Love Restored: Textual Essay

David Lindley

This masque was first printed in F1 where it occupies signatures 4O3–4O6. It begins towards the bottom of page 989, following directly on from Love Freed, with a separating rule, and is in turn followed on page 995 by A Challenge at Tilt, also separated by a rule and beginning towards the bottom of the page. Towards the end of F1 the printing of the later masques seems less generous than had been the case earlier. At the same time, as is noted in several of the textual essays for entertainments after Barriers, Jonson himself seems to have been less and less interested in providing either the detailed marginalia characteristic of the early quarto masques, or, indeed, in many cases, much account of setting and action. The running on of one masque into another, and the printing of parts of Oberon and Love Freed in double column, might simply be the consequence of an attempt to squeeze the texts into shorter space. The sparsity of commentary, stage directions, and the rest, however, might also signify that Jonson himself had neither the time nor the disposition to revise or amplify his original scripts to turn them into full accounts of the actual performances. He remarks, after all, in the letter to Prince Henry prefacing the quarto of Queens, on the labour it cost him to provide marginalia, and even to incorporate details about the setting and music would require him to return again and fully revise his original draft scripts.

Love Restored falls, as do many of the masques, within that part of F1 where formes were either reset or reimposed, after the printers discovered that they had not run off sufficient copies of these pages (see Barriers: Textual Essay, for a fuller account of the problem). The formes 4O3.4v, 4O3v.4 were completely reset, and the remaining formes were reimposed, using the same type as the first impression, but set within new skeletons. There are only variants in the running title to be found in the reimposed formes, whereas, as one would expect, there is a substantial number of variants in those which were reset. Almost all are trivial, and none introduce readings that bear the mark of authorial revision or of reference back to manuscript copy. The only substantive variants are manifest errors – ‘amazed’ for ‘mazarded’ (65), ‘ruines’ for ‘ruine’ (115) – and an attempt to make sense of the first state of F1’s ‘a Colossus, the companie’ by printing ‘as a Colossus, the companie’ (101) is unconvincing. Two stop-press corrections were made of reset sheets: ‘Gentlmen’ in the title on 4O3, 31, was corrected to ‘Gentlemen’, and ‘thnn’ on 4O3v, 40, corrected to ‘then’. There seem to have been no stop-press corrections in the original printings of these pages. For the sake of completeness a list of variants, derived principally from the extensive collation by David Gants, is provided below.

It is impossible to ascertain the nature of the copy which the printers had before them. Though there are a few characteristic Jonsonisms – the abbreviation ‘’hem’ occurs three times, and his spelling of ‘window’ as ‘windore’ is found at 66, of ‘tyrant’ as ‘tyran’ at 163 – they are not sufficient in number to suggest strongly that the printer’s manuscript was a holograph, rather than that they survived through a scribal transcript. Whether or not the manuscript was a holograph, it is notable that the text gives no information at all about setting or costume; not even Cupid’s chariot is described. It is unique amongst the early masques in such baldness (though both Barriers and Challenge, scripts for a different kind of performance, are similarly bereft of description). It would, however, seem possible the attenuation of any account of the sequence of masque dances and revels at the end of this masque might represent a more specific response to the actual events at the performance, when the ladies refused to participate in the revels (see Introduction). Whether it was this discomfiture that dissuaded Jonson from writing up the masque in fuller form, whether the comparatively lowly status of the masquers provided him with no good reason to attempt it, or whether, as suggested above, it is simply an extreme example of a general tendency in the masques after 1610, one cannot know.

The printing of the text, especially of the long prose antimasque, is marked by a few evident errors. On two occasions the compositors seem to have misread a letter as a mark of punctuation. At 101, as noted above, the first state of F1 prints ‘a Colossus, the companie’, and 134-5 ‘raignes; the world’, which may be explained as incorrect readings of ‘o’’ and ‘i’’ respectively (both were carried over into the reset sheets). At line 16 a word was missed between ‘aduenture, humbly’; and F2’s suggestion ‘adventure. We humbly’ seems an entirely plausible emendation. More problematic is the phrase at line 68: ‘a case:vses’ (another error which was simply transferred to the reset sheets despite being evident nonsense). Earlier editors suggested that this was a further instance of the misreading of a letter as a mark of punctuation, followed by a misprinted word. Gifford conjectured ‘a case of asses’ (which H&S found plausible, though they did not adopt it). Sir Walter Greg offered the conjecture that ‘vses’ might be a misprint for ‘vfes’, which he thought could be a form of ‘aufs’ or ‘oafs’ (1942, 152 ). Stephen Orgel, however, objected that these readings both require that the colon be a misreading not of a single letter, as in the other cases, but of the word ‘of’, which he thought rendered them inadmissible. He accepted Christopher Ricks’s ingenious suggestion of ‘a case o’catsos’, though it is perhaps rather a flight of ingenious imagination than paleographically as readily defensible as Orgel suggests. This edition also, somewhat reluctantly, adopts this reading, on the grounds that something must be offered that makes sense, though a truly compelling resolution of the problem has still to be offered. If the handwriting of the manuscript was sufficiently ‘small and crabbed that o’ could be taken for a colon or a comma’ as Orgel puts it, then it is clear that the printer’s copy was not written in the clear and elegant hand that Jonson employed for his presentation manuscript of Queens, which increases the likelihood that it was a scribal copy, or else a Jonsonian draft of the speeches for the masque (1969, 482 ).

LIST OF VARIANTS

4O 3:4 (o)

4O3 (989)

State 1 State 2 State 3
31 Gentlemen Gentlmen Gentlemen
33 [Orn. 18] [Orn.17] ~

4O4v (992)

3 Be ... me bee ... mee
... mee
~
4 Be bee ~
7 money ... be monie ... bee
... bee
~
8 Be bee ~
9 Whome whom -- ~
11 Interpreter … be ...
a Co-/loſſus
Interpreter ... bee as
a / Coloſſus
~
12 2me 2mee -- ~
16 Fayl'd me fail'd mee ~
18 deuice: ~ : ~
19 Be bee ~
22 Thou, ~ ∧ ~
26 Riots ... ruine ryots ... ruines ~
27 me, of entertaining mee, of entertayning ~
29 Poſt ... payre Post ... Payre ~
30 Noddie ... Tables? Neddie ... Tables? ~
31 Gentlewomen Gentlewomen ~
32 Twentie twety ~
33 charges, ~∧
-
... olde
~
34 Dreames Dieames ~
35 Then∧ -, ~
36 Embroydred embroydered ~
37 Me mee ~
38 countrey ... be countrie ... bee ~

State 1: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 29, 32, 34, 37, 39, 40, 43, 47

State 2: 4, 21, 28,

State 3: the rest

4O 3:4 (i)

4O3v (990)

1 Wil will ~
3 atti- atty- ~
5 Be bee ~
8 muſique ... Cvpid Muſicke ... Cupid
... Cupid
~
9 maieſtie ... chayre Maieſty ... chaire
... chaire
~
11 Been beene ~
13 Plvtus. Plvt. ~
15 Mas. Masq. -- ~
18 Mas. ... rayle Masq. ... raile
... raile
~
19 Plv. ... maſquer Plut. ... Maſquer
... Ma=quer
~
21 ſur- / quedry ſurque- / drie ~
22 finde, ... but / you ~ ∧ ... you / may
--
... you I may
~
23 1 / will will / haue ~
24 delight / ſo ſo / deare ~
25 merry ... hower ... me merrie ... houre ... mee
... houre ... mee
~
27 How! no maſque ~! no Maſque ~
27 no, maſque ~, Maſque ~ . ~
27 you /ſay, ſay, / are ~
28 maſque indeede ...can
/ you
Maſque indeed ... you /
tell
~
30 Mas. Masq. ~
31 bee no maſke be no Maſque ~
32 maſque Maſque ~
33 Plv. Plvt. ~
35 maſke Maſque ~
36 Plv. Plvt. ~
37 Ioy Ioy ~
38 Countrey countrie ~
39 wild mare wilde Mare ~
40 red ... maſque: Red ... Maſque:
... Ma=que:
~
40 Then thnn then
42 countrey ... harmleſſe: countrie ... ~: ~
42 Robbin∧good Robbin-good ~
43 Countrey Countrey ~
45 Court Court ~
cw Run runne ~

4O4 (991)

1 run ... was / ſo runne ... ſo / put ~
2 difficulties / ſo I / haue ~
3 maſque ... Reuells / I Maſque ... Reuels I
would / you
~
4 that / ifaith you / let ~
6 good∧fellow good-fellow ~
8 porter ... me Porter ... mee ~
10 Nonentry nonentrie ~
13 me ... me ... a- / corne mee ... mee ... A- / corne ~
14 ſow Sow ~
15 Carpenters Carpenters ~
17 Mazarded Amazed ~
20 cocks- / combe Cockes- / combe ~
23 Belie Belye ~
24 ingineer ... aſk'd Ingineer ... aſked ~
25 Beare Beare ~
27 maſquers Maſquers ~
28 be a muſician bee a Muſician ~
29 mary ... inſtrument marie ... Inſtrument ~
30 fea- / ther .. black Fea- / ther ... Blacke ~
32 Be Bee ~
34 We ... maſquers Wee ... Maſquers ~
36 countrey lady ... he Countrie Ladie ... hee ~
37 Clock Clocke ~
38 Me Mee ~
39 me ... Mary mee ... Marie ~
40 o’ the whimlens of the Whimlen’s ~
44 ci- / tizens Citi- / zens ~

State 1: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 29, 32, 34, 37, 39, 40, 43, 47

State 2: 4, 21, 28,

State 3: the rest

4O 2:5 (inner)

4O5 (993)

State 1 State 2 State 3
rt Maſques ~ [swash 'M’]aſques

State 1: 1, 40

State 2: 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 29, 32, 34, 37, 39, 43, 47

State 3: the rest

(For other variant readings in State 2, see Textual Essay to Love Freed.)

COPIES COLLATED (BY DAVID L. GANTS)

1. Huntington Library, 62100

2. Huntington Library, 62101

3. Huntington Library, 62104

4. Huntington Library, 62105

5. Huntington Library, 495467 (Ford Copy ‘A’)

6. Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 14751, Copy 1

7. Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 14751, Copy 2

8. Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 14751, Copy 3

9. Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 14751, Copy 4

10. Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 14751, Copy 5

11. Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 14751, Copy 6

12. Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 14751.2, copy 1

13. Folger Shakespeare Library, STC 14751.2, copy 2

14. Library of Congress, Yorke W.4.4

15. Gants Personal Copy, Fenton bookplate

16. Gants Personal Copy, Everard Home bookplate

17. British Library, G. 11630 (Grenville copy)

18. Boston Public Library, XfG .3811 .5

19. Boston University, YPR 2600 .C16

20. Wellesley College, qx - English Poetry

21. Bodleian Library, Douce I. 302

22. Huntington Library, 499968

23. Huntington Library, 499967

24. Huntington Library, 499971

25. Huntington Library, 606199

26. Huntington Library, 606202

27. Huntington Library, 606200

28. Huntington Library, 606574

29. Huntington Library, 606576

30. Huntington Library, 606599

31. Huntington Library, 606579

32. Huntington Library, 606582

33. Huntington Library, 606583

34. Brown University, Providence, PR 2600 - 1616

35. Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Lewis PR2600 1616

36. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616a

37. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616ab

38. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616ad

39. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616af

40. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616ah

41. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616ak

42. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616am

43. University of Texas, Austin, AH/ J738/ +B616an

44. University of Texas, Austin, Wh/ J738/ +B616a

45. University of Texas, Austin, Pforz. 559

46. University of Texas, Austin, Woodward-Ruth 181

47. University of Texas, Austin, Stark 6431

48. University of Virginia, E 1616 .J64