University of Virginia Library

Was There A Lost 1593 Edition of Marlowe's Edward II?
by
Fredson Bowers

The earliest known edition of Marlowe's Edward II (Greg, Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration, no. 129) has the imprint, 'Imprinted at London for William Iones | dwelling neere Holbourne conduit, at the | signe of the Gunne. 1594.' This is a 4°-form octavo collating A-M4, the text starting on sig. A2 and ending with a colophon on M3r. Sig. M3v is blank and so presumably was M4r-v, wanting in the only two recorded copies.

Whether this 1594 edition is the first or the second is a matter that has been in legitimate doubt. The imperfect copy of the next, or 1598, edition in the Dyce Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum has had its first two leaves, the titlepage and the first seventy lines of text (plus the head-title and two lines of opening stage-direction), supplied by two leaves of manuscript written in an early hand. (A photographic reproduction is provided in the Malone Society Reprint [for 1925] prepared by W. W. Greg.) That the manuscript copy was not made from the 1598 quarto is clear from the readings, some of which follow 1594 instead of the 1598 variants; but that any of the manuscript variants from 1594 (and 1598) reproduce the readings of an edition earlier than 1594 is in the nature of the case not to be demonstrated (see footnote 9). No single reading offers what can be accepted as a good original corrupted in 1594, and indeed the numerous manuscript variants appear to be exclusively errors, sometimes of a singular and inexplicable kind arising from extreme carelessness. Probably no serious question of the copy would have been raised on the evidence were it not that in this transcript the date of the titlepage imprint is given as '1593'. This fact, combined with the July 6, 1593, date of entry for the play in the Stationers' Register,[1] has led critics — following Tucker

Brooke and Greg — to take with some seriousness the possibility that the known 1594 quarto[2] may be the second and that an original 1593 edition may have been lost.

Bibliographical evidence not previously adduced suggests that no such 1593 edition existed, that the manuscript date must in some manner be an error, and that the preserved 1594 quarto represents the actual first edition.

In a Duke University dissertation The Printing of the Early Editions of Marlowe's Plays (University Microfilms, 1964), pages 59-72, Dr. Robert Ford Welsh examined the printing of the 1594 quarto and came to several conclusions that appear to be substantiated by the detailed evidence he offers. The book was printed presumably on one press by the efficient use of two skeleton-formes imposing respectively the inner and outer formes of each sheet in normal and unvaried sequence. Typesetting began not with sheet A (containing the titlepage and six pages of text) but instead with sheet B and progressed seriatim through sheet M, after which sheet A was both typeset and machined. The evidence is of three kinds. First, the patterns of substituted roman for italic sorts is found in contiguous pages between both formes in sheets C and L and nowhere is such substitution confined to a single forme in a sheet in a manner that appears to have significance. Other evidence that can be added confirms Dr. Welsh's conclusions. For instance, on B1 and B1v the regular 'W' types are set, but beginning on B2 and continuing on B2v, B3, B3v, and B4 there is a substitution of 'VV' in all but one occurrence until on B4v the setting of 'W' resumes. Also in this sheet the roman 'I' begins to run short on sig. B3v so that italic 'I' is substituted throughout starting towards the foot of sig. B3v and continuing not only on B4 of the inner forme but also on B4v of the outer forme. Italic 'I' begins to reappear at the foot of sig. C2v of the outer forme, is present on sigs. C3v and C4 of the inner forme, and also on C4v of the outer. Later sheets have the same pattern with this 'I' shortage as well as with other shortages that developed. This evidence shows that setting was not by formes from cast-off copy but instead was seriatim.

Second, the pattern of the reappearance of identified pieces of type is regular between sheets B and M, types from the distribution of the formes of one sheet usually reappearing two sheets later, as types from sheet B in sheet D, from C in E, and so on through types of K in sheet M. However, distributed types from sheet A are not found in sheets B or C or succeeding sheets, but distributed types from L are found in sheet A. This indicates the typesetting of sheet A after sheet M. Third, the completion of the book by the machining of sheet A is also suggested by the evidence of the running-titles. From sheet B to sheet L the four running-titles in each skeleton remain absolutely fixed in their positions without shifting in relation

to each other within the skeletons and without a turn of the skeleton in the imposition. Since the text of sheet M concluded on M3r, the running-titles identified as VII and VIII which had appeared respectively on L4 and L3v were removed from the inner forme of M's skeleton, and running-title IV (which had appeared on L4v) was taken from M4v in the outer forme. When sheet A came to be printed, running-titles were needed only for sigs. A2v-4v. In the outer forme of A on sigs. A2v and A3 running-titles II and III appear in their regular places, but VI, which had last appeared on sig. L1v of the inner forme, having been removed from the inner forme of M, appears on sig. A4v instead of IV. In the skeleton for inner A, running-titles V and VIII from inner M appear on A4 and A3v respectively as the only necessary headlines, but taken in the case of VIII (A3v) from sig. L3v since VI from M1v had been detached for use in outer A as A4v, leaving only V to transfer from the skeleton-forme of inner M to inner A. This running-title V from M2 is placed, with a turn of the forme, on A4. The dislocation of the running-titles by which they break their formes uniquely in sheet A is most readily explicable as occurring by reason of the imposition of the formes of sheet A from the skeletons of sheet M. As Dr. Welsh remarks, the evidence is not reversible, for "Were we to suppose that sheet A was the first to be printed, this evidence would force us to the difficult conjecture that after A outer had been printed, headline VI was taken from the skeleton imposing A outer and inserted in a different skeleton for the imposition of B inner."[3]

The running-title evidence alone is perhaps no more than suggestive, but its interpretation is promoted to high probability if not to certainty by the evidence from identified sorts that distributed types from sheet A did not find their way into subsequent sheets but that types from sheet L may be found in sheet A at the identical distance from the distributed formes observed throughout the rest of the book. It would seem, then, that composition and printing began with sheet B and progressed in regular order by seriatim typesetting page by page accompanied by regular machining of the sheets through sheet M, whereupon sheet A with its titlepage and text was composed and printed to conclude work on the quarto.

One can now see how Dr. Welsh's technical evidence about the printing can be applied to the problem whether the 1594 quarto is the first or second edition. Bibliographers have long recognized both in theory and in observation of practice that the printer of a first edition would generally begin with the text and leave the preliminaries for the last in order to accommodate any last-minute additions or alterations in the front-matter but that the printer of a simple reprint, since no changes in the preliminaries would

ordinarily be anticipated, was likely in the vast majority of cases to start with the first sheet of the book, without regard for its contents, and to reprint the copy-edition in order.[4] That the printer of the 1594 quarto[5] in dealing with a posthumous play for which he had been furnished no preliminaries save for the titlepage would start his signing with A for the first text gathering is not necessarily to be wondered at, for there are parallels to this procedure. Evidently preliminaries were not anticipated, but if they had most unexpectedly arrived after sheet A was printed they could have been inserted in a separate half-sheet, arbitrarily signed, following the title. However, such an insertion is not always very convenient to bind-in, and it would appear that Robinson wisely left his options open by instead casting off copy for six pages of text and then beginning composition with sheet B. In this manner he protected himself from any eventuality. If, as actually occurred, no preliminaries arrived, he could set sheet A as it appears in the quarto. If extra material were sent to him during the printing, he could set its last one or two pages as sig. A1 and prefix a title-leaf either as part of a half or full sheet or as a single leaf that with luck might be printed as part of the final gathering. If, instead, he had started the text on sheet B, and no preliminaries had come in, he was stuck either with a single-leaf title or a somewhat uneconomic half-sheet with the first leaf blank. In short, he planned his quarto expertly and emerged with honor.[6] The clear implication of his treatment of sheet A, however, is that he was setting a first edition for which the matter of preliminaries might still be thought uncertain. If the 1594 quarto had been a reprint of a 1593 first edition, this procedure would have been unnecessary. Dr. Welsh's evidence about the printing of the book is clear as applying to the order of the composition and the progression of the sheets of a first edition through the press. This having been established, one can speculate that Robinson might well have set by formes what in a second edition of this particular lengthy quarto would almost necessarily have been a paginal reprint, whereas instead he set it seriatim. Moreover, a very small adjustment of the typography would have enabled him to have saved paper in a reprint by preparing for sheet M as a half-sheet of four pages instead of a more costly full sheet of only five.

However, the evidence against 1594 as a reprint is not exhausted. Dr. Welsh (p. 60, fn. 4) remarked that he had found no evidence for a second compositor and thus conjectured that the entire book was set by a single workman. In fact, two compositors did set the quarto, Compositor X composing the five sheets A-E and Compositor Y the seven sheets F-M. The clue to the presence of these two workmen is the variant system of signing whereby the first three leaves of sheets A-E are signed but only the first two leaves of sheets F-M. Corroborative evidence from the text supports this bibliographical distinction without the need for the minutiae of a detailed series of spelling tests. Of the six appearances of 'France' in sheets A-E, the spelling is four times 'France' and twice 'Fraunce'; but of the thirteen occurrences in sheets F-M the spelling is twelve times 'Fraunce' and only once 'France'. In sheets A-E the exclamation 'Ah' occurs six times, and is invariably spelled 'Ah'. In sheets F-M 'Ah' appears fourteen times, of which no less than nine (starting with F4v) are given the rare variant spelling 'A'. (Marlowe's spelling, as we know from the manuscript fragment of The Massacre at Paris was 'Ah'.) Both compositors had some difficulty with part lines but Compositor X mislined his text only seven times whereas Compositor Y mislined his share twenty-two times and in more serious ways. If the number of required substantive emendations is any indication of expertness, supported by the problems of mislineation, Compositor Y was the less expert of the two, his share containing a minimum of seventeen necessary substantive changes to remove error whereas Compositor X made only eight, perhaps nine, substantive errors.[7] Whether it was the underlying text or compositorial styling cannot be determined, but at least it should be noticed that in Compositor X's stint there are no occurrences of 'Yea' or of colloquial 'A' for 'He', whereas Compositor Y has several of each.

It would be mere speculation to take it that the use of two compositors with fairly even stints for seriatim setting of the first and latter parts of the text instead of for simultaneous composition has any bearing on the question of the 1594 quarto as first edition or as reprint. We have no means of knowing whether Robinson actually had more than one working press or if so what other books he was printing at this time and how he allocated his

press-time. Instead, the significance seems to center on one particular treatment of copy by the two compositors that appears to have a pertinence to the problem. Variant spellings like 'France' or 'Fraunce' and 'Ah' or 'A' have little relevance in determining the nature of the underlying copy since the two compositors could impose such spelling habits either on printed or on manuscript copy. The incidence of substantive error, also, may not have a great deal to do with the case, for a high degree of error is not invariably a result of setting from manuscript. On the other hand, the extraordinary discrepancy between the ability of the two workmen to deal with problems of lineation, which are always present in setting from dramatic manuscripts, with especial reference to the correct determination of part lines without permitting them to throw off proper lineation, does appear to suggest that they were setting from manuscript and not from printed copy.[8] When Compositor X mistakes the correct lineation only seven times but Compositor Y fails in his interpretation of his copy no less than twenty-two times, the discrepancy is meaningful in conjecturing that a manuscript and not another printed edition was the copy for the 1594 quarto. Experience demonstrates that in setting reprints of dramatic quartos the cases are rare indeed in which a compositor takes upon himself to reline printed copy, no matter how faulty; and cases are rarer in which correctly lined printed copy is mislined in a reprint. If the 1594 edition were a reprint one would need to hypothesize that two compositors had set the 1593 edition in shares almost exactly the same as those assigned the compositors of 1594 and that Compositor Y was merely following the errors of his predecessor whereas Compositor X enjoyed the superior expertness of the compositor of the earlier sheets of 1593. Although this situation is not theoretically impossible, one would hesitate to hinge an argument on it for a lost 1593 edition.

However, the indication from the marked difference in the degree of mislineation that the 1594 edition was set from manuscript joins with the powerful evidence of the order of printing sheet A in the manner of a first edition, not of a reprint, to introduce a double-pronged bibliographical conclusion. That is, in the absence of any trustworthy textual evidence to the contrary in the manuscript leaves of the 1598 Dyce copy, the odds may strongly favor the view, despite the date in the manuscript imprint, that in the 1594 quarto we have the actual first edition of Edward II.[9]

Notes