University of Virginia Library

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-Z4, with the text beginning on B1r, 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 Bb3r 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 Dd1r, "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 G4v of the first 1595 "Wolfe" edition of St. Peters Complaynt is on A2v and G4v 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, Aa1r of The fift Booke has offset clearly on Z4v of The First Fowre Bookes. There is light offsetting throughout The fift Booke, most noticeably on Aa1v, Dd1v, and Dd3v, 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, H4v, 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