Poetaster was entered on the Stationers’ Register in 1601 to Matthew Lownes with the following entry:
21 decembris
Entred for his copie vnder the handes of master Pasfeild and the Wardens. A booke called Poetaster, or his arraignement. vjd (Greg, 1939-59)
Publication followed in 1602, with the following quarto title page:
POETASTER / or / The Arraignment: / As it hath beene sundry times priuately / acted in the Blacke Friers, by the / children of her Maiesties / Chapell. / Composed, by Ben. Iohnson. / Et mihi de nullo fama rubore placet. / [ornament] / London / ¶ Printed for M. L. and are to be sould in / Saint Dunstans Church-yarde. / 1602.
The play subsequently appeared in the 1616 folio with the following title page, in some copies with an ornamental border, in some copies without:
POETASTER, / OR His Arraignement. / A Comicall Satyre. / Acted, in the yeere 1601. / By the then Children of Queene / ELIZABETHS / Chappell. / The Author B. I. / MART. / Et mihi de nullo fama rubore placet. / LONDON, / Printed by W. Stansby, / for M. Lownes. / 1616.
The title page of the 1640 folio added that the play was printed ‘VVith the allowance of the Master of REVELS’ and indicated that it was printed by Robert Young in that year.
Among his other publications, the bookseller Matthew Lownes had registered (jointly with Thomas Fisher) on 24 October 1601 two plays by John Marston, Antonio and Mellida and Antonio’s Revenge, as ‘The ffyrst and second partes of the play called Anthonio and Melida’, published separately in 1602 as ‘acted by the Children of Paul’s’. On 9 March 1605 Lownes registered, and subsequently published, The History of Twelve Caesars, Emperor of Rome, translated by Philemon Holland (Blayney, 1982, 321, 331). Lownes was described in 1621 as ‘late Warden of the Companie’ of Stationers (Blayney, 299). When he published The Ancient Ecclesiastical Practice of Confirmation, written by George Hakewill, the Dean of the Royal Chapel at Whitehall, on the occasion of the confirmation of Prince Charles in Easter Week of that year, Lownes indicated that the book was to be sold ‘in his shop at the signe of the Bishops-head in Paul’s church-yard’. His earlier shop in 1602, in Saint Dunstan’s Churchyard, was in Fleet Street. He appears to have held on to his rights in Poetaster to be able to collaborate with William Stansby in the publishing of the 1616 folio; the initials ‘M. L.’ on the 1602 title page and ‘M. Lownes’ and ‘Matthew Lownes’ in 1616 all identify him as the publisher. Lownes transferred his rights in the play at the time of his death to his son in 1625 or 1627 (Greg, 1939-59, 1.297). His name is missing from the 1640 title-page. William Stansby was, along with William Jaggard, Isaac Jaggard, Nicholas Okes, and Edward Blount, one of the best known of the printers during this period.
The 1602 quarto appears to have been printed in the shop of Richard Bradock, who had married the widow of the printer Robert Robinson in 1592 and thereby acquired a printing house that, prior to 1588, had belonged to Henry Middleton; marriage to a property-owning widow was one legitimate pathway, along with outright purchase or direct inheritance, to becoming a master printer. Bradock and his successors occupied a building in Aldermanbury, a little to the south of the Conduit, where he was Richard Field’s closest neighbor in the trade. One of Bradock’s apprentices, Lionel Snowdon, having been freed by Bradock in 1604, became a master printer in his own right. Bradock had two presses (Blayney, 1982, 15-16, 24, 92). The title-page ornament (A1) and the upper ornament and ornamented initial ‘H’ on the final page (N1v) of Q Poetaster are identifiably his (Greg 1939-59, 1.296). So too with watermarks (see Blayney, 98-9). Among the books he printed are A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Q1 (1600), an expanded reprint of John Stow’s Summary of the Chronicles of England (1604), and parts of two volumes of the Almanac for 1608 and 1609 (Blayney, 258, 344-5, 364-6, 399; see also 69, 74, 87-8, 92, 99).
Bradock evidently supplied his compositors with cast-off copy. According to Tom Cain’s analysis (1995, 277), one compositor, whom he identifies as ‘A’, favoured long and sometimes unabbreviated speech prefixes while Compositor B normally abbreviated. Even though this key to identification is far from infallible (especially since abbreviations can become necessary when the compositor is faced with too much copy for an allotted stint), this hypothesis is indeed plausible, though the present compositorial analysis differs with Cain on the details of assignment. As they worked simultaneously on the outer forme of quire C, in Cain’s scenario, Compositor A, assigned to set pages C1 and C2v (which Cain misleadingly identifies as the left-hand side of the forme; normally these pages would be on the lower half), generally set Albius, Crispinus, and Chloë (along with two instances of Crisp.), while Compositor B, given copy for pages C4v and C3r, set Chl. or Chlo., Cri. or Crisp., Alb., Her., Cyth. or Cith., and Gal. or Gall. On the reverse or inner forme of this same quire, Compositor A set pages C2r and C1v using Albius, Crisp., Mayde, and Chloë, whereas Compositor B, on C3v and C4, set Iul., Alb., Tibull., Plaut. or Plau., Cith., Chl. or Chlo., Gal., Prop., Ouid, and Crisp. In some instances, Cain argues, the two compositors split their work on a given forme by dividing it the other way: on the outer forme of M, for instance, Compositor A seems to have set M1 and M4v, whereas Compositor B set pages M2v and M3.
According to the analysis presented in this essay, the practice looks more regular than that, and indeed is so regular as to lend strong confirmation to the proposition that two compositors worked in regular side-by-side stints. This analysis labels Compositor A as the employer of abbreviated speech prefixes, since he led off. Compositor A set the last three pages of quire A and then 1r-2v and 1v-2r of quires B, D, F, H, K, and M. He alternated these stints by setting 4v-3r and 4r-3v of quires C, E, G, I, and L. Compositor B, tending generally to unabbreviated speech prefixes, set 4v-3r and 4r-3v of quires B, D, F, H, K, and M, while also setting 1r-2v and 1v-2r of quires C, E, G, I, and L. This pattern enabled each compositor to do one page of each forme as it came along, while his partner did the facing page. A few ambiguous instances are to be found, especially on H4 and M3, where abbreviated speech prefixes are predominant where the pattern would call for unabbreviated speech prefixes, but the apparent anomalies are very infrequent as compared with the regular alternation and pairing of compositors on formes throughout.
The quarto collates as follows: title-page, A1; The Persons that Act, A1v; the speech of LIVOR (identified in the folio text as Envy), A2; Prologue, A3r; text, A3v through M in fours, followed by one leaf of N, completing the text of the play on N1r; on N1v, a note ‘To the Reader’ explaining that ‘an Apology from the Author, with his reasons for publishing of this booke’, designed to serve ‘in place of the Epilogue’, has been ‘restrained . . . by Authoritie’. Perhaps, as Cain (1995) speculates, Bradock cast off his copy originally to fill thirteen full quires, including all of N, to accommodate the ‘Apologetical Dialogue’, only to learn belatedly that it had to be replaced (on N1v) with an apology for providing no Apology.
Tom Cain, in his edition of the play for the Revels Plays (1995), has collated copies of Q (STC 14781) from the British Library (two copies), the Bodleian Library Oxford, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Huntington Library, the Harvard University Library, the National Library of Scotland, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The following additional copies have been collated for this edition: the Boston Public Library; the National Trust, Petworth House; Princeton University Library; the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington; the University of Texas Library; and the Yale University Library. Cain reports finding only one genuine variant: that in which ‘rarher’ in states 1 and 2 of C1v line 6 (2.1.29) is corrected in state 3 to ‘rather’. Cain is dismissive of Henry de Vocht’s collation (Materialien, Louvain, 1934) as ‘over-pedantic’, in that some instances noted are simply the result of wear during printing. No doubt this is sometimes the case, but there are other variants to be recorded. On B3v, line 29 (1.3.6), ‘Tis’, indented in the first state so that it falls under ‘If’ in line 28, is moved left in the second state so that ‘Tis’ falls under ‘Tibullus.’ On the same page, the catch-word ‘Pray’ becomes ‘Pr^a^, perhaps as the result of wear. On C1v, line 22 (2.1.43), the ‘A’ of Albius falls under the ‘e’ of ‘taine’ in line 21; in the corrected state, the ‘A’ falls under the ‘n’ of ‘taine’. In lines 22-3 (2.1.43), ‘Gaine / “sauours’ is corrected to ‘“Gaine / sauours’. On C2, line 33, ‘though, twere’ is corrected to ‘though twere’ (2.1.82). On C3v, line 9 (2.2.13), ‘(yo^u,’ is corrected to ‘(you,’. On D2v, line 7 (3.1.2), as noted by H&S (4.187), ‘Mecænas’ is corrected in BL1 to ‘Mecœnas’. In Tb, the last line of M2 (‘Tuc. I, you whorson Cantharides? was’t I?’ and the catchword ‘Deme.’ are transposed to the top of M2v, so that the last line of M2 in the Turnbull copy is ‘Suborn’d vs to the Calumny.’, followed by the catchword ‘Tuc.’ (5.3.372). Thus, M2 of Turnbull has 33 lines and M2v 35, whereas in other copies examined both pages have 34 lines. See the Collation Table below for the distribution of variants among the three states of printing in the copies examined.
On M2, lines 29-31 (5.3.369-70), an error remains uncorrected in all copies of Q examined: ‘Corneli- / Tuc. Gallus, Guiltie. Pantilius Tucca-- / us Parcell Guiltie; I.’ should read ‘Corneli- / us Gallus. Guiltie. Pantilius Tucca-- / Tuc. Parcell Guiltie; I.’ (as substantively in F1), the carried-over syllable ‘us’ that should stand at the head of 30 having been transposed with the speech prefix ‘Tuc.’ intended to stand at the head of 31. A similarly uncorrected error is in the marginal notation at 5.2.82: Q prints ‘Cœtis’, corrected in F1 to ‘Coeus’ but not in the corrected states of Q. On page A4v, the catchword is defective: ‘hous-holde’ is printed in two lines at the foot of the page as though ‘holde’ were the catchword, but then the top of B1 begins with the next word in the sentence, ‘gods’. On C3, the catchword is ‘Iulis.’ at the top of C3v, the speech prefix is ‘Iul.’ So too with Chloë’ on C4r and ‘Chl.’ at the top of the next page. On E3, the catchword is ‘SCE.’; elsewhere in similar situations, the catchword abbreviation is ‘SCENE’. At the foot of F2, the catchword ‘Pyrg.’ is an approximation of ‘I. Pyr.’ on the next page. On G4v the catchword is ‘him;’ the top of the next page begins with ‘him,’. Similarly, on I2v, the catchword is ‘Me’; the next page begins ‘Mee’. L2v’s catchword ‘Hor’ is changed to ‘Horace’ on L3. ‘Tucca’ at the foot of L4v yields to ‘Tuc.’ on M1r. ‘Deme.’ on M2r becomes ‘Demet.’ on the next page. M4’s ‘Crisp.’ becomes ‘Crispinus’ on M4v. A number of these latter irregularities may well be the result of the two compositors’ individual preference for abbreviated or unabbreviated speech prefixes.
At all events, printing errors are relatively few, suggesting that proof corrections were caught early and with a vigilant eye. The copy given to the compositors was evidently also carefully prepared, presumably by the author himself. Jonson’s characteristic spellings are much in evidence: Cain (1995, 289) notes thirty-seven instances of ’hem, twenty-four of ha’, and ten of i’the (see for example 1.1.8 and 19; 1.2.41 and 142-4; 3.1.60, 142, and 193; 3.4.86, 111, 140, 143, 155, 159, 226-8, and 307; and 4.1.12 and 14, all of which are carried over into F1). To these might be added such forms as Th’art (1.2.35), ha’s (3.1.198, 4.3.120, 4.5.132, and 5.3.32), ha’st (3.4.57), do’s (4.5.24), doe’s (4.5.57), and Do’st (3.4.165 and 225-6), all of these similarly carried over into F1. Stage directions are sparse, limited chiefly to exits and not always indicating these: at 2.1.125, for example, when Chloe orders someone (either her husband Albius, as in Cain, or a maid, as in this present edition) to bring in Cytheris, Q and F1 alike give no exit stage direction. Similarly, at 3.4.292, the exit of Histrio is not marked in Q or F1. More commonly, Q does mark exits that are then excised in F1; this is the case, for example, at 1.1.33; 1.2.181 and 186; 1.3.76; 2.1.12, 96, 103, and 108; and 2.2.15, 30, 46, 172, 187, and 189.
Massed entries at the commencement of each scene list the characters that are to appear in the scene or are already on stage, without further indications of when they are to enter or re-enter; this is so even in scenes where exits and re-entries are common, as with the frequent comings and goings of Albius in 2.1, posing a difficulty for the reader interested in keeping track of who is on stage but highlighting for that same reader the language of the poet-author. (Jonson regularly refers to his plays as poems and to himself as poet.) Quartos of Jonson’s earlier plays sometimes adopt the format of announcing specific entrances and exits in lieu of massed entries: this is true of The Case Is Altered (performed 1597, published in quarto in 1609), Every Man In His Humour (1598), and Every Man Out of His Humour (1600), even though Every Man Out especially shows every sign of literary ambition. The quarto of Poetaster thus suggests a desire on Jonson’s part to affirm the literary status of his texts and to distance them from stage practice, as he was to do systematically in preparing his texts for the 1616 folio; hence the excision in F1 of even those relatively sparse exits marked in Q of Poetaster. Conversely, to be sure, F1 does provide eight marginal notations, not in Q, that can be interpreted as stage directions, though their marginal location gives them the literary flavour of commentary rather then a call for stage action (see below, in the discussion of the F1 text).
A notably literary characteristic of both Q and F1 is Jonson’s marginal indication of his classical sources. As Cain (1995), 278 observes, these are a new feature not only in Jonson but seemingly in plays published in English since the invention of printing. Q initiates the practice, with citations of Ovid at 1.1.37-8, Horace at 3.1.1, and Virgil at 5.2.56-97. The citations of Virgil in this last passage are accompanied in both Q and F1 by marginal glosses, explaining that ‘Venus’ Dardan nephew’ in line 59 is Iulus, that ‘the Trojan prince’ in 62 is Aeneas, that ‘heaven’s great dame’ in the next line is Juno, and that ‘the last sister of that giant race’ in 82 refers to ‘Coeus, Enceladus, &c.’ (the F1 reading; Q erroneously prints ‘Cœtis’). These notes are all taken over into F1 and are there augmented by a note on Horace at 3.5.1, a scene missing from Q, and two notes on Ovid at lines 111-12 and 115-16 in the Apologetical Dialogue, similarly absent from Q. A marginal gloss at 5.1.74 in F1 (not in Q) explains that the ‘you three’ whom Caesar is addressing are ‘*Viz Mecœnas, Gallus, Tibullus’. Such marginal notations adumbrate the sometimes heavy annotations that Jonson will later employ in Sejanus and in the printed records of his masques and entertainments.
Q shows signs of last-minute revision that seems to have interrupted the process of press composition. As Cain (1995), 278 notes, the catchword at the bottom of F1, ‘I.Pyr.’ is erroneous, since the first line on F1v is a continuation of Tucca’s speech begun on lines 32-3 of F1 (3.4.117-18); the first Pyrgus does not speak until line 2 on F1v. Seemingly, what is now line 1 on F1v must have been moved from the foot of F1 after it had been set. A result is that F1 has only 34 lines in all, one short of the normal 35. (The normal for Q as a whole is 35; of the pages that are not made irregular in numbers of lines by scene indications, songs, and the like, about 53 pages have 35 lines, 10 have 34, and one, C2v, has 36.) Moreover, F1v also has only 34 lines, despite the likelihood that a line previously at the foot of F1 has been moved to this page. A possible explanation, as Cain argues, is that three short passages that turn up in F1 are absent from Q. The first is on the previous page, F1, at line 20: after Tucca’s ‘you growe rich, doe you? and purchase? (3.4.105-6), F1 follows with ‘you two-penny teare-mouth’. Next, at 3.4.126-8 (line 11 on Q F1v), F1 follows Tucca’s ‘honest Gent’man-like Scoundrels’, with ‘and suspected to ha’ some wit, as well as your poets; both at drinking, and breaking of iests: and are companions for gallants’. At this point both Q and the folio continue with the remainder of Tucca’s speech. Then, at 3.4.138, in Tucca’s next speech, Q’s ‘a blinde Iade and a Hamper’ (lines 24-5 on F1v) is continued in F1 with ‘and stalke vpon boords, and barrell heads, to an old crackt trumpet--’. Evidently these three phrases were in the manuscript copy and accordingly were set by Compositor B but were then removed for some reason (perhaps because they were seen as particularly abusive toward the players), leaving the page short and necessitating the movement of a line at the top of F1v to F1 to balance out the shortfall between two pages. Evidently too these phrases remained in Jonson’s manuscript, to be reinserted in the 1616 folio text. The turnover ‘(taine.’ in line 25 of F1v, and crowded spacing of lines 26-34 on the same page (3.4.140-7), must have been set before the deletions were made, for they bespeak a sense of need on Compositor B’s part to save space for his assigned stint. Conversely, lines 9-25 on this same page are somewhat loosely set, as might well occur when a compositor was obliged to remove some text and make up the difference. Even at that, and with the moving of a line at the bottom of F1 to the top of F1v as noted above, both F1 and F1v end up with 34 lines per page in a quire that otherwise prints 35 lines to a page in accord with the general rule.
A similar phenomenon occurs in M2, as noted above but not discussed by Cain (1995). At 5.3.373, the last line of M2 in the Turnbull copy, ‘Tuc. I, you whorson Cantharides? was’t I?’ and the catchword ‘Deme.’ are transposed to the top of M2v, so that the last line of M2 in Turnbull is ‘Suborn’d vs to the Calumny.’, followed by a new catchword ‘Tuc.’. As a result, M2 of Turnbull has 33 lines and M2v 35, whereas in other copies examined both pages have 34 lines. The reasons for this shift are not clear; there is no crowding of lines on M2. The move is again suggestive of last-minute adjustment during the process of composition, perhaps as a result of uncertainties in casting off copy. Possibly the compositors of M2 and M2v both printed 5.3.276 from copy supplied to them, one at the bottom of M2r with a properly supplied catchword and one at the top of M2v with the mistaken addition of the catchword ‘Deme.’ originally intended for M2. This might explain the otherwise puzzling appearance of ‘Deme.’ at the top of M2v in this copy of Q.
In any event, one cannot be too precise about the casting off of copy. The stints cast off for the compositors must have been approximate and would have required some adjusting. On several pages – B1r-B1v, C1r-C1v, C2v-C3r, D3r-D3v, E1r-E1v, E4r-E4v, F1r-F1v, F1v-F2r, F3r-F3v, F3v-F4r, F4v-G1r, G1v-G2r, G3r-G3v, G4v-H1r, H1r-H1v, H1v-H2r, H3r-H3v, I1v-I2r, L3v-L4r, M1v-M2r, and N1v-N2r – the break between stints, if indeed the copy was cast off forme by forme, comes in the midst of a prose sentence. Even when the break occurs between prose sentences, a certain amount of guesswork must have been required (as at B2v-B3r and D2v-D3r). The failure to begin B1 with what appears to be the catchword on A4v, ‘holde’, may be a result of uncertainty as to where the break in the cast-off copy was thought to occur. The unequal number of lines on a page in quire B – 35 for the first three and the last two pages, while B2v, B3, and B3v each have 34 – may well be the consequence of dealing with unevenly measured stints. The practice of printing verse or prose turn-overs to the right of the line above or below the turned-over line, as on D3v, F1v, G1v-G2r-G2v, and H2r-H2v, suggests the problem of too much copy on certain occasions for the space allotted. This problem tends to disappear in the latter part of the play.
The folio text of Poetaster occupies fourth place in the 1616 volume. It collates as follows, in sixes: title-page, Z4, in three states; a blank page, Z4v; a dedicatory epistle to Mr. Richard Martin, Z5 (page 273); The Persons of the Play, Z5v (274); the Induction, Z6-2A1 (275-7); the text of the play, 2A1-2F6v (277-348); an ‘Apologetical Dialogue’ ‘To the Reader’, 2F6v-2G3 (348-53); and an added page, 2G3v (354), indicating date of first performance, the name of the acting company, and the names of ‘The principall Comædians’, ‘With the allowance of the Master of REVELLS’. The running title on Z6v (276) is ‘Cynthias Reuells.’, owing to the use of a skeleton forme from the printing of the previous play; on 2A1-2F6v (277-348) it is ‘Poetaster.’; and on 2G1-2G3 (349-53) it is ‘To the Reader.’
State 2 of the title-page, lacking a border, informs the reader that the play was ‘Printed by William Stansby, for Matthew Lownes’. State 1, framed by an ornamental border, announces that it was ‘Printed by W. Stansby, for M. Lownes.’ Lownes, as indicated above, was the publisher who registered the play in 1601 and then published it in quarto in 1602, evidently holding on to his rights for folio publication as well. Stansby registered his copy on 20 January 1615 and began printing in late 1615 at the earliest (Gerritsen, 1959; Riddell, 1986; Donovan, 1987; Cain, 1995).
The copy for the compositors was a marked-up exemplar of Q, supplemented with some manuscript material supplied by Jonson. The most incontrovertible piece of evidence for the use of Q, as H&S (4.190) and Cain show, is a compositor’s error at 3.4.125. Tucca is saying, in Q (F1v, line 9), something that looks like ‘Doest thou’sweare?’, though in fact the seeming apostrophe between ‘thou’ and ‘sweare?’ appears to be a bit of lead that has worked its way up into the space. F1’s rendition of this (2C2v, line 25, p. 304), ‘Doest thou ’sweare?’ retains what the compositor mistook for an apostrophe. Apostrophes are used inappropriately on at least two other occasions as well. At 3.4.72, both Q (E4v, line 19) and F1 (2C2, line 17) read ‘he ’shall haue them now, presently’, possibly because, as H&S (4.190) speculate, the copy for Q could have read ‘a’ shall’; at any rate, F1 perpetuates the error. Similarly, at 3.4.112-13, both Q (F1r, lines 26-8) and F1 (2C2v, lines 10-11) read ‘we must haue you turne Fiddler againe, slaue, ’get a Base Violin at your backe’; F1 changes ‘Base Violin’ to lower-case but retains the apostrophe in ‘’get’.
Other traces tend to confirm F1’s use of Q. At 1.2.171-3, Q leaves a large space in the line (B3, lines 8-9):
Lawyer, Thou shalt be my Solicitor: Tis right olde boy, Ist?
In F1, 2A4 (283), lines 20-1, the equivalent passage becomes:
very emblemes of beggerie. No, dost heare? turn lawyer, Thou shalt be my solicitor: Tis right, old boy, ist?
The spacing in F1 is inexplicable other than as a following of the Q copy. Presumably the spacing is there to allow time for Ovid Senior to return with the money for Tucca.
At 2.1.130-2, both Q (C3, lines 16-18) and F1 (2B1, p. 289, lines 21-3) drop to a new line of type in the midst of Crispinus’s speech as he turns from addressing Chloe to Cytheris, who evidently enters at this point; the line break registers the entrance that is otherwise unmarked.
At 3.1.12-13, F1 (2B3v, p. 294) again follows Q (D2v, lines 18-19) in dropping to a new line in the midst of a speech, in this case suggesting a pause as Horace makes an attempt to rid himself of Crispinus’s annoying company.
At 4.4.20-3, F1 (2D3v, lines 12-15) similarly imitates Q (G4v, line 31-H1, lines 1-2) in providing a broad spacing and then a line break in the midst of Lupus’s speech to the First Lictor, first as Lupus urges the Lictor to ‘Stay the pothecary there!’ and then as Lupus turns to address Histrio.
At 2.2.130-1, F1 (2B2v) mimics in Q (D1, lines 34-5) a break to a new line in the midst of Ovid’s speech to Hermogenes, even though, as H&S (4.189) suggest, the reason for this break is not obvious. The Q formatting may have been simply a matter of a compositorial choice in arranging the lines. At any rate, F1 obligingly follows suit.
Even when F1 introduces a line break in the midst of a speech not explicitly called for in Q, F1 does so only when the Q compositor has filled up the first line and then drops to the next line for lack of any further room (H&S, 4.189-90). At 3.1.193-4, for example, Q (E1v, lines 17-18) reads as follows:
Crisp. And how deales Mecænas with thee? Liberally? Ha?
Is he open handed? bountifull?
The first line here fills up the column width of Q. F1 (2B6, lines 2-3) has a greater column width, so that a similar break in these lines gives the appearance of a gap. Similar copyings of Q’s lineation by F1, seemingly without substantive purpose, occur at 3.4.271-2 (Q F4, lines 2-3, and F1 2C4, lines 42-3), 5.3.47-8 (Q L1, lines 25-6, and F1 2E6v, lines 29-30) and 5.3.80 (Q L1v, lines 27-8, and F1 2F1, lines 17-18).
At 5.3.296-8 (Q M1, lines 19-21, F1 2F3v, lines 15-17), F1 follows Q in setting Tucca’s speech as verse, even though it is surely prose. At 3.4.134-5, F1 (2C2v, line 36) duplicates Q1’s (F1v, line 20) ‘tear and rand’, seemingly an error for ‘tear and rant’. Idiosyncratic spellings like ‘Enghle’ for ‘ingle’ (1.2.12, 2.2.188, 3.4.228, 5.3.535), ‘wright’ for ‘write’ (3.1.8, 5.2.81), ‘Fow’ for ‘Faugh’ (3.1.111), ‘Collonell’ for ‘Colonel’ (3.4.60), ‘neufe’ for ‘neaf’ or ‘nieve’, (3.4.165), ‘dubblet’s’ for ‘doublet’s (3.4.260), ‘Puet’ for ‘poet’ (4.3.56), ‘Ditt’is’ for ‘ditty’s’ or ‘ditty is’ (4.3.82), ‘Neufts’ for ‘newts’ (4.3.107), ‘Queere’ for ‘choir’ (4.5.154), ‘Waste’ for ‘waist’ (4.5.171), and ‘sent’ for ‘scent’ (4.6.17, 5.3.41) are carried over from Q to F1, sometimes changing the capitalization but not the spelling. So too with ‘Poluphagus’ and ‘Barathrum’ at 3.4.231-2, ‘Desseigne’ at 3.4.239, and ‘AEsope’ at 3.4.241. When at 3.4.186 and 200 Q1 provides the speech prefix ‘Demet. Histrio.’ for Histrio, F1 follows suit with ‘DEMET. HIST.’ (Demetrius is a hack-writer who is given no speeches in this scene until 292, and does not enter until 257, though conceivably he is silently on stage earlier.) The form ‘’Pray’ occurs in place of ‘Pray’ in both Q and F1 at 2.1.1, 3.4.215, 4.3.48, 4.3.122 and 129, 4.6.17, 5.3.81, and elsewhere, even though F1 sometimes prints ‘Pray’ (as at 3.4.236); at 4.3.130, Q and F1 concur in ‘pray’. At 3.3.14, F1 follows Q in printing ‘pray’’. At 3.4.78, Q’s ‘and a ’sweare’ (‘if he swear’) is copied by F1 instead of regularizing to ‘and a’ sweare’. At 4.5.66, F1’s ‘’Thanke’, with apostrophe, is a duplication of Q.
F1 presents the reader with some careful repunctuation of Q, as H&S note. F1 introduces dashes, hyphens, and exclamation marks. Commas sometimes replace colons, especially at the start of speeches and after words of direct address like ‘sir’. In other places commas are added to offset a word like ‘sir’ when placed in the middle or end of a speech. Instances of improved clarity in F1 are to be found, for example, at 3.4.91, where ‘Stand vp; Minos, close’ becomes, in F1, ‘Stand vp (MINOS) close’; 3.4.245-6, where F1 adds a clarifying comma after ‘scarfes’, to Q’s ‘but let him not begge Rapiers, nor scarfes in his ouer-familiar playing face’; and 4.1.31, where an added comma in F1 after ‘intollerable’ avoids the potential ambiguity of Q’s ‘O intollerable Iupiter!’. These are details; on the whole, F1 follows Q fairly accurately where Q served as the copy, as it did for most of the play. The impression one gets by studying such minutiae is that Jonson prepared Poetaster carefully for quarto publication and then did so once again for the 1616 folio.
Most importantly, he also made a goodly number of revisions and additions. A few were restorations of material excised from Q at the last minute, already noted above, at 3.4.105-6, 126-8, and 138, all on F1 and F1v. Evidently Jonson wanted these derogatory remarks by Tucca about the players back in what he must have regarded as his definitive edition of the play. Among the additions to F1, the most significant are a large portion of 1.2 (lines 73-5 and 77-109), two passages in 3.4 (250-5 and 308-10), all of 3.5, and the Apologetical Dialogue. This last item is clearly a restoration, since, as shown above, it appears to have been taken out of the Q printing at the last minute to be replaced by a note ‘To the Reader’. The first three passages may also be restorations of material that had been censored.
The F1-only passage at 1.2.73-5 and 77-109 is a continuation of the debate with which the scene has been concerned prior to line 73, namely, Ovid Senior’s ire at his son’s neglecting the study of law in his pursuit of verses, poetry, and play-making (lines 6-7), all of which the father regards as anathema. He is encouraged in his berating of young Ovid by the tribune Lupus, who is no less convinced that players ‘are an idle generation’ (28), and by Tucca, the brusque military man, who objects that a man of his profession cannot be seen in a bawdy house ‘but he shall be straight in one of their wormwood comedies’ (39-40). The continuation in F1 is of a piece with this, so that the cut version in Q proceeds smoothly enough. Still, the F1 passage is outspokenly satirical of the law as having no respect for merit and being well suited to a plodder who can ‘make noise enough’ and ‘be impudent enough’ (95-100), and as a profession in which one can ‘do right or wrong at thy pleasure’ (104). Scholarly consensus is that it must have been cut in response to the uproar to which Jonson addresses himself in his Apologetical Dialogue. It appears to have been cut before the compositors got to work, since there are no signs here of rearranging type at the last minute as in the instances cited above, including that of the Apologetical Dialogue. Jonson may have been under orders to excise the passage, or may have done so himself as a prudent move. See commentary note at 1.2.73-109.
The F1-only passages at 3.4.250-5 and 308-10 are the briefest of the substantial F1 additions, and the least certain to have been censored. Jonson could have written the first of these afresh for folio publication. Nonetheless, it is in a speech by Tucca, a favourite target for excision for reasons explored in this essay, and it does deal with the touchy matter of the actors versus London shopkeepers: Tucca professes to have defended the players when they ‘have beene said to prey vpon ‘pu’nees [i.e. ‘puny’], and honest citizens, for socks, or buskins’, and when the shopkeepers have called the players ‘vsurers, or brokers’ who might help one ‘to a peece of flesh’. Perhaps this another bit of prudent self-censorship on Jonson’s part, when the quarto of Poetaster was under such intense scrutiny. If so, it is a passage that he was determined to restore to the definitive text of F1. The second F1 addition in 3.4 (308-10) is still more brief, and certainly could be a new addition in F1 intended to provide a smooth transition to the entrance of Horace and Trebatius, but it too is in a speech by Tucca.
All of 3.5, and three preceding transitional lines at the end of 3.4, are also missing from Q. As the headnote to 3.5 in this present edition argues, it could have been written by Jonson as he revised the play for folio publication, but its closeness to English libel law in its last sixteen lines (expanded from the seven lines in Jonson’s source in Horace) may suggest instead that this passage, along perhaps with 3.5 as a whole, was written earlier, close to the time that Jonson found himself threatened with censorship or prosecution for his writing of Poetaster. As a translation perhaps not intended for stage presentation, it lacks dramatic movement and reads as a set piece. Whether Jonson intended it nonetheless for performance in 1601 and then publication in Q but was constrained by the circumstances to leave it out, we cannot be sure, but in any event he felt it was appropriate for the more literary occasion of folio publication. If it had been cut from the Q text, the cut must have been made before the compositors got to work, since there are no signs of disarray on Q F4v at the end of act 3. See Introduction and notes to 3.5.
In a new note ‘To the Reader’ in 1616 at the end of the play, Jonson describes his Apologetical Dialogue as ‘only once spoken upon the stage’. The suggestion is that it was suppressed thereafter, perhaps in the wake of the play’s original performance. If so, that could help explain why it was excised from the 1602 quarto despite an attempt on Jonson’s part to see it printed then. In Jonson’s proud view, it embodies ‘all the answer I ever gave to sundry impotent libels cast out (and some yet remaining) against me and this play’. Combined with 1.2.73-109 and 3.5, then, the Apologetical Dialogue seems to have constituted for Jonson a supreme defence of his position in the War of the Theatres and more broadly in the writing of drama for the London stage. These passages constitute his major contributions to the revised Poetaster text of 1616.
Omission of Q material in the F1 text is rare. One substantial passage does occur at 4.5.107, where Q continues Ovid’s speech to Julia after ‘Cotqueanity’ as follows: ‘we will lay this City desolate, and flat as this hand, for thy offences. These two fingers are the Walls of it; these within, the People; which People, shall be all throwne downe thus, and nothing left standing in this Citty, but these walls’. Why F1 omits this passage is not clear. The omission could be unintentional. Cain (1995), 193 proposes that it was omitted from F1 ‘because of its non-literary nature’. The hand gestures that must have been intended to accompany this passage could have been risibly sexual, suggestive of ‘the cuckold’s salute’ with the first and fourth fingers raised, as Cain suggests. Might Jonson have excised it from F1 as indecorous? Certainly one editorial choice would be to include it in a critical edition, as Cain does.
The other revisions, though numerous, are chiefly a matter of rephrasing short passages rather than adding new material. Jonson went to some trouble to replace the word ‘Knight’ throughout with various alternatives. At 1.2.20, Tucca’s ‘my Knight of worshippe’ (addressed to Ovid Senior) becomes ‘my Master of worship’. At 1.12.122 and 132, Tucca’s similarly addressing Ovid Senior as ‘my little knight Errant’ and ‘knight’ become ‘my little old boy’ and ‘old boy’. At 127, Tucca’s ‘my most Magnanimous Mirror of Knighthood’ (said again to Ovid Senior) in Q becomes ‘my flowre o’ the order’ in F1. At 152, Tucca’s ‘the knight’ (meaning, again, Ovid Senior) becomes ‘This old boy’. At 175 and 176, still on Ovid Senior, Tucca’s ‘mine honest Knight’ becomes ‘mine honest horse-man’ while ‘Knight’ is this time changed to ‘Romane’. At 4.3.85, Tucca’s ‘Knightes, and men of worshippe’, referring to Crispinus and Demetrius’, is shortened to ‘men of worship’. Another cluster emerges in 5.1. At 7, Caesar’s addressing Cornelius Gallus and Tibullus as ‘Knightes’ is changed to ‘gentlemen’, and similarly in 17 ‘your Knighthoodes’ is altered to ‘your gentrie’. Caesar’s vow, at 97-8 in Q, to ‘put no difference more / ’Twixt Knights, and Knightly spirits’, becomes ‘put no difference more / Between the great, and good’. Perhaps the shift at 1.2.122 from ‘Caualier Cothurnus’ in Q to ‘Cothurnus’ in F1 should be added to Cain’s list (1995); ‘Cavalier’ has many of the same connotations as ‘Knight’, and it turns up in Dekker’s Satiromastix, as for example in Tucca’s ‘Knights and Caualliers’, 3.1.102 (ed. Bowers, 1953). F1’s adding of ‘braue boy’ in Tucca’s address to Ovid Senior at 1.2.161 may be part of this same process of revision. So too with F1’s ‘boy’ for ‘Slaue’ in Tucca’s speech at 1.2.168 and ‘bold boy’ for ‘old boy’ in Tucca’s speech at 5.3.131; this kind of word substitution is especially marked in the speeches of Tucca, who plays such a significant role, from Jonson’s point of view, in Satiromastix.
Some of these instances seem inoffensive, especially those in act 5. The puzzle becomes more intensive in view of the facts that ‘knight’ is a more accurate translation of eques than ‘gentleman’, and that various knights turn up often enough as the objects of satire in Every Man Out, Volpone, Epicene, The Alchemist, and other plays that were published both before and after King James I had caused such a stir with the creation of so many ‘carpet knights’ early in his reign. Perhaps, as Cain plausibly suggests (1995, 54, 283-4), Jonson was sensitive to the roasting he had been implicitly subjected to in Dekker’s Satiromastix, a play that was probably staged shortly after Poetaster in late 1601. Dekker seemingly had obtained information on what Jonson had written or else hurriedly inserted new material into his play when he had seen an early performance of Poetaster. Satiromastix is openly satirical of knighthood in general and of Jonson’s adulation for knighthood in particular; Dekker parodies an ode that Jonson had written in 1601 to his Welsh patron, Sir John Salusbury. Dekker’s caricature of Jonson is unmistakably close in personal appearance, clothing, personality, the history of bricklaying, the acting and playwriting, the felony conviction, the adherence to Catholicism, etc. (Bednarz, 2001, 218 ff.). In light of such an unmistakably ad hominem attack, Tucca’s accusation of ungrateful behaviour on the part of Dekker’s Horace (i.e. Jonson) toward his patron (‘Art not famous enough yet, my mad Horastratus, for killing a Player, but thou must eate men alive? thy friends? Sirra wilde-man, thy Patrons? thou Anthropophagite, thy Mecaenasses?’, Satiromastix [in Dekker, Dramatic Works ], 4.2.61-3) might well have embarrassed Jonson in 1602-3, when Salusbury was himself in some difficulties. The presence here of Tucca, spouting the same rant as in Poetaster, is all the more significant in that most of Jonson’s excisions in Poetaster were in speeches by Tucca. Moreover, two more gentlemen to whom Jonson turned for patronage in these years, Robert Cotton and Robert Townshend, were knighted in 1603.
Cain (1995) plausibly sees in Jonson’s sensitivity to Satiromastix an explanation for three other changes in F1. At 5.3.389, Tucca’s lashing out at the Lictors who are apprehending him as ‘you inhumane Gorboduckes’ in Q (M2v, lines 16-17) is changed in F1 to ‘you inhumane Harpies’, evidently because, in Satiromastix, 1.2.339, Horace is lampooned by Tucca as ‘King Gorboduck’. Ovid’s objection in Q at 1.2.206 to the ‘dudgeon Censures’ with which some ignorant men ‘stab at poetry’ is changed in F1 to ‘desp’rate censures’, evidently in order to distance the text from Horace’s assertion in Satiromastix, 1.2.134-5, that ‘I am too well ranckt Asinius to bee stab’d with his dudgeion wit’. The reference in ‘his’ is to Tucca. And the change at 2.1.82 of Chloe’s disparaging reference to her citizen husband as a ‘Flat-cappe’ in Q to a ‘trades-man’ in F1 is probably a response to Satiromastix, where, at 4.3.194-5, Tucca jeers at Horace, ‘thou cryest ptrooh at worshipfull Citizens, and cal’st them Flat-caps’. Tucca is importantly involved in all three of these alterations, just as he was in most of the excisions discussed in the previous paragraph. A speech addressed by Crispinus to Chloe in F1 immediately after the jibe at Albius as a ‘trades-man’ or ‘Flat-cappe’ (‘No doubt of that, sweet feature, your carriage shewes it in any mans eye, that is carried vpon you with iudgement’) is missing in Q, perhaps having been excised when ‘Flat-cappe’ was altered to ‘trades-man’. The shift at 3.1.34 from ‘veluet Cap’ in Q, with its particular application to a tradesman’s wife’s attire, to the more abstract ‘dressing’ in F1 may have been prompted by similar considerations. So too with the change at 3.1.52 from ‘Veluet hose’ to ‘veluet bases’, at 3.1.67 from ‘Veluet’ to ‘dainty’, and at 4.3.26 from ‘veluet cap’ to ‘fine dressing’. At 3.1.89, F1’s ‘Whose freedom, and impatience of this fellow’ sounds less likely to give offense than Q’s ‘Romes Common Buffon: His free Impudence’. The change from Q’s ‘their ( ) Courts’ to F1’s ‘their loud courts’ at 3.1.180 seems to call attention to the omission of a word in Q that might give offence. Jonson’s substitution in F1 of ‘O JOVE’ for Q’s ‘O God’ at 4.1.9 and of ‘O JVNO’ for Q’s ‘O Hercules’ at 4.1.12 sound like mild self-censorship on Jonson’s part.
Most of Jonson’s rewritings in F1 would appear to be, more simply, a search for le mot juste. A tabulation of the most substantive of these changes should make clear how conscientious, limited, and precise is the process:
| Q | F1 | ||
| Ind. 0SP | LIVOR | Envy | |
| 1.1.73 | The frost-drad | Frost-fearing | |
| 1.2.28 | Sir Marcus Ouid | MARCVS OVID | |
| 1.2.59 | Reuenewues | reuennew | |
| 1.2.70 | Is’t not true? Is’t not true? | Is’t not true? | |
| 1.2.112 | traduce | bewitch | |
| 1.2.193 | Hmh! that | That | |
| 1.2.201 | soule | Muse | |
| 1.3.3-4 | Numa in Decimo nono? | Nay, I will see it--- | |
| 1.3.15 | Acoutrements | habillaments | |
| 2.1.55 | Mumma | mummia | |
| 2.1.118 | hit vpon | hit on | |
| 2.1.118 | easie | easily [probably an | |
| error] | |||
| 2.2.36 | a lingring taste | a present tast | |
| 2.2.184 | pray | pay [an error] | |
| 3.1.88 | Happy the bold Bolanus | Happy thou, bold | |
| BOLANVS | |||
| 3.1.90 | cald this fellow, Foole; | call’d him foole, and | |
| foole, | |||
| 3.1.92 | he had | thou hadst | |
| 3.1.121 | Rhadamanthus | Sir | |
| RHADAMANTHVS, | |||
| RHADAMANTHVS, | |||
| 3.1.126 | Apothecary | pothecary | |
| 3.1.153 | Graues | vrnes | |
| 3.1.179 | stand | stand still | |
| 3.1.200 | Assistance | assistant | |
| 3.1.219 | Torturer | torture [probably an | |
| error] | |||
| 3.1.224 | Importunacy | importunitie | |
| 3.2.1 | Redeemer | releeuer | |
| 3.2.8 | worse then | beyond | |
| 3.2.19 | sinne | offence | |
| 3.2.19 | adue | farewell | |
| 3.2.22 | Conuulsion | convulsions | |
| 3.2.24 | what Humours this | what humour is this | |
| 3.4.9 | that was [in error] | thou wast | |
| 3.4.15 | loose | lose | |
| 3.4.29 | disgeste | disgust | |
| 3.4.77 | a ’shal | hee shall | |
| 3.4.78 | by his trueth | by his truth, and | |
| earnest | |||
| 3.4.90 | Arrant | errant | |
| 3.4.99 | Leueret | ferret | |
| 3.4.101 | what’l hee | what, will he | |
| 3.4.129 | Caprichio | PANTALABVS | |
| 3.4.141 | Paunch | Stiffe toe | |
| 3.4.143 | Twentie i’the hundred | shifter | |
| 3.4.148 | twentie; Drachmes | twentie, sesterces | |
| 3.4.153 | new Playes | new matters | |
| 3.4.161 | Death of Pluto | life of PLVTO | |
| 3.4.207 | her, than me | her------- | |
| 3.4.233 | Oenobarbus | ÆNOBARBVS | |
| 3.4.241 | Father AEsope | ÆSOPE | |
| 3.4.244 | Friskin | FRISKER | |
| 3.4.247 | Rascall | stiffe-toe | |
| 3.4.255 | Yes | Thanke you | |
| 3.4.270-1 | inough: | that, that shall serue | |
| in some sort. | |||
| 3.4.274 | villanous | ranke | |
| 3.4.276 | such | these | |
| 3.4.302 | here’s | here are | |
| 4.3.14 | Via sacra | holy street | |
| 4.3.22 | Pyrrhus | NEOPTOLEMVS | |
| 4.3.42 | Poet? | poet, me thinkes. | |
| 4.3.57 | CANTVS | SONG | |
| 4.3.95 | loose | lose | |
| 4.5.99 | it. | it ----- | |
| 4.5.131 | feast [in error] | iest | |
| 4.6.4 | Why, speake | Why speake | |
| 4.6.53 | my . . . I | our . . . we [the royal | |
| plural] | |||
| 4.7.6 | six pence | a sesterce | |
| 4.7.19 | my Prophet | my noble prophet | |
| 4.7.20 | Noble Horace | little fat HORACE | |
| 4.7.32 | I | I, I | |
| 4.7.41 | Kingdomes | empires | |
| 4.8.13 | looseth | loseth | |
| 4.8.15 | Loose | Lose | |
| 5.1.102 | reasons | reason [in error] | |
| 5.1.126 | ’Tis worthily | Worthily | |
| 5.2.5 | Sir-name | sur-name | |
| 5.2.45 | that | whom | |
| 5.3.24 | Periwig | peruke | |
| 5.3.51 | Tyrants | tyrannes | |
| 5.3.79 | Praying | Preying | |
| 5.3.146 | Labour | worke | |
| 5.3.158 | Twopence | a drachme | |
| 5.3.250 | Cris: aliàs, Innocence | CRIS | |
| 5.3.276 | De. Fannius | DEME. FAN. | |
| 5.3.292 | Fiers; and increase | fires, and still increase | |
| 5.3.328 | Buffonary wits | buffon, barking wits | |
| 5.3.355 | but wholsome | but very wholsome | |
| 5.3.356 | another, yet | yet another | |
| 5.3.383 | gag him: | gag him: doe. | |
| 5.3.415 | Reciprocall, and Incubus | and reciprocall | |
| Incubus | |||
| 5.3.432 | Spurious, Snotteries | Spurious snotteries | |
| 5.3.438, 439 | Ventosity | ventositous | |
| 5.3.443 | Oblitrant -- Obcæcate -- | oblitrant -- | |
| 5.3.446 | often Conscious | often conscious | |
| dampe | |||
| 5.3.447 | O --- Conscious. | O --- conscious --- | |
| dampe. | |||
| 5.3.462 | Tropologicall -- Anagogicall-- Loquacity – Pinnosity | Snarling gusts – | |
| quaking custard | |||
| 5.3.524 | contest | attest | |
| 5.3.555 | CANTVS | SONG | |
| 5.3.560 SD | Finis Actus quinti & vltimi. | [not in F1] |
This list suggests several things about the process of revision. The corrections are numerous but in these instances limited to a few words or a single word. They tend to be clustered in certain scenes and involving certain interlocutors. The first cluster is in 1.2, when Ovid Senior is lecturing his son on the evils of poetry, abetted by Lupus and Tucca. In 3.1, Jonson seems to have paid particular attention to the speeches of Horace: of the ten alterations entered in this scene, eight are from Horace’s utterances and two from Crispinus. Three corrections in 3.2 are also in Horace’s speeches. In 3.4, where the correcting is especially heavy, some fourteen out of seventeen changes are from Tucca’s speeches; some changes are minor, but several alter the tone of Tucca’s abrupt humour, as in the shifting of ‘Leueret’ to ‘ferret’, ‘Caprichio’ to ‘PANTALABVS’, ‘Paunch’ to ‘Stiffe toe’, ‘Twentie i’the hundred' to ‘shifter’, ‘Death of Pluto’ to ‘life of PLVTO’, and ‘Rascall’ to ‘stiffe-toe’. The changes in 4.3 also are in speeches belonging to Tucca, and in 4.7 his ‘my Prophet' is changed to ‘my noble prophet’ and ‘Noble Horace’ to ‘little fat HORACE’. Some scenes are untouched, including 3.3, 4.1, and 4.2; others, including 1.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.8, 5.1, and 5.2, are only sparsely visited. The largely untouched scenes in act 4 are devoted especially to the presence at court of the ladies and Caesar. Revision is marked in the long final scene, many of the changes being in the speeches of Horace, of Tucca, and of Crispinus when he forced to vomit up his Marston-like neologisms. Some changes alter terms for money, as with ‘sesterces’ for Q‘s ‘Drachmes’ at 3.4.148, ‘a sesterce’ for ‘six pence’ at 4.7.6, and ‘a drachme’ for ‘Twopence’ at 5.3.158. (The ‘Drachmes’ at 3.4.22 and 302, the ‘Sesterties’ at 3.4.49, and the ‘Drachme’ at 4.3.137 in Q are not substantively changed in F1; generally, the changes are away from terms for English money.) A few terms sound as though they have been reworded for considerations of religious sensitivity, as when Horace’s ‘Redeemer’ is changed to ‘releeuer’ at 3.2.1 and when Tibullus renames the ‘Via sacra’ as ‘holy street’ at 4.3.14. (This is of course the street on which Horace encounters the unnamed bore in his Satires, 1.9.) Jonson’s close attention to the utterances of Horace and Tucca is what we might expect, given Horace’s identification with Jonson himself (in this play and in Dekker’s Satiromastix) and Tucca’s role as proxy in Jonson’s spat with Dekker and Marston.
Proof correction of F1 took place during the printing of the book, beginning in late 1615. Stop-press correction and resetting were heavy in F1 as a whole, heavier indeed than as enumerated by H&S. Jonson may well have assisted the press corrector in this labour, especially in the early plays, including Poetaster. According to David Gants’s tabulation (1999, 43), Jonson’s interventions were especially numerous in quire 2A of Poetaster, with substantial corrections also in quires Z, 2E, 2F, and 2G, followed by 2D, and with no Jonsonian interventions (and only one by the press corrector) in 2B and 2C. Throughout, according to Gants, Jonson’s own interventions substantially outnumber those of the press corrector. Cain (1995), 285 comes to a different conclusion, implicitly crediting the press corrector with numerous changes that Gants would regard as authorial. The difference would appear to be that Gants is counting as Jonson’s any literary, ‘stylistic or indifferent alteration of punctuation with which a printing-house corrector would not bother’ (42); and this is the more plausible argument on its face. The upshot of this debate is to reaffirm H&S’s position, in the early plays at least, that most of the corrections are authorial. Many pages exist in uncorrected form, evidently because the pressmen machined the early states over a period of time before running the sheets through the press again, presumably in the interests of efficiency. Even so, on occasion a run of perhaps 200 to 300 sheets would be printed out of a total production of 750 copies. Sometimes a forme might be printed while the corrector was still at work on that forme, and in some instances the initial proofing may have missed some items that were later caught (Gants, 40). The result is that press corrections are found in three states, variously distributed in existing copies of F1. See F1 Collation for a detailed listing.
Cain (1995), 285 posits that F1 Poetaster was set by formes, even though Stansby’s printing house seems to have had a sufficient supply of type at least much of the time to be able to print by quires, which would allow more time for proofing -- some of it even off-premises, as at Jonson’s residence. Gants and Donovan (1987) argue, on the other hand, that the text pages for most of the composition of F1 were set seriatim: in Gants’s words, ‘Throughout most of the Folio composition of the gatherings seems to have been seriatim, i.e. sequentially by page: sig. 1r, sig. 1v, sig. 2r, sig. 2v, etc.’ Gerritsen (1959), 52-5 estimates that Stansby had thirty-seven folio pages still standing toward the end of the printing of F1. Cain hypothesizes that one compositor set most of quire Z and half of 2A of Poetaster. This differentiation of compositorial stints is, however, based on a few spelling preferences, such as ‘Ile’ (not found after 2B3v) and ‘verie’ and ‘everie’ (not found after 2A6), and Cain admits that the balance between y and ie endings is more evenly balanced after quires A and B. At the same time he wants to point out that, except for words like heavenly, the middle quires from 2C through 2F generally favour ie endings, frequently changing Q’s final y to ie. Is a third compositor to be discerned, Cain wonders, in 2G, with its strong preference for the final y? This is hazardous as a tentative conclusion. What’s more, the data on y and ie do not fall out as Cain proposes. Compositorial preference for y formations, as in changing poetrie to poetry, is to be found on many pages of F1 throughout the play.
The compositorial assignments are difficult to determine, in part because the spellings and punctuation of Q are often followed in F1; after all, the F1 compositors worked with corrected printed copy except for the few additions. Some changes are systematic; many capitals in Q have been reduced to lower-case, even in a word like ‘Helicon’ (1.1.9). Generally roman caps and small caps are employed for proper names like ‘ENVIE’, ‘ROME’, ‘IOVE’, etc., in place of Q’s preference or italics. The speech prefixes have been carefully regularized in four letters, cap and small cap: TVCC. (or, once on p. 341, TVCCA.), OVID., OVID se. or OVID. SE. (when the two are onstage together), OVID iu. or OVID. IV. (similarly), LVSC., LVPV., PYRG., TIBV., CRIS., ALBI., CHLO., MAYD. 1., MAYD 2., IULI., CYTH., PLAV., PROP., HERM., GALL. (or, on p. 313, anomalously, COR. GALL.), ALL., HORA., ARIS., LICT., MINO., DEMET. (twice, anomalously, on p. 306) or (more commonly) DEME., 1. PYR., 2. PYR., TREB., HIST., MECÆ or MECŒ., CAESA. (anomalously on pp. 323-4 in five letters, but representing CÆSA.) or (more often) CAES., VIRG., EQVES 1., and EQUITES. (in plural use). This regularization means that the speech prefixes are not useful in determining compositorial stints. Other changes too seem independent of compositorial preference. Some roman words are italicized, and the reverse. Hyphenation is sometimes introduced into words like ‘ey-strings’ (Induction, 28). Sometimes apostrophes are introduced into words like ‘endowed’, ‘squeezd’, ‘armed’, and ‘scornd’ (Induction, 43, 45, 51, 65). Ile’ is regularized into ‘I’le’ throughout most of the text. A word like ‘iuice’ sometimes becomes ‘juice’. The handling of y/ie endings seems arbitrary: in the Prologue of the Induction, for example, at 73 ‘Allegory’ is changed to ‘allegorie’, whereas two lines later ‘follie’ is changed to ‘folly’. (Granted, in much of the play F1 prefers ie to Q’s y.) Ampersands occurring in the crowded Q printing are changed throughout to ‘and’, as at 1.1.13.
These many changes occurring throughout notwithstanding, compositorial spelling preferences are perhaps discernible, especially in the changes away from the spellings of Q. In the printing of words like ‘me’, ‘we’, ‘be’, ‘she’, and ‘he’, many pages of quires 2A and 2B -- namely all of 2A except 2r and 4v, and, in 2B, 1v, 2r, 2v, 5r, 5v, and 6r -- exhibit a marked preference for ‘mee’, ‘wee’, ‘bee’, ‘shee’, and ‘hee’, changing the Q spelling in this direction some 36 times as compared with 7 instances in the reverse direction. Tentatively, let us identify the compositor here as Compositor A. Some other pages in 2A (2r and 4v) and 2B (3r, 4v, 6v) are indeterminate in their preference for ‘mee’ or ‘me’ spellings. Conversely, 2A4r prefers ‘he’ and me’; 2B3r changes Q’s ‘mee’ and ‘Wee’ to ‘me’ (twice) and ‘We’. In quire 2C, certain pages (notably 2r and 3v) change ‘wee’ to ‘we’ etc. with notable frequency. Tentatively, we can identify this as the work of Compositor B. Meanwhile, 2C1v (with 3 ‘he’ types) and 4r (with 5 ‘mee’ types) were perhaps set by Compositor A. In 2D, the first four formes give us 12 ‘bee’ types against 1 ‘be’, while in 3r-4v and 3v-4r, ‘be’-type spellings predominate 10 to 3. In quire 2E, ‘bee’ types predominate in 2r, 3v, and 6r, while 2v, 3r, and 4v tend to favour ‘he’ etc. In 2F, ‘mee’ spellings dominate on 1r, 2v, 5r, while ‘he’ spellings are favoured on 3r, 4r, and 4v.
Though these numbers are hardly decisive in themselves, other spelling preferences offer some support for these tentative assignments. Compositor A’s assignments in quires 2A and 2B display a discernible tendency in some cases to add an ‘e’ to words like fly/flye, think/thinke, six/sixe, pox/poxe, madam/madame, lack/lacke, intreat/intreate, wear/weare, stir/stirre, meats/meates, moods/moodes, and steals/steales, though forms without the final ‘e’ are generally much more common throughout the text. Similarly, in quires 2A and 2B (and also on Z6v, at the end of the previous quire) we find several instances where Compositor A has changed from ‘either’ to ‘eyther’, ‘maides’ to ‘maydes’, ‘dining’ to ‘dyning’, ‘alwaies’ to ‘alwayes’ (all four of these are on 2A6v), ‘prais’d’ to ‘prays’d’, ‘daies’ to ‘dayes’, ‘saies’ to ‘sayes’, and ‘die’ to ‘dye’, whereas throughout the text (including much of quires 2A and 2B) the marked preference is for changes in the other direction. This preference for ‘crye’ instead of Q’s ‘cry’, ‘plaies’ for ‘playes’, ‘ladie’ for ‘ladye’, etc., is especially noticeable in quire 2C and those pages of 2D (3r-4v) tentatively assigned in this analysis to Compositor B.
Compositor A, especially in his pages of quires 2A and 2B, tends to prefer spellings like ‘boldnesse’, ‘sonne’, ‘clogge’, ‘gemme’, ‘trimme’, ‘conferre’, ‘preferre’, ‘deferre’, and ‘stirres’, where Q has ‘boldnes’, ‘son’, ‘clog’, and the like. (There are individual counter-instances on 2A2v and 2B1v, 2r, and 5r.) These changes also turn up in what may be Compositor A’s stint in 2D, on 2v, 5r, and 5v, and also on 2D2v and 5r. Changes in the other direction, from Q’s ‘dogges’ to ‘dogs’, ‘beginne’ to ‘begin’, ‘swimme’ to ‘swim’, ‘penne’ to ‘pen’, ‘skilles’ to ‘skils’, ‘varlettes’ to ‘varlets’, ‘ramme’ to ‘ram’, ‘ragges’ to ‘rags’, ‘stirre’ to ‘stir’, ‘Mistresse’ to ‘mistris’, ‘worshippe’ to ‘worship’, etc., are to be found especially on 2C1r, 2v, 2v, 3v, and 4v, and 2D3r, all on pages tentatively assigned here to Compositor B. Quire 2F perhaps shows a similar preference, at least in some of its pages, with ‘quit’ for ‘quitte’ and ‘varlets’ for Q’s ‘Varlettes’ (4r) and ‘worship’ for ‘worshippe’ (4v).
Spellings like ‘hopefull’ in place of Q’s ‘hopeful’, ‘will’ for ‘wil’, ‘well’ for ‘wel’, ‘tell’ and ‘tells’ for ‘tel’ and ‘tels’, ‘fill’d’ for ‘fil’d’, ‘shall’ for ‘shal’, ‘intollerable’ for ‘intolerable’, ‘subtell’ for ‘subtel’, ‘all’ for ‘al’, and ‘pills’ for ‘pils’ show up substantially often in Compositor A’s stints in quires 2A and 2B as compared with only two instances of the reverse (‘farewel’ for ‘farewell’ and ‘cal’ for ‘call’). The double ‘ll’ also appears in what may be Compositor A’s stint on 2C6v (‘will’ for ‘wil’), and, in quire 2D, on 2r and 5r (‘violl’ for ‘Viole’, ‘subtill’ for ‘subtil’, and ‘fills’ for ‘fils’). Conversely, ‘skils’ for Q’s ‘skilles’ turn up on 2C2v, and ‘wel’ for ‘well’ on 2F3r, on pages tentatively assigned here to the Compositor B. Counter-examples are not hard to find, however, so that the positions taken here are tentative.
Compositor A seems to have had a preference for ‘ieast’ in place of Q’s ‘iest’, as on 2D2v and 5r, paired together on a single forme, and on 2E1, perhaps suggesting that this compositor worked on the first forme of quire 2E. This spelling, ‘ieast’, printed thus 6 times, occurs nowhere else in F1; it is repeatedly ‘iest’ in Q. This same compositor may have preferred ‘cousin’ for Q’s ‘cosen’; the change occurs 9 times, on 2A5v-2B1, all in Compositor A’s pages of quires 2A and 2 B, and then five times on 2D2, with no contrary instances. The spelling change to ‘punke’ from Q’s ‘Punque’ turns up fairly often in the Compositor A’s stints, on 2A2 and 2D2 (4 times), as well as 2E1 and 2F2v, but also on 2D4v, tentatively and uncertainly assigned here to Compositor B. Compositor A may have favoured ‘hearts’ for Q’s ‘harts’, ‘household’ for ‘houshold’, ‘onely’ for ‘only’, ‘idely’ for ‘idly’, ‘feuers’ for ‘feauers’, ‘cleare’ for ‘cleere’, ‘sudden’ for ‘sudaine’, ‘moost’ for ‘most’, ‘choose’ for ‘chuse’, ‘told’ for ‘tould’, ‘sute’ for ‘suit’ or ‘suite’, and ‘swaggerer’ for ‘swaggrer’, all in quires 2A and 2B. A shift from ‘foorth’ in Q to ‘foorth’ occurs on Z6, 2A5, 2E1v, 2E5v, and 2F6, all pages tentatively assigned here to Compositor A. The spellings ‘shaddowes’ and ‘shaddow’ in place of Q’s ‘shadows’ and ‘shadow’ on 2E2 and 2E6 occur on pages assigned here to Compositor A. Compositor B may have gravitated to ‘bloud’ for Q’s ‘blood’ (7 times in all, on 2C1, 2D4, and 2E2v and 3r), with no changing of ‘blood’ to ‘bloud’ elsewhere in F1; however, the spelling ‘blouddie’ turns up on 2A6v in what is tentatively assigned in this analysis to Compositor A. Compositor B may have favoured ‘bold’ for ‘bould’, as on 2C4v.
Quire 2E presents some spellings that elsewhere seem characteristic of Compositor B: dregs (1v), bloud (2r, 3r), swim (3v), begin (5v), we (3r), he (4v). On other pages in 2E, we find spellings characteristic of the Compositor A (shee, bee, starres, sharpnesse, summe). Quire 2F, as indicated above, seems to have received the attention at times of the Compositor B, with spellings like worship, varlets, quit, wel, we, me, sodaine, libell, and bloud, especially on 2F3r-4v.
If two compositors shared the work on F1 Poetaster, the shares may have fallen out as follows:
| Quire | Compositor A | Compositor B |
| 2A | 1r-6v | (could have worked |
| on 3r and 4v) | ||
| 2B | 1r-2v, 4r, 5r-6v | 4r (?), 3r, 4v (?) |
| 2C | 1r (?), 3r, 4r, 6v | 1r, 2r, 2v, 3r, 4v, 5r, |
| 5v, 6r (?) | ||
| 2D | 1r-2v, 3r, 5r-6v (?) | 3r (?), 3v-4r-4v (?) |
| 2E | 1r, 1v (?), 2r, 3v, 4r-4v (?), 5v, 6r, 6v | 2v, 3r, 5r |
| 2F | 1r, 2v (?), 5r, 6r, 6v | 1v, 2r, 3r, 3v, 4r, 4v, |
| 5v | ||
| 2G | (see below) |
Several details here are uncertain, where the spelling evidence on a given page is sketchy. On the whole, nevertheless, the pattern seems to be that Compositor A set most of quires 2A and 2B, and that Compositor B took responsibility for much of quire 2C, after which the work was more evenly divided in quires 2D through 2F. If so, the two compositors shared their assignments at first in such a way as not to take maximum advantage of their collaboration; sharing work on a quire would allow it to proceed quickly to the press-work. Yet, as indicated above, Stansby’s shop often printed not by formes but by quires and seems to have had a sufficient supply of type on hand to use fairly long stints of cast-off material, with the advantage that the occasional need for leading or crowding, such as is evident in Q but not in F1, would be minimized.
Quire 2G, containing the Apologetical Dialogue, was not set from an exemplar of Q, so that the kind of spelling analysis conducted above does not apply. Cain (1995), 285 notes a pronounced tendency for y endings (poetry, archery, company, etc.), whereas ie endings have prevailed throughout the earlier quires, in words like poetry/poetrie, elegy/elegie, pouerty/pouertie, gallery/gallerie etc. Cain wonders if a third compositor was brought in for quire 2G. As indicated above, however, Compositor A showed some tendency toward y endings in Eyther, folly, worthy, lady, body, etc., especially in (but not limited to) quires 2A and 2B, though the stints of Compositor A also contain plenty of ie endings. Perhaps, too, the tendency in quire 2G toward y endings was influenced by the manuscript copy.
The printers of F1 used four to six skeleton formes at a time, enough, in Gants’s view, ‘to comfortably juggle the tasks of composing, proofing and printing’ (1999, 51). The number of skeletons begins to drop off at the printing of the poems (Donovan, 1987) Cain, 1995), but for the plays, including Poetaster, these skeletons were generally in use, and seemingly in a random order. The headlines do not appear in regular sequence, as for example with a particular skeleton turning up on the first sheet of each quire or on the same side of a given sheet. For most of the play text of Poetaster, as Cain (1995), 285 also shows, as many as six skeleton formes were in use, though even more may have been required, or at least different headlines, for the first and last quires with their different running titles.
F1 masses entries at the heads of scenes, as in other folio plays and also as in Q of Poetaster, a difference being that Q regularly supplies a speech prefix for the first speaker at the start of each scene whereas F1 does not. Entrances are otherwise not marked in Q or F1. F1 deletes a number of exits marked in Q, as discussed above, leaving the reader to surmise when characters come and go. F1 does provide eight marginal notations, not in Q. Envy, at the start of the Prologue, is described as ‘Arising in the midst of the stage’. A centered heading above the scene marks the Induction as beginning ‘After the second sounding’, and ‘The third sounding’ marks the beginning of the Prologue. At 2.1.84, F1 notes marginally of Albius that ‘Hee is still going in and out’. At 3.4.15, ‘The Officer strikes up his [Tucca’s] heels’ as the Lictors are arresting Crispinus. At line 223, ‘They [Minos and Second Pyrgus] with-draw to make themselues ready’ for their entrance a short time later in the playacting. (This marginal note in F1 is more or less equivalent to Q’s ‘Exeunt’.) Accordingly, at line 278, ‘The boy [Second Pyrgus] comes in on Minos shoulders, who stalkes, as he acts’. At 4.6.13, ‘He [Caesar] offers to kill his daughter [Julia]’. At 4.7.18, ‘Horace passes by’ Tucca, Crispinus, and the Pyrgus. At the start of 4.9, ‘Shee [Julia] appeareth aboue, as at her chamber window’, conversing with Ovid on the main stage below. At 5.3.128, Tucca urges Maecenas to take back his chain ‘The while the rest [Gallus and Tibullus] whisper [to] Caesar’. These marginal notations read like stage directions in several instances, but they are presented as literary commentary, especially in the absence of stage directions elsewhere in the text where indications of stage action (including entrances) would be helpful to the reader. In addition, citations of Jonson sources appear on pages 278, 308, 334, and 335, taken from Q and then augmented (as indicated above) by a note on Horace at 3.5.1 (a scene missing from Q) and two notes on Ovid at lines 107-8 and 110-11 in the Apologetical Dialogue (similarly absent from Q). Another marginal gloss at 5.1.74 in F1 (not in Q) explains that the ‘you three’ whom Caesar is addressing are ‘*Viz Mecœnas, Gallus, Tibullus’.
This edition
The overall edition of the works of Ben Jonson in which Poetaster now appears is committed to a reexamination of textual priorities throughout the canon, in the spirit of Johan Gerritsen’s careful review ( ES, 38, 1957, 120-6) of Herford and Simpson’s Oxford Ben Jonson. No longer can one assume that the folio is to be preferred across the board to the various quarto texts; one must be careful, in Gerritsen’s words, not to prefer Stansby to Jonson. A substantial number of individual editing assignments in the present Cambridge Works have chosen the quarto as copy text.
In the case of Poetaster, however, as also with The Alchemist, Catiline, and some others, the folio offers what is clearly the best choice as the place to begin. As the above textual essay hopes to have demonstrated, the following points favour the folio:
Jonson rewrote many short passages and substituted single words throughout Poetaster in preparation for folio publication. A substantial number occur in speeches by Tucca and Horace, thereby touching on Jonson’s quarrel in the theatre with Dekker and Marston. A few short cuts, particularly those at 3.4.106, 126-8, and 138-9, seem to have been made at the last minute while the play was in press.
Jonson restored several longer passages that appear to have been suppressed in the quarto and seemingly also in early performance, most notably 1.2.73-109, all of 3.5, and the Apologetical Dialogue at the end. These passage offer collectively a Jonsonian defence of his art as dramatist in the face especially of Dekker’s attack in Satiromastix. Somewhat less controversially, the F1-only passages at 3.4.250-5 and 308-10 may also have been censored or else culled out prudently by Jonson, since they deal with Tucca’s allegations against the public players. Even if Jonson wrote some of these passages anew for inclusion in the folio text, they unquestionably belong to the version of the play as he wished it to be in 1615-16.
F1 of Poetaster cuts only one substantial portion of the quarto text, at 4.5.107 (approximately four lines long in Q), concluding Ovid’s speech to Julia. The cut certainly could be intentional on Jonson’s part, possibly out of concern that the wording might seem indecorous, or that it was better suited to gestural language in the theatre than to a literary text.
Even if the adoption of F1 as copy text for a modern critical edition seems clearly called for, questions still remain as to whether Q offers a superior choice in specific instances. For one thing, the formatting of F1, with massed entries at the heads of scenes, the absence of stage directions including all entrances and exits, the omitting of a speech prefix for the speaker at the head of each scene, the provision of marginal notes (some of them taken over from Q) citing sources and commenting at a few points on significant stage action, and the like, plainly conform with Jonson’s wish to present his readers with a literary text in the neoclassical tradition rather than a theatrical script. This present edition is committed to giving greater weight to texts with theatrical provenance or features than do Herford and Simpson and some other editors, and in that sense F1 Poetaster moves away from theatrical concerns. The important point here is that the quarto text remains a vital part of the play’s stage and textual history, even if F1 is best suited overall for copy text.
The cut at 4.5.107 is certainly an instance where Q deserves serious consideration. Cain (1995) includes this passage in his Revels edition of 1995, and defensibly so, if one sees this as an instance of censorship in a play that had been assailed by censorship pressures in 1601-2. Since, however, the passage found its way into Q in 1602 despite those pressures, and since Jonson clearly had a freer hand in 1615-16 to restore the defence of his art about which he felt so embattled, the decision to omit the passage at 4.5.107 would seem to have been his on grounds other than those of fearing censorship. It is included in this present edition in the textual collation and in a commentary note at 4.5.107.
Other possible candidates for a restoration of Q’s readings might include some changes in the speeches especially of Tucca and Horace where they touch on the quarrel between Jonson and his adversaries in the theatre. Should one prefer Q’s ‘Leueret’ to F1’s ‘ferret‘, for example, or ‘Caprichio’ to ‘PANTALABVS’, or ‘Paunch' to ‘Stiffe toe’, or ‘Death of Pluto’ to ‘life of PLVTO’, or ‘Rascall’ to ‘stiffe-toe’, all of these in an especially concentrated area of revision in the speeches of Tucca in 3.4? To do so would require a textual argument that one is restoring original Jonsonian readings which then retreated under pressure of censorship or public opinion. Once again, the counter argument is that Jonson took the opportunity to restore censored readings as he revised the text for folio publication, while at the same time changing the wording of Tucca’s speeches as seemed to him appropriate for a literary text.
In an old-spelling edition, as Gerritsen (1957) and Cain (1995), 287 have noted, a case could be made for following Q in the matter of accidentals, and is thus a factor that Herford and Simpson might well have considered, but it does not apply to the present modern-spelling edition. Modern spelling does, to be sure, create its own problems, notably with a word like ‘satyre’ or ‘satyricall’, spelled thus in Q and F1 (e.g. 3.4.299, 4.3.94, 5.3.27 and 29 and 261) as though in acknowledgement of a presumed derivation from the Greek satyr play. A resonance is lost with modernizing to ‘satire’, but the commentary can ameliorate the difficulty by pointing out what is at stake. So too with ‘trauaile’ (see Induction, 59, 1.2.4), which its frequent ambivalence as suggesting ‘travel’ and ‘travail’; goodman and good man (1.2.19), Marry/Mary (1.2.66, 2.1.47, etc.), prithee/pre’thee (2.1.94), compliment/complement (2.2.186, 3.4.69), write/wright (3.1.8), whither/whether (3.1.97), straiter/straighter (3.4.201), quit/quite (5.1.46), preying/praying (5.3.79), and still others. Here, as Fredson Bowers was fond of saying, you pays your money and you takes your choice.
Stage directions are notably absent from F1 Poetaster, and an editor might wish to save Jonson from his own studiously literary bent in the interests of seeing the play in the theatre. This approach has substantial appeal in a play like Every Man Out of His Humour, for example, where the quarto is manifestly more aware of its theatrical milieu. The quarto of Poetaster is, on the other hand, nearly as literary in format and flavour as the folio text. The exits that are included in Q are easily restored to this critical F1-based edition with the use of brackets to indicate that they are not a part of F1, along with collation notes indicating when they are or are not taken from Q. Many other stage directions are provided in this present edition of Poetaster in brackets, including entrances; massed entries at the heads of scenes are emended as little as possible, but are still emended to indicate when characters so named actually enter or reenter later in the scene; added words in such stage directions are bracketed. Speech prefixes are regularized in accord with the editorial guidelines of this Jonson edition as a whole.
In accord with the editorial practice of this Jonson edition as a whole, the few marginal notes in Poetaster F1 that read like stage directions are printed in this edition in the body of the text as though they are stage directions. The intent in printing F1 may have been to provide glosses rather than stage directions in the usual sense of that term, but the distinction is a small one in its practical consequences.
F1 carefully distinguishes prose from verse, and is no less careful in its printing of verse to indicate when a verse line is divided among two or more speakers; the F1 practice generally is to print a second half-line, together with its speech prefix, on the same line of type as the first half-line. Instances are to be found at 1.3.1, 4, 12, 44, and 64. Compared with other early modern dramatists, Jonson makes easy an editor’s task in determining when verses should be printed as divided in this way. Occasionally, to be sure, F1 prints what appear to be two half-lines of verse one below the other, as at 1.3.32, calling for an editorial judgment, but the instances are relatively few and not problematic.
This edition follows the scene divisions of F1, which are those of Q also. Cain (1995) introduces a new scene at 4.7.25, where indeed the stage is clear, and a case can certainly be made for doing so. This edition chooses instead to follow the divisions of F1 and Q, since the massed entry at the head of 4.7 indicates an intent on Jonson’s part to think of what is marked as 4.7 as a unit. Following Jonson has the further advantage of making easier the location of citations in various editions other than Cain’s. His argument that some crowding in Q may possibly have occasioned the need to drop a scene division and thereby save space seems perhaps unlikely, since the massed entry at the head of 4.7 names characters who are to speak in the text following line 25.
When all is said in favour of F1 as the choice of copy text for this present edition, Q is of course still invaluable as attesting to an earlier stage of Jonson’s writing and the acting company’s performance. The differences between Q and F1 must continue to interest us as a means of studying how Jonson’s attitudes changed toward censorship, the matters at issue in the Poetomachia, and much more.
The folio of 1640, printed by Robert Young, who by this time had acquired full copyright, is mainly a reprint of F1, offering some corrections to punctuation and introducing some errors. It offers three substantive new readings. At F1’s ‘Traduce, corrupt, apply, enforme, suggest’ (Induction, 54), the word ‘enforme’ is changed in F2 to ‘enforce’. The alteration is plainly suspect as a dittography of ‘Traduce’ earlier in the line. At 5.1.129, in Horace’s tribute to Virgil, ‘His learning labours not the schoole-like glosse’, ‘labours’ becomes ‘savours’ in F2 -- plausible enough, but by that very token suspect as an editorial sophistication encouraged by the physical resemblance of ‘l’ and tall ‘s’. And at 5.4.473-6, in Virgil’s advice to Crispinus to ‘Looke, you take / Each morning, of old CATOES principles / A good draught, next your heart; that walke vpon, / Till it be well digested’, the change from ‘that walke vpon’ to ‘and walk upon’t’ is arguably an improvement in clarity, but nothing beyond the capability of an F2 editor offering another scattered sophistication. These F2 changes are recorded in the collation but not incorporated into the text.
Among recent editions of Poetaster not published as part of the collected works of Jonson are the following: Herbert S. Mallory (New York: H. Holt, 1905); Josiah H. Penniman, ed., Poetaster by Ben Jonson and Satiromastix by Thomas Dekker (Boston, London: D. C. Heath, 1913); Henry de Vocht, edited from the quarto of 1602 (Louvvain: C. Uystpruyst, 1934); Tom Cain, Revels Plays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, cited several times in the above essay); and Margaret Jane Kidnie, ed., Poetaster, Sejanus, The Devil is an Ass, and The New Inn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Variants in the 1602 Quarto
Copies Collated
1 British Library, 644.b.52
2 British Library, Ashley 954
3 Victoria and
Albert Museum, Dyce 25.A.79
4 National Trust, Petworth House
5 Oxford,
Bodleian Library, Mal. 213(1)
6 National Library of Scotland, Bute 300
7* Boston Public Library
8* The Huntington Library,
62065
9 Yale University Library, Ih.J738.602
10 Folger Shakespeare Library,
STC 14781
11 Harvard University Libraries, STC 14781
12 Princeton University Library, RHT 17th-335
13* University of Texas, Austin, Pforz. 554
14 Alexander
Turnbull Library, Wellington, REng.JON.Poet.1602
Copies marked with an asterisk have been checked for known variants, though not fully collated.
| B(inner) | State 1 | State 2 |
| B3v | ||
| 29 | Tis under If | Tis under Tibullus |
| catchword | Pray | Pr^a^ |
State 1: 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14
State 2: 4, 5, 7, 13
| C(inner) | State 1 | State 2 | State 3 |
| C1v | |||
| 6 | rarher | rarher | rather |
| 22 | ‘A’ under ‘e’ | ‘A’ under ‘n’ | ~ |
| 22-3 | Gaine / ”fauours | “Gaine / fauours | ~ |
| C2 | |||
| 33 | though, twere | though twere | ~ |
| C3v | |||
| 9 | (yo^u | (you. | ~ |
State 1: 10
State 2: 2, 3, 8, 9, 11, 14
State 3: 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13
| M (inner: outer) | State 1 | State 2 |
| M2 | ||
| Final line | Suborn’d vs to the Calumny | Tuc. I, you whorson Cantharides? was’t I? |
| catchword | Tuc. | Deme. |
| M2v | ||
| 1 | Tuc. I, you whorson Cantharides? was’t I? | Demet. I appeale to your conscience, Captaine. |
State 1: 14
State 2: all other copies
Collation of F1, by David L. Gants
| Z3:4 (i) | ||||
| Z4 271 | State 1 | State 2 | State 3 | |
| [Compartment t-p] | [Plain t-p] | --- | ||
| 2 | OR | OR | --- | |
| 4 | Satyre | Satyre>. | --- | |
| 5 | 1601. | By | then | Children | --- | |
| 6 | Queene | ELIZABETHS | Chappell | Queene ELIZABETHS | CHAPPEL | --- | |
| 12 | LONDON | LONDON | --- | |
| 13 | W. Stansby, | WILLIAM STANSBY, | ~. | |
| 14 | M. Lownes | Matthew Lownes | [omit] | |
| 15 | 1616. | M. DC. XVI. | --- | |
| Z2:5 (i) | ||||
| Z5 273 | State 1 | State 2 | ||
| 4 | FRIEND. | ~, | ||
| Z1:6 (i) | ||||
| Z6 275 | ||||
| 4 | thee; | ~, | ||
| 18 | Stay: | ~! | ||
| 21 | not … These | ~, … theſe | ||
| 23 | lights | ~, | ||
| (For the rest of this forme, see Textual Essay to Cynthia’s Revels.) | ||||
| 2A2:5 (o) | ||||
| 2A5v 286 | State 1 | State 2 | State 3 | |
| 25 | lo . oke out: [crooked ‘f’]or … sir.r | --- | looke out: for … sir. Or | |
| 35 | ſomewhereel ſe: | ſomewhere elſe: | --- | |
| 2A3:4 (o) | ||||
| 2A4v 284 | State 1 | State 2 | ||
| 11 | knowledge. | ~, | ||
| 2A3:4 (i) | ||||
| 2A3v 282 | State 1 | State 2 | State 3 | |
| 1 | himſelfe | --- | ~, | |
| 4 | Boy. | --- | boy. | |
| 8 | law; … that: | --- | ~: … ~. | |
| 12 | farewel, | ~. | --- | |
| 16 | Boy | --- | boy | |
| 17 | I. | --- | ~ ------ | |
| 19 | Now, captaine | --- | ~. Captaine | |
| 42 | -cracker: | --- | ~, | |
| 44 | him and | --- | ~, an, | |
| 2A4 283 | ||||
| 2 | now: | --- | ~. | |
| 6 | Sixe | --- | ſixe | |
| 8 | Time: | Time: | ||
| 15 | CAL- | LIMACHVS. Thy | --- | ~, thy | |
| 17 | ſo: … muſt: They | --- | ~, … ~, they | |
| 18 | ſtarued … linnen: | --- | ſtaru’d … ~; | |
| 20 | No: … Lawyer | --- | ~, … lawyer | |
| 21 | Iſt? | --- | iſt? | |
| 26 | me | --- | ~, | |
| 27 | horſe | --- | ~, | |
| 38 | Romane artes | --- | artes | |
| 2A2:5 (i) | ||||
| 2A2v 280 | ||||
| 2 | Maſter | ~, | --- | |
| 6 | SE. | ſe. | --- | |
| 7 | camrades | cam’rades | --- | |
| 19 | ’hem, | ~: | --- | |
| 20 | punke | punke | --- | |
| 26 | SE. Me … alone; | ſe. Mee … ~, | --- | |
| 30 | IV. … me | iu. … mee | --- | |
| 37 | SE. | ſe. | --- | |
| 39 | IV. | iu. | --- | |
| 40 | SE. | ſe. | --- | |
| 42 | meanes, … reuennew | ~, … reuenew | ~; … ~ | |
| 2A5 285 | ||||
| 7 | iewellers, | where | house, | The | --- | |
| 19 | elyzium | elysian | --- | |
| 29 | new | now | --- | |
| 2B 3:4 (o) | State 1 | State 2 | ||
| 2B3 293 | ||||
| 40 | hat they | that ~ | ||
| 2D2:5 (o) | ||||
| 2D5v 322 | ||||
| 13 | drouzineſſe, | ~. | ||
| 2D3:4 (o) | ||||
| 2D3 317 | ||||
| 9 | We await | Wee wait | ||
| 11 | Captaine | Cap taine | ||
| 16 | then, | ~. | ||
| 18 | MERCURY, | ~. | ||
| 19 | Poet? | ~? | ||
| 22 | armes? | ~? | ||
| 24 | little, | ~. | ||
| 34 | muſe> | muſe | ||
| 38 | bee … dore, | be … ~. | ||
| 2D4v 320 | ||||
| 3 | wife, | ~. | ||
| 23 | ‘Thanke | .~ | ||
| 30 | husband be | husband bee | ||
| 41 | 1we | 1wee | ||
| 2D3:4 (i) | ||||
| 2D3v 318 | ||||
| 5 | Caduceus? … petaſus? | Cadaceus? … ~? | ||
| 10 | ſcepter? … good: | ~? … ~. | ||
| 30 | ſtate, | ~. | ||
| 36 | ſeates | ſeats | ||
| 2D4 319 | ||||
| 8 | goddeſs | goddeſſe | ||
| 9 | 1He | 1Hee | ||
| 13 | keep … 2Shall | keepe … ~, | ||
| 17 | husband | husband | ||
| 22 | 2change | 2chang | ||
| 28 | [swash ‘M’]omus | Momus | ||
| 32 | enacted; | ~, | ||
| 41 | Come, | ~. | ||
| 43 | bee | be | ||
| 2D1:6 (i) | ||||
| 2D1v 314 | State 1 | State 2 | State 3 | |
| 1 | with[inked quad]ours | with ours | --- | |
| 4 | 1God; | ~, | --- | |
| 9 | Court; | ~: | --- | |
| 2D6 323 | ||||
| 2 | Ouid; | OVID; | ~: | |
| 2E1:6 (o) | ||||
| 2E1 325 | State 1 | State 2 | ||
| 9 | vp: ‘Hart; | ~. ~, | ||
| 10 | humours | humours | ||
| 16 | truncheon; | ~. | ||
| 21 | arſe, | ~; | ||
| 33 | you … of | LICTORS | ASINIVS; | You … Lictors | ||
| 2E6v 336 | ||||
| 6 | LICTORS | Lictors | ||
| 2E3:4 (o) | ||||
| 2E3 329 | ||||
| 6m | [omit] | Shee calls him | backe. | ||
| 7 | vndeſern’d? | vndiſcern’d? | ||
| 11 | deſcerne | diſcerne | ||
| 14m | [omit] | He calls her | backe. | ||
| 23 | father; | ~, | ||
| 2E4V 332 | ||||
| 8 | reaſon | reaſons | ||
| 11 | bodie; | ~: | ||
| 12 | himſelfe: | ~, | ||
| 37 | name: | ~; | ||
| 2F 3:4 (o) | ||||
| 2F3 341 | ||||
| 3 | [swash ‘N’]o; | ~, | ||
| 6 | ---- (TVCCA. | .~ | ||
| 7 | iudgement; | ~: | ||
| 9 | brawles. | ~, | ||
| 20 | too; | ~, | ||
| 21 | poet: | ~, | ||
| 24 | numbers: | ~. | ||
| 25 | ---- (TVCC. | .~ | ||
| 27 | arrogance: | ~. | ||
| 28 | ---- (TVCC. | .~ | ||
| 34 | ---- (TVCC. … fellowes: | | .~ … vp | shorter | ||
| chaine | ||||
| 45 | ſnake; | ~, | ||
| 2F4v 344 | ||||
| 8 | Captaine; | ~, | ||
| 11 | him: | ~: doe | ||
| 14 | fiends. | ~! | ||
| 16 | now; | ~, | ||
| 19 | Commander; | ~, | ||
| 31 | ſtill; | ~, | ||
| 42 | incubus | Incubus | ||
| 44 | and reciprocall, | ~~. | ||
| 2F2:5 (o) | ||||
| 2F5v 346 | ||||
| 44 | CAE [frisket bite] | CAESAR. | ||
| 2G 2:5 (o) | ||||
| 2G2 351 | State 1 | States 2/3 | ||
| 18 | [line flush left] | [line indented] | ||
| (For state 2 and 3 variants in the rest of this sheet, see the Textual Essay for Sejanus.) | ||||
Distribution of variants
Z3:4 (i)
State 1: the rest
State 2: 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 15, 16, 18, 19, 26, 27, 28, 31, 33, 34, 36, 41, 43, 47
State 3: 2, 10, 12, 13, 17, 38, 44
(Copy 8 has Z4 in states 1 and 2)
Z2:5 (i)
State 1: 4, 22, 41
State 2: the rest
Z1:6 (i)
State 1: 3, 5, 8, 9, 14, 19, 20, 26, 27, 31, 34, 36, 47
State 2: the rest
2A2:5 (o)
State 1: 29, 39
State 2: 2, 9, 19, 20, 31
State 3: the rest
2A3:4 (o)
State 1: 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 14, 18, 19, 21, 27, 30, 31, 35, 39, 41, 43, 48
State 2: the rest
2A3:4 (i)
State 1: 5, 21, 41
State 2: 10, 11, 14
State 3: the rest
2A 2:5 (i)
State 1: 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 29, 33, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43
State 2: the rest
State 3: 7, 8, 12, 49
2B3:4 (o)
State 1: the rest
State 2: 4, 5, 6, 16, 26, 27, 32, 33, 39, 41, 43, 45, 46, 47, 49
2D2:5 (o)
State 1:
State 2: the rest
2D3:4 (o)
State 1: the rest
State 2: 5
2D3:4 (i)
State 1: the rest
State 2: 5
2D1:6 (i)
State 1: 39, 49
State 2: 4, 5, 6, 11, 15, 16, 19, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 40, 41, 43, 46, 47
State 3: the rest
2E1:6 (o)
State 1: 7, 9, 27, 32, 36, 37, 42
State 2: the rest
2E3:4 (o)
State 1: 4, 5, 8, 10, 15, 16, 18, 22, 30, 33, 40
State 2: the rest
2F3:4 (o)
State 1: the rest
State 2: 2, 7, 12, 13, 17, 20, 22, 38, 44
2F2:5 (o)
State 1: 1, 4, 5, 19, 21, 26, 35, 36, 40, 41, 45, 46, 47
State 2: the rest
2G2:5 (o)
State 1: 9, 23, 24, 33
State 2: 7, 8, 10, 20, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 36, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 48
State 3: the rest
(Missing in copy 19)
Copies collated
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 Public Library, XfG .3811 .5A
20. Boston University, YPR 2600 .C16
21. Wellesley College, qx - English Poetry
22. Bodleian Library, Douce I. 302
23. Huntington Library, 499968
24. Huntington Library, 499967
25. Huntington Library, 499971
26. Huntington Library, 606199
27. Huntington Library, 606202
28. Huntington Library, 606200
29. Huntington Library, 606574
30. Huntington Library, 606576
31. Huntington Library, 606599
32. Huntington Library, 606579
33. Huntington Library, 606582
34. Huntington Library, 606583
35. Brown University, Providence, PR 2600 - 1616
36. Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Lewis PR2600 1616
37. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616a
38. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616ab
39. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616ad
40. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616af
41. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616ah
42. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616ak
43. University of Texas, Austin, Ah/ J738/ +B616am
44. University of Texas, Austin, AH/ J738/ +B616an
45. University of Texas, Austin, Wh/ J738/ +B616a
46. University of Texas, Austin, Pforz. 559
47. University of Texas, Austin, Woodward-Ruth 181
48. University of Texas, Austin, Stark 6431
49. University of Virginia, E 1616 .J64