The New Inn was first performed at the Blackfriars theatre, London, in 1629, but not without controversy, at least according to the text as it was printed two years later in 1631. The printed edition, the only one of Jonson’s plays to appear in octavo, states on its title page that the play ‘was never acted, but most negligently played, by some, the King’s Servants. And more squeamishly beheld, and censured by others, the King’s Subjects. 1629.’ The print version, the title page asserts, sets that play ‘at liberty’ to be properly understood and judged by its readership, and this is underscored by a motto adapted from Horace, Epistles, 2.1.214: me lectori credere mallem: / Quàm spectatoris fastidia ferre superbi (‘I prefer to entrust myself to a reader rather than to bear the disdain of a scornful spectator’).
The poor reception of the first performance is acknowledged in the octavo (henceforth O) by various means, not least the appended poem, ‘Come leave the loathed stage’, whose full title reports ‘The just indignation the author took at the vulgar censure of his play by some malicious spectators begat this following Ode to Himself.’ As a further indication of Jonson’s careful efforts to right the wrongs of that initial performance, O’s preliminary materials are at pains to establish the play’s meaning. The dedication to the reader praises his or her judgement in comparison to the stage audience’s – ‘if thou canst but spell and join my sense, there is more hope of thee than of a hundred fastidious impertinents who were there present the first day’ (2-4) – and there is a lengthy exposition of the play’s ‘The Argument’, act by act. ‘The Persons of the Play’ provides a ‘short characterism of the chief actors’, but also seizes the opportunity to berate the Blackfriars players.
It is intriguing to speculate why Jonson writes that the play is ‘at last’ set at liberty. The phrase seems significant and perhaps implies a struggle to regain control of his text from the King’s Men, who presumably held ownership in 1629. Elsie Duncan-Jones has suggested that two years was an unusually long gap between first performance and first printing (1996, 147 ). Certainly, prior to 1614, a fairly rapid printing of Jonson play-texts was not unusual: with the exception of Epicene, all his plays prior to Bartholomew Fair appeared in quarto form soon after their first production. The printing of his Caroline plays was less consistent, but the failure of The New Inn’s initial production may have contributed to the decision to print it two years after its first staging. It is likely that the play left the boards almost immediately after its poor reception, so control of the text might have returned to Jonson at this point. The decision to print in 1631 could have been taken on economic grounds. The majority of poems and letters extant from this period indicate the parlous state of Jonson’s finances, in part due to the second stroke he suffered in 1628 (see, for example, Und. 62, 68, and 71). Letters addressed to his most significant Caroline patron, William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle, repeat the tropes of sickness and need expressed in the poetry (e.g., Letters 17 and 18) and contemporaneous poems treating subjects such as royal births and birthdays (Und. 65, 66, and 67) are feasibly part of a general bid for patronage. However, the inclusion of such extensive preliminary materials in O also suggests a conscious attempt on Jonson’s part to redeem the reputation of both play and playwright.
The choice of octavo format also singles out this publication. Like most contemporary dramatists, Jonson would usually have published single plays in quarto form. Octavo was a useful choice for popular publications, since the size enabled a volume to be carried in a pocket, but a failed stage play could hardly have had high predicted sales. A more likely motive for the unusual format was the cheaper cost of production (less paper was required, which was the most expensive item in the process). Octavo publication was less risky in financial terms and the plethora of additional material Jonson attached indicates an anxiety about its fate in print.
Other works by Jonson were printed in 1631. Two court masques, Love’s Triumph at Callipolis and Chloridia, were both performed and published (in quartos by Thomas Walkley), and Robert Allott was arranging the printing of three plays in folio: Bartholomew Fair (which had not been published either in quarto in 1614 following its first performance or as part of F1), The Devil is an Ass, and The Staple of News. All three were printed for Allott by John Beale, but while some presentation copies were distributed, there is no evidence for any general release. It appears they were intended to form part of a second folio of Jonson’s work, which in the end was left incomplete prior to his death in 1637. Creaser suggests that Jonson’s penury in 1631 was a factor in these plans; a second folio, this time dedicated to Charles I, would remind the monarch of his father’s patronage of the playwright (see Bartholomew Fair, Textual Essay). The relationship of O to these companion 1631 printings is harder to fathom. Far from seeking royal patronage, O carries no dedication, except to the reader, and the only mention of the King is an allusion at the end of the ‘Ode to Himself’. What is clear is that the 1631 folio editions sorely lacked the typographical finesse usually associated with Jonson publications. All three are marked by an unusually high number of compositorial errors (see Bartholomew Fair, Textual Essay).
Because Jonson expressed dissatisfaction with Beale’s work in his correspondence with Newcastle (Letter 15), it has been suggested that he refused to authorize full publication of plays for the putative second folio and therefore sought an alternative publisher and printer for The New Inn (Hattaway, 1984, 11 ). This would be unusual behaviour. Since in this period an author’s chief relationship was with the publisher and not the printer, Jonson could simply have asked Allott to lodge The New Inn with an alternative printing-house. Nor do the dates entirely support a reading of the The New Inn octavo as a response to the problems with Beale. The New Inn was entered on the Stationers’ Register to Thomas Alchorne on 17 April 1631:
17mo die Aprilis 1631
Thomas Alchorne Entred for his Copye vnder the handes of Sir HENRY HERBERT
and Master Kingston warden a Comedy
Called New Inne written by Ben: Johnson . . . vjd.
(Arber, 1875-94. 4.217).
April is early for Jonson to have become so disillusioned with Beale’s work: The Staple of News was not even assigned over to Allott in the Stationers’ Register from John Waterson’s control until 7 September that year, although Creaser suggests that the availability of early page-settings for Bartholomew Fair (these plays were worked on in chronological order) may have been sufficient cause for Jonson to seek an alternative printer (see Bartholomew Fair, Textual Essay).
Jonson’s individualistic decision to print The New Inn in octavo format has already been noted. Certainly, Alchorne’s printer, Thomas Harper, would have come with strong recommendations for such a project, since in 1629 he had printed a very worthy third edition of William Camden’s Annals (in 1636, he would print the fifth edition of Camden’s Remains Concerning Britain). Other projects undertaken by Harper between 1628 and 1632 show that he had some experience of dramatic publications (his books include Massinger’s The Emperor of the East in 1632, printed for John Waterson, and Thomas May’s The Tragedy of Antigone for Benjamin Fisher in 1631) but far more experience with texts of a religious or linguistic content. Of 51 projects during 1628-32, over twenty are theological, and ten more are works such as Henry Cockeram’s English Dictionary (1631), Antonio de Nebrija’s A Brief Introduction to Syntax (1631), and Camden’s Institutio Graecae grammatices compendiaria (1630). It seems a reasonable suggestion that a printing-house accustomed to the compositorial demands of dictionaries would be well able to cope with the intricacies of setting a Jonson play. Alchorne used Harper for six extant publications during this period, including George Chapman’s The Wars of Pompey and Caesar (1631), which Alchorne sold at his shop in St Paul’s. Fleay speculated that Alchorne was the ‘Bookseller’ addressed in the epigram at Und. 58 (Fleay, 1891, 1.331 ; Donaldson, OA, 701 ); Jonson imagines the bookseller as his text’s ‘intelligencer’, taking note of public reaction.
The alternative time-scale for the relationship of O and the 1631 folio fragments is, then, that Jonson turned to Allott and Beale to print the latter only after Alchorne’s work on O had begun (this would explain the gap between the April registration of The New Inn and that in September of The Staple of News). Possibly Alchorne and Harper were unable to handle a large folio project at this time – Harper’s printing house was extremely busy in 1631 – and Allott and Beale had both the capital and the space for such a large-scale commission.
All editors agree that Harper produced for Alchorne an admirably tidy, consistent, and error-free edition of The New Inn. A contributing factor in its accuracy appears to have been a degree of authorial involvement in the proof-reading, but also the fact that the text was set up from either a holograph copy or a scribal transcript carefully corrected by the author, rather than a playhouse prompt copy. The preliminary materials, as well as the additional epilogue and ‘Come, leave the loathèd stage’ (also known as the ‘Ode to Himself’), suggest a scribal manuscript prepared subsequent to the first performance, and reinforce the argument made by Hattaway in his edition for the Revels Plays series that the copy used by Harper came direct from the playwright ‘rather than from any manuscript associated with the playhouse’ (Hattaway, 1984, 12 ). Even though it seems likely that the preliminary materials and appended second epilogue and poem were delivered separately (as will be discussed), the paucity of entrances and exits marked in the text also suggests a scribal manuscript with a non-theatrical provenance. Other indicators of a text deriving from the author’s study include the use of the typically Jonsonian abbreviation ‘’hem’ in preference to the more common ‘’em’, and the punctuation, which, with its preponderance of emphatic exclamation marks, is suggestive of Jonson’s Caroline style.
The collational formula of the octavo is: (*)8, A2, B-G8 [G7 + H2]. In the majority of extant copies, the two additional leaves (H2) are inserted before the blank G8, although in the Ashley copy in the BL and those owned by Canterbury Cathedral and the Library of Congress, G8 precedes gathering H. In the Forster copy in the Victoria and Albert Museum the blank has been cut away. In detail: (*)1r, title page; (*)1v, blank; (*)2r-(*)3r, The Dedication to the Reader; (*)3v-(*)8r, The Argument; (*)8v-A2r, The Persons of the Play; A2v, Prologue; B-G7r, the text of the play; G7v, Epilogue; H1r, Another Epilogue; H1v-H2v, ‘Ode to Himself’. The first four rectos of each gathering are signed. There is no pagination. The signatures of the gatherings begin on the preliminary pages, but with the unusual formula (*) for the first gathering. This complete gathering precedes the incomplete gathering A, which commences partway through 'The Persons of the Play’. This suggests that the preliminary materials were delivered to the printing-house later than the text of the play, which begins neatly on B1, with the half-sheet A coming before it, an indicator that it was printed separately from A. The fact that the title page is printed on (*)1 suggests that the preliminaries came in together, whereas more often the title page would be printed independently and then coupled with a blank back page, enabling it to be wrapped around the text proper. While it was also common practice to print the text prior to the preliminaries, these rarely exceeded one sheet’s worth of material to be cast off (see Blayney, 1997, 406 ). In this instance, Harper must have found that the additional materials sent subsequently to the text, including that for the back gathering H (the second epilogue and poem), far exceeded this common requirement, and ingeniously, as well as casting off a complete gathering from the preliminaries, he created A2 to provide one half of a sheet paired with H2 in the machining process.
The strange history of one major character’s name change in The New Inn reinforces these speculations. While some extant copies of gathering B carry the original ‘Cicelie’ and ‘Cis’ (the name deployed in the original stage performance, instead of the subsequent ‘Prudence’ and ‘Pru’, as the name of Lady Frampul’s chambermaid), the preliminary pages in all extant copies consistently read ‘Prudence’ and ‘Pru’. The second epilogue provided in the later materials sent to the printing-house explains the name change and the contemporary preliminaries execute it. It can be presumed from this that the scribal manuscript of the playtext carried the original ‘Cicelie’, and that either this was not always caught in proof, or (more likely) was not altered until the later materials arrived, indicating that the uncorrected gatherings were produced earliest. Running titles also indicate a divide between the preliminaries and the text proper: ‘The Argument’ appears on (*)4r-(*)8r, and ‘The New Inne’ (with some variation in the capitalization) appears from B1v-G7r.
Previous editors have suggested that the play was set seriatim, that is page by page, rather than by forme (Hattaway, 1984, 12 ), though the evidence is difficult to provide. Setting by forme was usually deployed in folio printings for reasons of economy, since seriatim setting requires ‘that five pages must be in type simultaneously before printing can commence’ (Parr, 1988, 4 ). High demand for type in small printing-houses militated against seriatim settings. But quartos or octavos, the demand was less problematic due to a smaller page space. The recurrence of individual type pieces in the first five pages of a folio can indicate that a text was set by forme but in a quarto or octavo this evidence is not available (Blayney, 1982, 90 ).
The running titles to the playtext proper suggest a setting by forme. There are alternations between ‘n’ and ‘N’ in ‘New’ and ‘I’ and ‘J’ in ‘Inne’ across gatherings B-G, but matches across gatherings and between the inner and outer formes of later gatherings possibly indicate setting by skeleton formes. There are no matches to be found within gatherings B and C, but there are matches within D, F, and G (inner and outer formes follow the same pattern within their running titles), and between D and E which suggest that D and E were produced at much the same time. The predominant occurrence of press variants on gatherings B and C reinforces this suggestion (see below).
In all copies the title page reads: ‘THE | NEVV INNE . | OR, | The light Heart. | A COMOEDY. | As it was neuer acted, but most | negligently play’d, by some, | the Kings Seruants. | And more squeamishly beheld, and censu- | red by others, the Kings Subiects. | 1629. | Now, at last, set at liberty to the Readers, his Maties | Seruants, and Subiects, to be iudg’d. | 1631. | By the Author, B. Ionson. | Hor. . . . . me lectoris credere mallem: | Quàm spectatoris fastidia ferre superbi. | [rule] LONDON, | Printed by Thomas Harper, for Thomas Alchorne, and | are to be sold at his shop in Pauls Church-yeard, | at the signe of the greene Dragon. | MDCXXXI.’
The text is remarkably clean. The majority of variants occur on the inner formes of sheets B and C, which were the first to be printed (inner formes tended to be printed before outer formes for reasons of the text showing through). This could lead to several possible conclusions. First, it is feasible that the working arrangement was established only late into the process. Second, Jonson may have been able to look at proofs and was punctilious at the outset, supervising the printer quite closely. However, proving that an author acted as proof-reader is notoriously difficult, and, since many of the variants involved constitute detailed correction of punctuation, capitalization, and italics, there is some case for suggesting that these corrections were made in-house by Harper’s reader. More substantive changes have been proposed by previous editors as likely to be authorial: for example, the metrical alterations at 1.3.155 (‘then o’my Master’ becomes ‘then my Master’); 1.6.166 (‘sparkle’ becomes ‘sparke’); 2.2.8 (‘let me see him, host’ becomes ‘let me see him,’); 2.2.13 (‘Is’ becomes ‘It is’); 2.2.20 (‘Yes, madame.’ becomes ‘Yes.’); 2.4.25 (‘call in, still’ becomes ‘call in’); 2.5.7 (‘and I’le ha’’ becomes ‘and ha’’); and 2.5.85 (‘what’s’ becomes ‘what are’). But the question remains why, if at least some of these proof-corrections were Jonson’s, he did not correct the speech heading of Lovet which occurs on the second line of B2. It seems more plausible that the in-house reader was making changes to restore the author’s text and this latter mistake was simply overlooked.
The one significant revision to the text that occurred during the printing process was the name-change from ‘Cicelie’ to ‘Prudence’ (and ‘Cis’ to ‘Pru’). Jonson’s reasoning for effecting this change some two years after the play’s performance is a matter for conjecture. The second epilogue refers to the hostile audience reaction to the original name, and the playwright hopes for better behaviour from his readers:
such as will not hiss
Because the chambermaid was namèd Cis.
We think it would have served our scene as true
If, as it is, at first we’d called her Pru, (7-10)
Several commentators have reflected on the possible offence that the name could have given. ‘Ciceley’ was not an uncommon name for a serving-woman. Indeed, Jonson had named Cicely as one of the country ‘doxies and dells’ in The Gypsies Metamorphosed (Burley, 478; Windsor, 533), along with Prudence and Maudlin (which he re-used for his Papplewick witch in The Sad Shepherd). Thomas Nabbes named a milkmaid Cicely in his Tottenham Court, 1633 (although, admittedly, by the play’s resolution she proves to be a gentleman’s sister in disguise).
Various guesses have been made about the person who might have been offended by the chambermaid’s name, or to whom the audience may have registered an allusion. F. G. Fleay noted a reference to ‘secretary Cis’ in the ‘Charis’ sequence of poems (Und. 2.8.25), a sequence he connected to Elizabeth, Lady Hatton, and argued that she was being referred to (Fleay, 1891, 1: 324-7, 385 ). While The New Inn deploys the same phrase twice at 1.6.25 and 5.4.14, the case seems unprovable, as is Fleay’s claim that Charis can be identified with Lady Hatton.
More persuasive is an alternative allusion suggested by Elsie Duncan-Jones – albeit one she argues was unintentional on Jonson’s part – to Cecilia or Cicely Crofts, daughter of Sir John Crofts of Saxham, Suffolk. This family had considerable standing in the Jacobean and Caroline courts: not only had James I visited Saxham, and on one occasion enjoyed a masque performed by female members of the circle, two of Sir John’s sons held court positions, and his eldest daughter, Anne, was the Countess of Cleveland (Duncan-Jones, 1996, 148 ). In 1628, Cecily became one of Henrietta Maria’s maids of honour, and the 1629 audience may have taken offence at the association of such a high profile court lady with a servant of ‘Cis’s’ status. Duncan-Jones cites a newsletter sent to Lord Scudamore in 1638, which mentions her death, referring to her as ‘Mrs Killigrew, the wife of [the playwright and courtier] Thomas Killigrew, formerly called by the name of Queen Sis’ (Duncan-Jones, 1996, 150 ; NA, C115/N4/8621). Since ‘queen’ is the very role assigned to the chambermaid of The New Inn, and the phrase ‘Queen Cicelie’ is used directly by the Host (1.6.82), the potential existed for connections to be made between Crofts and the character. By the early 1630s, when the play came into print, Crofts was a well-known court neoplatonic. She would perform in 1633 in Walter Montagu’s The Shepherd’s Paradise, and she had been touted at court in humorous verses as a ‘valentine’ for James I as early as 1622; by 1630 she was ‘high enough in favor to receive the reversion of pensions amounting to £450’ (Duncan-Jones, 1996 , 148; Poynting, 2003 ). Perhaps in the midst of New Inn’s printing in 1631, Jonson felt that she was a significant enough a figure to warrant the name-change; but since the second epilogue indicates that the theatre audience had objected to the name, it seems more likely that this association with Cicely Crofts led him to rethink the name soon after the first performance. However, the text that Alchorne provided to Harper’s printing-house was unrevised, based on the play as first performed, and the correction was made belatedly. The change had been fully effected by the time the later gatherings and preliminaries were printed.
In most corrected copies, the shift from Cicelie to Prudence is effected from B8 onwards. There is, however, one intriguing exception, which was noted by H&S. At B7v in the Selden copy in the Bodleian Library, a cancel slip is pasted over the name Cicelie in the scene heading to Act 1, scene 6. The cancel reads Prudence and it is the only example of this correction that has been found. Since this copy contains more corrections than any other, H&S’s speculation that it was a presentation copy seems valid. Specific corrections of gathering C are only found here and in the Ashley copy (British Library 2).
There has been some speculation as to how far Jonson could have been involved in seeing this play into print following his second stroke. The first epilogue indicates that he is beset by illness, although, with typical assertiveness, the playwright stresses that his mental faculties are unaffected: ‘All that his faint and falt’ring tongue doth crave / Is that you not impute it to his brain. / That’s yet unhurt, although, set round with pain / It cannot long hold out’ (8-11). But, although in the contemporaneous Und. 71, Jonson describes himself as a ‘bed-rid wit’ (15), there is some evidence to suggest he still had partial, if not full, mobility in 1631. Mark Bland (1998a, 169 ) suggests that the extent of his paralysis post-1628 has been exaggerated, for in BL Add. MS 71,131 F, Jonson is named, in his role as city chronologer, amongst those who walked in the funeral procession of Sir John Lemmon on 3 May 1632. Limited mobility in 1631 could have enabled him to oversee the printing of The New Inn first-hand. Presence in the printing-house is not, however, the prerequisite for authorial involvement and even were Jonson confined to his house at Westminster, which would have made any detailed proof-reading impossible, he was still perfectly capable of providing fundamental revisions such as the name change and the additional materials.
The large number of variants on the inner formes of B and C, as well as the time-gap in the printing of individual gatherings suggested by the running titles, could indicate two compositors at work, with the less skilled working on those formes. Incontrovertible evidence is not available. The stock of roman capital ‘I’ runs short after sheet B and italic ‘I’ is used predominantly thereafter, particularly towards the bottoms of pages, but there is no clearly discernible variation that would confirm the existence of two compositors (both ‘I’ and ‘I’ are found on all subsequent sheets). Broken colons are recurrent throughout extant copies. The convention of utilizing the long dash for marking entrances ‘( ---------- To them.)’ increases on the later sheets, but the plotline dictates this, rather than printer’s preference. Harper’s printing-house appears to have been busy in 1631, but neither to the point of distraction or significant interruption so that had to be redistributed partway through the project. The result is one of the least problematic, textually speaking, of Jonson editions.
***
The ‘Ode to Himself’ is worthy of independent consideration. The poem exists in at least two main versions: that printed in O, and an earlier draft which was actively circulated in contemporary scribal culture and also included as an inserted sheet in Benson’s 1640 quarto of the ‘Execration upon Vulcan’ (BensonQ ) and in his duodecimo of Jonson’s translation of Horace’s Art of Poetry (Benson12mo, 135-8 ) the same year. In both versions, the poem provoked numerous poetic responses and replies, in print and manuscript miscellanies, including three Latin translations (see Davis, 1972 ; R. C. Evans 2000b).
The manuscript versions of this poem, with Beal’s sigla, are as follows:
| JnB 367 | Copy in the Newcastle MS; c. 1630s BL Harley MS 4955, 207 |
| JnB 368 | Copy in a verse miscellany compiled by Nicholas Burghe (d.
1670); c. 1638 Bod. MS Ashmole 38, 80-1 [reproduced in Tennant and collated by H&S and Hattaway] |
| JnB 369 | Copy in a verse miscellany compiled by an Oxford man, possibly
a member of Wadham College; later used by William Fulman (1632-88); c. late 1630s Bod. MS CCC. 328, 45v-6 [Davis (1972, 411 n.6) records that this ‘derives its text from [O] and is therefore textually negligible’] |
| JnB 370 | Copy in a verse miscellany; c. 1640 Bod. MS Firth e. 4, 30-5 |
| JnB 371 | Copy in a verse miscellany compiled by a Cambridge man; c. 1640s Bod. MS Rawl. poet. 62, 38v-40v |
| JnB 372 | Copy in a ms volume of poems ‘chiefly by and probably in the
hand of one “Alphonso Mervall”; c. 1629, Bod. MS Rawl. poet. 166, 83-5 |
| JnB 373 | Copy in a verse miscellany partly compiled by John Peverell
(after 1646); c. 1630s Bod. MS Rawl. poet. 209, 11-12 [Davis (1972) collates JnB 370-3.] |
| JnB 374 | Copy in a verse miscellany complied by a Cambridge man; c. 1660s [Copied stanza for stanza together with Thomas Randolph’s Latin translation and his verse-for-verse answer poem.] CUL MS 79, 28v-31 |
| JnB 375 | Copy in a transcript by ‘S.H.’ (b. 1665) of Benson12mo; c. 1680 Edinburgh UL MS Dc, 7. 94, 18-19 |
| JnB 376 | Copy on leaves removed from a verse miscellany (Folger MS V. a.
97) compiled by an Oxford man, possibly a member of Christ Church College; c. late 1630s. Folger MS V.a.152, 77-8 |
| JnB 377 | Copy in a verse miscellany compiled by an Oxford man;
c. 1630s Folger MS V.a.170, 184-7 |
| JnB 378 | Copy in a verse miscellany; mid-seventeenth century [Copied stanza for stanza with Randolph’s Latin translation and answer poem, and a Latin version by William Strode.] Folger MS V.a.322, 170-81 [JnB 376-8 were collated by Hattaway] |
| JnB 379 | Copy in a verse miscellany owned by Edward Denny, Charles
Cokes, Edward Randolpe, and Thomas Carey; c. 1630s Huntington HM 198, Part I, 114-15 |
| JnB 379.5 | Scribal copy in a commonplace book; 1650s. Isle of Wight Record Office. |
| JnB 380 | Copy in a verse miscellany once owned by John Nutting;
c. 1630s-40s St John’s College, Cambridge MS S. 23 (James 416), 1-2 |
| JnB 380.5 | Trinity College, Dublin MS 877, 279v-81v |
| JnB 381 | Printed exemplum of O, with MS annotations by Joseph Haslewood
(1769-1833), collating the ‘Ode’ with a 17th-century ms once in Haslewood’s
possession. Victoria and Albert Museum, Dyce Collection, D25.A.97 [Collated by H&S and Hattaway] |
The miscellany tradition of this poem enables us to identify Jonson’s alterations and track its textual history, circulation, and reception in some detail. In earlier versions, line 27 referred disparagingly to Jonson’s former amanuensis, the playwright Richard Brome (?1590-c.1653): ‘There sweepings’ (the O reading) appears as ‘Broomes sweepings’, ‘Brooms sweepings’, and ‘Broome and his sweepings’ in various textual witnesses. Jonson may have been jealous of Brome’s success in 1629 with the (now lost) The Lovesick Maid, or the Honour of Young Ladies and The Northen Lass. According to Edmond Malone, The Lovesick Maid ‘was so popular, that the managers of the King’s Company, on the 10th of March [1629], presented the Master of the Revels with the sum of two pounds “on the good success of The Honour of Ladies,” the only instance I have me with of such a compliment being paid him’ (Bawcutt, 1996a, 167 ). As Tennant noted in his 1908 edition of The New Inn, Jonson had relented by 1630 when he wrote a prefatory poem for the publication of The Northern Lass, and the revisions to the ‘Ode’ may date from then. References to ‘Brome and his sweepings’ are removed, but there are several other substantive changes, for example, ‘larding’ for ‘stuffing’ (36), and the line ‘if they’re torn, and foul and patched enough’ (39) refined to ‘if they are torn and turned and patched enough’.
The earlier version clearly circulated widely. As well as appearing in this form in commonplace books and in Benson’s quarto and octavo, it is recalled in several published ripostes, including Thomas Randolph’s ‘An Answer to Mr Ben Jonson’s Ode to Persuade Him Not to Leave the Stage’ (full details below), with its allusion to playgoers ‘contented . . . With what Brome swept for thee’, and in Ralph Brideoake’s contribution to Jonsonus Virbius (1638), which mentions ‘the nasty sweepings of thy servingman’. Alexander Brome also refers to Jonson’s envy of his protegé in his commendatory verses for Brome’s A Jovial Crew (printed 1652): ‘I love thee for thy neat and harmless wit, / . . . Who could go faster? / At first to be th’envy of thy master.’ Davis’s hypothesis (1972, 415 ) of a clearly identifiable early version of the poem in JnB370 and JnB371 is persuasive. His additional argument, based entirely on miscellanies in the Bodleian collection, that a later group of MS copies (including JnB 368, 372, and 373, as well as BensonQ and Benson12mo ) were conflations of the printed version in O and this earlier version looks less secure as further manuscript versions are identified. JnB 376 in the Folger is an interesting case in this respect, containing several unique but substantive variants that cannot necessarily be ascribed to careless copying and textual corruption. Nevertheless, Davis’s central point – that the Ode enjoyed a separate manuscript tradition – remains valid.
The three Latin translations of the ‘Ode’ were John Earles’s ‘Ode Ad B: J.’ (BL Add. MS 152227, 44-5); William Strode’s ‘Ben: Johns. Ode translat. per Gu. Stroad, Proc. Oxon’ (which appears in Bod. MS Montagu d.1, 30-1 in the hand of Sir Kenelm Digby, with the title ‘Ben Johnsons Ode translated into Latin by the Proctor of Oxford’; in Folger V.a.152, 79-80; Folger V.a.170, 194-7; and Folger V.a.322, 170-81; in a Cromwellian commonplace book in the Isle of Wight RO [Beal, 1980, StW1414]; and in Trinity College, Dublin, MS 877 [Beal, 1980, StW1415]); and Thomas Randolph’s, which appeared along with Jonson’s original and Randolph’s reply in English (‘An Answer to Mr Ben Jonson’s Ode’) under the heading ‘Ben Johnsons Discontented Soliloqui upon the Sinister censure of his Play, called the New Inn, Translated into Latin, and Answered Verse for Verse, by Thomas Randal’ in A Crew of Kind London Gossips. All Met to be Merry . . . To which is added ingenious poems or wit and drollery, written and newly enlarged by S.R. (1663). It is printed in the order of one stanza of Jonson, followed by Randolph’s rendering in Latin, and then Randolph’s reply. The poems appear in this version in several mss, including Bod. MS Rawl. poet. 62, 71-2; Bod. MS Rawl. poet. 209, 22 (a ‘very bad’ copy, note H&S); Bod. MS Ashmole 47, 110-11; Bod. Eng. poet. c. 50, 101; Bod. MS Firth e. 4, 30-5; Folger V.a.152, 81-2; Folger V.a.170, 192-4; Folger V.a.322, 170-81; Harvard MS 626; Corpus Christi, Oxford MS 328; CUL Add. MS 79; Hunt. HM 198; and Trinity College, Dublin MS 877. Randolph (1602-35) was a dramatist and recognised ‘son of Ben’. The poems were included in his posthumously published Poems with the Muses Looking Glass and Amyntas (1638).
Thomas Carew (?1595-?1639), another ‘son of Ben’, defends the playwright in ‘To Ben Jonson upon Occasion of his Ode to Himself’. Found in the State Papers Domestic for 1629 (CSPD 155.79), this was obviously written in the wake of the initial performance. It was first printed in Carew’s Poems (1640), but appears in several mss: BL MS Harley 4955, 214; BL Add. MS 11,811, 12; BL Sloane 1446, 55v-56r; Folger V.a.170, 190-2; Bod. MS Rawl. poet. 209, 12; Bod. *Don.b.9, 26; NA SP16/155/79 (an autograph copy from the papers of Dudley Carleton); Rosenbach MS 1083/17; Trinity College, Dublin MS 877; St. John’s, Cambridge MS S23; and CUL MS Add. 4138 (Bod. Firth d.7, 135 is a nineteenth-century copy of this).
Another supportive poem is I. C.’s ‘Ode: to Ben Jonson Upon his Ode to Himself’, whose final stanza notes ‘Sing, English Horace, sing / The wonder of thy king’ (61-2). This was printed in Benson12mo , sigs. A10v-A12v, and appears in BL Harley MS 4955, 186-7. I. C. remains unidentified, although H&S conjecture that he was James Clayton, to whom the fifteenth poem in Jonsonus Virbius is attributed in a handwritten list in the Malone copy at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. There are verses signed I. C. in the 1607 quarto of Volpone. Gifford’s identification with John Cleveland is refuted by H&S and Hattaway.
R. Goodwin’s ‘Vindiciae Jonsonianae’ appears in BL Harley MS 4955, fols. 186-7. As Hattaway observes, it ‘asserts Jonson’s detractors are base tradesmen’: ‘Had they been half so versed in wit, so bred / In learned authors as they’re deeply read / In subtle shop-books, I confess their doom / That gives thee a laurel now had given thee a tomb’ (75-8). John Polwhele (‘otherwise unknown’ notes Hattaway) also wrote to persuade Jonson not to leave the stage: ‘To the admired Ben Jonson to encourage him to write, after his farewell to the stage, 1631; alluding to Horace, Ode 26, Book 1, . . . etc.’ This appears in the ms Poems of John Polwhele in Bod. MS Eng. poet. f.16, 10. There is also a positive account of New Inn in a poem by C. G. printed in Thomas Nabbes’s The Unfortunate Mother (1640): ‘I do not wonder that great Jonson’s play / Was scorned so by the ignorant that day . . . There was some reason for it: ’twas above / Their reach, their envy, their applause or love’ (1-6).
More hostile responses also circulated. Owen Felltham’s ‘An Answer to the Ode of Come Leave the Loathed Stage, &c’ does not hedge its words: ‘Come leave this saucy way / Of baiting those that pay / Dear for the sight of your declining wit:’ (1-3). It mocks several of Jonson’s characters: ‘Jug, Pierce, Peck, Fly, and all / Your jests so nominal / Are things so far beneath an able brain / As they do throw a stain / Through all th’unlikely plot, and do displease / As deep as Pericles’ (21-6). This is clearly a riposte to Jonson’s denigration of Shakespeare’s romance at 21-2 of the ‘Ode’. Felltham (?1602-1668) was the author of Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political, a series of moral essays printed in numerous seventeenth-century editions, to which this poem was appended. It also appeared in Parnassus Biceps, ed. A. Wright (1656), and in several mss: BL Harley MS 4955, 216; BL Sloane 1446, 56r-57r; Bod. MS Ashmole 38, 71; Bod. 47, 108v-110r; and Bod. Ashmole 71, 108v.
Another anonymous criticism of Jonson circulated under the title ‘The Country’s Censure on Ben Jonson’s New Inn’ (Bod. MS Ashmole 38, 79-80). Its references to ‘Pru’ (22) and to the ‘Argument’ (26) imply that it was responding to the 1631 octavo. Negative accounts such as these may well have influenced Restoration perceptions of this and Jonson’s other Caroline plays, not least Dryden’s view of his ‘dotages’ (see Introduction).
***
This edition has for the first time collated all nineteen extant copies of the quarto. Seven of these were originally collated by H&S. Michael Hattaway collated some additional copies (in particular several in the United States, which H&S had not considered) for his 1984 Revels Plays edition, collating 13 copies in all. No new stop-press variants have emerged, although I have been able to correct slips of collation in previous editions. The consistency of the evidence is testimony to Thomas Harper’s meticulous press-work.
The play has not been as richly served as many in the Jonsonian oeuvre by later editions. It was not included in F2 in 1640. This may have been due to a rights problem: possibly the compilers of F2 were unable to obtain printing rights in time for The New Inn to be included. Alternatively, unlike the other F2 texts, which were newly in print or had not been printed since 1616, there could have been plenty of unsold copies of The New Inn which would have meant the play was unavailable for reprinting. The play was included in F3 in 1692 (sigs. 4Z1-5B4v): the F3 title page specifically signals its inclusion: ‘To which is added A COMEDY CALLED THE NEW INN’. This was printed from an uncorrected octavo copy, so that certain uncorrected readings, particularly from gathering C, passed into in subsequent editions, including Whalley’s (1756). Whalley made one substantive change at 1.5.59 (‘He that did loue in Oxford’ to ‘He that did liue in Oxford’), which I have retained here. Gifford established the text for his 1816 edition from Whalley but also collated O. He introduced many entrances, exits, and other stage directions, thereby adding to a text which, for reasons discussed above, is oddly shorn of its more performative elements. My own debt to Gifford is recorded in the collations. In 1908, G. B. Tennant undertook the first single edition of the play for the Yale Studies in English series. He consulted only one copy of O, but as this was the corrected British Library copy (3), it enabled him to incorporate many of the most significant stop-press corrections. On the whole, Tennant viewed the editing process as a joyless task, describing the play with faintly disguised scorn.
H&S edited The New Inn in volume 6 of their complete works. Their account of the play is typically accurate and detailed, although their collation of O relies solely on UK copies. Their edition is in old spelling and retains the Jonsonian punctuation that has been lightened and updated here. Little discussion is offered either of the printing or the revision of ‘Cicelie’ to ‘Prudence’. Their textual analysis is admirably error-free, though their critical assessment of the play in the context of the generic conventions of romance and humours comedy has been superseded by more recent historicist scholarship, which allows a deeper understanding of the play’s inflection of contemporary Caroline cultural movements.
The New Inn has been reasonably well served in modern times. Michael Hattaway undertook a scholarly edition with modernized spelling and punctuation for the Revels Plays series in 1984. Strongly influenced in its critical approach by Anne Barton’s scholarship, Hattaway’s elegant introduction is crucial for its detailed analysis of the classical and medieval precedents for the ‘Court of Love’ scenes, and for its understanding of the play’s interventions into Caroline culture more generally. The text was re-issued in a revised version in 2001, which corrects a number of typographical and textual errors, but some remain, which are corrected here. Martin Butler edited the play for his volume of Selected Plays by Ben Jonson in 1989, drawing on previous editions in the matter of textual analysis. This is also a modernized spelling edition. Most recently, the play was edited by M. J. Kidnie for the Worlds Classics series, in volume titled ‘The Devil is an Ass’ and Other Plays. Kidnie makes some useful modernizations of punctuation from which this edition has benefited, but does not present any new collation of O.
In line with a fully modernized edition, I have modernized character names such as Tiptoe (from the original ‘Tipto’) and standardized ‘Peirce’ as ‘Pierce’. Perhaps the hardest task is deciding a policy for Jonson’s punctuation. As in several of his later plays, the punctuation of The New Inn is idiosyncratic, with a high usage of exclamation marks and, occasionally, question marks operating as exclamatory punctuation. It would be insensitive of the editor simply to omit all these as in many instances they are a significant guide to the actor’s interpretation and delivery. For example, Lovel’s impassioned soliloquy at 1.4.1-3 reads thus in O:
O loue, what passion art thou!
So tyrannous! and trecherous! first t’en-slaue,
And then betray all, that in truth do serue thee!
While not all these exclamations have been retained, the majority have, so that the modernised text reads:
O love, what passion art thou!
So tyrannous and treacherous! First t’enslave
And then betray all that in truth do serve thee!
– thereby reflecting Lovel’s agitated state of mind and suggesting a performative tone.
However, at times the sheer plethora of punctuation hinders the performer and can confuse the sense for the modern reader. For example, at 5.2.1-5 O’s exclamation marks divide up Lady Frampul’s speech rhetorically, in an unfamiliar manner:
Sweet Pru, I, now thou art a Queene indeed!
These robes do royally! and thou becom’st ’hem!
So they doe thee! rich garments only fit
The partyes they are made for ! they shame others.
How did they shew on good’y Taylors back!
This has been modernized as follows:
Sweet Pru, ay, now thou art a queen indeed!
These robes do royally and thou becom’st ’em,
So they do thee. Rich garments only fit
The parties they are made for; they shame others.
How did they show on Goody Tailor’s back?
Decisions have been taken on a case by case basis, although a fair number of exclamation marks have been retained on the grounds that they are part of the idiosyncratic tone and aesthetic of this Caroline text.
As already argued, O’s text is remarkably cohesive. I have, then, tended to prefer O readings where some modern editors have chosen to emend. One significant moment comes early in the play (1.3.14-15) where, in a discussion concerning the Host’s adopted son Frank and the inn world where he has raised the ‘boy’, the Host states ‘But my Inne / Knowes no such language’. Most editors follow Cunningham in emending this to ‘But my son / Knows no such language’. I preserve the former sense, which is compatible with the Host’s holistic view of his inn as a community that can influence and shape lives (cf. Brown, 1990, 41). Since O bequeaths us such a clean text of the play, it seems good practice to trust it wherever possible. In the case of the ‘Ode to Himself’, I have retained O’s revised version but collated substantive differences from print and manuscript versions of the earlier text.
***
Copies Collated
1. Yale, Beinecke Library, STC 14780
2. Princeton, Firestone Library, Ex 3806.367
3. British Library, 643.b.31 [lacks D1] [entered on the BL online catalogue as the second part of Tennant’s 1908 edition of the play]
4. British Library, Ashley 962 [with the blank G8 preceding H1]
5. Bodleian Library, Selden 80.I.12
6. Bodleian Library, Mal 263 (4)
7. Harvard, Houghton Library, STC 14753.3 [Bridgewater Copy, formerly STC 14754.2*; inlaid and bound in with F2(2) and F2(3)]
8. Harvard, Houghton Library, STC 14780
9. Huntington Library, STC 14780 [12517]
10. Huntington Library, STC 14780 [62066]
11. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, STC 14780
12. University of Austin at Texas, STC 14780, Greg, II, 442(a)
13. Worcester College, Oxford, AA1.20
14. Canterbury Cathedral Library, STC 14780 [lacks (*)1 and (*)2, retains blank G8; bound with Codicum Cabalisticorum Manuscriptorum (Paris 1651), W. Petty’s Political Arthmetick (1691); and J. Bodine and N. Everhardi’s Universi iuris distributio (1610); contains underlinings and annotations, especially on F7v, F8v, and G2v]
15. Victoria and Albert Musuem, London, National Library of Art, D 25.A.97 [Dyce collection; formerly the property of Joseph Haslewood, who annotates and collates the ‘Ode to Himself’ in detail; other annotations include the missing speech heading Fer. on B1r, and pencil underlinings on F4r, F5v, and G3v (Lovel’s discourse on virtue)]
16. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, National Library of Art, 47.E. Box VI.I [Forster collection, lacks G8; speech heading Fer. on B1r entered in ink]
17. Senate House Library, London, [S.L.] I [Sterling collection; underlining on B5r, C1r, D5r, and F4r, and pointing hands in the margin at B5r, C1v, C2r, D4r, D4v, E3r, and F7v]
18. Boston Public Library, **G.4075.15
19. Library of Congress, Washington D.C., PR 1263.04 [with blank G8 preceding H1; bound with several Caroline plays: N. Richards, The Tragedy of Messalina, A. Cowley, Love’s Riddle; J. Rutter, The Shepheards Holy-day, and T. May, The Tragedy of Antigone]
Table of Variants
| B inner | STATE 1 | STATE 2 | |
| B1v | |||
| 1 | Whether it be by chance or art, a heauy pur=e makes a light heart. [one line] | Whether it be by chance or art, / A heauy pur=e makes a light Heart. | |
| 3 | A heauy pur=e | A heauy pur=e | |
| 3 | makes | makes | |
| 4 | a light heart | a light heart | |
| 6 | bolt . . . Ton | bolt . . . Ton | |
| 11 | Here | Here, | |
| 25 | phy=icks | phy=icks | |
| B2r | |||
| 2 | Lovet, Ferret, | Lovet. Ferret. | |
| 8 | end | end, | |
| 9 | place | Place | |
| 13 | heart | Heart | |
| 14 | it; | it: | |
| 17 | heare | here | |
| 18 | ’gen | ’gayn’ | |
| 23 | Beare | beare | |
| 23 | Butter-milke | butter-milke | |
| 24 | Whey | whey | |
| [Note: In 18 the italicization of ’gayn’ is a compositorial error; in 24 the capital on ‘Claret’ is overlooked in the corrections.] | |||
| B3v | |||
| 1 | Lo. . . . downe | Lov. . . .down | |
| 27 | Centaures . . . Thrace | Centaures . . .Thrace | |
| 29 | Pyrrhick | Pyrrhick | |
| [ Note: In 1, the line is crowded, so in state 2 the ‘e’ of ‘downe’ is dropped to make room for ‘Lov.’.] | |||
| B4r | |||
| 4 | tongue, | tongue! | |
| 21 | Tiburne | Tiburne | |
| 29 | if . . . it, | (if . . . it) | |
| B5v | |||
| 1 | o’my | my | |
| 9 | betray all, | betray, all | |
| 10 | Creature | creature | |
| B6r | |||
| 2 | =ilent, Enter Host. | =ilent, | |
| 5 | Ho=t, Ferret, | Ho=t. Ferret. | |
| 6 | Iouial | Iouiall | |
| 11 | Alderman ---------- | Alderman,---------- | |
| 17 | (hou=e di=charge the |
di=charge the (hou=e |
|
| [Note: In 17, state 2 deploys the usual position for a word squeezed in at the end of a line: a printing-house adjustment.] | |||
| STATE 1 | STATE 2 | STATE 3 | |
| B7v | |||
| 3 | Ferret, Lovel, | Ferret. Lovel. | Ferret. Lovel. |
| Ho=t, Cicelie. | Ho=t. Cicelie. | Ho=t. Prudence. | |
| 5 | Plea=ed | Plea=’d | ~ |
| 7 | how, | how. | ~ |
| 8 | Chalke | Chalke, | ~ |
| 18 | L. | Lov. | ~ |
| 24 | Giges | Giges | ~ |
| 25 | hoop! En. Cic. | hoop! | ~ |
| STATE 1 | STATE 2 | ||
| B8r | |||
| 1 | rebus | Rebus | |
| H. | Ho=. | ||
| 3 | Cis | Pru. | |
| her, | her, Ent. Pru. | ||
| 7, 10 | Cis. | Pru. | |
| 24 | Cicely | Prudence | |
| 25 | di=po=ition | condition | |
| 26 | Ho. | Ho=t. | |
| B outer | |||
| B1r | |||
| 16 | [omit] | Fer. | |
| C inner | |||
| C1v | |||
| 3 | more ; | more : | |
| 25 | =onne. | =onne! | |
| 28 | Howres | Howres | |
| 29 | Clouds | clouds | |
| C2r | |||
| 1 | then! | then, | |
| 16 | Nere | N’ere | |
| 18 | loue-craft | Loue-craft | |
| 19 | Phoenix, | Phoenix: | |
| 22 | on | on, | |
| 24 | =parkle | =parke | |
| 24 | mi=tre=se | mi=tre=se, | |
| 27 | Ile | Ile | |
| 29 | doe: | doe. | |
| [Note: 16 ‘N’ere’ in state 2 is a miscorrection for ‘Ne’re’.] | |||
| C3v | |||
| 3 | =uddaine, | =uddaine ? | |
| 4 | cloathes ! | cloathes ? | |
| 4 | =entences | =entences | |
| 6 | =cale | =cale, | |
| 8 | fault, | fault: | |
| 16 | it Pru. | it, Pru, | |
| 26 | breed , | breed: | |
| 28 | me: | me. | |
| C4r | |||
| 4 | =ouerainty | Souerainty | |
| 10 | him, ho=t. | him, | |
| 11 | pre=ently, | pre=ently, Ho Ser. Anone. | |
| 12 | anone | Anone | |
| 15 | Is | It is | |
| 16 | doe. | doe | |
| 17 | de=in’d to doe, by | de=ign’d to by | |
| 18 | you | you, | |
| 19 | I beleeue | I beleeue | |
| 20 | empha=ed, | empha=ed | |
| 22 | (madame, | ||
| Yes | Yes. | ||
| [Note: 10 ‘him,’ in state 2 should be ‘him.’ In 11-12 ‘Ho’ should be ‘Ho!’ to indicate a call to the servant, followed by his answer in roman type, but the italic ‘Anone’ is confused with Pierce’s nickname ‘Anon’, used in the subsequent line.] | |||
| C5v | |||
| 6 | O | O, | |
| 7 | ho=t | Ho=t | |
| 9 | mery | mery, | |
| 13 | nay | Nay | |
| 15 | Cup | cup | |
| 23 | him, | him. | |
| 24 | =ee : . . . black, | =ee, . . . black: | |
| C6r | |||
| 2 | vnknown | vnknow | |
| 3 | in, =till. | in, | |
| 7 | Campo, | Campo ! | |
| 8 | roome, | roomes: | |
| 9 | Inne | Inne, | |
| 15 | L.Bea. L.Lati. | Beaufort. Latimer. | |
| 21 | the day | thy day | |
| 22 | and I’le ha’ | and ha’ | |
| C7v | |||
| 1 | man, | man. | |
| 2 | That . . . ho=t, | What . . . Ho=t. | |
| 3 | ho=t | Ho=t | |
| 4 | Paramento’s | Paramento’s, | |
| 4-6 | Sir he has the father / Of | Sir, / He ha’s the father | |
| =words, within a long | of =words within, a long | ||
| =word; Blade corni=h, | =word / Blade corni=h, | ||
| =til’d / Of Sir Rud | =til’d, of Sir Rud | ||
| Hughdibras. | Hudibras. | ||
| 7 | And with | And, why | |
| 16 | what’s | what are | |
| 18 | had Don | hath Don | |
| 20 | world . . . . world | world! . . . world. | |
| 22 | fencer | Fencer | |
| 23 | Colonel. | Colonel, | |
| 27 | contemplation ! | contemplation. | |
| 28 | fencer | Fencer | |
| 30 | him | him, | |
| C8r | |||
| 2 | Peremptory | peremptory | |
| 3 | tane, | tane: | |
| 6 | thorough fare | thorough-fare | |
| 7 | broken | great | |
| 12 | A . . . weapons | At . . . weapons, | |
| 13 | =aw ; . . . Inuention. | =aw, . . . Inuention. | |
| 16-17 | that . . . yeare, | (that . . . yeare) | |
| 17 | Scaliger. | Scaliger! | |
| 20 | Mortals | mortals | |
| 24 | Circle, | Circle. | |
| 26 | one of that quare | one. of that, quare | |
| 30 | animals | Animals | |
| [Note: The catchword is Fly, suggesting that the next page will start with a speech heading for him, but C8v begins with ‘Flie’.] | |||
| D outer | |||
| D8v | |||
| 24 | Huffle. | Huffle? | |
| E outer | |||
| E4v | |||
| 5 | loues | loue. | |
| E6v | |||
| 17 | blew toff | blew’t off | |
| E8v | |||
| 2SD | them | them. |
Distribution of variants
B inner
State 1: 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19
State 2: 3, 4, 7, 13, 14, 17
State 3: 5
B outer
State 1: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19
State 2: 5
C inner
State 1: 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19
State 2: 3, 5
D outer
D8v
State 1: 3, 4
State 2: All other copies
E outer
State 1: 6, 8, 12, 19.
State 2: All other copies