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The play Beggars Bush in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon is known in four early documents: (1) a private-transcript manuscript in the Lambarde volume preserved in the Folger Shakespeare Library; (2) a text in the 1647 Folio; (3) a separate quarto reprint in 1661 from this Folio without authority; (4) a text in the 1679 Folio reprinted from 1647 but with a few alterations that must derive from some authoritative source, either the Lambarde manuscript or its ancestor prompt-book. The Lambarde manuscript is in the hand of the scribe who wrote a presentation copy for the king of Suckling's Aglaura before the court performance of the Christmas season 1637/38, and is presumably of about the same date.
The history of the date and composition of Beggars Bush is obscure. It has long been conjectured that more than one hand could be detected in the play. The latest and most careful study, based on the linguistic evidence of contractions and of forms like ye-you, hath-h'as-ha'-have, and doth-does, assigns Act I and V.ii.1-65 to Massinger, Acts II and V.i, ii.65-255 to Beaumont, and Acts III-IV to Fletcher.[1] Although difficulties are present in this assignment, on the whole it may serve as the basis for a working hypothesis.[2] As early as 1935 W. J.
The date of Knight's transcript of the prompt-book almost certainly cannot have approximated that of the original composition and sale of the play if it were indeed one of Beaumont's last contributions to the stage, probably in 1613-14, when Massinger was beginning to take over as Fletcher's collaborator. The stylistic evidence clearly indicates that Massinger was one of the play's original authors and his connection with it was not that of a later reviser. On the whole it is easier to interpret the evidence that Knight's prompt-book was transcribed in the early 1620's (possibly even for the court performance on December 27, 1622, or at any later date, as for court performances in 1630 or 1636) than to argue that Massinger's share in the play was that of a reviser.[5] Fortunately, the matter of the divided authorship is not of
The relationship between the texts of the Folio and MS has not previously been studied in detail. A multiplicity of 'bibliographical links' establishes that the copy behind each, although not identical, was relatively similar in its accidental characteristics. Only a sample need be given. If we take I.iii as an example, the work of Compositor A in the Folio after the first dozen lines, we find that in line 15 both texts spell the city as Bruges but in line 54 both have the rare variant Brugis. At line 23 both have a colon after way and follow with a capitalized But against their usual practice; both want a comma that might be expected after denyall in line 35; both have a colon after prosperity (40), a purely caesural comma after price (68), no pointing after 'em (85), parentheses at 93-95 and 105,[7] and another colon followed by an unusual capital at 103. MS spells Indico, Quitcheneel and Folio Indico, Quitchineel (120); more parentheses come at 148 and 150; at 65 both texts spell 'pric'd' as priz'd although price (as a noun) is found in both at 68 but prices in MS and prizes in F at 126; and at
A simple conclusion can be drawn from the total evidence:[8] the original fair copy made by Massinger for the King's Men was preserved and was given to the printer of the 1647 Folio. Correspondingly, these identical papers had previously been copied by Edward Knight to make up a prompt-book; and from this prompt-book was copied the presentation Lambarde MS. The evidence permits no other ready interpretation, and no unknown intermediaries appear to exist in this transmission. Hence the Folio is at one remove from the Massinger fair copy—the closest we can get to the original authorial papers—and the MS is at two removes. The relationship thus is a radiating one in which the branch represented by MS derives from Massinger's papers through Knight's lost prompt-book.
The establishment of this relationship between the two major preserved documents offers a valuable opportunity to compare a prompt-book with its immediate source, the fair-copy manuscript given to the company by one of the authors. The opportunity is the more to be treasured in that a possible date for Knight's transcript closely approximates the printing of the Shakespeare First Folio. Many speculations about the printer's copy given Jaggard at this time, and how it can be recovered from the printed text, center on the relation of authorial manuscripts to prompt-books.
Although both Massinger's manuscript and the prompt-book may be assumed to have undergone some form of alteration in the process of typesetting and of re-inscription,[9] their common features offer trustworthy evidence about what they were like in the originals, and the causes for significant variation can usually be assigned. The MS is divided into acts only, scenes not being numbered, whereas the Folio breaks up the same acts into numbered scenes. Two and perhaps three errors in F's numbering appear. The first scene of Act I consists of 61
For Believe as You List in 1631, conjecturally eighteen years later than his manuscript of Beggars Bush, Massinger wrote out the scene numbers, which Knight then deleted when he made the manuscript into a prompt-book. It is also significant, perhaps, that in Knight's manuscript of The Honest Mans Fortune in 1624 scene numbers are not present. The lack of scene numbers is not unexpected in MS, therefore, and of itself offers no evidence about the condition of Massinger's copy. It is possible, however, that this evidence is in fact contained in the Folio. At the end of I.ii, since only the Merchant was given an exit and an exit was not marked for Herman after his concluding half line, Compositor B, if he were himself numbering the scenes, could readily have been misled into thinking that the scene
The survival of authorial stage-directions in the transcript of a prompt-book is always interesting. In F the Massingerean directions are brief and business-like entrances and exits, with very few descriptive features, and so are those of MS: the scribe of the prompt-book seems to have copied directions verbatim from Massinger's manuscript. Thus whenever the text as in F expands a simple entrance or exit, the MS repeats, even in such a permissive direction as III.i.o.1, 'Enter three or foure Boores';[12] other examples are 'Enter Higgen like a Sowgelder, singing' (II.i.3.1), 'Enter Gerrard like a blinde Aquavitœ-man, and a boy singing the Song' (III.i.96.1),[13] 'Enter Hubert like a Huntesman' (III.iii.o.1), 'Enter Higgen . . . and the rest with Boores (III.iv.
As expected, the Lambarde MS directions contain various additions to Massinger's fair copy as preserved in the Folio. It is more than possible, also, that not all of the prompt-book's additions have been retained in MS, since some slight evidence exists that the scribe passed over a few directions that could have appeared in the margins outside the text, like the omission of F's exit for Margaret at II.iii.43 or the final exit for the scene at III.v.48 and again at IV.i.73.[15] At I.ii.o.1 MS adds Hemskirk to the entrance direction. Some guard for Hubert is manifestly required, and—though mute—Hemskirk is the natural agent for Woolfort to have used to intercept Hubert's flight, although for all we know Massinger may have intended no more than the usual supernumerary guards. The F omission of the direction for Bertha's entrance in V.i.70.1 may be an F error and not a prompt addition preserved in the Lambarde MS, but sometimes authors' papers are not impeccable in their entrances, although this missing one is egregious. All the other additions are concerned with properties. In the margin to the left of the opening direction for II.iii, MS adds 'Table out:'. As part of the centered opening direction for III.i MS adds after the entrance, 'A table kans, and stooles sett out'. Before Higgen's entrance at III.i.3 MS reads to the left, 'Winde a Sowgelders horn within'. At III.iv.97.1 where F had read 'Enter Ferret. a letter.', MS has 'Enter Ferrett: with y e Paper'. At IV.iii.14 MS adds to the right, braced, 'Drum, flourish | Peeces discharg | Enter saylors'.[16] At IV.v.29 to F's 'Enter Hubert' MS adds the property warning 'a letter', the paper being used at line 39. At IV.vi.o.1 MS adds 'severallie' to F's 'Enter two young Merchants.' Somewhat superfluously, MS changes F 'Enter Woolfort, Hemskirke, and Attendants' (V.i.51.1) to 'Enter Woolfort: Hemskirk, Guard and Attendants:' in a direction where Massinger had seemingly thought of the attendants as comprising the guard. The MS addition '(Hubert hollowes within)' wanting in F at V.i.44.1 may just possibly be evidence for an F error of omission, for this holla is mentioned in line 82 when F reads 'Holla againe.'
A few prompt directions may perhaps be recovered from the 1679 Folio, which has clearly been compared with a theatrical copy and changes noted in the 1647 text used by the 1679 printer. For example, at II.iii.137.1 where neither 1647 nor MS has a direction, 1679 specifies 'He gets Hemskirks sword and cuts him on the head.' This specification of the kind of wound, or even that Hemskirk is wounded at all, could not have been drawn from the context. That this may not be a sophistication in 1679 but an omission by the MS scribe may be suggested because MS has a dash after the line which it should follow, this dash being customary in MS to separate the text from a direction written to the right on the same line. Thus it would appear that this is one of the marginal directions omitted by the MS scribe even though he copied the dash. A few lines before, at line 135, the 1679 direction 'Strikes him.'—though obvious from the context—is also very likely a prompt-book addition wanting in F (and MS) since in MS the text-line here is also followed by a telltale dash. On the other hand, at III.iv.36 the 1679 addition 'Beat one another.' wanting in F and MS may not necessarily have come from the prompt-book since the context would provide the direction and there is no dash in MS.
A clearcut theatrical direction appears in the MS variant from 1647, where the F direction at IV.i.40.1 'Enter Higgen. and Prig. like Porter[s]' is changed in MS to 'Enter Higg: and Prig like Boores', this no doubt on the principle of economy, or precision, since disguise as boors is required for them later at V.i.98.1. But the prompt-book seems to have omitted on several occasions to specify necessary action beyond Massinger's incomplete or ambiguous directions as found in F. The prompt-book acceptance of Massinger's 'Enter three or foure Boores' at III.i.o.1 has been noticed above. More to the point, at III.ii. 32 MS follows the F form of the direction, 'Enter Gerrard and Beggars.', without specifying that in fact they have doffed their disguises as beggars and adopted some other, for Florez does not recognize them (lines 39-41). Moreover, when at line 49.1 Gerrard returns after reassuming his disguise as Clause, no mention in either is made of this necessary change back to his customary appearance. Correspondingly, although at IV.i.40.1 the prompt-book had altered Massinger's disguise of Higgen and Prig from porters to boors, when they participate in IV.iii in the general entrance direction no disguise is specified in F or in MS, yet they must be in the same habits as in IV.i. More important is the manner in which the prompt-book does not seem to have inserted a direction that was wanting in Massinger at V.i.55 when Woolfort orders his soldiers to search out the woman
These are simple omissions caused by failure to annotate the author's copy properly in making up the prompt-book. On another occasion Knight carelessly followed his copy in reproducing positive error. In both F and MS Jacqueline is named in the general entrance at II.i.o.1 although she does not actually make her entrance until line 171. However, at 171 the true entrance is noted in both and so no harm is done, even though it was careless to leave her name standing after the right action had been observed. The most serious error of all was not caused by Knight following his deficient copy but instead by his misinterpreting the staging intended by Massinger though not specified owing to the omission of a crucial stage-direction. In IV.vi Gerrard (as Clause) orders Florez (as Goswin) to redeem his pledge and to leave his bride and the wedding to follow him. Florez' pleas are ignored until finally Gerrard tells him (lines 94-95), 'Then you must goe with me: I can stay no longer. | If ye be true, and noble——'. Both the broken-off speech (actually punctuated in F with a period but in MS with a colon) and Florez' reply, 'Hard heart, I'le follow:' indicate that Gerrard must make his exit here at line 95, but neither document has a direction. Florez then turns to address the guests, urging them to return inside the house and celebrate until his return, and in lines 100-101 he urges the host Van-dunk (though not by name), 'nay pray goe in Sir, | And take them with you, tis but a night lost Gentelmen.' Van-dunk responds by urging the guests to enter the house and promising them 'he cannot stay long from her | I am sure of that', to which Florez, completing line 104, responds, 'I will not stay; beleeve Sir.' Then in line 105 Florez turns to say farewell
As in the above example, Massinger was by no means scrupulous in marking all necessary exits, and (again as in the above example) Knight in writing out the prompt-book did not himself provide very many of the missing exit directions. Thus both F and MS join in failing to note the exits that are required at I.ii.23; II.i.142, 187, 196, 208; III.ii.34; III.iv.40; V.i.150; V.ii.67; and V.ii.255.1, these in addition to the ones already mentioned. Exit directions missing in F are found in MS at II.ii.17 and IV.iii.40, whether added by Knight or omitted in printing F is not to be determined. The exits found in F but omitted in MS at II.iii.43, III.i.96, III.v.48, and IV.i.73 may be errors by the MS scribe.
The condition of Massinger's manuscript from which F was set and the prompt-book transcribed is a matter of some interest because comparison of the two documents enables one to recover certain unusual features of this manuscript that offer useful evidence for determining the causes of anomalies in other printed dramatic texts. At least two additions were made to Massinger's papers after he had inscribed them. The first of these occurs at III.iv.130 and concerns the position of Higgen's canting speech to Hubert. In the Lambarde MS all is in order. The disguised Hubert makes his offer to serve the beggars and is accepted by Gerrard (lines 119-120), who orders the beggars to welcome him. Higgen takes the duty upon himself, greets
The second case is more difficult to assess. In MS at V.i.70.1 Bertha makes her entrance, is captured, and after Hemskirk and Woolfort have congratulated themselves on discovering her, Hubert hollos within as he approaches for the meeting. At this point in MS Bertha speaks three lines (lines 84-86):
O I am miserablie lost, thus faln
into myne uncles hands from all my hopes
can I not thinke away my selfe, and die?
O I am miserably lost, thus falne
Into my uncles hands from all my hopes,
Can I not thinke away my selfe and dye?
O I am miserably lost; thus fallen
Into my Uncles hands, from all my hopes:
Once again the repetition of what appear to be the lines that key the speech in its proper place indicates that Bertha's brief three lines in Massinger's original manuscript were expanded by a dozen additional ones written on a separate sheet of paper with the cue. In this case, however, whether by accident or design, the prompt-book omitted these lines (followed again by 1679 in its treatment). Whether Knight overlooked the separate piece of paper on which they were written, or whether he rejected the expansion of the speech is not to be demonstrated. The point is that the omission of these lines in MS is not a theatrical cut of original material but either a cut or an error in treating an added passage.
Another difference between the two texts comes at III.i.42, where in F the MS song about the devil is omitted although the lines leading to it are preserved:
Will you heare a Song how the Divel was gelded?
3. Bo. I, I, lets heare the Divell roare, Sow-gelder.
If Knight had annotated Massinger's fair copy in preparation for writing the prompt-book, and if the Folio printer had set these annotations, we should be completely unable to identify such markings, for F and MS would agree. Nevertheless, the various changes that Knight made in his transcription, and particularly their kind, seem to indicate that in preparation for this transcript he may have read over the play to familiarize himself with it, but he did not mark it. One piece of excellent evidence comes in the two changes that Knight introduced into the time-scheme. In the original papers, as demonstrated by the text of F, the Merchant, who in I.i receives the necessary exposition
The Folio omits almost nothing from the MS text. The loss of Higgen's half-line 'I thanke your worshipps' at III.i.65 is certainly accidental. The omission at III.i.19 of 'Shees vengeance ranck o'th man' in F, coming after 'Canst thou tell me a way now, how to cut off my wives Concupiscence?' is uncertain whether simply the dropping of the last line of a speech by accident or else an act of censorship. No very serious formal censorship of oaths is evident in either text, both of which join without variation in the usual quotas of by the mass, slid, and faith. On the other hand, at III.i.131 and 132 F prints dashes to substitute for some indecency in the speech of the Second Boor. It seems possible that these dashes are not independent F censorship but instead the representation of dashes found in Massinger's manuscript, as indicated by the mildness of the MS substitutes, which in the first instance has 'Plague' and in the second, 'Pox'. Since one cannot imagine anybody deleting plague, or possibly pox, by a dash, it is reasonable to conjecture that Knight added what he thought was acceptable for the dashes he found in Massinger's papers. If so, it is likely that Massinger substituted the dashes for some indecency he found in Fletcher's original text. When F has Hubert harangue Woolfort as 'A Prince, in nothing but your princely lusts' where MS has 'beastlie lusts', censorship may have operated although compositorial memorial contamination is as possible as compositorial censorship. Only one other possible case of censorship occurs—this in MS—where the line
In contrast to F, MS omits a number of lines. Various of these are cases of eyeskip, presumably by the MS scribe, such as the omission of 'to beleeve . . . dangerous' at I.ii.57-58, the half-line 'he . . . purveyers' (II.i.120), and the last line of two speeches (II.iii.18, IV.vi.72), 'It is not . . . from' (V.ii.89), and 'I speake . . . Hemskirck' (V.ii.133). Knight seems to have started by cutting what he considered to be repetitious parts of speeches. For instance, at I.ii.11-17 he may have felt that the sentiments in 'Who ever . . . prayers with' did not need the elaboration given them and removed the text as found in F. Similarly, later in the same scene he cut 'Despise them not . . . actions' in F I.ii. 108-114 perhaps because he found the hypocrisy was too blatant for Hubert to have swallowed. These are the only clearcut examples of Knight's editing by deletion, and it would seem that he soon gave up his initial intention to tighten the dialogue by excisions. Two other cases seem to represent Knight's omissions but for other reasons. The first is the omission of the single line 'No . . . grievances' mentioned above as a possible case of censorship. However, if F's reading 'On', which needs emendation to 'No', stood in Massinger's copy by mistake, it may have been that Knight simply omitted the line when he could make no sense of it. This is the more possible as an explanation, because something of the same sort seems to have occurred at IV.vi.9-12 in the omission in MS of '1. Merchant. No doubt on't . . . Vanlock.' Here there was no reason to delete these lines, which in fact are useful to introduce a new character just making his entrance. However, signs of textual disruption in F suggest that Massinger's copy was not clear to Knight. F omits the speech-prefix '2. Merchant.' present in MS for the first half of line 9 and prints as a separate line without speech-prefix what should have been the 1. Merchant's response (cut in MS) which started by completing line 9, followed by the remaining lines of the response. This double omission of speech-prefixes in F, connected with a passage omitted from MS, suggests a simple cut when Knight could not reconcile the text with the single prefix that was perhaps the only one present in his copy. The third example at IV.i.29-32 consisting of Florez' entire speech 'Is my misery . . . reproaches?' appears to have no reason behind its omission from MS. It usefully comes between two speeches to him by the Merchants and is not repetitious. That it was deliberately cut by Knight for such reasons as had moved him to cut in I.ii is difficult to believe. Whether there was some unknown form
The Folio speech-prefixes seem generally accurate. The difficulty due to copy in IV.vi.8-12 causing the F omission of two prefixes has been noticed above. Possibly indicative of some uncertainty on Massinger's part about this scene is the mistaken F prefix for 3. Merchant a few lines later at IV.vi.17, which conflicts with the opening entrance direction specifying two Merchants and which is thus corrected by Knight (if it stood in Massinger's papers) to 2. Merchant. At II.i.194 F's assignment of the first stuttering speech to Higgen may just possibly be right if he immediately exits, for it would then be the change from his normal speech to the stutter that provoked Hubert's 'Slid they did all speak plain ev'n now me thought'. But since after this remark he addresses Snap, continuing, 'Do'st thou know this same Maid?', the MS assignment of line 194 to Snap, the only known stutterer, is very likely correct, and Hubert's wonder at the stuttering is natural enough if Snap answers. The correctness of F is not certain in several more cases of doubt. At III.i.95,96 a pair of related variants appears, suggesting in itself more Knight's intervention than F's error, although the compositor may have overlooked the manuscript prefixes in this series of short speeches. At any rate, whether all the boors chorus in lines 94-95 'I take it, take it, | And take some drinke too', or whether it is the second boor who adds 'And take some drinke too' as in MS, is uncertain. It is correspondingly uncertain whether in lines 95-96 it is Prig who has the whole speech in response 'Not a drop now | I thanke you; away, we are discover'd else', the latter an aside to Higgen, or whether as in MS it is Prig who answers the boor and Higgen who speaks the closing half-line to Prig as an aside. One would be inclined to rely on the aptness of the MS ascriptions and to treat the F assignments as oversights (difficult as double error may be here) were it not for a single clearcut case of Knight's sophistication of the text, encouraging a hypothesis for his intervention here. This sophistication comes in an entrance direction at V.ii.109.1 in F, which follows Gerrard's 'Insolent Devill!' addressed to Woolfort: the entrance is moved up a line so that Costin, who would be otherwise mute in this scene (and in the play), is given the ejaculation as his entrance line that should
With the exception of the deliberate alteration in the position of the entrance direction at V.ii.109.1 already noted in order to transfer Gerrard's line to Costin, there is no indication that Knight altered the position of Massinger's directions. However, the varying treatment given entrance directions by the MS scribe, sometimes centering them in a large hand, and at other times squeezing them in on a text line, indicates that as in Believe as You List Knight had placed some of Massinger's centered directions in the margin. The position the MS scribe chose for them gives no indication that Knight had made them at all anticipatory.
When one comes to review what can be learned from this example of a prompt-book and its copy (insofar as they can each be reconstructed from documents at one remove), the first point of interest is that Knight in fact wrote out a prompt-book from papers that on the evidence should have been Massinger's fair copy of a play by himself and two other men. That is, although there is no indication that the manuscript of Beggars Bush could not have been as clean as that for Massinger's Believe as You List, Knight treated the two differently. The suggestion may follow that Believe as You List represents an unusual case and that the normal theatrical procedure was to use an author's fair copy as the basis for the transcript of a prompt-book, not to mark it so that it became the prompt-book itself.[20]
Whether the company had criticized Massinger's play and made suggestions that resulted in authorial revision before the original earlier prompt-book was transcribed is unlikely, on the evidence, although it is true that any revisions marked in the papers would have been repeated both in the Folio and in Knight's later prompt-book and thus in MS. The two additions—the canting oath at III.iv.131-143 and the expansion of Bertha's lament at V.i.86-97—identify themselves because of the cue-lines to key them into the text after they had been written on separate sheets of paper, these cue-lines being repeated in F as if an integral part of the text. Both of these passages are additions, therefore, but whether they can be called later revisions is perhaps moot. For the first, Gerrard's 'Now-sweare him' is the cue, but this text line would seem to call for some oath not found in the text proper without the addition. This situation suggests that when III.iv was written, the oath—which required more canting language than Fletcher may have had at his command—was proposed but needed to be worked out and inserted at a later time, whether written by Fletcher or by someone else is not to be proved. Thus the oath seems a special case, prepared for in the text but temporarily passed over. Whether the same is true for Bertha's speech is less obvious, for her rhetoric would have needed no special preparation as did the canting oath. A dozen lines is an insufficient number on which to judge authorship. The passage occurs in a scene written by Massinger and is presumably his; he would scarcely have needed outside help to compose it. Hence Bertha's added lines may represent an authentic revision, but whether called for by the company to fatten Bertha's small part is difficult to say. If it was, ironically the addition was omitted from Knight's prompt-book by accident. If the addition was Massinger's own idea, then a slight chance exists that Knight cut it, although omission by accident is still the more probable conjecture. These two alterations, then, do not necessarily originate with the company; other differences between the two texts are too slight to assign to authorial revision. It would seem that Knight was ordered to make up the prompt-book from Massinger's papers as they stood but with whatever changes his professional judgment might suggest.
It is reasonably clear that if Knight read over Massinger's papers, he did not make notes about problems of casting and staging presented by the author's stage-directions before setting to work. This is the odder in that Massinger's directions for entrances, especially, and often for exits were sometimes non-existent and, as it happened, confused Knight who took less account of the context than he should have when he followed Massinger's errors of omission. A few errors of commission, also, could have been corrected by a careful consideration of the context but were, instead, slavishly copied. In fact, Knight made a minimum effort to exercise his personal judgment in straightening out various of the tangles in the directions and the action and was generally content to copy what he found with the addition only of directions for properties and noises.
The question of cuts made in prompt-books is an important one, but Beggars Bush is uninformative. The omission of a few single lines in MS appears to be accidental either in copying the prompt-book or the Lambarde transcript deriving from it. One omission of Florez' brief speech in IV.i.29-32 is inexplicable and may be accidental, and two other omissions seem to have been caused by Knight's inability to resolve textual difficulties, a problem he solved by draconian methods (II.i.105, IV.vi.9-12). Two brief cuts of repetitious sentiment he seems to have initiated on his own responsibility early in the play (I.ii.11-17, 108-114), but no more. So far as one can tell, he decided on these omissions while he was copying the papers, although in theory they could have been crossed out later. It is interesting that he made little or no attempt to reline faulty verse in the manuscript where Massinger seems to have written a beginning half-line as part of the following pentameter. A round dozen of such lines are faithfully reproduced both in F and in MS, thus suggesting that mislineation, at least of this sort, is no guide to the nature of the manuscript underlying printed copy. Indeed, MS's lineation is less correct on occasion than F, but whether this difference is caused by the F compositors improving their copy or by the MS scribe (or Knight) running two half-lines together is unknowable.
Knight seems to have accepted almost all of Massinger's directions, permissive or descriptive, only rarely making minor alterations when properties were to be specified, as changing Massinger's 'a letter' to 'ye paper', or once where precision of disguise was needed, as in his alteration of Higgen's and Prig's disguise from porters to boors (IV.i. 40.1), or his distinction between Woolfort's attendants by the addition of 'Guards' (V.i.51.1). Although he was careful to specify properties
That Knight did not carefully consider the action and so failed to insert a few necessary entrances may be matched by two particular
When a Shakespearean textual critic finds copy other than a prompt-book behind the printed text, as in All's Well That Ends Well, or Twelfth Night, or Julius Caesar, he may legitimately wonder whether when the prompt-book came to be written the scribe really resolved the various contradictions in time-schemes, or references to action that never took place (both of which appear in the false report of Helena's death by Lord G), or changes of intention not removed from the text (such as the substitution of Fabian for Feste in the letter-gulling scene with Malvolio), or alternatives for the staging of scenes such as are found in Helena's choice of Bertram or, in Julius Caesar, in the interview of Brutus and Cassius in Act IV. In short, loose ends that were not tied up in copy were perpetuated in Knight's prompt-book since he made only a feeble effort to correct them.
It would be interesting to know whether his alterations in the time scheme in I.i.7 and I.iii.140 were made at the moment of copying, like his two cuts in I.ii, or later when he may have become conscious of the difficulties involved. Something could be said for his having made the first change on the spot when he became conscious of the absurd identification in Massinger's text of a Merchant who had been absent from Flanders for five years (line 7) with one who had left Flanders before the start of a seven years' war recently concluded (line 12). If so, Knight would have been better advised to have contented himself with changing the five to ten years and not to have altered the mention of Florez' charity to Clause at I.iii.140 from three to seven years. If the alteration had been made under the influence of Bertha's seven-year residence with Van-dunk, then Knight must have reverted to it; otherwise it could have been done currently if he knew enough about the plot to recognize that three years was a short time to accumulate the treasure with which the beggars later rescue Florez. Whenever the alterations were made, the time scheme is still grossly impossible, and Knight never grappled with its intricacies. It is true that references in the text to the duration of the antecedent action could have been adjusted with relative satisfaction if Knight had troubled to work out
If the company—and no doubt the audience—was not much concerned about this double time scheme, it would be too much, perhaps, to have expected Knight to have troubled himself about the two different views taken of the four Merchants in I.iii and in II.ii and later in their attitude to Florez. However, since it was a question of who had to be brought on the stage and when (and the correct writing-out of the 'plot' for backstage consultation) he was careless in not recognizing that in II.i the direction (which he reproduced) for the entrance of six beggars, Higgen, Ferret, Prig, Clause, Snap, and Ginks, was inaccurate in its permissive conclusion 'and other Beggars'. From
If Knight's transcript of this prompt-book from Massinger's papers is at all typical, it is evident that unresolved tangles in the action and even in the casting could be transferred to print from a prompt-book or transcript. Neglected characters like Costin who ought to have appeared consistently as the seventh beggar, though mute, or characters who have no business being named in directions like Jacqueline in II.i.0.1 and Ginks in V.i.98.1, are not unexpected in an author's working papers but are surprising in prompt-books. Knight's record here as a prompt-book scribe is not a comforting one. We have no information, unfortunately, whether he was the book-keeper of the company this early. He certainly was writing-out the company's prompt-books
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