inserts an erroneous apostrophe at the end of 'truely'
5.3.127 (5.212) GAB. Neither [state 2; 'Neyther' in state 1] will I know. CAT. Impudent head! (F1); Q has ‘Nor I will not know’ for ‘Neither will I know’
5.3.154 (5.239) But now, we find the contrary! Where was there (F1); Q has ‘Bnt’ for ‘But’
5.3.167 (5.252) Of ruffians, slaues, and other slaughter-men? (F1); Q has ‘Ruffins’ for ‘ruffians’
5.3.239 (5.324) That I now see, yo’haue sense of your own safety. (F1); Q has ‘you’haue’ for ‘yo’haue’
5.3.268 (5.353) CIC. Away with all, throw it out o’ the court. (F1); Q has ‘throw’it’ for ‘throw it’
5.4.31 (5.397) If we can giue the blow, all will be safe to vs (F1); Q has ‘to’vs’ for ‘to vs’
5.5.57 (5.476) I know, too, well, his manners, and modestie: (F1); Q has ‘and his’ for ‘and’
5.5.149 (5.568) CRA. Let it be so decreed. SEN. We are all fearefull. (F1); Q has ‘all were’ for ‘are all’
5.5.183 (5.602) To death by’a sword. Strangle me, I may sleepe: (F1); Q has ‘by, a’ for ‘by’a’
5.5.274 (5.693) CAT. He did the more. CIC. Thanks to the immortall gods, (F1); Q has ‘the’immortal’ for ‘the immortal’
In addition, Q’s gnomic pointing of proverbial or sententious statements has been dropped in F1 at 3.1.83, 212, and 230; 3.2.105-6, 131, 134-5, 200, 246, 250-5 (3.229-30, 3.365, 368-9, 434. 480, 484-9); 3.3.4-5, 16-17, 18-20, 22-3 (3.493-4, 505-6, 507-9, 511-12); 3.5.40, 42-4 (3.835, 837-9); 4.1.56-9; 4.2.76-7 (4.135-6); 4.3.35 (4.572); 4.4.38-40, 101-2 (4.637-9, 700-1); 5.3.134-5 (5.219-20); 5.4.7-9, 45 (5.373-5, 411); 5.5.180 (5.599).
Some of these changes in F1, though listed here to give a sense of the kinds of changes made, are not very material and could have been made by the compositors or proofreaders. Errors are corrected, as at 1.1.98 (changing a mistaken ‘AVR’. to ‘CAT’.), 3.3.75 (‘‘Twas’ for ‘Was’), and 5.3.154 (‘But’ for ‘Bnt’). Some changes have to do with perhaps unusual spellings, as at 3.3.77 (‘ominous’ for ‘omenous’) and 5.3.167 (‘Ruffians’ for ‘Ruffins’). Several are minor adjustments to elision, as at 5.3.239 (‘yo’haue’ for ‘you’ haue’), 2.1.110 (‘’o’ for ‘of’), and 1.1.482 (‘in’ for ‘i’’). Adjustments in punctuation are numerous and are listed here only when meaning is potentially affected.
In a few instances, inevitably, F1 introduces errors that are presumably compositorial, as for example:
2.1.57 F1 omits Q1's speech prefix 'GAI.' [an error for 'GAL.']
5.5.32 (5.451) Q1's 'doe hinder' becomes 'doehinder' in F1.
The more substantive corrections are mostly limited to single words or very short phrases where the substituted word of phrase has a comparable metrical equivalence to the original: onely/naturall (1.1.32), blaze/fame (1.1.35), may/doth (1.1.71), on/by (1.1.190), so/most (1.1.425), Swell/Crowne (1.1.499), ramparts/rampires (3.1.23), Which/That (3.1.146), shall/will (3.2.73), betray headie/strangle-head-strong (3.3.240), What/Which (4.2.5), forc’d/runne (4.2.426), bolt/charge (4.5.51), Neither will I know/Nor I will not know (5.3.127), are all/all were (5.5.149), etc. These all read as the kinds of ‘improvements’ that a conscientious poet like Jonson might pen into the printer’s copy as a means of providing a more mellifluous phrase, a more exactly defined term in context, or a phrasing of greater clarity. The correction at 1.1.32 is perhaps intended to avoid unfortunate associations with the word ‘naturall’. ‘Blaze’ at 1.1.35 makes better sense than ‘fame’ and is more self-evidently the verb that is needed. F1’s ‘on their shoulders’ is a more intelligible metaphor than Q’s ‘by their shoulders’ at 1.1.190. To ‘swell’ a bowl of drink at 1.1.499 is more comprehensible as a verb than ‘crowne’, even if in making this change Jonson needed to abandon his paraphrasing of Virgil’s ‘Vina coronant’; he chooses instead to remember his own line from Poetaster, 3.1.5: ‘Swell me a bowl with lusty wine’ (H&S, 5.413). To ‘betray headie husbands’ at 3.3.240 suggests Catiline’s evil intent of cuckolding giddy husbands rather than strangling them for being head-strong. At 4.2.14, ‘as stark as death’ is manifestly an improvement over Q’s ‘as dead as death’. To ask, at 4.5.51, that a second ‘bolt’ be thrown down is more clearly about lightning than Q’s ‘charge’. The Senators’ ‘We are all fearefull’ (5.5.149) seems clearer in the present tense than Q’s ‘We all were fearefull’.
A very few corrections attempt to alter the metre. Cicero’s ‘A states anger’ in place of Q’s ‘A state’ at 4.6.34 gives more active agency to the state in not concerning itself with fools, and adds grace to a line in Q that may have seemed short to Jonson. On the other hand, the deletion of a second ‘his’ in ‘I know, too, well, his manners, and [his] modestie’ at 5.5.57 could easily be a compositorial error; arguably this second ‘his’ improves the cadence of the line and makes explicit the grammatical linking.
These are all minor but seemingly authorial tinkerings. Pressures of censorship or of current events seem not to have impinged on the process. Q and F1 are not very different overall; Jonson was satisfied with what he had written. At the same time, he did do some rewriting, and modern editing here provides a clear rationale for not taking away from Jonson the changes he had inserted.
Stage directions also weigh in favour of F1 as the more suitable copy text. Q essentially has no stage directions. F1 adheres to Q’s rigorously literary characteristics, and does not attempt to dress up the text with the kinds of bracketed stage directions that a modern-spelling edition is likely to prefer. Entrances and exits are not provided, even at the many points when a reader might be uncertain as to who comes on or leaves the stage, or when these actions occur. (Jonson makes extraordinary demands on his intelligent reader.) At the same time, F1 does provide marginal notations of actions that the reader is invited to imagine as the process of reading goes along. ‘Discouers Catiline in his study’, the text notes in act 1 at line 15, suggesting that we are to visualize the appearance of Catiline by means of a withdrawn curtain, so that the opening soliloquy of Sylla’s Ghost may be seen as pertaining to the play’s protagonist. Catiline’s kissing of Aurelia’s lips, cheek, and eyes is duly noted at 1.1.104, presumably for thematic purposes; Jonson is hardly thinking of the actors at this point. So too with ‘A noyse without’ at 1.1.185; Jonson is not prompting the actors but is instead providing commentary for the reader eager to know what causes Catiline to say ‘Who’s that?’ Directions of this sort are plentiful at 1.1.312-18, as Autronius, Longinus, Curius, Vargunteius, and others wonder why it is that ‘The day goes back’ as “Darknesse growes more, and more’. Since this all seems clear enough without further elucidation, we are left to suppose that Jonson’s marginal notations, ‘A darknesse comes ouer the place’, ‘A grone of many people is heard vnder the ground’, ‘Another’, ‘A fiery light appeares’ are intended to provide literary atmosphere rather than instructions to the acting company. Some are not characteristic of usual early modern stage directions: e.g. ‘She kisses him and flatters him along still’ (2.1.351). This is a comment more than a stage direction. The wording is at times more literary than in the shorthand of the theatre: e.g. ‘Curius whispers this to Fulvia’ (3.3.213) instead of ‘CURIUS (Whispers to Fulvia)’. One can well imagine that a preparer of a prompt-book would look at Jonson’s ‘It thunders, and lightens violently on the sodaine’ (3.5.41) and write, more simply, ‘Thunder. Lightning.’ Long stretches of the play have no stage directions at all. And so it goes throughout, quite unsystematically from a theatrical point of view. Even when stage directions are practical, they can be thought of as coming to the aid of the reader rather than the acting company: ‘The Allobroges enter’ (4.4.23), ‘The Armie’ (5.1.1, indicating to the reader that Petreius is accompanied by soldiers).
At the same time, these marginal notations appear to be genuine authorial additions to F1 and belong in the text of an edition of Catiline. They are treated in this present edition like stage directions in other plays, even though their marginal location and their literary flavour require that we regard them as ‘stage directions’ only in the somewhat bizarre sense that they are not primarily intended for pragmatic stage use.
The evidence that F1 was based on an exemplar of Q is plentifully at hand. Some distinctive spellings are duplicated: ‘venter’ (1.1.169), ‘omenous’ (1.1.322), ‘gyrlond’ (1.1.434, 5.3.227), ‘tasts’ (1.1.571), ‘windore’ (2.1.256), ‘tyran’ (2.1.295), ‘prosequute’ (2.1.336), ‘moniments’ (3.1.14), ‘moe’ (3.1.52), ‘sodaine’ (3.1.185, 4.4.95), ‘strooke’ (3.1.191), ‘phant’sie’ (3.2.146), ‘reguard’ for ‘regard’ (4.1.46), ‘ere’ for ‘e’er’ (4.5.18), ‘deceipt’ (4.7.60),’wisedome’ (5.3.220), etc. Readings that may well be in error are sometimes retained in F1: ‘fame’’ with an extraneous apostrophe (2.1.273), ‘that Senate’ instead of F2’s more plausible ‘the Senate’ (2.1.298), the speech prefix ‘CET.’ presumably intended for ‘CAT.’, i.e. Catiline (3.3.195), the speech prefix ‘SEN.’ presumably intended for ‘SEM.’, i.e. Sempronia (4.5.58), the name ‘SVLLA’ (5.3.112) at variance with the text’s preference elsewhere for ‘SYLLA’ and ‘SYLLA’s’ (as at 1.1.1-17 and 5.3.72), etc. Both Q and F1 read ‘Of corne, and victuall’ at 5.4.22, whereas F2 emends to the more expected ‘victuals’. A striking typographical error (‘engines’ for ‘enginers’, 3.4.6) survives from Q into F1 in what is otherwise a carefully proofread text. Punctuation of course varies, but nevertheless offers plentiful instances of F1’s following Q copy.
Generally F1 seems to have followed the corrected text of Q, as at 1.1.160, 167, 268, 411, and 531; 2.1.163, 165, and 170; 3.3.169; and a heavy predominance of the numerous press-corrected passages in act 4. To be sure, F1 appears to retain uncorrected Q readings in act 4 scene 2 at lines 6, 8, 46, 142, and 172, though even these few cases may be more simply a matter of F1’s preferring a lower-case ‘conscript’, ‘state’, ‘wife’, ‘state’s’, and ‘state’ to Q’s capitalized form. F1 may have been following corrected sheets of Q here but chose lowercase forms as a matter of style. It would not be surprising if F1’s copy of Q had some uncorrected pages in it, but in fact they seem to have been few or none.
The punctuation of F1 does move the play in a neoclassical direction, in line with the play’s overall neoclassical conception. Exclamation marks, dashes, and brackets for parenthesis are common. Jonson seems to have taken a good deal of care with this matter; it is the one sort of change that he wished to impose throughout. He exercised considerable care with metrical apostrophes, though, as H&S observe, the matter appears to have confused the compositors; H&S choose to restore apostrophes present in Q but missing in F1, at 1.1.156, 3.1.214, 3.3.66, 5.1.43, 5.4.31, and 5.5.274, and note other places where compositorial confusion with metrical apostrophes has led to error (e.g. 5.5.183). Q may accordingly preserve more of the flavour of the original in its punctuation, and an old-spelling text might well choose Q as its copy text. Because the present edition is in modern spelling, however, conventions of punctuation do not weigh heavily in the choice of copy text. The punctuation of this present edition is modernized in accord with today’s semiotic and grammatical conventions. Where Q and F1 afford plausible insights as to ways in which punctuation can clarify Jonson’s text, those models are of course not lightly discarded.
To assist today’s readers and actors, and to restore the play to its place in the theatre, this edition provides bracketed indications of entrances and exits. It incorporates the marginal stage directions from the folio text, and distinguishes them by not placing them in square brackets, since they are in the folio; they are also noted in the collation. This edition provides other indications of stage movement (‘coming forward’) or persons addressed (‘To the conspirators’). It amplifies the folio’s marginal stage directions with others of a similar nature called for in the text (‘He kisses them’ . . . ‘Kissing her again’). It indicates offstage noise. No new scene markings are needed in the first two acts, but new scenes are marked at 3.2 through 3.5, where there the stage is momentarily bare, so that here the line numberings depart from those of Herford and Simpson. So too at 4.2 through 4.7 and 5.2 through 5.5. These editorial choices are meant to underscore the play’s theatrical nature.
Recent bibliographical research, by others and by those who have prepared this current edition, have added materially to our knowledge of the early printing history of Catiline. Several new states have been identified in Q beyond those that were known in the time of H&S, including three states of L outer. Several of the lately discovered variants exist in only one or two copies, owing presumably to the poor survival rate of Q overall; only fourteen copies survive. If more copies were available today, we might possibly have information on more press correction than has come down to us.
That Catiline enjoyed some belated currency among presumably sophisticated readers and even audiences is attested to by the publication of three quartos after the 1616 folio, in 1635, 1669, and 1674. The quarto of 1635 insists on its title page that the play is ‘now acted by His Majesty’s Servants with great applause’. The quartos of 1669 and 1674 both advertise the play ‘As it is now acted by His Majesty’s Servants at the Theatre Royal’. (The second folio of 1640 simply repeats the advertisement of the first folio title page that the play was ‘First acted in the year 1611. By the King’s Majesty’s Servants’.) See the Stage History for further details. This seeming vindication in the Caroline and Restoration years was not, however, to endure past the end of the seventeenth century.
The 1635 quarto was printed by Nicholas Okes for John Spenser, who, as H&S note, had acquired the copyright from Mistress Burre in 1630, probably without Jonson’s knowledge. The 1635 quarto is a careless reprint of the first quarto, omitting two lines (3.3.138, 5.5.162) and mangling some others. Presumably if Jonson had been consulted he would have insisted on using the 1616 folio text he had carefully revised and corrected. This quarto manifestly is without textual authority other than what it can recommend by way of an occasional commonsense correction of a few words or marks of punctuation.
The 1669 quarto was printed by ‘A. C.’ (Andrew Crooke) to be sold ‘by William Cademan at the Pope’s Head in the Lower walk of the New-exchange’. According to H&S, Crooke had acquired with John Legatt the copyright of Bartholomew Fair, and also The Staple of News from Robert Allot in 1637. He probably acquired the copyright for The Staple of News in 1640. Despite its many misprints, this quarto undertakes to reproduce the 1616 folio text, and it retains some of Jonson’s characteristic punctuation in the midst of a more general modernizing.
The 1674 quarto features a title-page essentially identical to that of the 1669 quarto, but with the imprint: 'Printed for William Crook, at the green Draggon without Temple-bar. 1674.' The text is a careless reprint, and is without any independent authority.
More recent editions of Catiline include the following:
Ben Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy. A tragedy. Acted in the year 1611. By the King's Majesty's servants. London: printed and sold by H. Hills, n.d. (1710).
An edition of 1729 in Ben Johnson’s Plays (2 vols), printed at Dublin, by S. Powell for George Risk, George Ewing, and William Smith.
Ben Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy. A tragedy. Acted in the year 1611. By the King's Majesty's servants. London: printed for D. Midwinter, J. and P. Knapton, H. Knaplock, A. Ward, A. Bettesworth, C. Hitch, and ten others. London, 1739.
Peter Whalley, ed., The Works of Ben Jonson, in seven volumes, collated with all the former editions, with notes critical and explanatory. London: D. Midwinter, 1756.
Peter Whalley, ed., The Dramatic Works of Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher. With notes by Whalley and George Coleman. Catiline in vol. 4. London: John Stockdale, 1811.
W. Gifford, ed., The Works of Ben Jonson. With notes critical and explanatory and a biographical memoir. London: G. and W. Nicol [etc.], 1816.
W. Gifford, ed., The Works of Ben Jonson. With notes critical and explanatory and a biographical memoir. With introduction and appendices by Lieut.-Col. F. Cunningham. Catiline in vol. 4. London: Bickers and Son,, Henry Sotheran and Co., 1875. New edition, London: Chatto & Windus, 1904.
W. Bang, ed., Ben Jonsons's Dramen in Neudruck herausgegeben nach der Folio 1616. Materialien zur Kunde des älteren Englischen Dramas. Louvain: A.Uystruyst, 1905.
Lynn Harold Harris, ed., Catiline His Conspiracy. Yale Studies in English, no. 53, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916. This edition, from a 1914 Yale PhD dissertation based on the folio text of 1616, is, as Herford and Simpson observe, carelessly proofread, with dropped words and inaccuracies in the critical apparatus, and without knowledge of the third quarto of 1669.
C. H. Herford and Percy Simpson, eds., Ben Jonson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Catiline in vol. 5, 1937, reprinted 1954.
G. A. Wilkes, ed. The Complete Plays of Ben Jonson, based on the edition of C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson. Catiline in vol. 3. Oxford: Clarendon Pres, 1982.
W. F. Bolton and Jane F. Gardner, eds., Catiline His Conspiracy. A modern-spelling edition for the Regents Renaissance Drama series. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973.
Here follows a collation of the 1611 quarto of Catiline.
| State 1 | State 2 | ||
| A inner | |||
| A4r | 19 | Yeare | eare |
| B outer | |||
| B1r | 13 | breath. | breath: |
| 23 | voice | voice! | |
| B2v | 11 | Oreſtilla | Oreſtilla, |
| 12 | thought | thought, | |
| B3r | 29 | debts | their debts |
| 36 | there be | there be, | |
| B4v | 14 | world | World |
| 33 | They had | They’had |
[Note: the state 2 reading at B1 13 is produced by dislodged type, and not a genuine variant.]
| State 1 | State 2 | ||
| C outer | |||
| C1r | 30 | affaire; | affaire, |
| C3r | 1 | you! | you. |
| C4v | 14 | Can nothing | CAn nothing |
| 15 | [flush left] | [indented] | |
| D inner | |||
| D1v | 8 | hether | hither |
| D3v | 14 | yonr | your |
| 32 | to | too | |
| 34 | dos | do’s | |
| D4r | 3 | ſo, imperious | ſo imperious |
| 5 | be be | be | |
| H outer | |||
| H1r | 13 | him loſt | him, loſt |
| I inner | |||
| I1v | 3 | Stayer | STAYER |
| 6 | Which may be happy, and | Which may be happy, and | |
| auſpicious ſtill | auſpicious ſtill | ||
| 7 | To Rome, and hers | To Rome, and hers | |
| 7 | conſcript | Conſcript | |
| 9 | ſtate | State, | |
| 10 | night; | night, | |
| 16 | Senate | Senate, | |
| 19 | ſeem'd; | ſeem'd, | |
| 23 | effects; Then | effects, then | |
| 25 | one; | one: | |
| 26 | ſithence | yet ſince | |
| 28 | looſe | looſe, | |
| 31 | greater, | greater; | |
| 31 | all, | all: | |
| 32 | theſe | thoſe | |
| I2r | 4 | all; | all: |
| 13 | wife | Wife | |
| 28 | Nature | Nature, | |
| 35 | licentiouſneſſe; | licentiouſneſſe: | |
| I3v | 1 | ſtate’s | State’s |
| 5 | ruſt, | ruſt; | |
| 7 | liu’ſt, | liu’ſt: | |
| 9 | Fathers | Fathers, | |
| 14 | iawes | iawes, | |
| 14 | Hetruria, | Hetruria; | |
| 16 | walles, | walles: | |
| 17 | publique | Publique | |
| 18 | If | If, | |
| 19 | Here | Here, | |
| 22 | bee | were | |
| 22 | meale | meale, | |
| 29 | leaue: | leaue; | |
| 29 | liu’ſt, | liu’ſt: | |
| 31 | ſtate | State | |
| 35 | night, can | Night can, | |
| 35 | darkneſſe | darkenſſe, | |
| 36 | houſe, | Houſe | |
| I4r | 1 | Can . . . walles | Can, . . . walles, |
| 2 | conſpiracy,if | conſpiracy: If | |
| 5 | told | told, | |
| 10 | Nouember | Nouember | |
| 20 | Præneſte? | Præneſte ? | |
| 21 | And | Where | |
| 25 | thee; | thee, | |
| 27 | buiſineſſe | buſineſſe | |
| 31 | met? | met. | |
| 33 | thee; | thee: | |
| L outer | State 1 | State 2 | State 3 | |
| L1r | 5 | I’ha’ | ~ | I ha’ |
| L2v | 26 | Ambaſſadors: | Ambaſſadors. | ~ |
| L3 | 16 | SEN. | ~ | SEM. |
| 18 | SEN. | ~ | SEM. | |
| L4v | 3 | all | ~ | all. |
| 8 | While | ~ | While you |
[Additionally, in L1 state 2, line 9 the type-shoulder has printed between R and O in ‘CICERO’, so that it seems to read ‘CICERIO’]
| M outer | State 1 | State 2 | |
| M1r | 21 | sea | Sea |
| N outer | |||
| N2v | 24 | CATILINE. Army. | CATILINE. THE ARMIE. |
| O inner | |||
| O2r | 15 | by, a | by’ a |
Distribution of variants
A (i)
State 1: copies 1, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14
State 2: copies 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11
B (o)
State 1: copies 1, 2, 5, 13
State 2: copies 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14
C (o)
State 1: copies 5, 9
State 2: the rest
D (i)
State 1: copies 3, 7, 8, 11
State 2: copies 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14
H (o)
State 1: copies 1, 9
State 2: the rest
I (i)
State 1: copies 4, 9, 12
State 2: the rest
L (o)
State 1: copy 5
State 2: copy 13
State 3: the rest
M (o)
State 1: copies 2, 12
State 2: the rest
N (o)
State 1: copy 6
State 2: the rest
O (i)
State 1: copy 5
State 2: the rest
Copies consulted
Nine copies have been collated in full; the remainder have been checked against the established list of variants.
1 British Library, C 39.k.9
2 Bodleian Library, Mal.188 (6)
3 Boston Public Library, XG.3962.2 no.2 (checked by Catherine Rockwood)
4 Cambridge University Library, Syn.7.61.12
5 Victoria and Albert Museum, The Dyce Collection 5358, call no 25.A.91
6 Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 14759 copy 1
7 Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 14759 copy 2 (lacks sheet E)
8 Glasgow University Library Special Collections Hunterian Co.3.27 (checked by Rob Maslen)
9 Houghton Library, Harvard University, STC 14759 (checked by Suparna Roychoudhury)
10 Huntington Library, 62096 (Bridgewater bookplate)
11 Huntington Library, 60533
12 Newberry Library, Case Y, 135 .J 76228
13 Ohio State University, PR2608.A1 1611 (checked by Mira Assaf)
14 Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas: PFORZ 540 PFZ (checked by Meghan Andrews and Douglas Bruster)
Here follows a collation of the 1616 folio text of Catiline:
| SETTING A | SETTING B | |
| State 1 | State 2 | |
| 3L3:4 outer | ||
| 3L3r 677 | ||
| sig. KKK3 | Lll3 | |
| 3L3:4 inner | ||
| 3L3v 678 | ||
| 1 vvas | was | |
| 4 Maiesties | Maieſties | |
| 3L4r [679] | ||
| 11 quo[‘que with accent] | quo[‘que’] | |
| 13 LONDON, [CAP & sc] | LONDON, [[CAP & sc] | |
| 14 WILLIAM STANSBY [CAPS & sc] | William> Stansby | |
| 15 M. DC. XVI. | 1616 | |
| 3M1:6 inner | ||
| 3M6r 695 | ||
| 11m [note] | 9m [note] | |
| 3P2:5 outer | ||
| 3P2r 723 | ||
| 5 downe | downe? | |
| 6 well; | well: | |
| 10m [omit] | [note] | |
| 15 attempt; | attempt, | |
| 20 lady, | lady: | |
| 34 CIMBER. [CAP & sc] | CIMBER. [CAP & sc] | |
| 38 ſtrangle head-ſtrong | betray headie | |
| 38 eaſie; | eaſie: | |
| 3P5v 730 | ||
| 12 and nature, | and of nature, | |
| 14 But | But, | |
| 23 mine | mine, | |
| 26 owne; | owne: | |
| 34m [omit] | [note] | |
| 42 CAT. [CAP & sc] | CATI. [CAP & sc] | |
| 3R3:4 outer | ||
| 3R3r 749 | ||
| 40 vp-right | vpright | |
| 3R4v 752 | ||
| 19 SYBILLS [CAP & sc] | SIBYLLS [CAP & sc] | |
| 32 Neither | Neyther | |
| 3R1:6 inner | ||
| 3R1v 746 | ||
| 4 not, | not. | |
| 3R6r 755 | 4 Reſcu d | Reſcu’d |
Distribution of variants
3L3:4 (o)
State 1: all except copy 37 [missing in copy 40]
State 2: copy 37
3L3:4 (i)
State 1: all except copy 37
State 2: copy 37
3M1:6 (i)
State 1: copies 2, 5, 11, 19, 24, 32, 42, 45, 51, 56
State 2: the rest
3P2:5 (o)
State 1: copies 7, 8, 9, 19, 24, 33, 42, 54, 55
State 2: the rest
3R3:4 (o)
State 1: copies 9, 24, 31
State 2: the rest [missing in copy 51]
3R1:6 (i)
State 1: copies 2, 3, 4, 9, 12, 14, 16, 24, 31, 33, 37, 41, 43, 45, 49, 52, 57
State 2: the rest [missing in copy 51]
Copies collated
1 British Library G. 11630 (Grenville copy)
2 British Library, C39.k.9
3 Cambridge University Library, Syn 4.61.19
4 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Douce. I.302
5 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Arch. A d 28
6 Balioll College, Oxford, 525.C.1
7 English Faculty Library, Oxford, YK1 26764
8 English Faculty Library, Oxford, YK1 26765
9 English Faculty Library, Oxford, YK1 26766
10 Exeter College Library, Oxford, Ex 142-k-g
11 Wadham College, Oxford, A39.12
12 Huntington Library, 62100
13 Huntington Library, 62101
14 Huntington Library, 62104
15 Huntington Library, 62105
16 Huntington Library, 495467 [Ford copy A]
17 Huntington Library, 499967
18 Huntington Library, 499968
19 Huntington Library, 499971
20 Huntington Library, 606199
21 Huntington Library, 606200
22 Huntington Library, 606202
23 Huntington Library, 606574
24 Huntington Library, 606576
25 Huntington Library, 606579
26 Huntington Library, 606582
27 Huntington Library, 606583
28 Huntington Library, 606599
29 Folger Library, STC 14751, copy 1
30 Folger Library, STC 14751, copy 2
31 Folger Library, STC 14751, copy 3
32 Folger Library, STC 14751, copy 4
33 Folger Library, STC 14751, copy 5
34 Folger Library, STC 14751, copy 6
35 Folger Library, STC 14751.2, copy 1
36 Folger Library, STC 14751.2, copy 2
37 Library of Congress, Yorke W.4.4
38 D. Gants personal copy (Fenton bookplate)
39 D. Gants personal copy (Everard Home bookplate)
40 D. Gants personal copy, partial (Catiline)
41 Boston Public Library copy 1, XFG .3811.5
42 Boston University, YPR 2600.C16
43 Wellesley College, qx – English Poetry
44 Brown University, Providence, PR2600 - 1616
45 Texas Christian University, Fort Worth: Lewis PR2600 1616
46 University of Texas, Austin: Ah/J738/+B616a
47 University of Texas, Austin: Ah/J738/+B616ab
48 University of Texas, Austin: Ah/J738/+B616ad
49 University of Texas, Austin: Ah/J738/+B616af
50 University of Texas, Austin: Ah/J738/+B616ah
51 University of Texas, Austin: Ah/J738/+B616ak
52 University of Texas, Austin: Ah/J738/+B616am
53 University of Texas, Austin: Ah/J738/+B616an
54 University of Texas, Austin: Wh/J738/+B616a
55 University of Texas, Austin: Pforz. 559
56 University of Texas, Austin: Woodward-Ruth 181
57 University of Texas, Austin: Stark 6431
58 University of Virginia, E 1616.J64
59 William and Mary College, PR2608 A2 B6 1616