Time Vindicated to Himself and to his Honours was first printed in a quarto probably intended for distribution at the time of performance. The quarto carries no details of printer, and no date other than that of the performance itself, ‘Twelfth night. 1622’. Since the masque was in fact deferred to 19 January, this suggests that it was printed sometime before Christmas 1622, when the performance was still expected to happen on 6 January. Only one copy survives, in the Pforzheimer collection at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas. It has never been bound, but is simply stabbed. This uniqueness of its survival suggests that the quarto’s circulation was very limited.
The quarto collates A-B4, C1; a deckle at the inner edge of C1 indicates that this must be a single leaf (Greg, 1939-59, 2.532 ). A1 is the title-page, with verso blank; the text occupies A2-C1v. The running title is ‘Time Vindicated.’ The quarto is printed without much care for its appearance. The compositors failed to find a format that did justice to Jonson’s complex text: they set the antimasque in roman, with speech headings in small capitals placed flush left, and the main masque in italic, with speech headings centred above the line, so that the text falls into two halves the designs of which are at odds with one another. The decision to set the SHs of the antimasque as a separate left-hand column (rather than above the text, or indented into the verse as in other masque quartos) is aesthetically unappealing, and it creates a problem with the justification of the verse since the long SH ‘EARES.’ runs into the verse margin. On some pages (A4v, B1v) this was corrected by ignoring the stop after ‘EARES’, but on other pages the intrusive stop creates a ragged left-hand edge to the spoken text. Some of the SHs are misspelled: we have ‘ERRES’, ‘EISE’ (A2), ‘EARSE’ (B1), and ‘HIPPOLTVS’ (B4v). There is also an inconsistency on B4v, where ‘CEPHALVS’ is set in small capitals instead of roman lower-case, as should have been used for the name of an off-stage character. Incorrect elisions occur at 105 (vtterd’), 125 (’o), and 232 (yon’d). The most radical error is the substitution of ‘Time’ for ‘Fame’ in line 3. Such lax presswork suggests that Jonson had nothing to do with the printing. He must have supplied the motto on the title-page, but he can hardly have corrected the proofs.
Patterns of distinctive type in the running title indicate that two skeletons were used in the presswork, even though this was a very small publication. On the inner formes, the ‘i’ which lacks its dot in ‘Time’ on A3v reappears on B2, and the distinctive ‘T’ of A4r reappears on B1v. On the outer formes, the hooked ‘T’ of A2v reappears on B4v (and was later transferred to C1v), the ‘T’ of A3 reappears on B1 and C1, and the broken ‘e’ in ‘Time’ on A4v recurs on B2v. Variations in spelling further suggest that two compositors were involved. There is a striking division between ‘doe’ and ‘do’, and between ‘EIES’ and ‘EYES’ in the SHs. There is also some variation between spaced and unspaced commas, though the pattern cannot be fully traced since it is affected by the different formats of couplet and blank verse. In general, the evidence is insufficiently extensive to allow us to divide compositorial shares confidently, but the impression is that this job was being pushed rapidly through the printing-house.
The quarto was probably set up from a manuscript in Jonson’s own hand, for several of his distinctive elisions appear. We have ‘he’is’ (15), ‘To’exhibite’ (27), ‘we’are’ (58), ‘To’haue’ (69), ‘you’world’ (sic, for ‘you’would’) (134), ‘I’am’ (277), and ‘they’haue’ (344). The elision is missing from ‘he hath’ at 324. The compositors also followed the distinctive treatment of stage directions at 260, 291, 304-5, 318-19, and 332-4, where the pauses and phrases such as ‘To the king’ are placed on either side as marginal notes. A particular feature of the quarto is the provisionality of the stage directions. The SD at 114 is vague about the identity of the antimasquers, and that at 216-17 is back to front, with the phrase about the Cat and the Fiddle tacked on in the wrong place. At 225-6, the direction is vague about the character of the scene, as is that at 256. It seems possible that Jonson was writing the text without fully knowing what Jones’s designs would look like (see notes to 45, 225). Some of the SDs are inconsistent. That at 225-6 identifies the Votaries with the Chorus, but the two are separate in the ensuing dialogue; at 260 Saturn and Venus ‘pass away’, but are still there in the dialogue fifteen lines later; and the pause at 332 is incorrectly placed at 335, where it interrupts both the action and the rhyme scheme of Cupid’s verse. These anomalies suggest that the stage business had not been completely worked out in the manuscript that Q was following. Perhaps Q was printed from Jonson’s foul papers, or from a transcript made before the masque was completed.
On 20 March 1640, Crooke and Sergier entered Time Vindicated in the Stationers’ Register, as part of a larger entry attempting to establish copyrights in advance of the publication of the second folio (see Pan’s Anniversary, Textual Essay). It was subsequently reprinted in F2 , where it occupies sigs. N2v-O4v of the masque section, paginated 92-104, between The Masque of Augurs and Neptune’s Triumph. F2 is a reprint of Q, following the layout of the verse and SDs very closely. There are also some distinctive spellings which are carried over, and which confirm F2’s immediate relationship to Q: ‘mean’t’ (10), ‘dread’s’ (88), ‘ha’s’ (116), ‘Belinsgate’ (117), ‘By like’ (382), ‘Her-selfe’ (385), ‘youth’s’ (392), and ‘help’s’ (411). Although inferior in its accidentals, F2 improves on Q in some regards, particularly by incorporating some revisions in the stage directions: it corrects the disordered SD at 216-17 and adds information about the scene change to 364-5. It also makes corrections at 3, 134, and 221, though a half-line is dropped at 8, and smaller substantive errors are made at 12 and 194. Q’s punctuation is reproduced with reasonable fidelity. Jonson’s elisions are mostly standardized, but there are also some possibly authorial changes: exclamation marks are used more freely, in Jonson’s later manner, and brackets are added around 393. Probably the compositor was working from a copy of Q that had corrections in the form of annotations by the author. My text is based on Q, but incorporates the substantive revisions made in F2.
There are a few technical errors in F2. The speech headings ‘NOES’ (8) and ‘CUIPID’ (305) are misspelled, ‘VENUS’ is in the wrong font at 244, and a space is missing at 326 (‘inuxurious’). The presentation of the main masque is marred by frequent inconsistencies over the use of small capital ‘U’ or ‘V’ in the speech headings. Given this last, it is surprising that the only stop-press variant uncovered by collation is the following:
| O3v (102) | State 1 | State 2 |
| 9 | CHORUS | CHORVS |
State 1: 14, 16, 22, 26, 32, 35
State 2: all other copies
In 1942, in a review of the published Oxford text of the masque, W. W. Greg referred to what he believed was a putative manuscript of Time Vindicated at Dulwich College, but this is a ghost, brought about by Gifford and J. Q. Adams, in carelessly phrased references to Sir Henry Herbert’s papers at Dulwich College. See Review of English Studies, 18 (1942) , 147, and the answer by P. Maas at 465 . In a letter of 15 August 1942, Evelyn Simpson herself wrote privately to Greg to complain about his implication that the editors had missed what – if it had existed – could have been an important document (Beinecke Library, Osborn Shelves, Box 9).
Outside the collected editions, Time Vindicated has also appeared in The Progresses, Processions and Magnificent Festivities of James I, ed. John Nichols (1828) ; Ben Jonson: Masques and Entertainments, ed. Henry Morley (1890) ; Ben Jonson: Complete Masques, ed. Stephen Orgel (1969) ; and Inigo Jones; The Theatre of the Stuart Court, ed. Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong (1973) .
The copies of F2 collated for this edition are as follows:
1. Boston Public Library, **G.3811.8 (Sir Lister Holte copy)
2. Brotherton Library, Leeds, Brotherton Collection Fol 1640 JON
3. Brotherton Library, Leeds, Brotherton Collection Lt q JON
4. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C., 14754, copy 1
5. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C., 14754, copy 2
6. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C., 14754, copy 3
7. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C., 14754, copy 4
8. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C., 14754, copy 5
9. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C., 14754, copy 6
10. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C., 14754a, copy 1
11. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C., 14754a, copy 2
12. Huntington Library, San Marino, California: 62101-v.2
13. Huntington Library, San Marino, California: 62103
14. Huntington Library, San Marino, California: 495468 (Schlatter-Shaver copy)
15. Huntington Library, San Marino, California: 600688
16. Huntington Library, San Marino, California: 606598
17. Houghton Library, Harvard University, fSTC 14751 v.2 (Norton Perkins copy)
18. Houghton Library, Harvard University, HEW 6.10.10. v.2 (Widener copy)
19. Library of Congress, Washington D.C., PR2600 1616a copy 2 [a copy of F2, notwithstanding the call number]
20. Library of Congress, Washington D.C., PR2600 1640 copy 2
21. Library of Congress, Washington D.C., PR2600 1640 copy 3
22. New York Public Library, *KC 1640
23. Bodleian Library, Oxford, Vet.A2 d. 73
24. Bodleian Library, Oxford, Gibson 520
25. Bodleian Library, Oxford, Don. d. 66
26. Bodleian Library, Oxford, Douce I.303
27. Bodleian Library, Oxford, Gibson 518
28. University of Pennsylvania, Folio STC 14754 (Furness-Schelling copy)
29. University of Pennsylvania, Folio STC 14754 (RBC copy)
30. University of Pennsylvania, PR2600 C40 v.2 (Edwin Forrest copy)
31. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Pforz. 560
32. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Pr 2600
1640 vol. 1, copy 1, Stark 5433
33. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Pr 2600
1640 vol. 2, copy 2, Woodward-Ruth 1
34. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Wh J738
+B641
35. Clark Library, Los Angeles, *F PR2600 1640c
36. Beinecke Library, Yale University: J738+B640 copy 1 (C. W. Bradley copy)
37. Beinecke Library, Yale University: J738+B640 copy 2
38. Beinecke Library, Yale University: J738+B640B (Morris Tyler copy)
39. Beinecke Library, Yale University: 1977+424 (John Milton Boardman copy)
40. Beinecke Library, Yale University: 1978+47 (Norman Holmes Pearson copy)
41. David Gants copy
42. Martin Butler copy