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Sixteen promptbooks survive of plays written for the public theatre in England before 1640.[1] One cannot overestimate the importance of these manuscripts for the understanding of Renaissance dramatic texts. In the England of Shakespeare's time plays were written not so much as a literary expression of ideas and experiences which the playwright could communicate in no other form but more as fairly conventional vehicles for cultural commonplaces, and were purveyed in public theatres for all who could afford the price of admission. The best modern analogy is not with 'art' theatre but with television situation comedies and the like; only in its decadence did
Four of the sixteen promptbooks carry evidence of the censorial attentions of Sir George Buc, who, as Master of the Revels between 1603 and 1622, was encharged with the task of ensuring that the plays presented at court and played in public were free from matter offensive to the governing authorities or to public order.[5] They are: (1) The First part of Richard II
When the Malone Society was founded in 1906 by a group of prominent English scholars which included E. K. Chambers, A. W. Pollard and R. B. McKerrow, W. W. Greg was appointed Honorary Secretary and General Editor. He exercised the second function until 1939, with consequences for the scholarship of early English drama which have yet to be thoroughly appreciated.[7] In that period were gathered the first fruits of an achievement which justifies his description as the greatest editor of English literature of this century; his contribution to bibliography, textual criticism and editing requires no amplification here. Nevertheless, the Malone Society edition of The Second Maiden's Tragedy "prepared by the General Editor" and issued in 1910 is not impressive as a harbinger of Greg's later achievements. The introduction is so brief that it does not discuss topics like watermarks which are customarily described in such introductions and there were, despite Greg's disclaimers, an unusually large number of misreadings in an edition which purported to represent the original manuscript exactly.[8] More serious, and particularly significant for analysis of the censor's role in the evolution of the dramatic text, was that Greg disregarded completely a whole set of markings in the margin of the manuscript.
Greg's fastidiousness about the attribution of alterations in the manuscript was criticised shortly after the publication of the Malone Society edition by Watson Nicholson whose own edition of the play had been forestalled
Neglect of pencil markings in SMT may seem trivial by comparison with the plenitude of textual data and observation which was supplied by the Malone Society edition. In fact, that edition omits mention of 17 crosses and 3 marginal lines and underscorings, and the diplomatic editions of the three
In 1978 The Second Maiden's Tragedy was meticulously edited in modern spelling for the Revels Plays series by Professor Anne Lancashire, who provided an independent scholarly examination of the manuscript which went far to correct the omissions of Greg's edition.[13] The pencil markings were recorded and taken account of in a separate discussion, "Marginal ink and pencil crosses" (pp. 280-281), where it was mentioned that "occasional marginal square ink crosses and pencil crosses occurring together and separately, seem related to textual censorship and have been tentatively attributed . . . together with the censorship alterations they generally accompany, to the censor Sir George Buc." Professor Lancashire concluded, however, that "it is unsafe to make an attribution to Buc of any censorship change simply because it is accompanied by one or more such crosses" (p. 281). On the contrary: pencil and ink together are sure signs of Buc's censorial attentions. Her argument was simply one of uncertainty, about the
The singlemost important observation about the crosses is that they fall into several distinct categories; not only pencil or ink, but small and large, square or slanted. Once separated on the basis of form, they can be examined in terms of function. The small slanted crosses have no apparent effect on the received text; they may be categorised as 'modern' and set aside. Since they are not peculiar to SMT, as I have noticed (note 11) their origin from the hand of a modern editor should not be too difficult to trace. Other small crosses are associated with corrections in the text. It was common for writers at this time to place small crosses in the text to mark corrections or to indicate the correct place of inserted material, and to make a correction or insertion in the margin, with the cross repeated. SMT gives an example at 1. 2, associated with a censorial correction, which deserves closer attention.
The only other kind of cross in SMT is large and square. It is necessary to attribute this form to Sir George Buc, for the following reasons:
(1) the crosses are consistent in form; this indicates a common origin;[14]
(2) they are found only in 4 promptbooks which contain censorial alterations; in two (SMT., Bar.) of the manuscripts Buc is specifically identified as the source of textual corrections;[15]
(3) the pencil crosses are associated with ink crosses which are formed in the same manner, and the ink of the crosses is the same as that in which four textual alterations by Buc were made;[16]
(4) finally, and to my mind conclusively, the pencil markings in the 4 promptbooks are paralleled by similar markings in Buc's two surviving holograph manuscripts. The main portion of Buc's Commentary upon the New Roll of Winchester (Bodleian ms. Eng. misc. b. 106) was written in 1614 and revised through 1621. It was very much a work in progress and exhibits a fascinating repertoire of marks of deletion, cancellation, insertion, annotation, reference and comment. Most of these are in ink, but pencil occurs often enough to reveal the manner in which Buc employed it.[17]
More informative than a mere summary of the marks Buc used in the Commentary, two passages where pencil was used foreshadow events in the dramatic manuscripts. Folio 21 is an inserted slip of waste paper from the Revels Office made up of two pieces of paper pasted together, the first strip bearing eleven lines, the second three lines of text. The sequence of the corrections need not be determined now although a mere record of the alterations makes that clear enough. Opposite l. 2 there is a faint pencil cross in the right margin and in the following line "anmacro 18. Ed.1" shows 1 changed to 2 in pencil. In the right margin opposite l. 4, "20 libr" is written in pencil and the gloss in the line above is altered in ink to "xx.l.i." Even more instructive to show how Buc used his pencil is an instance on f. 26v. Upon completing the recto Buc inadvertently reversed the leaf so that the writing on the verso would run from the bottom to the top of the page when the leaf was bound in place. He discovered this after he had written two thirds of the verso and, loath to rewrite the recto as well, on the correct top half of the verso he put a pencil cross and wrote "Renvurser" opposite it. To make his intention quite clear he added "Neville" and "Latimer" between brackets above the cross in the top lefthand corner of the leaf. All these additions are in pencil. Later he pasted blank paper over the upside-down text and recopied his manuscript—not without variation—over the pencil markings in proper form.[18]
It is quite clear from the Commentary that Buc used pencil in a manner familiar to writers of later ages, as an easy, informal working tool, for records which were temporary or provisional. This impression is confirmed by its appearance in his History of the Life and Reign of Richard the Third (B.L. ms. Cotton Tiberius E.x) which is roughly contemporary with the Commentary.[19] To anticipate, it is also characteristic of the way in which the censor read a play submitted for license, pencil in hand, marking passages of text which required closer consideration and, often, the confirmation of additional marks or corrections in ink. There is no need to deal further with this manuscript or, indeed, with Buc's use of pencil in general.
Notwithstanding the weight of the evidence which identifies the pencil markings with Buc, one may contemplate the possibility that someone else, perhaps the Clerk of the Revels, marked up the plays in pencil in order to draw passages to Buc's attention and final disposition. However, that not-unreasonable notion cannot hold in the light of one passage in SMT. At l. 708, servant was pencilled in the right margin by Buc who also, presumably, underscored frend in the text; in this instance, there is a cross, a mark in the text, and an alteration in Buc's handwriting, all in pencil and all together.[20] Furthermore, this instance is particularly valuable in revealing the influence of the censor on the text which was eventually performed on the stage. That Buc was troubled by the passage in which Helvetius urges his daughter, the Lady, to allow him to select her lover appears from his alteration of "friend" to "servant" and his addition of another marginal cross beside l. 712 (II.i.76); he also drew a pencil line in the right margin from l. 699 to l. 730. Apparently as a result of the censor's intervention the corrector substituted "woman" for "courtier" in l. 712, and ll. 715-24 (to "forgotten") were marked for omission and crossed out in ink which is possibly that of the substitution. Editors can understand the relationships amongst the markings only when the marginal crosses and the marginal servant are correctly identified as Buc's.
The only refuge for anyone who wished to deny that Buc was responsible for the pencil crosses would lie, it seems, in the Revels editor's claim that "in S.M.T., at least, where pencil and ink crosses occur together the ink has preceded the pencil."[21] In the event, a footnote reveals that in only one (l. 1425) of the three places with both pencil and ink crosses does "Examination of the MS with a microscope [show] this to be the case definitely." Nevertheless, one case is enough. However, brief reflection on the physical properties of graphite and ink, or recollections of early schooldays, bring to mind that
By this point a case has been made that the pencil markings in the margins of SMT have a bearing on the history of the manuscript itself and of the text it contains. When the appropriate reservation of certain distinctive 'modern' crosses is made, that Buc was responsible for the significant pencil markings in SMT and the other three promptbooks can scarcely be doubted, even though the unavoidable exigencies of space do not permit the case to be made—particularly for the other manuscripts—in complete fullness. The particular fashion in which Buc employed pencil and the local effects of its use are perhaps of more special interest to dramatic historians and to later editors of the four plays. Certainly the topic of his influence on the text and performance of the plays is too large and complicated to be entered into here, involving as it does scrutiny of the whole range of the means by which the censor made his requirements known to those who submitted texts for his approval. Nevertheless, one cannot relinquish all this marginal pother without one illustration of the advantage an editor may obtain from knowing the source of the pencil crosses. It is doubly instructive to examine an instance which is not wholly characteristic of the censor.
Opposite the first speech of SMT is a largish, square pencil cross, smeared for deletion, with the crossbar extended to touch have, the first word of the verse. Above have to the left is a smaller ink cross in the ink used by the corrector of the text. (Greg who thought he was "almost certainly the author" named him C whereas the Revels editor who thought he was merely a corrector called him A.) The original reading was hath; the corrector converted it to have by writing v over the th and adding e at the end. In the right margin, with a similar cross and in the same ink and hand, is added haue. The marginal pencil cross is not in Buc's usual form in having an extended
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