University of Virginia Library

The Text of Colley Cibber's The Double Gallant: or, The Sick Lady's Cure
by
John W. Bruton

Colley Cibber's comedy The Double Gallant: Or, The Sick Lady's Cure (London, [1707]) had a complicated and confused beginning—both as a play and as a printed text. Made up almost entirely of, to use Cibber's words, "what little was tolerable, in two, or three [other plays] that had no Success,"[1] the play was nevertheless presented to the public by the Haymarket Company as a new entertainment. The result, as Barton Booth tells us in a letter to Aaron Hill, was most unpleasant: "as soon as the goodnatur'd Town found him out, they resented his calling [The Double Gallant] a new Play, and hounded it in the most outrageous Manner."[2] Cibber, despite his thick skin in matters of this sort, withdrew the play after three nights, permitted it to be revived once more three weeks later and once in February 1708, then removed it from the stage for four years. When the play was performed again in December 1712, its reception was most favorable, and it went on to become a very popular and profitable stock play. In Cibber's lifetime alone, it was performed over 165 times and went through at least seven London editions.[3]

Although the play is an extraordinary specimen of the adaptor's art—"its pedigree," observed F. W. Bateson, "is indeed of quite alarming complexity"[4] —it

is equally interesting as a printed document, having apparently undergone an unusually involved printing procedure. On the surface, the first edition along with its undated reissue also of 1707[5] appears to be more or less typical of a hastily printed play of the period. The collation follows a normal pattern for a quarto, running A-I4 with the preliminaries beginning on A2 and the text beginning on the first page of gathering B. The play is divided into the usual five acts, but scene divisions are not consistently used. Stage directions, both major and minor, are usually printed in italics with the personae in the directions usually but not always printed in roman. Major directions are, of course, centered whereas minor directions are placed against the right margin or occasionally at the end of a line and set off with either single or double brackets. Speech prefixes are indented, italicized or at least partially italicized (as in 'Sir Sol.' for Sir Solomon), and the forms of abbreviation used for the prefixes of some characters vary at times, changing from gathering to gathering and occasionally within a gathering (as 'L. Sad.', 'La. Sad.', or 'La. Sad.' for Lady Sadlife). Little care was taken to enhance the appearance of the text. No ornaments, decorations, or illustrations appear. Finally there are the inevitable errors such as misspellings, wrong fonts, incorrectly attributed speech prefixes, etc. In all of these matters, The Double Gallant could hardly be considered exceptional. Closer examination, however, clearly reveals that it was printed in a surprisingly complicated manner.

According to the small memorandum book kept by Bernard Lintot during this period and published in Nichols' Literary Anecdotes, Cibber sold the play to Lintot on October 27.[6] The play was then performed on Saturday, November 1, but not without some formidable competition from the Drury Lane Company. Somehow word of Cibber's plagiarism had gotten around, and on October 31, the eve of The Double Gallant's first performance, Drury Lane performed Burnaby's The Reform'd Wife,[7] one of the principal sources of Cibber's "new" play. The Reform'd Wife was performed again on Monday, November 3, The Double Gallant's second night, and after Tuesday the Haymarket ended the embarrassing run by dropping the play. Only four days later, November 8, The Double Gallant

appeared in print,[8] with a hastily written preface in which Cibber explained that, although he had "only propos'd" to call the play a "Revis'd" one, "some who had Read it were of Opinion, that the Additions in it were of Consequence enough to call it a New one" ("To the Reader," sig. A2). Lintot's haste in publishing a play that had failed so quickly—only twelve days altogether passed between the purchase and the printing of it—is perplexing, unless his intention was to capitalize on the controversy which the exposure of Cibber's plagiarism had touched off. Whatever his reasons, Lintot spared no effort in rushing the play through the presses. In order to insure that the play was published as quickly as possible, he apparently arranged to divide the manuscript into two parts and have each part printed by a different printing house. The first edition of The Double Gallant thus is actually two printed documents.

The division of the manuscript for printing by two different houses is evident at the end of gathering G, where a catchword error sets up a serious mistake within the text. The last catchword of G is 'Sir',[9] the shortened speech prefix for the character Sir Solomon Sadlife. But the speech prefix for the first line of gathering H is 'La. Da.' for the character Lady Dainty. The result of this discrepancy is that two Lady Dainty speeches come together in the text but with different speech prefixes, the last prefix of G being 'L.D.' with 'L.D.' also appearing at times in the gathering. The outcome, of course, is a glaring error, but from the point of view of the compositor of gathering H not entirely an illogical one. Apparently when the manuscript was divided, something happened which obscured the speech prefix for the first line of gathering H, so that the compositor of H was forced to guess what it should be. If he had had access to gathering G, he would have seen that the last two speeches of the gathering belong respectively to Sir Solomon and Lady Dainty; that information, along with the catchword 'Sir', would clearly indicate the proper prefix. Without a prefix, however, and without gathering G to help, he would logically conclude that Lady Dainty should be the speaker, since the next two speeches after the one in question belong respectively to Lady Sadlife and Lady Dainty and since the context would easily permit such a reading. In this instance, of course, we can only speculate about what actually took place, but a major error of this sort clearly demonstrates that the compositor of H did not have access to gathering G and that furthermore he was using a different prefix for a major character. For more specific evidence that sections A-G and H-L were printed at different houses, we need only examine a few mechanical details within the sections.

Because watermarks are the same in all gatherings, they are of no use in distinguishing one part of the play from the other. Convincing mechanical evidence, however, can be found in the differences between headlines, press figures, and certain fonts of type which appear in the two sections. Although the style of type used in the verso and recto headlines or running titles is the same in both sections, the type is slightly larger in the headlines of H-L. Since headlines were normally reused, the adoption of a new set of headlines halfway through the printing process would obviously result in a needless waste of time in a single printing establishment. As far as press figures are concerned, we find a curious situation. In section A-G press figures appear in every gathering, and in all but gatherings A and G, the same or different figures appear once on both the inner and outer formes.[10] In section H-L, however, we find no figures at all. Again it would be most difficult to account for such a discrepancy if both sections were printed at a single house. As for differences in type, certain fonts for commas, apostrophes, and question marks are unique to section H-L. In gatherings H, I, K, and L, occasional commas and apostrophes are noticeably larger than the fonts normally used in this section or in A-G. A different type of question mark with a curved rather than angular hook (the standard font in A-G and in most of H-L) appears occasionally in gatherings H, I, and L and is the only type used in gathering K. It never appears, however, in any gathering of A-G.

Yet another type of evidence can be found in the fact that the abbreviations for speech prefixes used for certain characters are different in the two sections. The characters whose prefixes change after gathering G are Lady Dainty, Lady Sadlife, Clarinda, and Sir Solomon Sadlife. Throughout A-G, Lady Dainty's prefix is either 'L.D.' or 'L.D.', but in H-L it is invariably 'La. Da.' Lady Sadlife's prefix is 'La. Sad.' in gathering C but either 'L. Sad.' or 'L. Sad.' in the rest of A-G; in the second section her prefix is 'La. Sad.' in every instance. Clarinda's prefix is 'Cla.' once in C, but in the rest of C and in D it is 'Clar.' In H-L the prefix is exclusively 'Cla.' Finally, Sir Solomon Sadlife's prefix is always 'Sir Sol.' in the first section but becomes 'Sir Sol.' in gathering H and appears as either 'Sir Sol.' or 'Sir Sol.' in K and L. Some variation in the abbreviation of speech prefixes, of course, is not unusual in the printed plays of this period, but the pattern of changes in The Double Gallant unmistakably points to the fact that each section was, in effect, handled independently of the other.

The division of the manuscript for printing purposes apparently did

not stop with the distribution of the two sections to different houses. Additional evidence in the form of numerous discrepancies in the use of catchwords would seem to indicate that the sections themselves were distributed to multiple compositors within each house. Aside from the catchword error at the end of gathering G which was discussed earlier, four other similar errors occur in the play—three in section A-G and one in H-L. And all but one of these errors occur at the end of a gathering. An examination of these discrepancies suggests the strong probability that several compositors were working simultaneously to hasten the publication of the play.

The first catchword error in section A-G occurs in gathering B, within rather than at the end of the gathering. At the bottom of page 7 the catchword is 'Sir,'. But at the top of page 8 the speech prefix is 'Sir Sol.' for the character Sir Solomon Sadlife. Because of its position within the gathering, the error is difficult to explain adequately. It may, of course, have resulted from a single compositor's oversight, or it could be that the gathering was cast off and some sort of arrangement worked out which permitted more than one compositor to work on the gathering. If the gathering were set by formes rather than serially, the error could easily have occurred, since page 7 would have been the highest numbered page of the inner forme and page 8 would have belonged to the outer forme. There is no firm evidence to prove such an arrangement, however, and the error must remain as one of the many inexplicable peculiarities in the printing of the play.

The second catchword error in A-G occurs at the end of gathering C where the catchword is 'Sylv.', the prefix for the character Sylvia. With the first appearance of this character in the gathering, the prefix is 'Syl.', but throughout the remainder of the gathering it is 'Sylv.' The first speech of gathering D, however, has the speech prefix 'Syl.', which is used all through the gathering and, for that matter, the rest of the play. Another change in speech prefixes involves the character Lady Sadlife, who is identified as 'La. Sad.' in C but consistently as 'L. Sad.' in gathering D. A final difference within the gatherings deserves mention. In gathering C we find eight minor stage directions of the type which is placed against the right margin, and of these eight all but two are enclosed within brackets, the other two being separated by a single bracket. In gathering D there are seventeen right margin stage directions, and all but two have only the single bracket. It seems clear, thus, that two different compositors set the gatherings, each with his own preference regarding speech prefixes for Sylvia and Lady Sadlife and each with very nearly opposite preferences in the matter of setting off minor directions.

The last discrepancy in the use of catchwords within this section appears at the end of gathering E. The catchword here is 'believe,'. The last line of the gathering reads as follows: 'Care. [i.e. Careless] Why truly Madam, the little Gentleman my Rival, I' and the first line of F continues: 'believe is much in the right on't.' Very probably the compositor of E, whose job

was to set the catchword, either found the comma in his manuscript copy or cleverly deduced the need for one. The last sentence of his gathering, plus the knowledge that 'believe' was the next word, would clearly indicate that "I believe" was an interpolated element of the sort that is normally set off by commas in this part of the play. The compositor of F, however, working apart from gathering E (or perhaps setting his gathering at the same time E was being set), could not so easily deduce the need for a comma after just the word 'believe'. If he had found a comma in his manuscript, he would very probably have inserted it, but in the absence of one he would have found no obvious reason to do so. This catchword discrepancy, then, if these assumptions are correct, resulted very simply from the fact that the compositors were working separately or perhaps even simultaneously, each using his best judgment in the absence of a clarifying context.

Further evidence that the gatherings may have been set by different compositors can be found by examining the types of dashes which are used in E and F. In gathering E, solid dashes of varying lengths are used throughout. In F, the same types of dashes are prevalent, but on five pages of the gathering (pp. 33, 37-40) they are used along with broken dashes which resemble four (and occasionally three) hyphens closely spaced. Similar broken dashes also appear on five pages of gathering G (pp. 41-43, 45, 48) but do not appear anywhere else in the play. Since gatherings F and G would probably have been the last two gatherings to be composed at this particular house, it may well be that a shortage of solid dashes was developing—a situation most likely to occur when several gatherings are being set simultaneously, since the frequently used dashes could not be redistributed. The compositor of F (and of G too, for that matter) perhaps anticipated a shortage and decided to substitute broken dashes from time to time to conserve the supply.

In section H-L, aside from the error at the beginning of H discussed earlier, there is only one discrepancy in the use of catchwords. At the end of gathering H, the cacthword is 'Find. Shall' ('Find.' being the speech prefix for the character Finder). In the first line of gathering I, the text reads 'Find [period omitted] Shah!' Since ''Shah!' is clearly the correct reading—'Shall' would have made no sense at all in the context—it is highly probable that two different compositors set the gatherings. The only other indication that multiple compositors may have been at work in H-L appears in gathering K where we find the curved question mark discussed earlier used throughout the gathering. The mark does appear, although infrequently, in the other gatherings of this section, but K is the only one where it is used exclusively. Although the evidence is more limited in this section, there seems to be no reason to suppose that H-L was not handled in much the same fashion as section A-G.

The printed text of The Double Gallant thus seems clearly to have been patched together from the work of several compositors, and it was perhaps inevitable that the seams would show, especially in the critical areas where

the principal sections were linked and also within the sections where certain gatherings were joined. Quite probably much of the work within each section was going on simultaneously, and it is also possible that the sections themselves were being printed at the same time or very nearly so. We need hardly be surprised, therefore, at the number and variety of mechanical discrepancies we find. When we turn our attention from the printing process itself to an examination of the accidentals, however, a remarkable fact emerges. Within the two main sections, the treatment of accidentals is more or less consistent, despite the distribution of the work to several compositors. But when we compare the sections, some significant differences come to light. In the following analysis, I have limited my examination to major differences that can be readily demonstrated. There are, of course, numerous occasional variants in the practices of the two sections which could be significant but which do not appear frequently or systematically enough to permit any sound conclusions. Many, if not most, of these differences might be attributed simply to the individual preferences of various compositors. In two areas, however—the punctuation of vocatives and the capitalization of non-substantive elements—the practices in sections A-G and H-L differ dramatically.

The two sections treat vocatives in very nearly opposite ways. Up to the end of gathering G, the prevailing practice is to set off vocatives completely by commas if they come within a sentence and to separate them by a comma if they occur at the beginning or end of a sentence or just before or after a terminal mark of punctuation such as a semicolon or exclamation point. Of around 330 vocatives in A-G, about 300 are set off in these ways. For the purposes of counting, rhetorical effectiveness was not considered. Thus of the 30 or so vocatives not set off or separated, many were no doubt intentionally left alone, especially if they were preceded by an exclamation as in 'Oh my Dears', 'Oh Clerimont', or 'Ay Sir'. In section H-L the practice has been almost exactly reversed. Most vocatives are not set off at all or are only partially set off. Out of some 272 vocatives, only about 27 are punctuated in the manner which prevails in A-G. These differences were largely regularized in the true second edition of 1718 (termed "The Third Edition" on the title page). The printers of this edition, who used the first edition as the copy-text, found it necessary to make only 10 or so changes in the punctuation of vocatives in A-G, but over 225 such changes were necessary to make the practices in H-L resemble those of the first section.

To demonstrate the differences in capitalization between the sections is a much more difficult task, for the differences here represent tendencies rather than clearly systematic preferences as in the case of vocatives. In general, of course, nouns are normally capitalized in both sections, and there is also a tendency in both to capitalize emphatic modifiers preceding nouns, although this practice is somewhat more obvious in H-L. In both sections we also find numerous non-substantive elements which are capitalized,

but section H-L tends to capitalize such elements much more frequently. Some idea of the degree of greater frequency can be derived from the table below. Patterns of capitalization throughout the play were examined closely, and the grammatical categories listed in the table were those which were found to show significant differences. The table does not show capitalized modifiers preceding nouns, since many of the resulting combinations would have been regarded as compound nouns and thus normally capitalized. Neither does it include capitalized words which were derived from nouns or words which were capitalized because they begin independent clauses or fragmentary utterances. Finally it does not include capitalized elements which occur too infrequently to indicate any trend or minor elements which do not lend themselves to a formal classification. Elements fitting the categories listed were simply counted, and although every effort was made to assure accuracy and consistency, the figures must be regarded as approximates. It should be borne in mind that section A-G is 16 pages longer than H-L.                

Classification	Section A-G	Section H-L
Adjectival
Complements (All types)[11]	22	66
Main Verbs	14	65
Infinitive or
Participial Elements in Verb Phrases	9	38
Verbals and Verbal
Elements in Verbal Phrases	22	62

The scope of the differences might be further illustrated by comparing the changes made in the true second edition which regularized and normalized the capitalization of the sections. Here we find that over 389 capitals were removed from section H-L and 37 new capitals added. In A-G, however, only 64 capitals were removed and 85 new capitals added. Admittedly data of this sort should not be too rigorously interpreted, since a different house style is likely to have its own inconsistencies. But assuming that the style of the second edition was carried out with reasonable thoroughness, the figures do show in a roughly relative way the much higher frequency of capitalized words in H-L.

The two sections were apparently printed from Cibber's manuscript; this would have been the normal procedure and it would have saved considerable time. If this be the case, then it would appear that H-L was printed more or less directly from the manuscript with little or no attempt having been made to regularize Cibber's accidentals. There is a sort of undisciplined consistency in the accidentals of section H-L that could very well reflect the practices of an author who was writing at top speed without

much conscious concern for consistency in mechanical matters. On the other hand, A-G would appear to be a corrected text of sorts. The compositors, or possibly a corrector employed to mark copy prior to the setting of type, would naturally have followed the house style with the inevitable result that the relatively easy job of spotting and correcting Cibber's improperly set off vocatives would have been carried out much more thoroughly than the difficult and time consuming task of regularizing his eccentric capitalization.[12] Thus the occasional passages in A-G in which capitalization resembles the practices in H-L are probably only partially regularized or overlooked passages from the manuscript itself.

As for corrections at press A-G was undoubtedly corrected in at least three instances, but there is no conclusive evidence that H-L was ever corrected in any way. In six of the seven copies of the first edition or its reissue which I have examined,[13] a trivial correction of a typo has been made on page 4.[14] In five of the copies, two spelling errors on page 24 have been corrected.[15] In section H-L three different instances in which type has separated on the line and one instance of a broken font can be found in some copies but not in others.[16] But these instances are probably not evidence of correction in H-L; the lines and the font were very likely correct to begin with and the apparent errors resulted quite simply from wear and stress as the printing progressed. As far as correcting of the text is concerned, thus, both before printing and at the press, section A-G received somewhat more attention than H-L.

On the basis of the evidence and of the conclusions I have endeavored to propose, I believe we can speculate with some hope for accuracy on the order of events which ultimately resulted in the curious text of The Double Gallant. First, of course, Lintot must have taken Cibber's manuscript to the house which eventually printed section A-G. There we must suppose the manuscript was at least partially cast off, marked by a corrector,

or given to several compositors to compose and correct as they went along. Despite the hurried circumstances, some correction at press took place, as we have seen. Then at some point in the early stages of the preparation of A-G, Lintot decided to hasten the publication of the play by taking section H-L of the manuscript to another house. Perhaps, as I have suggested earlier, the exposure of Cibber's plagiarism and the resulting controversy spurred Lintot to take this step. Since the watermarks are the same throughout the play, it would appear that Lintot supplied the paper for both houses. At the second house the text was again distributed to multiple compositors, but for reasons we cannot now determine, the decision was made to expedite the printing by simply following Cibber's manuscript without bothering to seriously correct it or impose any sort of house style on it. The steps for correction at press seem also to have been omitted. Finally the two sections were bound together and the play offered to the public just four days after it had ended its run.[17]

There are, of course, other possible explanations. Something may have happened at the first house which would have seriously delayed the printing, thus forcing Lintot to take the play to the other house. Or perhaps Lintot distributed the manuscript to the two houses from the very beginning. But the point of separation of the manuscript—in the middle of a scene and between speeches—would seem to indicate that the first section had already been cast off to that point. Whatever the case, there can be little doubt that The Double Gallant was printed in piecemeal fashion with many different men working hurriedly to complete it. As a result of this unusual procedure, the text provides us with clear evidence of the remarkably flexible printing practices of the period. And perhaps more importantly, it provides us with a unique opportunity to examine alternative approaches to the printing and especially the correcting of an author's manuscript.

For the textual critic, the play poses an unusual challenge—how best to edit a play in which two very different styles are so evident. Since section H-L is probably closest to Cibber's own style, should the style of its accidentals be adopted and section A-G made to conform? This solution obviously would not do, since the style of H-L is too eccentric to admit of being copied and imposed on the other section with any hope of accuracy. For much the same reason it would be impractical to attempt to regularize the accidentals in H-L to the practices of the first section. Another alternative, the selection of the second edition of 1718 as the copy-text, would result in a text more or less consistent in the accidentals, but there is no

evidence whatever that Cibber ever had anything to do with that or any other edition of the play in his lifetime. Because both sections of the first edition represent in their own way authoritative texts, each the closest we can come to Cibber's accidentals in spite of the obvious conflicts and inconsistencies, it would appear that the editor has no choice but to edit each section as he finds it. Just as Cibber took a piecemeal approach to the composing and Lintot to the printing of the play, the editor can only endeavor to preserve the pieces in their most accurate form.

Notes