THE copy for A King and No King was
entered in the Stationers' Register
to Edward Blount on 7 August, 1618. There is no record of
a transfer of the copy to Thomas Walkley, who published
the first quarto in 1619. The dedicatory epistle addressed
to Sir Henry Nevill which appears only in the first quarto
seems to indicate that the quarto had been printed from a
manuscript which the publisher had secured from Nevill.[1] It is therefore possible that the
first quarto was printed from a private transcript without
the permission of the King's Company. The statement on the
title-page of the second edition of 1625 "And now the
second time Printed, according to the true Copie" may
indicate that the first quarto was not from copy which had
been furnished by the company.
The second quarto, containing many prompt notes, seems to have
been printed from the official book which the actors used
in the playhouse. There are not only many added stage
directions in this edition but also many small deletions
and minor alterations in the text. In spite of the fact
that these circumstances would seem to indicate two
different manuscripts used as copy for the two quartos,
there are a number of curious similarities in the printing
of the two editions. These similarities seem to suggest
that the second quarto was printed from a marked copy of
the first. The differences between the two texts suggest,
furthermore, that the copy for the second quarto was the
official playhouse copy with the prompter's notes.
The title-page of the first quarto reads: "A King and no King.
Acted at the Globe, by his
Maiesties Seruants. Written by Francis Beamount, and Iohn
Flecher." The second quarto substitutes "Blacke-Fryars" for "Globe," and adds the statement about the
copy. The arrangement of the title-pages is quite
different, but the curious spelling of the authors' names
is repeated in both quartos.
The first quarto type-page measures 91 mm. from margin to
margin. The Q2 page is narrower, measuring 88 mm. from
margin to margin. The type size is the same in both
quartos. The additional stage directions in the second
quarto make it impossible to print that text within fewer
pages
than the number occupied by the
text of the earlier edition. Although the number of lines
per page is the same, the second quarto, therefore, could
not be a page for page reprint. Moreover, while the size
of type is the same, the lines of the second quarto are 3
mm. shorter, thus making a line for line reprint
difficult. Yet in spite of this difference in space, the
line endings of the prose passages show a startling
correspondence.
[2] The passage at line 66,
Act V, scene i, has the line endings: laming of, for you,
have a leg, like a, of my con-, like a, verie person,
leave you, are much, in both quartos. Since the lines of
the second quarto are a trifle shorter, however, one would
expect the shorter words like
of, you,
leg, a, to be carried over to the beginning of
the succeeding line, particularly as the last line of the
paragraph is so very short that the compositor could not
have lost a line of space by so doing. Such
correspondences, then, can hardly be accidental.
In some of these prose speeches, the passage at line 96, Act
III, scene iii, and that at line 31, Act V, scene ii, for
example, the compositor of the second quarto, because of
some variation in spelling, found himself with extra space
at his disposal. Instead of filling up the line as usual,
he sometimes spaced out the words so that the line
arrangement of the first quarto is preserved.
At the beginning of the second scene of Act III, Bessus has a
long prose soliloquy. For the first twenty-five lines of
this speech the second quarto faithfully follows the line
arrangement of the first. Then at line 26 a word is lost,
and by line 35 the second quarto is three words behind the
first. In the following line the words "to account" have
been dropped out, apparently by accident, restoring the
line for line correspondence.
Two other passages may link the first two quartos. At the
beginning of scene iv, Act V, five lines of Arbaces'
speech are omitted in Q2. Instead of printing the half
lines marking the beginning and end of the cut in a single
line of type, Q2 prints them as separate lines, an awkward
arrangement which may refer back to a deletion marked on
the printed page of Q1. A second passage seems to contain
an error perpetrated by the printer of the first quarto
which has been only partially corrected in the second
quarto. At line 118, Act I, scene i, the first quarto has:
But of her eye Tigranes.
Is it the course of
The compositor has here omitted the speech head which
ought to indicate a change in speakers. It looks as though
the manuscript perhaps looked like this:
But of her eye. Tigranes.
Is it the course of
and the compositor attached the speech head to the
last line of Arbaces'
speech. In the
second quarto the missing speech head has been supplied,
making the passage read:
But of her eye Tigranes.
Tigr. Is't the course of
Iberia to vse their
prisoners thus?
A number of errors seem to have been carried over from the
first quarto to the second. The word "Souldier" at line
59, Act I, scene i, is singular in the first two quartos;
it has been corrected to the plural form in subsequent
editions. Line 269 in the same scene, which has been
emended to "To talke but idly," is given in Q1 as "to
balke but I desire," in Q2 as "to balke but I defie." The
misreading "balke" for "talke" thus occurs in all the
early quartos. At line 71, Act V, scene iii, Q1 reads
"slaue, my key" which Q2 partly corrects to "slaue my
toe." Subsequent quartos change the "slaue" of the first
two quartos to "hurts."
Still another correspondence between the first two quartos
should perhaps be noted. At the beginning of the second
Act, and at line 45 of the first scene of Act III, the
stage directions of the first quarto are sufficiently long
that it was necessary to carry the directions into a
second line. This second line, in both instances, is not
centered. The second quarto copies this unusual
arrangement.
The first quarto was printed in 88 pages, the text ending on
M2 verso. There are 38 lines to a page with many stage
directions centered to occupy a separate line of type. The
second quarto was printed in 91 pages, the text ending in
the middle of M3 recto. Again there are 38 lines to a
page, but there are more blank lines setting off stage
directions than in the first quarto, so that the line
arrangement of the first quarto looks more crowded.
In the last two gatherings, however, the arrangement of the
second quarto is quite different from that of the first.
Beginning with signature L, the number of lines per page
is reduced from 38 to 36. From this point onward even
brief stage directions are centered to occupy separate
lines, and the blank space above stage directions is
increased in width. What seems to have occurred is this.
The compositor had before him a copy which seemed to
contain more material than the first quarto. The first
edition, however, had been printed with an initial blank
leaf and two final blank leaves, an arrangement which the
Elizabethan printer considered undesirable since it
required as much labor to print one leaf as four. The
compositor of the second quarto, therefore, eliminated the
initial blank leaf by beginning his text on A2 instead of
on A3. The extra material would doubtless go to fill up
the three blank leaves. Throughout most of the work, the
arrangement seemed to be succeeding until, at signature L,
he was printing material which appeared a page and a half
earlier in Q1. At that point, perhaps because a cut of
five lines reduced the material yet to be printed, the
compositor realized that he would still have an
undesirable number of blank leaves at the end. To prevent
this, he reduced the number of lines per
page and stretched out his copy as far as possible. By
this procedure, and with the help of an ornamental tail
piece, he gained a leaf and a half, leaving only three
blank pages instead of the six of the first quarto.
Since misspellings and other errors in the first quarto
reappear in the second, it becomes probable that the
latter was printed from the former. The similarities in
typographical arrangement increase the probability. It is
difficult to explain the unexpected divergence of the last
two gatherings if we postulate a manuscript copy for Q2,
but it becomes easier to account for it if the first copy
were used as copy for the second. The conclusion to be
drawn would seem to be that Q2 is a reprint of Q1.
Q2, however, was printed from the "true copie," to all
appearances from the official stage copy. The nature of
the differences between the two texts thus becomes
significant. Except for one cut of five lines already
referred to, the text has not been noticeably altered. No
appreciable additions have been made, and differences in
readings which do appear are alterations of single words
or brief phrases. No change has been made which affects
plot or characterization. In short, no textual addition or
alteration of sufficient interest to warrant collation of
a printed copy of Q1 with a playhouse MS can be found.
The additions which have been made to Q1 consist of marginalia
which seem to be all of a prompt nature. Nearly every
stage direction has been expanded, usually in such a way
as to make the direction more explicit. Thus "Enter
Arbaces and Tigranes, with attendants" becomes "Enter
Arbaces and Tigranes two Kings, &c. The two
Gentlemen.", and "Enter Panthæa" becomes "Enter
Panthæa and 1 Gent." Musical directions have been
added. A few exits which had been unmarked in the first
quarto are marked in the second. At least one entrance
direction, "Flourish, Enter one running." on D3v appears only in the second
quarto. For the second quarto the exit directions have
been made more explicit so that characters' names are
frequently added to such directions, and group exits are
frequently broken up. One entrance in the first act has
been printed twice so that a warning of three lines is
given. One very interesting direction in the fourth act
has been expanded to indicate setting: "Enter Tigranes in
prison." In two places the technical prompter's note
"Exeunt cleere" appears in the second quarto. This note
also occurs in the prompt manuscript of Heywood's The Captives and in the
manuscript prompt notes in the Chicago copy of A Looking Glasse for London and
England.[3] In a stage direction in
the last act an actor's name occurs: "Enter Seruant, Will.
Adkinson."[4]
It seems unlikely that a publisher would deem these notes of
sufficient
general interest to hire
someone to collate a copy of the quarto with a theatrical
manuscript to secure them. If, however, the publisher had
acquired a copy of the quarto which had been used as
prompt text,
i.e. "the true copie,"
the prompter's notes would be carried over into the
printed page, giving us just such a text as we have in
Q2..
The existence of a copy of the first quarto which had been
used as the official stage copy would seem to indicate
that the King's Men, on some occasions at least, used a
printed copy for the official book. One may conjecture,
however, that the original manuscript was lost, or
destroyed in the Globe fire in 1613, thus necessitating
the use of a private transcript as copy for the first
quarto. The existence of a copy of Q1 with manuscript
playhouse notes which was later used as copy for the
second quarto would imply that there was an unrecorded
revival of the play, possibly at the Blackfriars, between
1619 and 1625.