Some Bibliographical Notes on Samuel Daniel's
Civil Wars
by
James G.
McManaway
THE FIRST FOWRE BOOKES OF THE CIVILE warres
between the two houses of Lancaster and Yorke
(1595; a fifth book appeared without title-page or date)
by Samuel Daniel,[1] which has long engaged
the attention of Shakespearians, is a fine poem, well
worth reading for its own sake. Since no part of it is
included in the recent volume of selections from Daniel
edited by Professor A. C. Sprague, the text is not readily
available. Before a modern edition can appear, there are
several bibliographical puzzles to be solved. Some of the
data for their attempted solution are collected in "A
Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Daniel, 1585-1623"[2] by Mr. H. Sellers; others which I
shall use are derived from my examination of the copies in
the Carl H. Pforzheimer, the Pierpont Morgan, the New York
Public, and the Folger Shakespeare Libraries and the
Library of Congress, and from other information generously
supplied by officials in several other institutions.[3]
The first problem relates to the title-page of The First Fowre Bookes, of which
there are two distinct printings, each printed by Peter
Short for Simon Waterson, and each dated 1595. One of
these bears McKerrow and Ferguson's
title-page border 160, which has at top a compartment
enclosing the Royal Arms between Fame and Victory;
[4] I shall refer to copies with this
title-page as the "Royal Arms issue." The other is printed
with McKerrow and Ferguson border 177, which has at the
top "IHS" in a circular glory;
[5] copies with
this title-page will be called the "IHS issue." Since the
verso of both title-pages is blank and the collation of
most copies is
i1 B-Z
4, with the text beginning on
B1
r, it is not easy to
determine how the two title-pages were printed.
1. The most economical method would have been to set up the
two pages simultaneously and print them together with one
pull of the bar, after which they could be separated and
attached indifferently to the text. It seems unlikely that
Short did this, for the two title-pages were printed on
several different kinds of paper, and among the copies I
have had the opportunity to examine carefully I have found
no one variety of paper used to print both kinds of
title-page. Furthermore, the surviving copies of the book
have the IHS page in the ratio of two to one. Finally,
there are at least two copies which have a blank leaf
conjugate with the title-page—Professor Hazen
reports this of the IHS copy at Columbia University, and
Mrs. Richmond of the IHS copy in the Chapin.
The problem of the priority of the title-pages is complicated
by the fact that the book did not sell as rapidly as the
author and publisher might have wished, with the result
that in 1599, when Waterson had Short print Musophilus, Cleopatra, etc.,
unsold copies of The First Fowre
Bookes were put first in a volume bearing the
title, The Poeticall Essayes of Sam.
Danyel . . . , 1599. In some copies of Poeticall Essayes, The First Fowre
Bookes retains the Royal Arms title-page;
others, the IHS title page; while yet others have a cancel
title, The Ciuill Wars of England . . .
, 1599. The ratio in copies known to me is
seven to sixteen to ten, respectively.
2. If The First Fowre Bookes did not
sell rapidly, did Waterson attempt to improve sales by
cancelling the original title-page
at some time between 1595 and 1599 and having Short print
a cancel? This seems unlikely, because copies of
Poeticall Essayes (1599) are
known in which
The First Fowre
Bookes has now one and now the other 1595
title-page.
[6] This would indicate that
Waterson's remainder stock in 1599 must have included
copies of the 1595 book in both issues, an unlikely state
of affairs if he had decided to insert a new title-page at
some time after 1595.
[7] At first he issued
copies of
Poeticall Essayes (1599)
with whichever 1595 title-page came to hand, but after a
time he substituted the cancel title-page dated 1599 to
disguise the fact that approximately half of the book
consisted of remainder sheets.
3. A third possibility is that the change from one title-page
to the other was made when the book was being printed in
1595.[8] Of the copies I have examined, none
has a blank leaf conjugate with the title, and although
others may exist I have a record of only the Columbia
University copy referred to above, in which an IHS page is
followed by a conjugate blank A2 (the watermark is
tentatively identified as a dog), and the Chapin copy, in
which the IHS title-page—without watermark—is
preceded by a conjugate blank leaf. Mr. Sellers assumes
the presence of such a blank but cites no copy containing
it. It is possible, therefore, that most of the blank
leaves were removed and used to print the second
title-page. Or the substitution of one page for the other
may have come as a stop-press correction. I incline to
this last explanation and suggest that the Royal Arms page
was displaced when not more than a third of the edition
had been printed. At this point the IHS page was
substituted, and copies were delivered to Waterson for
sale in the proportion of one with Royal Arms to two with
IHS title-pages.[9]
As has been stated, unsold copies of
The First Fowre Bookes were
incorporated into the volume issued as
Poeticall Essayes in 1599. It is not my
purpose to prepare an edition of either work, and so I
have not collated the text; but there is no reason to
suspect that it varies except as stop-press corrections
were inserted.
[10]
The second problem is presented by Daniel's Book V. This is
known in two different printings, as Sellers points out,
but he leaves unanswered several pertinent questions: what
is the relation of one edition to the other; when were the
two editions printed; and by whom? It is obvious at a
glance that neither edition was intended to have an
independent existence. There is no title-page in either
edition and no colophon. Each begins with a head-title
which serves to identify it, the spelling in one being
"fift" and in the other "fyft." The collations are
identical, Aa-Ee4; and the foliation
in each is 89-108, consecutive with that of The First Fowre Bookes.
It is clear, I think, that Book V is a later continuation, for
both 1595 title-pages mention only four books, and it is
safe to assume that both editions were in existence in
1599 when Poeticall Essayes was
published, for the cancel title-page bearing that date
which Waterson prefixed to The First
Fowre Bookes reads, The
Ciuill Wars of England. Within these limits,
the date of composition—and first printing—of
Book V is unknown. Whenever it came from
the press, one would expect the author to insist upon a
cancel title-page to advertise his augmentation of the
text, and the publisher to accede in order that a
slow-moving, but now more expensive book might be made
more attractive to customers. Yet not until 1599 was an
inclusive title-page prepared, and it is not present in
all copies of
Poeticall Essayes.
Collation of the two texts will satisfy anyone that one
edition was printed from the other. For example, the
erroneous catchword "Of" on Bb3
r is
found in both editions, as is the misspelling "mimens"
(for "immens") in stanza 52 line 5. Two curious spellings,
common to both editions, may also be noted: "We'ill" in
88.9 and "Be'ing" in 105.2 (in 116.3, "fift" book reads
"be'ing" but "fyft" book "being"). The variant in stanza
116, line 3 suggests that the spelling "be'ing" is
peculiar to Daniel (or his scribe) and that the "fyft"
edition, which normalizes it to "being" is derivative,
i.e., that the "fift" edition
came first and that "fyft" is a reprint of it. The
suggestion is supported by the fact that while "fift" has
an erroneous catchword, "Thus" on Dd1
r, "fyft" reads correctly "Thys."
[11]
There is other than textual evidence, however, and in my
opinion it not only confirms the priority of editions just
suggested but also shows that the editions did not come
from the same printing house and that neither was printed
by Peter Short. In the first place, three different fonts
of type were used in printing (a) The
First Fowre Bookes, (b) the "fift" book, and
(c) the "fyft" book. The printer's measure for the books
in the order just listed is 101 mm., 103 mm., and 94 mm.
And an eight-line stanza measures respectively 45 mm., 45
mm., and 48 mm. This evidence is, of course, not
conclusive, but it is significant that throughout Books
I-IV, Short uses a digraph oo,[12] while in the
"fift" and "fyft" books the digraph never appears.[13] There are other typographical
differences, but they may be passed over to consider
weightier evidence.
The fift Booke has on Aa1 a head
ornament 90 x 14 mm., in the center of which is a human
face with a small crescent above the
forehead; on each side of the head is an approaching
snail. This ornament occurs also in both
[14] 1595 editions of Robert Southwell's
St. Peters Complaynt, which
in their imprints are said to have been printed by John
Wolfe in 1595.
[15] There is good reason
for thinking, however, that after 1594 Wolfe acted only as
a publisher.
[16] An examination of other
books printed in 1594, 1595, and 1596 discloses the fact
that other ornaments of the Southwell books were used
repeatedly in those years and even later by John Windet.
For example, the tailpiece on G4
v of
the first 1595 "Wolfe" edition of
St.
Peters Complaynt is on A2
v and G4
v of the second
1595 "Wolfe" edition; this compact ornament showing two
cherubs playing a lute and a viol was used frequently by
Windet.
[17] Another ornament, which shows the
half-figure of a child and two satyrs, is in the two
"Wolfe" 1595 editions of Southwell and in several books
printed by Windet.
[18] Since Peter Short used
none of these ornaments it appears probable that John
Windet printed the two editions of
St.
Peters Complaynt in 1595 for John Wolfe and
that he was also the printer called in by Simon Waterson
in or shortly after 1595 to print
The
fift Booke of the Ciuill warres betweene the two
Houses of Lancaster and Yorke.
[19] His employment is not remarkable,
for in 1593 he had printed
STC
6467,
The Defence of Contraries,
for Waterson.
There is visible proof of the haste with which sheets of The
fift Booke were made available to
Waterson for binding up with unsold copies of
The First Fowre Bookes. In the
two Folger copies, Aa1
r of
The fift Booke has offset
clearly on Z4
v of
The First Fowre Bookes. There is light
offsetting throughout
The fift
Booke, most noticeably on Aa1
v, Dd1
v, and Dd3
v, which bear offsets of the
marginal glosses on the facing rectos. This appearance of
haste in what I take to be the first edition of Book V
puzzles me. It would not be surprising in a small second
edition, run off when it was discovered that the first
edition was nearly sold out. But the ratio of survival of
the two editions, 16 to 6, points clearly to
The fift Booke as the earlier
and larger edition.
Next we may consider the identity of the printer of The fyft Booke and its date.
There is no head ornament to help identify the printer,
but the watermarks resemble closely those in Edward
Guilpin's Skialetheia which was
printed in 1598 for Nicholas Ling by James Roberts.[20] It is true that other printers may
have used paper from the Bayonne area about this time, and
so the identification of Roberts on this evidence cannot
be considered final. Waterson employed Roberts to help
print STC 6254, Daniel's Delia and Rosamond in 1594. In
the same year Roberts printed for him STC 19383, Robert Parsons' A Booke of Christian Exercise and reprinted
it in 1598 (STC 19384), 1599 (STC 19384a), and 1601 (19385).
Relations between the two men were continuous in the
period in question, and, as we shall see, Roberts was
almost certainly the printer of a disjunct leaf of "Faults
Escaped in the printing" which is found in a number of
copies of Daniel's poem.[21]
This leaf of "Faults Escaped," which presents the next
problem, has a head ornament measuring 91 x 16 mm., with a
butterfly in the center. The same ornament occurs
repeatedly in other books printed by Roberts. In STC 7203, Drayton's Ideas Mirrour (1594), for
example, it is on B1, B2, C1, C2, D3, D4, E3, E4, F3,
F3v, G3, G3v, and H1v. Other books
in which it is found are STC 1084,
Babington's A Briefe Conference
(1596), B1; STC 16958, Lupton's A Thousand Notable Things
(1595), A2; STC 17059, Lyly's
Euphues (?1595), B1; and
STC 22956, Southwell's
St. Peters Complaynt (for
Cawood, 1595), A4, F2, H4
v, and I2.
The paper is unlike that used elsewhere in
The First Fowre Bookes and
Poeticall Essayes for
title-pages or text, having chain lines very wide
apart—35 mm. Unfortunately, no copy examined has a
watermark. My conclusion is that James Roberts was the
printer of
The fyft Booke and also
of the leaf of Faults Escaped, and that they were produced
in 1599, when Waterson discovered that he had an
insufficient quantity of
The fift
Booke to match the remainder copies of
The First Fowre Bookes.
Of the twelve corrections indicated in the list of errata,
five are for the first four books and seven for the fifth
book. The leaf could not have been printed, then, until at
least one edition of Book V was in existence,[22] and it appears safe to infer that
both editions of Book V preceded it, for neither edition
has any of the corrected readings in the copies I have
examined.[23]
So much for certain of the bibliographical puzzles connected
with the variant title-pages of The
First Fowre Bookes, the two editions of Book
V, and the Errata Leaf. Whether or not my solutions be
correct, no editor dare produce a modern edition until
they are solved. For as Sir Walter Greg has demonstrated,[24] the authoritative text is that
based on the author's manuscript; in it will be found the
closest approximation to what he wrote—his spelling,
his punctuation. The other text is wholly derivative.
Moreover, until we know with the greatest possible
certainty how much time elapsed between the writing of
Books I-IV and Book V of The Civil
Wars it is impossible to estimate Daniel's
development as a poet. Is the historical point of view in
Book V the same as in the earlier books? If there was a
long interval before the writing of Book V, were Daniel's
thought or his verse modified by the English historical
plays being acted on the London stage or
by the various complaints and heroical epistles being
published by other poets? Until a dependable chronology,
supported by bibliographical evidence, can be formulated,
there is no answering these and cognate questions.
Now let us turn back to The First Fowre
Bookes and consider briefly a problem that I
have not attempted to solve, but upon which it is possible
to make a few observations. The text of this book was
printed on various kinds and qualities of paper. One
Folger copy (HH 65/29) is printed on a cheap paper that
has turned quite brown. The watermarks are generally alike
throughout the book, and the chain lines are about 25 mm.
apart. The paper in another Folger copy (HH 65/30) is
markedly superior; one kind of watermark appears in sheets
S and Y and another elsewhere in the book, but neither
resembles those in HH 65/29; and chain lines are about 30
mm. apart. In the other three Folger copies, much the same
kind of paper is used throughout, to judge by the
watermarks and by the chain lines, which are about 27 mm.
apart. But the paper is quite different from that in HH
65/30 and HH 65/29. I suspect that a few copies were
printed on cheap paper, the bulk of the edition on good
paper, and perhaps a small number of copies on fine, large
paper.[25] I have put the cheap
paper copies first because in HH 65/29, the Folger copy
printed on thick paper, the marginal gloss on Q4r is improperly located, as noted
above; but this same copy has the corrected headline on
Z3v. One should really
collate all copies of the book and after tabulating the
uncorrected and corrected states of the formes should
correlate the data with a complete listing of the
watermarks in every copy. Since I am not engaged in
editing the book, I have not collated all copies; and it
will surely be agreed that I have no right to impose upon
busy curators of rare book collections by asking for a
report on the watermarks. This is a study that should be
undertaken, however, for Daniel's Civil
Wars merits reprinting, and we know all too
little about fine-paper editions of Elizabethan books.
Notes
