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Notes
John Dryden, A Bibliography of Early Editions and of Drydeniana (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), pp. 93-95.
J. M. Osborn, "Macdonald's Bibliography of Dryden: An Annotated Check List of Selected American Libraries," Modern Philology, XXXIX (1941), 80-81. Recorded in G. L. Wood-ward and J. G. McManaway, A Check List of English Plays, 1641-1700 (Chicago: The Newberry Library, 1945), as no. 424.
"Variants in Early Editions of Dryden's Plays," Harvard Library Bulletin, III, no. 2 (1949), 278.
Bracketed numbers are those assigned to the newly-discovered editions by Hooker-Osborn and Bowers.
The page and line references in parentheses are to the edition of Montague Summers. Summers did not number lines within scenes and acts. Signature and line references are those of the editions under discussion.
Edition C was overlooked by Scott-Saintsbury and by Summers as contributing authoritative variants to the text of the play. Owing to the subsequent history of the text, the variants in C, although they are repeated in D and E, did not appear in later editions, all of which stem from F (1681), which in turn goes back to B.
Why F used B as a copy-text rather than the vastly superior edition C is a matter for conjecture. Normally we should expect the more recent edition to furnish copy for a new one. Since this was not done, the question arises whether a copy of C, D, or E was available to the printer, or if one were at hand, why Herringman preferred the text of B. As Dr. Bowers has suggested to me, the explanation may probably lie in the fact that edition B contained "A Defence" and that therefore B might have been preserved for the purpose of furnishing a text in case it were ever considered expedient to reprint the essay in later editions.
There are several instances in which F follows readings appearing in C, D, and E but which are not present in some copies of B. But in every case press-corrected copies of B contain these variants and are thus the source not only for the variants in C, D, and E, but also for those in F as well.
One minor, but very significant detail in the printing of F shows its neglect of CDE as copy-texts. Edition B, like A, prints the epilogue of the play on two pages, sigs. K3 and K3v; but CDE on sig. K4 only. F again uses K3 and K3v, with the last seven lines of the epilogue, as in A and B, on K3v.
There are two major differences between editions G and H. G prints the epilogue at the end of the play; H on the verso of the page bearing the prologue. In G, as in the earlier editions, the dedication is in italic type; in H this appears in roman.
It was conventional for two compositors to work in relay, each following his own counted-off copy-text. For a demonstration of this method, see Philip Williams, "The Compositor of the Pied-Bull Lear," Papers of the Bibliographical Society, University of Virginia, I (1948-49), 59ff.
If I was set from both G and H the question may be raised why each compositor was not given one half of the text to set while the other was at work upon the second half. As has been noted, the collation of I differs considerably from that of editions G and H, necessitating an extremely accurate casting off of copy, a task not impossible, but one which would have resulted in delaying the printing process. However, if only one press were employed, the compositors would need to set in relay.
According to the appearance in edition I of variants which can with certainty be traced to the earlier editions, sigs. B1, C1, C4v, D3, D3v, D4, D4v, F1, F2v, F3v, G2, G4v, H2v, H3, I1, and I1v, of edition G were used as copy-text for edition I. The dedication, the epilogue, and sigs. B2, D2, E2, E3, and E3v of edition H were used for the corresponding passages of edition I. Because of the mixed condition of the text of edition I elsewhere, it is impossible to point definitely to either one or the other edition as copy-text for I for other pages.
There is one exception to this general statement. The Folio spells the name 'Traxalla' thus on Q1v, l. 1 (290: 32), as do all editions but J and K, which misprint it 'Taxalla'. However, the spelling of this name is not a good test in the Folio, since it regularly has 'Traxalla' no matter what the other editions read.
The edition made by Summers also has the superfluous 'with', and this, together with many other instances in which his text and that of the Folio are in accord to the neglect of more authoritative readings, indicates that the Folio was probably the copy-text for his modern edition in spite of his misleading claims for early authority.
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