The growth of the text
There are three possible models for the development of the two
versions. The first, which I prefer, is that the A version preserves the
original form of the poem and the B version is a later (perhaps much later)
revision. The second, which has been assumed by all editors of Rochester,
is that the B version preserves the original form and the A version is a
revision, though in this case one that was already present at the earliest
stage of circulation. The third is that the A and the B versions derived
independently from a lost version that was either radically different from
either of them, or so equally balanced between them as to be assignable to
neither group. While such a derivation is textually possible, the historical
evidence mitigates against it and it will not be considered further.
The case for the primacy of the A version rests on the form in which
the poem was recorded by Haward and the fact that his version is the
earliest by at least seventeen years of those that survive. Od8
carefully divides the poem into two sections with the second classified as
"Additions." The simple sense of this would seem to be that the
fourteen-stanza version preserves something close to the original form in
which the poem was circulated at court in 1673, and that the additions
represent a subsequent initiative, material from which in some cases found
its way into an enlarged integral text. Under this assumption
BLh17 would represent a version revised to the extent of
incorporating lines 25-28, 33-36, 41-44 and 65-72, found in the
Od8 additions, into the main text and rationalizing the order
of
stanzas, but not so far as adding the "pursuit" stanzas (ll. 81-92), which are
present in Od8/2, though not in the concluding position they
occupy in the B
version. In fact, both Od8/1 and BLh17
conclude
with lines 61-64, 73-76, though with the two stanzas in the reverse of this
order in Od8/1. As mentioned earlier, all the B-version lines
are
to be found in one or other of the A-version sources. Under
this hypothesis, the B version would represent a second level of revision,
based on an A-version text different from either of those we possess.
An opposed view, tacitly accepted by Vieth, Wilson and Walker, is
that it is the B version, not Od8/1, that represents the original
form of the poem; that Od8/1, by implication, should be
regarded as a cut-down version of this; and that Od8/2 is an
assemblage of "lost" as well as added stanzas. (In fact none of the editors
mentioned even discusses the problem of the versions, only Walker warning
his readers that there are problems with the text of this
poem.)
This order of development is not impossible but requires us to assume a
self-consciously literary origin for the poem, which seems at odds with its
improvisatory, occasional air and the likelihood that its early transmission
would have been as much in sung as in written form. (The B version is
certainly the more polished.) It also seems to proceed from the assumption
that the poem is the work of Rochester rather than, say, of some court
singer, an assumption that is far less secure than editors
have suggested. A further objection, already raised, is that, while we know
from BLh17 and the marginal addition to
OSe15 that
the A version was known in the 1690s, there is no evidence prior to this
date for the existence of the B version.
To gain further purchase on the dating problem it will be necessary
to consider the political meaning of the satire both at the time of
composition and at that of its renewed circulation in the mid-1690s. In its
original conception it was an attack on the Yorkist party at court, whose
position had been strengthened by the marriage of the Catholic heir to the
throne to a Catholic princess. (This theme is particularly apparent in
Od8/2, but the majority of the victims throughout were either
Catholics or sympathisers.) Its circulation at this period was clearly
anonymous and its substance elastic: Haward went as far as to leave a blank
space for any future additions he might acquire or invent. Intended for
singing, it was to be regarded as a performance piece rather than a work for
the eye. Once its topicality departed, it ceased to be transcribed and is
found in none of the many scribal anthologies of the later 1670s and the
1680s.
The reappearance of the poem in anthologies of the 1690s must have
resulted from more than the chance survival of a copy. There could hardly
have been much interest in the sexual taunts of twenty years earlier, but
there would certainly have been in the connection with Mary of Modena,
who had gone into exile in December 1688 and was now living near Paris
with her husband, James II. The revival of a poem poking fun at the events
of her marriage and at the morals of the Catholic nobility of that epoch
would have an obvious polemic value to supporters of the Protestant
succession. Moreover, if the renewed circulation of the satire at this stage,
in anthologies written by professional scribes, was a deliberate anti-Jacobite
initiative, it is also possible that the rewriting that produced the B version
was done at that time. The compiler of BLh17 and the
annotator
of OSe15 were presumably interested in the poem for the
same
reason but had encountered it in the A
version.
By accepting the hypothesis that Od8/1 preserves the
earliest form of the poem and that all other surviving texts are derived from
this version (or something like it), we are able to establish the place of
BLh19 in the tradition. Its agreement in A-version readings
against the scriptorium texts at 12 "chance get," 17 "The," 21 "My good,"
30 "Harrys," 56 "fittest," 59 "With" and 84 "upon" (see list of variants)
indicates that it cannot itself be descended from the Cameron scriptorium
master copy, but is a collateral descendent from a higher-level ancestor.
Reconstruction of the readings of this ancestor would require adjudication
between those of BLh19 and those of the scriptorium master
copy which can itself be reconstructed from its descendants. The printed
text of 1703 may also be independently derived from the common ancestor
of BLh19 and the scriptorium master copy, though the
evidence
for this is less marked, and I would place greater weight on its
agreements with V90 which include the displacement of lines
33-36.[10]
