The manuscript
The MS is written on a single sheet of fairly good-quality writing
paper, watermarked with a pot containing the initials PD;[8] the sheet
measures approximately 15.5 by 12 inches, and was folded once to create
pages of about seven and three-quarter by twelve inches (i.e. a normal
foolscap dimension). The paper itself, subsequent to its being written upon,
was folded twice more for use as a wrapping for the correspondence, and
the outermost page (fol. 2v) has suffered as a consequence.
An area of
about a third of the page is discoloured and faded, and several words have
been rendered illegible at the creases. There is also a small hole in the
second folio, coinciding with one of these creases, and an ink stain near the
top of fol. 1v which obscures one word. Despite these
damages, the
writing is for the most part well-preserved, and the good general condition
of the MS, considering the use to which it was put, is remarkable.
However, the paper is clearly not strong, and the creases
are in danger of tearing; we have recommended that preservative work be
done on it to protect it from further deterioration.
The text written on this paper is a part of a scene from a play (a
modified typographical facsimile is provided at the end of this article). The
scene is in progress at the beginning of the first page (which is numbered
"2.", implying that the events it contains occur early in the dramatic
action); it consists of a dialogue between Prince Alexander and his favorite,
his cousin Lorenzo. The Prince begins by dismissing his attendants, and the
only other speaking character (Alphonso); they leave in l. 7. The rest of the
scene consists of Lorenzo's clever evasion of a charge of conspiracy, which
the Prince has received against him in the form of a letter. Lorenzo
establishes a humorous, witty tone with his cousin, affecting to think the
whole matter a nonsense. He then turns round and admits the charge, but
declares he was acting the role of a double agent, only seeming to join the
conspirators in order to gain entry into their ranks and so to prevent their
purposes. It is a lively
scene, Lorenzo's prose in particular being racy and vivid, a highly
theatrical mixture of colloquial, "low" style and learned allusion. The
Prince's speeches, which are in verse, are more formal, but in no way
incompetently written or uninteresting. In other words, the author of the
MS was beyond any reasonable question a competent dramatist with a good
deal of verbal and theatrical skill; there are none of the signs of the amateur
or the closet-author in these pages.
It is immediately evident that this scene has much in common with
Act I scene ii of James Shirley's play The Traitor, in which
the
Duke of Florence (Alexander de Medici) confronts his cousin Lorenzo with
an accusation of treason; Lorenzo defends himself, though in a different
way (he straightforwardly appeals to the record of his loyalty) and uses very
different language. At the very least this would suggest that the writer of
the MS and Shirley were using a common source, but if so it is a source
that has not been satisfactorily established.[9] At any rate, it is clear that the
author of
the MS followed customary Jacobean practice in basing his plot on an
historical source; he was also following fashion in using an Italianate setting
and writing a plot of political and personal intrigue. These points are worth
notice since they bear an obvious relationship to the question of what kind
of document the MS is.
Until the discovery of this manuscript, everything that has been said
about "foul papers" has been conjectural. Though there are several
examples of fair copies, prompt copies, and scribal copies of Jacobean
plays, hitherto there has been no known example of foul papers, whose
characteristics have had to be inferred from casual contemporary comment,
and from the characteristics of printed texts held to derive from them.
The MS gives flesh to these inferences, and happily confirms them as far
as its limits enable it to do. One immediately striking feature is that unlike
prompt manuscripts, it does not divide one speech from the next by a
horizontal stroke. The speech-prefixes are abbreviated, not consistently, but
quite clearly (the Prince is either "Prince" or "Pr:", and Lorenzo is
"Lorenz." or "Loren:" or "Lor:"), and placed slightly to the left of the
dialogue, except in lines where revision has caused the writer to encroach
upon the left-hand margin. The hand is current and fluent, but there is good
cause to think that the author was careful and painstaking. Altogether there
are at least 85 corrections in these four pages, more than one every second
line. This is a high rate of alteration, and suggests at once a fastidious
author, concerned with striking exactly the right note in dialogue, and with
minor details of spelling and presentation as well.
This impression is entirely confirmed by closer examination.
Consider, for instance, l. 10, which was changed from "The roome nor the
grizlie monsters Companie" to "The chamber for the grizlie monsters
Companie",[10] with evident
improvement to the rhythm; both alterations were effected by writing over
the original words "roome" and "nor" to convert them into "chamber" and
"for", a practice the writer evidently was habituated to. Lines 15-16
originally read "though that danger had | death for his Page", which was
clearly intended to conclude Alexander's speech. However, the author
improved Alexander's line to "though that danger had | for his attendant
death", following which Lorenzo's ensuing line "By heav'n my Lord"
makes up the pentameter (which would not have been the case with
Alexander's original line). This suggests not only that the change was made
currente calamo but that Lorenzo's line was not written until
the
change had been
made. An even more interesting feature of this alteration is that the author
in cancelling "death" also unwittingly or carelessly cancelled "for", a
situation editors often hypothesize to account for strange readings in printed
texts. In l. 24 "But Can the" was changed to "And Can the", then
cancelled, and written again, "And Can theare", an interesting instance of
authorial dither. Line 43 was struck out altogether, and replaced by a line
squeezed in between it and the next line of the original. This strongly
suggests authorial reconsideration subsequent to the original drafting of the
lines, though not necessarily at a subsequent date. Usually there is no way
of knowing whether alterations were made in the course of composition or
later, but here the interlined l. 44 must surely have been, to some extent,
an after-thought.
In Lorenzo's satiric diatribe (ll. 49-70) the author can be seen
carefully adjusting the colloquial language for maximum effect. In l. 50 the
profane "slight" is changed to the milder "why"[11]; in l. 53 "such small"
is cancelled, and replaced by the sharper word "pettie"; in l. 55 the striking
phrase "Ile Conjure his Coat" is replaced by the commoner, though still
forceful expression "Ile clapperclaw the villaine"; in l. 58 a reference to the
"time of plague" is changed to "a Visitation"; most strikingly, in l. 61 the
expression "ffavorite", used elsewhere in the scene, is deleted in favour of
the word "privado", a much rarer noun.
[12] A little later, at l. 74, the entire
clause
"Knowe you foster in your bosome a serpent" was carefully eliminated.
There is an interesting false start in l. 106, which begins with a
speech-prefix for Lorenzo, even though the Prince is in the middle of a
sentence.
Finally, and most helpfully, there are four stage-directions in the
pages. Unfortunately, they do not give any clue to which theatre or
company the author was writing for, but still they yield valuable
information. Though the mundane Exeunt at l. 7 is no great
help, teares the subscription at ll. 47-48 is much more useful,
since it indicates an action which cannot be inferred from the dialogue.
Even more important is the direction at ll. 71-72, Hee reades the
Prince attentively marking him, a perfect example of the kind of
"literary" or "descriptive" stage-directions which Greg and others propose
as characteristic of foul papers. Finally, at l. 82 we get a laconic
read
againe, in the imperative form allegedly characteristic of prompters.
As the MS cannot be a prompt-book it is possible to deduce from this
direction that the author was familiar enough with the theatre to know the
form prompt directions took. A further inference from these directions is
that the criteria for attempting to distinguish printed texts set up from
foul-papers copy from those derived from prompt copy may have been too
optimistic, since this author could obviously write directions that resemble
both; presumably, so could other dramatists who were familiar with
theatrical practice. These observations by no means exhaust the material
available in the MS which confirms and extends our inferential knowledge
of foul papers, but will serve to suggest the importance of the MS for study
of this kind of dramatic manuscript, and cannot fail to cause thankfulness
that, a piece of foul papers having been recovered, it should be so
wonderfully informative.
One other feature requires brief mention. There are several revisions
of a more mundane nature: the author seems to have been troubled by what
he may have thought was his old-fashioned spelling: at l. 47 "theare" is
changed to "theire" (though "theare" in the sense "there" is left to stand at
ll. 24, 33, 126, and 129); at ll. 42 and 100 "heare" was altered to the more
conventional "heere". The fact that the author was addicted to
correcting words, changing one word to another by making
a
palimpsest of it (rather than always scoring out and writing afresh) again
suggests
that the MS was revised, not only in the course of composition, but also
subsequent to its initial drafting. However, it is possible that the practice
may rather reflect the author's habits of composition. Either way, it would
pose a series of near-insoluble problems to a compositor. What can usually
be determined under bright light and magnification in 1986, namely which
letters were written first, and which written over them, would not have
been a practicable matter in the busy and probably ill-lit conditions of a
Jacobean printing-shop. One cannot generalize of course, but if a
compositor were trying to set from copy such as this (rather than a
fair-copy transcript), the practice of correction by palimpsest would surely
be reflected in strange readings in the typeset text. It therefore is of more
than a little importance that the author be identified, not just for the sake
of this MS, but for the light it might shed upon his other writings, in their
printed form.
