[616] Pollard, Sh. F. 53.

[617] They had risks to run. The Star Chamber fined and imprisoned William Buckner, late chaplain to the archbishop, for licensing Prynne’s Histriomastix in 1633 (Rushworth, Historical Collections, ii. 234).

[618] M. S. C. i. 364; Variorum, iii. 159.

[619] Moseley’s Epistle to F₁ (1647) of Beaumont and Fletcher says, ‘When these Comedies and Tragedies were presented on the Stage, the Actours omitted some Scenes and Passages (with the Authour’s consent) as occasion led them; and when private friends desir’d a Copy, they then (and justly too) transcribed what they Acted’.

[620] See Epistles to Armin, Two Maids of Moreclack; Chapman, Widow’s Tears; Heywood, Rape of Lucrece, Golden Age; Marston, Malcontent; Middleton, Family of Love.

[621] Jonson, E. M. O. (1600), ‘As it was first composed by the Author B. I. Containing more than hath been publikely spoken or acted’; Barnes, Devil’s Charter (1607), ‘As it was plaide.... But more exactly reuewed, corrected, and augmented since by the Author, for the more pleasure and profit of the Reader’; Webster, Duchess of Malfi (1623), ‘with diuerse things Printed, that the length of the Play would not beare in the Presentment’.

[622] Pollard, Sh. F. 57; F. and Q. 117.

[623] The editors of the Shakespeare F₁ claim that they are replacing ‘stolne, and surreptitious copies’ by plays ‘absolute in their numbers, as he conceiued them’, and that ‘wee haue scarse receiued from him a blot in his papers’; and those of the Beaumont and Fletcher F₁ say they ‘had the Originalls from such as received them from the Authors themselves’ and lament ‘into how many hands the Originalls were dispersed’. The same name ‘original’ was used for the authoritative copy of a civic miracle-play; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 143.

[624] The manuscripts of Sir John Barnevelt (Addl. MS. 18653), Believe As You List (Egerton MS. 2828), The Honest Man’s Fortune (Dyce MS. 9), The Faithful Friends (Dyce MS. 10), and The Sisters (Sion College MS.) appear to be play-house copies, with licensing corrections, and in some cases the licences endorsed, and some of them may be in the authors’ autographs; cf. Pollard, Sh. F. 59; Mönkemeyer, 72. Several of the copies in Egerton MS. 1994, described by F. S. Boas in 3 Library (July 1917), including that of 1 Richard II, are of a similar type.

[625] Sir Henry Herbert noted in his office-book in 1633 (Variorum, iii. 208), ‘The Master ought to have copies of their new playes left with him, that he may be able to shew what he hath allowed or disallowed’, but it was clearly not the current practice. In 1640 (Variorum, iii. 241) he suppressed an unlicensed play, and noted, ‘The play I cald for, and, forbiddinge the playinge of it, keepe the booke’, which suggests that only one copy existed.

[626] Greg, Henslowe Papers, 155, prints it; cf. 1 Antonio and Mellida, ind. 1, ‘Enter ... with parts in their hands’; Wily Beguiled, prol. 1, ‘Where are these paltrie Plaiers? stil poaring in their papers and neuer perfect?’ By derivation, the words assigned to an actor became his ‘part’; cf. Dekker, News from Hell (1606, Works, ii. 144), ‘with pittifull action, like a Plaier, when hees out of his part’.

[627] In 1623 Herbert re-allowed The Winter’s Tale, ‘thogh the allowed booke was missinge’, and in 1625 The Honest Man’s Fortune, ‘the originall being lost’ (Variorum, iii. 229).

[628] Cf. App. N.

[629] The handing over of ‘papers’ is referred to in several letters to Henslowe; cf. Henslowe Papers, 56, 69, 75, 76, 81, 82.

[630] He sends Henslowe an instalment ‘fayr written’, and on another occasion says, ‘I send you the foule sheet and y^e fayr I was wrighting as your man can testify’ (Henslowe Papers, 72, 78).

[631] Pollard, Sh. F. 62.

[632] Birth of Hercules, 3, ‘Notae marginales inseruiant dirigendae histrion[ic]ae’; Nashe, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 1813, ‘You might haue writ in the margent of your play-booke, Let there be a fewe rushes laide in the place where Back-winter shall tumble, for feare of raying his cloathes: or set downe, Enter Back-winter, with his boy bringing a brush after him, to take off the dust if need require. But you will ne’re haue any wardrobe wit while you live. I pray you holde the booke well, that we be not non plus in the latter end of the play.’

[633] ‘Exit’ and ‘Exeunt’ soon became the traditional directions for leaving the stage, but I find ‘Exite omnes’ in Peele, Edw. I, 1263.

[634] Mönkemeyer, 73.

[635] T. N. K. I. iii. 69, ‘2 Hearses ready with Palamon: and Arcite: the 3 Queenes. Theseus: and his Lordes ready’, i.e. ready for I. iv, which begins 42 lines later; and again I. iv. 29, ‘3 Hearses ready’, for I. v, beginning 24 lines later. So too Bussy D’Ambois (1641, not 1607 ed.), I. i. 153, ‘Table, Chesbord and Tapers behind the Arras’, ready for I. ii.

[636] A Shrew, ind. i, ‘San.’ for speaker; The Shrew (F₁), ind. i. 88, ‘Sincklo’ for speaker; 3 Hen. VI (F₁), I. ii. 48, ‘Enter Gabriel’; III. i. 1, ‘Enter Sinklo, and Humfrey’; R. J. (Q₂), IV. v. 102, ‘Enter Will Kemp’; M. N. D. (F₁), V. i. 128, ‘Tawyer with a Trumpet before them’; 1 Hen. IV (Q₁), I. ii. 182 (text, not s.d.), ‘Falstaffe, Haruey, Rossill, and Gadshil, shall rob those men that we haue already waylaid’ (cf. II. ii); 2 Hen. IV (Q₁), V. iv. 1, ‘Enter Sincklo and three or foure officers’; M. Ado (F₁), II. iii. 38, ‘Enter Prince, Leonato, Claudio and Iacke Wilson’; M. Ado (Q and F), IV. ii, ‘Cowley’ and ‘Kemp’ for speakers; T.N.K. v. 3, ‘T. Tucke: Curtis’, IV. ii. 75, ‘Enter Messenger, Curtis’; 1 Antonio and Mellida, IV. i. 30, ‘Enter Andrugio, Lucio, Cole, and Norwood’; for other examples, cf. pp. 227, 271, 285, 295, 330, and vol. iv, p. 43. The indications of speakers by the letters E. and G. in All’s Well, II. i; III. i, ii, vi, may have a similar origin. The names of actors are entered in the ‘plots’ after those of the characters represented (cf. Henslowe Papers, 127).

[637] Alphonsus, prol. 1, ‘after you haue sounded thrise’; 1938, ‘Exit Venus. Or, if you can conueniently, let a chaire come down from the top of the stage’; James IV, 1463, ‘Enter certaine Huntsmen, if you please, singing’; 1931, ‘Enter, from the widdowes house, a seruice, musical songs of marriages, or a maske, or what prettie triumph you list’; Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, sig. C, ‘Here Simp[licitie] sings first, and Wit after, dialoguewise, both to musicke if ye will’; Locrine, I. i. 1, ‘Let there come foorth a Lion running after a Beare or any other beast’; Death of R. Hood, III. ii, ‘Enter or aboue [Hubert, Chester]’; 2 Hen. VI, IV. ii. 33, ‘Enter Cade [etc.] with infinite numbers’; IV. ix. 9, ‘Enter Multitudes with Halters about their Neckes’; T. A. I. i. 70, ‘as many as can be’; Edw. I, 50, ‘Enter ... and others as many as may be’; Sir T. More, sc. ix. 954, ‘Enter ... so many Aldermen as may’; What You Will, v. 193, ‘Enter as many Pages with torches as you can’.

[638] Mönkemeyer, 63, 91.

[639] Pollard, Sh. F. 79.

[640] e.g. R. J. (Q₁), III. i. 94, ‘Tibalt vnder Romeos arme thrusts Mercutio in and flyes’; III. ii. 32, ‘Enter Nurse wringing her hands, with the ladder of cordes in her lap’; IV. v. 95, ‘They all but the Nurse goe foorth, casting Rosemary on her and shutting the Curtens’.

[641] Cf. ch. xxi, pp. 133, 136.

[642] Pollard, Sh. F. 71; Van Dam and Stoffel, William Shakespeare, Prosody and Text, 274; Chapters on English Printing, Prosody, and Pronunciation.

[643] R. B. McKerrow, introd. xiv, to Barnes, Devil’s Charter.

[644] Pollard, Sh. F. 74; cf. his introd. to A New Shakespeare Quarto (1916).

[645] Epistles to Heywood, Rape of Lucrece; Marston, Malcontent, Fawn; Middleton, Family of Love. In Father Hubburd’s Tales Middleton says, ‘I never wished this book a better fortune than to fall into the hands of a truespelling printer’. Heywood, in an Epistle to Apology for Actors (1612), praises the honest workmanship of his printer, Nicholas Okes, as against that of W. Jaggard, who would not let him issue errata of ‘the infinite faults escaped in my booke of Britaines Troy, by the negligence of the Printer, as the misquotations, mistaking of sillables, misplacing halfe lines, coining of strange and neuer heard of words’.

[646] ‘Proofs’ and ‘revises’ had come into use before 1619, for Jaggard, criticized by Ralph Brooke for his ill printing of Brooke’s Catalogue of Nobility (1619), issued a new edition as A Discoverie of Errors in the First Edition of the Catalogue of Nobility (1622), regretting that his workmen had not given Brooke leave to print his own faulty English, and saying, ‘In the time of this his vnhappy sicknesse, though hee came not in person to ouer-looke the Presse, yet the Proofe, and Reuiewes duly attended him, and he perused them (as is well to be iustifyed) in the maner he did before’; cf. p. 261.

[647] Cf. pp. 106, 107, 117, 127.

[648] e.g. Cynthia’s Revels (F₁), ‘The Scene Gargaphie’; Philaster (F₂), ‘The scene being in Cicilie’; Coxcomb (F₂), ‘The Scene; England, France’ (but in fact there are no scenes in France!).

[649] The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom has no acts, but nine scenes. The latish Jacob and Esau, Respublica, Misogonus, Conflict of Conscience have acts and scenes.

[650] Ralph Roister Doister, Gammer Gurton’s Needle, Gorboduc, Gismund of Salerne, Misfortunes of Arthur, Jocasta, Supposes, Bugbears, Two Italian Gentlemen, Glass of Government, Promos and Cassandra, Arraignment of Paris; so, too, as a rule, University plays. Dido and Love and Fortune, like the later private theatre plays, show acts only.

[651] Devil’s Charter, Duchess of Malfi, Philotas, Sir Giles Goosecap, The Turk, Liberality and Prodigality, Percy’s plays, The Woman Hater, Monsieur Thomas, 2 Antonio and Mellida.

[652] Acts and scenes are marked in Tamburlaine and Locrine; acts, or one or more of them only, sometimes with the first scene, in Jack Straw, Battle of Alcazar, Wounds of Civil War, King Leire, Alphonsus, James IV, Soliman and Perseda, Spanish Tragedy, John a Kent and John a Cumber; a few scenes without acts in Death of Robin Hood. These exceptions may indicate neo-classic sympathies in the earlier group of scholar playwrights; some later plays, e.g. of Beaumont and Fletcher, have partial divisions. The acts in Spanish Tragedy and Jack Straw are four only; Histriomastix, a private theatre play, has six. Where there are no formal divisions, they are sometimes replaced by passages of induction or dumb-shows.

[653] Cf. ch. xxi.

[654] Pollard, F. and Q. 124; Sh. F. 79.

[655] Creizenach, 248.

[656] Melville’s Diary (Bannatyne Club), 22.

[657] R. Hudson, Memorials of a Warwickshire Parish, 141.

[658] Lodge, Defence of Plays, 7.

[659] Collier, Memoirs of Alleyn, 133.

[660] Plays Confuted, 167

[661] School of Abuse, 40.

[662] Lodge, Defence of Plays, 28.

[663] Plays Confuted, 165.

[664] Repentance (Grosart, xii. 177).

[665] Grosart, xii. 134.

[666] Ibid. viii. 128.

[667] Ibid. vii. 7.

[668] App. M; cf. E. Köppel (Archiv, cii. 357); W. Bang (E. S. xxviii. 229).

[669] Grosart, vi. 86, 119.

[670] Grosart, vi. 31.

[671] Sig. A 3^v. Farewell to Folly was entered on S. R. on 11 June 1587 (Arber, ii. 471), but the first extant edition of 1591 was probably the first published, and the use of the term ‘Martinize’ in the preface dates it as at least post-1589 (cf. Simpson, ii. 349).

[672] Grosart, xi. 75.

[673] Strange News (Nashe, i. 271); cf. Pierce Penniless; his Supplication to the Devil (Nashe, i. 198) and Have With You to Saffron Walden (Nashe, iii. 130). The passage about ‘make-plays’ is in an Epistle only found in some copies of The Lamb of God (Nashe, v. 180).

[674] This allusion is not in the extant 1592 editions of the pamphlet (Grosart, xi. 206, 258).

[675] Ed. Grosart, i. 167.

[676] Ed. McKerrow, i. 247.

[677] Ed. Gosart, ii. 222, 322.

[678] Ed. McKerrow, iii. 131.

[679] Arber, ii. 620.

[680] App. C, No. xlviii.