The Entertainment at Theobalds survives in two different texts, one in the seven manuscript witnesses created more or less contemporaneously, and the other as printed in F1. The two different media transmit different versions of the event, the variant texts of which include numerous localised changes.

The seven manuscripts fall into three distinct groups. Group A consists of three manuscripts which contain only the speeches of Genius, Mercury, and the Fates (11-20, 22, 34-106). These MSS are the Fane MS (BL MS Add 34218, fols. 23v-24v: JnB 576); the Kaye MS (Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, MS X.d.475: JnB 578), a partial and corrupt copy; and the Yelverton MS (All Souls’ College, Oxford, MS 155, fols. 319-21: JnB 575). Group B, consisting of the Goodere MS (NA, SP 9/51/41-2: JnB 576.5) and the Le Neve MS (BL MS Add 27407, fols. 127-128v: JnB 575.5), transcribe the speeches for the main figures (as in Fane, Kaye, and Yelverton) and provide a four-stanza version of the final song (110-21, 123-34) which is only two stanzas in F1. Both Group A and Group B MSS include lines not included in F1 (Print Edition, Theobalds, 54, 60, 78, 82).

The final group of manuscripts (C) is linked to Cecil’s household: a French transcript (Hatfield House, Cecil MS 140, fols. 110-11v: JnB 577) and the Kirkham MS (Hatfield House, Cecil MS 144: JnB 579). The former, a copy probably provided for the visiting French party, exhibits a number of divergences from any of the English versions and contains only a two-stanza version of the final song. Given the free nature of the translation it cannot be used to determine precise readings, although it provides evidence about what might have been performed in 1607. Similarly, the Kirkham MS, a copy of 110-21 only, corrected by one of Cecil’s secretariat, does not yield any textually significant readings.

The F1 text, sigs. 4E6-4Fv (pp. 887-90), adds prose descriptions, stage directions, and speech headings, prints the two-stanza song, and includes the authorship ascription (5-10, 21, 23-33, 107-8, 109, and 122). It also includes an additional couplet on Mercury’s genealogy (35-6). As the last item in the ‘Entertainments’, Theobalds is followed by the half-title for the ‘Masques at Court’ (sig. 4F2; p. 891).

Although Herford and Simpson rather casually discuss two of the manuscript witnesses as a ‘first draft’ (the Fane and Yelverton MSS) and mention the Cecil MS fragment (H&S, 7.153-8), a detailed study of these MSS and their milieux has had to wait until Gabriel Heaton’s doctoral thesis, ‘Performing Gifts: the manuscript circulation of Elizabethan and early Stuart court entertainments’ (Cambridge University, 2003), published as Writing and Reading Royal Entertainments: From George Gascoigne to Ben Jonson (2010). Both are especially useful in marshalling the sources for this text. What follows could not have been achieved without Heaton’s careful work.

In addition to providing important information about the provenance of three of the MS texts and their owners (Goodere, Kaye, Le Neve), Heaton makes two crucial arguments. First, he argues that the two versions of the text are, broadly, a shorter ‘patronal’ text preferred by the Cecil household, and a longer ‘authorial’ version preferred by Jonson and the eventual basis of F1. Second, he argues that the final song stanzas are late additions, written out of concern that the text did not praise Queen Anne sufficiently, although they were eventually not performed (Heaton, 2003, 111; Heaton, 2010, 183-4).

The evidence of revision of this text between the MS versions and F1 seems incontrovertible, but although Dr Heaton’s work goes a long way to establish the provenance of the witnesses, the origin of the copy in those witnesses is harder to ascertain. There is no evidence that the Cecil household circulated the text (unlike Burse), and both four-stanza version witnesses are credibly linked to Jonson. This complicates any attempt to characterise the MS circulation as patronal, and associated directly with Cecil’s household. The main difference between the ‘shorter’ MS version and F1 is the inclusion of the prose description and stage directions: there are 111 verse lines in the F1 text, 89-91 lines in the abbreviated MSS (Fane, Kaye, Yelverton), and 115 lines in the four-stanza song MSS (Goodere, Le Neve). So, although Group A MSS can be characterised as shorter and possibly patronal texts which reproduce Theobalds, as far as we can tell, in a form close to the 1607 performance as established in the Group C MSS, the Group B MSS complicate the supposition. On one hand, they contain more ‘patronal’ texts, while on the other they have an authorial provenance. In fact, what this grouping suggests is the authorial circulation of alternate versions of the text.

The Manuscript Witnesses

The MSS can be classified as follows:

Group A

Fane MS (BL MS Add 34218, fols. 23v-24v; JnB 576).

As with all the other group A MSS, this copies the speeches of Genius, Mercury, and the Fates, but not the songs, title, or prose descriptions. A title of sorts is provided (‘Verses reported to be made by the Earle of Salesburye’, on fol. 2) which may reflect contemporary awareness of Salisbury as a writer of occasional entertainments and verse (Heaton, 2003, 100-104; 2007, 229-31). Herford and Simpson describe this as a ‘slovenly transcript’ (7.153), and the text does manage some spectacular errors, for example at 13, 17, 70, 81, and 86.

The volume’s original owner, Sir Francis Fane, later Earl of Westmorland (d. 1628), had Kentish links but also owned the important Apethorpe estate in Northamptonshire where his son, Mildmay, and his family staged plays and masques in the late 1630s and 1640s. Most of the connections in the papers of Sir Francis are to Kentish politics (he served on the Commission of Sewers for Kent), and may reflect his links with the Cobham family (Heaton, 2003, 124). Cobham’s fall had benefited his accuser, the Earl of Salisbury, and the manuscript contains many items on the Earl, including the ubiquitous material on his final illness and death. Fane also maintained significant literary connections through Rowland Woodward, later his secretary, who produced the ‘Westmorland Manuscript’ of Donne’s poems for his patron (NYPL, Berg Collection; Beal, 1980-93, DnJ 19).

Consisting of 222 folios, this volume began life as a formal commonplace book into which material was to be copied under alphabetical headings. Later this intention was abandoned and the remainder of the MS transcribes texts from separates. Heaton, 2003, 124 dates the volume to around 1616.

Kaye MS (Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, MS X.d.475; JnB 578).

Also a copy of part of the text, and without the prose descriptions. It has a title, ‘A speech made at Tibaldes the xxiith of maye when the Queene tooke posession beinge accompanied with the Kinge, yonge prince a great peare of France and many noble’, which may associate the text with the original performance and provides the only heading that accurately reflects the property exchange the event celebrated. Heaton, 2003, 127-8 provides the best summary of this MS and its provenance, which he successfully traces to the Kaye family of Woodsome, near Huddersfield, Yorkshire. As Heaton comments (109), this MS is ‘corrupt’, but it does share some interesting variants with Goodere (44: see also 70 collation).

The Yelverton MS (All Souls’ College, Oxford, MS 155, fols 319-21; JnB 575).

Another copy, from the papers of the Yelverton family, again without the final song. Of poor quality (see 68, 101) and very uncertain origins, as both Sir Christopher Yelverton (1536/7-1612) and Sir Henry (1566-1630), Attorney General in 1617, were interested in drama, literary, and occasional texts (ODNB). The volume includes a poem attributed to Salisbury (‘From a servant of Diana, as faithful as the best’: see Heaton, 2003, 123), the ubiquitous ‘Challenge of the Four Knights Errant of the Fortunate Isle’ (1606), along with material from Sir John Davies, including a copy of a Cecil entertainment for Elizabeth I from 1602. The Davies poems may come directly from the author, and several are unique to this manuscript (Heaton, 2003, 123); they suggest the kind of material circulating in legal circles in the early 1600s, although Sir Henry Yelverton was more noted as a patron of puritan preachers. It may also be worth noting that Sir Henry Yelverton was pursuing Cecil’s patronage during 1607 as part of an attempted rapprochement with the King (ODNB). The volume is a quarto, 413 leaves.

Group B

The Goodere MS (NA, SP9/51/41-2; JnB 576.5).

Found on a single bifolium (249 x 175mm), and originally folded as a letter enclosure, the Goodere copy contains the speeches for the main figures (as in Fane), but is also without title or the prose descriptions. In addition to the extra speeches, it contains the longer sung material (123-34). It is possible that the retention of the reading ‘father’ (18) points to a date before Cecil’s death in 1612.

This manuscript, in the hand of Sir Henry Goodere (c. 1571-1627) (Beal, 1980-93, 1.248), is found in a small miscellaneous group of state papers that may have descended from the seventeenth-century collector and military figure, Sir Edward Conway (1564 –1631). As Heaton argues (2003, 119-21), the provenance evidence is inconclusive, as the MS lacks the usual ‘Conway Papers’ stamp associated with this collection. When SP 9, a group of papers assembled by Sir Joseph Williamson, Keeper of State Papers 1661-1702, was listed in a partial catalogue made in 1849, this item was not included. This may point towards origins in the Conway Papers, as these were only being incorporated into various sections of the State Papers in the early 1850s.

Either provenance for this manuscript suggests a potentially close collection to Jonson (see Burse, Textual Essay). Conway was a major collector of books and literary manuscripts and several Jonson items feature in his separates collection, including The Entertainment at Britain’s Burse, and copies of Epigram 91, ‘To Sir Horace Vere’. Like Goodere, he was also an intermediary for the transmission of texts and later was an important dispenser of patronage through his office as Secretary of State. His connections were strongly Protestant but, unlike Goodere, he was less connected to legal circles (Knowles, 2000, 89-90). Although Goodere is mainly remembered today as a close friend of John Donne, his legal connections provide links to key members of the Sireniacs (Christopher Brooke, Richard Martin, and John Hoskins). Evidence of their joint literary activity survives in ‘A Letter Written by Sir H.G. and J.D. alternis vicibus’, and in Donne’s verse epistle written to him. Goodere was known as a poet, although much of his verse is either scattered or lost.

The copy contains a number of errors (see below) and on occasion struggles to reproduce the long lines of the verse, leading to compressed graphs at the end of lines, while at 103 the ‘o’ from ‘but o’ appears interlined and bracketed beneath the text.

The Le Neve MS (BL MS Add 27407, fols. 127-128v; JnB 575.5).

Another untitled witness with the additional lines, including 123-34 (the longer version of the final song). The Le Neve MS is manifestly a very high quality copy, which supplies indentations for the verse lines, the heading ‘Song’ (109), and two independent variants (51 and 104). Despite the longer version of the song, shared only with the Goodere transcript, the Le Neve MS also has some strange omissions (‘would’, 84), and errors or copying slips increase in frequency towards the containing final song (‘bree’, 120; ‘thy’, 131, ‘cept’, 134).

Heaton makes a convincing argument for the descent of this copy from Jonson through the papers of Dudley, Lord North, and thus to Peter Le Neve, although, as he admits himself, the case cannot be proven. He also links the copyist of Le Neve with the MS of the Merchant Taylors’ Entertainment (Heaton, 2003, 112-5). Unfortunately, given the miscellaneous nature of the Le Neve MS, which includes a range of poetry from the first decade of the seventeenth through to the early eighteenth century, it is difficult to provide dating parameters for the text. The MS contains poems by Donne and also an anonymous epistle to Ben Jonson (fols. 8-9), sent to Lord North, and dated 9 July 1610 (Heaton, 2010, 190-1).

While North cannot be described as a major patron (the only figure he can be connected to is Nicholas Breton), he was a significant collector of MSS – notably the Brotherton MS (Leeds University Library) of poems by Daniel. Although the Goodere and Le Neve MSS may be entirely unrelated, simply being copies that circulated through the hands of key court-based poetic intermediaries, it may also be that the appearance of Jonson’s work in the hands of members or associates of Prince Henry’s circle was significant as he was gradually making overtures towards the Prince, although generally these date from the period 1609-11 (Knowles, 1999b, 125).

The layout of the MS is close to F1, including the central position for speech headings over the verse column, the correct verse indentations, and the heading ‘Song’ (109) not found in the other MSS. It also agrees with F1 in reading ‘likings’ (72), ‘This’ (82), and ‘never’ (116), but differs from F1 in reading ‘And’ (57; ‘But’ in F1 and all other MSS), ‘Who’ (94; ‘Which’ in F1 and all other MSS), and ‘over throwe’ (104). Most of these variations may simply result from errors in scribal transmission, but there are two major cruxes, one on which Le Neve and F1 agree, the other on which they differ.

In common with F1, Le Neve contains two lines, Theobalds, 35-6, describing the origin of Mercury and his meeting with the Fates, although Le Neve also differs from F1 in that ‘Good Event’ has ‘pursued’ him in the MS, but is ‘met’ by him in F1. In the other MSS there is no mention at any point of Good Event, a non-speaking figure presented by a boy-actor ‘hovering in the air’ near clouds above the Lararium. While this makes perfect sense in F1, in Le Neve (without the prose description) ‘good euent’ could simply be a verbal personification rather than an actor. (These lines are also absent from the French transcript at Hatfield House.)

Le Neve differs from F1 more substantively in that, in common with the other MSS copies, it retains the couplet added after 54 (MS 31-2), the two short dramatic interjections after 60 and 78 (the first of which is squeezed into the text), and the lines on Cecil’s titles (after 82). Most importantly, it provides a second copy of the four-stanza version of the final song, although it differs from the other witness, the Goodere MS, in verbal details (123, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134).

The shared features between Le Neve and F1 strongly suggest that, in some way, it relates to the MS tradition that lies behind the printed text. If Heaton is correct about the provenance and the hand, this argument is strengthened further.

Group C

Cecil MS (Hatfield House, Cecil MSS, 144; JnB 579)

This bifolium contains two stanzas (110-21) of the final song corrected in the hand of Robert Kirkham, a member of Cecil’s secretariat. It provides two corrections to the text of the song, reading ‘this’ against ‘The’ (118), and ‘looks’ instead of ‘looked’ (119). Cecil also owned the following item.

French transcript (Hatfield House, Cecil MS 140, fols. 110-11v; JnB 577)

This manuscript, now bound as part of a larger miscellaneous volume, contains a French ‘translation’ of the text of the entertainment The rendering of Jonson’s text is by no means literal, and includes passages in praise of the French that survive nowhere in any of the other print or MS versions: see Theobalds, 11-14n., and 47-52. The survival of these passages supports the view that this copy was prepared for the Prince de Joinville and his party.

The textual status of this MS is ambiguous. Clearly it cannot be regarded as a direct textual witness, but, as an exemplar that can be precisely linked to the occasion, it does illuminate what might have been performed in 1607; also, if confirmed by the other main MSS, it may provide further support for specific readings. Thus the French translation clarifies the sense of the text at Theobalds, 15, where ‘sere’ is translated as ‘l’automne de son age’, rendering the line more clearly complimentary, and it also supports certain, key readings, such as the singular ‘thread’ in the MS version of the text against the plural found in F1 and JnB 576.5 (see 39n.).

Manuscript Versions: Interpolation, Revision (MS 31-2, 39, 58, 63-6)

As has already been noted, with the exception of the additional two stanzas of the final song, the MSS are consistent in their differences from the F1 printed version at 13, 18, 52, 53, after 54, 60, after 60, 64, 78, after 78, and after 82 (see MS 3, 8, 28, 29, 31-2, 38, 39, 43, 51, 57, 58 and 63-6). Four passages, present in all the MSS, point towards revision (MS 31-2, 39, 58, and 63-6), along with the extra couplet otherwise only found in F1 (35-6) and the Le Neve MS, probably part of pre-publication revision. The difficulty is to track a consistent rationale for the revisions, to provide some sense of a date for the process, and suggest their origin or author. Heaton observes that these look very much like the interventions that might be expected from the Cecil household (2003, 109).

With multiple scribal copies there are also numerous examples of transmission error. Thus, although it is possible that ‘honour’ in the Goodere MS offers a contrast between the honours already implied in the ‘changed . . . name’ (MS Text 64) and a broader sense of honour accruing from favour, it seems more likely these lines illustrate indifferent variation caused by scribal error. So too, at MS 66 the following plural in ‘unlooked for till they came’ suggests that the other MSS are correct to read ‘honours ‘ (in the sense of ‘titles’); although the ‘r/rs’ error is not that common, the singular form may simply be a misreading or miscomprehension by the scribe. The Fane MS reading, ‘howres’, is clearly an error, and it is likely that the readings ‘of his grace’ (MS 63, Kaye MS), and ‘to his place’ (MS 65, Le Neve MS) are similarly indifferent variants. On occasion there are cases of convergent variation: the Goodere and Kaye MS both read ‘house’ where all other texts read ‘place’ (Print Text 44), but the shared reading seems the result of logical substitution rather than connection between the copies. Similarly, Heaton treats the change between ‘of Charlemagne’ (MS 28) and ‘from Charlemagne’ (Print Text, 52) as an instance of indifferent variance between the MS and F1 texts, along with ‘so’/‘Thus’ (MS 38; Print Text 60), the changes between ‘lasting crown and praise’ and ‘crown, and lasting praise’ (MS 73; Theobalds, 89), and the minute alterations of verbal mode (‘might’/‘should’ at MS 87; Theobalds, 103). In the case of some of these variants, however, we might question how far what can sometimes be classed as indifferent variation may equally belong to a process of close revision. The alteration between ‘Whose dooms are certain and whose causes true’ (MS 57) and ‘Whose dooms are just, and whose designs are true’ (Theobalds, 78) ― where both lines are metrically regular and the shift between ‘certain’ and ‘just’ nuances the meaning of the text’s central exchange ― is a case in point.

One of these local variants repays further consideration. At Print Text 18 all the MS read ‘father’ whereas F1 reads ‘fathers’. This may reflect revision prior to the publication of F1 when the second Earl of Salisbury held the title. For the 1607 version ‘father’ would be apposite, as it refers to Theobalds’ construction by Robert Cecil’s father, Lord Burghley. After Cecil’s death, and around or before 1616 when revisions might have been made prior to the publication of F1, the plural would encompass both Lord Burghley and the first Earl of Salisbury. Although the designated estate for the second son (the primary family seat was Burghley House), Theobalds was decorated with genealogical and heraldic material that celebrated the Cecil ‘dynastic’ inheritance. The singular in the MSS stresses the personal connection between father and second son (restated at Print Text 61-6), while ‘fathers’ (F1) reflects the situation after 1612, and may suggest that the MS copies are closer in date to the entertainment.

Indeed, all four additions (MS Text 31-2, 39, 58, 63-6) are evidenced in the documents surrounding the Cecil entertainment. The French transcript and the surviving two-stanza version of the song from the Cecil papers suggest that the shorter version was linked to his household and that, most likely, the shortened version was sung in 1607. The same applies to the two interjected speeches found in the MS versions (MS 39 and 58), as the former survives in a two-line version in the French, while the latter is absorbed into a longer line that concludes ‘mais escoutens le reste’. The image of the King as ‘concave glass’ (MS 32), gathering the heat of the looks from his subjects, becomes ‘miroeurs’. There is even a vestigial rendering of the four lines on Cecil’s lineage. Interestingly, however, the lines on Mercury’s descent and on Good Event, only found in F1 and the Le Neve MS, have no equivalent in the French.

The longest of these passages, the four lines added at 82 (MS 63-6), illustrates the complexity of the revision of the text from the MS version into the print text, but also points towards one potential solution. With the exception of the Goodere MS, which retains ‘honour’ as singular, the MSS all read substantively as follows:

The next to godhead, who of grace
So oft hath changed thy master’s name
And added honours to this place,
By him unlooked for till they came . . .

On one level it is clear that these lines refer to Robert Cecil and so would have been unsuitable in any posthumous revision which wished to recognise William Cecil’s assumption of the title. Cecil’s installation as first Baron Essenden (1603), then as Viscount Cranborne (1604), and finally, as Earl of Salisbury (1605), had attracted adverse comment which ‘unlooked for till they came’ perhaps seeks to mollify. Heaton suggests that Lachesis’s lines introduce the idea of freely-given princely benevolence (part of the strategy of avoiding any hint that Cecil might have benefited from the exchange), and belong to a pattern of interventions from the Cecil household designed to manage and gloss Salisbury’s relations with the monarchy.

As we infer from the presence of an equivalent in the French translation that these lines were spoken in 1607, it seems logical to suggest that after 1612 the lines were redundant, but they are also anomalous in a particularly revealing way as they interrupt the careful alternating verse forms of the speeches. Throughout Theobalds, Genius and Mercury speak alternately rhymed pentameter, while the Fates employ octosyllabic couplets. The exception is these four lines, which are alternately rhymed pentameter. Moreover, as the F1 text shows, the lines could easily be lifted out without any loss of sense. It is tempting to speculate that MS 63-6, ultimately rather clumsy lines, might have been one of the interventions from Cecil’s household that are observed in Two Kings and Burse and which seem to have annoyed Jonson, so that, as the text was prepared for print, he took the opportunity to return to his original conception and regularize the interchange of poetic forms between types of figures. It seems equally likely that the suppression of the extra-metrical, explanatory speeches for Mercury and the excision of MS 31-2, which removes a rather weak rhyme (face/glass), may belong to the same authorial revision of patronal interpolations or passages that were required for dramatic clarity but not readerly reconstruction (MS 39, 58).

The ‘Group B’ Manuscripts

The most notable difference between the MS circulation and F1 concerns the final songs, not present or confirmed in the Group A and Group C manuscripts, but given in both Group B exemplars. Heaton (2003), 111 has argued that the two stanzas were ‘last minute additions’, although it seems to me that the evidence can also support a case that they were excised from the patronal performance text but retained in the authorial circulation. The Group C texts strongly suggest these stanzas were not staged in 1607, so to see them as a late addition posits their creation after the main MS, their excision before performance, their circulation in manuscripts with good connections to Jonson and then an ultimate removal, perhaps as part of the revisions for F1. It seems more inherently likely that the Group B MSS differ from the Group A texts due to the removal of lines for performance that then circulate in texts linked to the author. It is worth looking at these MSS in some detail.

The Goodere and Le Neve MSS, which alone contain the four-stanza song, differ from the other MSS at key points as well as varying from each other and, in the case of the song section (Print Text 110-21, 123-34), from the partial copy in the Cecil papers.

The Goodere MS contains independent readings as follows:
12] nor
39] thread
44] house
61] his
103] thought
111] missing glad than
113] receive
116] ever
(See MS Text 2, 15, 20, 40, 87, 93, 95, 98.)

As was the case with the other manuscripts these two copies show evidence of transmission errors. Thus, the variants at MS 2, 15, 40, 95 and 98 might be indifferent variations produced by copying errors. The singular ‘thought’ (103; MS 87), the missing ‘glad than’ (111; MS 93), and the later plural ‘thanks’ (123; MS 104) appear to be straightforward errors. Other readings shared with the Kaye MS (especially house/place, MS 20), and the recasting of ‘sun that ne’er’ (MS 34) into ‘sun shall never’, appear to result from scribal error rather than authorial tinkering, especially when the both variants are shared with the Kaye MS, the most error-prone text.

Beyond these scribal mistakes, there are other variants in the passages where the Goodere and Le Neve MSS are the sole witnesses:
123 thank] Le Neve; thankes Goodere
128 by . . . falls] Goodere; with other falls Le Neve
131 thine] Goodere; thy Le Neve
132 good] Goodere; best Le Neve
133 So] Goodere; for Le Neve
133 shall] Goodere; which Le Neve
134 reverence] Goodere; reverence shall Le Neve

The combination of independent readings in Print Text 11-121 (MS 1-103) and the clear divergences between the Goodere and Le Neve MSS strongly suggests that Goodere derives from a different textual tradition, especially as the Le Neve MS and F1 share readings in common, and Goodere never agrees with Le Neve and F1 against the other MS. It is firmly associated with the MS tradition, while Le Neve is equally connected – at least partially – with the F1 text.

This is not to suggest, however, that Goodere is an unproblematic text, as the missing ‘glad than’ (111) and the fumbled ‘thanks’ (123) and ‘thine’ (131) testify. If Goodere is prone to occasional error, none of the extant manuscripts navigates the awkward expression found in the final couplet (133-4) with greater dexterity than the other: ‘So this great day shall still to thee / In reverence kept holy be’ (Goodere), or ‘So this great day which still to thee / In reverence shall kept holy be’ (Le Neve). The absence of punctuation renders this especially difficult to parse, but Goodere allows us to read the sentence as referring to the current day as ‘holy’ and maintained ‘still . . . kept’ in ‘reverence’ whether ‘thee’ refers to the founder (132) or ‘that queen’ (123).

The ‘Song’ and Textual Circulation

We can summarise the situation thus far as follows. It seems likely that all the MSS, irrespective of their exact date of copying, contain a text close to the 1607 entertainment, retaining the references to Robert Cecil’s father, and matching what we know was staged at the time from the Group C MSS. The Group B MSS retain the 1607 family allusions, but each contains a version of the song which was not staged in 1607, while the Le Neve MS also contains material that brings it closer to F1. F1 appears to contain revisions suitable for post-1612 and deletes material that may have been associated with the performance and, in one instance, seems to have been an interpolation produced by or at the request of the Cecil household.

The two versions of the song offer different conclusions to Theobalds. If the two-stanza version emphasizes willing subjection to the King’s will (121) and the paradoxical ‘blessèd change’ at the heart of the entertainment (110), the additional stanzas shift towards ‘that queen’ who, ‘liking first’, made ‘our cell her palace’ (123, 125-6). The identity of this queen is not entirely clear, seeming to merge Elizabeth I (a regular visitor and recipient of the Hermit’s Speech alluded to in 126), and Anne of Denmark (praised at 88-92 as Elizabeth’s inheritrix, and even using the version of her name, Bel-Anna, derived from Elizabeth’s avatar, Belphoebe). The final stanza, though, returns to Burghley, and suggests that the day, ‘still to thee in reverence kept’, will remain holy (132-4). Both stanzas seek to connect past and present glories but, perhaps, very slightly press the family’s loss more than the ‘blessèd change’.

Broadly, then, the two different versions in MS and print embody two different conceptions of the event. By retaining the final song stanzas, Goodere and Le Neve offer a more Anne-centred and F1 a more James-centred occasion. Along with the other change at MS 63-6, this nuancing of the occasion and of Cecil’s relations with both King and Queen may reflect some of the ambivalence in the event as to who exactly was receiving the house. F1 titles the event as an entertainment of both monarchs ‘when the house was delivered up, with the possession, to the Queen’, although the Kaye MS provides a lesser role for the King by calling the entertainment a ‘speech made at Tibaldes . . . when the Queene tooke posession beinge accompanied with the Kinge’. This reflects the legal situation and its rather less clear realities, as Theobalds was exchanged for Hatfield, part of the Queen’s jointure (NA, SP14/27/31, fol 82, cited in Heaton (2003), 110), although the house became the King’s hunting retreat. Lachesis may tell Genius that he must become ‘servant’ to Anne (83), but it is rather telling that the interpolated lines MS 63-6, which conspicuously praise the King’s bounty, immediately precede this point. They not only follow on the praise of James as King of ‘this lesser world, this greatest isle’ (82) but extend the recognition of royal power (79-82) and balance the next section of praise of past and current queens (83-92).

So it would appear that part of revisions in 1607 centred not only on Cecil’s relations with the crown but also on glossing the property exchange in all its ramifications. It would not be surprising that the Cecil household sought to tilt the entertainment towards the King: MS 63-6 show that process in operation, and the removal of the longer song appears to follow the same pattern. Later, at whatever point before 1616 when Jonson revised the text for publication, Anne’s role was much diminished, so the F1 version, culminating with the ‘breath of kings’, which we know was played in 1607, was retained. As Heaton argues (2010), 184, it is possible that the additional stanzas were ‘very late additions’, but this would be against the thrust of the revision which was already reinserting James as the central figure of the event, and would require us to imagine revisions which were then cut before the performance. It is much more likely that an initial version, in line with the legal situation, was recalibrated to reflect the realities of power and possession.

The intriguing question then arises as to why the Group B manuscripts were made available against the thrust of the patronal revisions of the text, especially as the provenance evidence points towards Jonson as the source of these texts. Elsewhere I have argued that Jonson used manuscript in the early 1600s, especially in association with occasional entertainments, as an alternative to print publication (Knowles, 2010), and it seems likely that Theobalds extends that strategy. Like Cecil, Jonson needed to retain the favour of ‘The greatest king and fairest queen’ (48), and the expedient of circulating the pre-performance unabridged text may have allowed him to accrue favour with his recipients, or to maintain his own balance between two of the key centres in a multi-polar court. Nevertheless, given that both Goodere and Le Neve struggle with the final couplet of the song, and that neither produces a particular successful or mellifluous version, it could be that we here see an aesthetic rather than a political decision in operation.

In selecting base texts for the edition, then, it seems that F1, the final revision should be the basis of the Print Edition, and the choice of text on which to base the manuscript versions lies between Goodere and Le Neve. The Goodere MS is likely to be closer to what circulated immediately after the event, while Le Neve already shows signs of the movement towards the F1 text and is really an intermediary between two different versions of the event, one as staged in 1607, and one as restaged on the page in 1616.