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Notes
This paper is based, in part, on an unpublished thesis on The Plays of John Webster, considered in the light of contemporary stage conditions which was submitted for the degree of Bachelor of Letters at the University of Oxford in 1952. The writer is greatly indebted to the advice of Prof. F. P. Wilson. Unless otherwise stated, quotations are from the following copies; The White Devil, Bodleian, Mal. 216(6); The Duchess of Malfi, Harvard S.T.C. 25176A; and The Devil's Law Case, Bodleian, Mal. 199(7).
R. C. Bald first related The Duchess to these Shakespeare plays in "'Assembled' Texts," The Library, 4th ser., XII (1931).
Cf. the present writer's "On the Dating of Webster's The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi," Philological Quarterly, XXXI (1952), 353-358.
Cf. for example, Dedication, 'To the Reader in ordinarie', and 'To the Reader extraordinary', Catiline (1611); 'To the Reader', The Alchemist (1612); 'To the Reader', Poetaster (1616); and Dedication, Sejanus (1616).
The Complete Works of John Webster, ed. F. L. Lucas (1927), I, 275. Act, scene, and line references are to this edition which will be known as 'Lucas'.
Only the first occurrence of a change is shown while minor changes in the abbreviated forms are omitted.
"The Compositor of the 'Pied Bull' Lear," [Studies in Bibliography], I (1948), pp. 61-68. Compositor A was responsible for B1,1v, C1-F2v, G1-2v, H2,2v,4,4v,I3,3v, 4v, K1,3v-4v, L3-M2v.
See E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare (1930), I, 121, n. 1, for examples of a prompter cutting out a 'small part for which the author has definitely provided.'
F.8a,ll.149/50 and F.8b,l.213. At F.9a, l.263, the direction is a line too high although the speech line is correct. The vague assignment of speeches to the 'other' which is a characteristic of this MS. is not found in The White Devil. Vide, Sir Thomas More, ed. W. W. Greg (M.S.R.; 1911).
If Lucas was right in moving Antonelli's entrance forward twelve lines (from III.iii.91; F4) this misplacement is probably due to the copy; however, the quarto may be right, for 'see how yon couple greue' could refer to two of the ambassadors remaining on the stage.
Where the lining of the marginal direction does not coincide with that of the text, reference is made to the following line of the text. The Malone copy is cropped and the readings of nos. 8, 9, 12, and 13 are from the Dyce copy 10,491(2).
This correction and the one mentioned previously at IV.iii.82 are noted by Lucas; full details of the variant readings must wait for a subsequent article.
W. W. Greg, Dramatic Documents from the Elizabethan Playhouses. . . . Commentary (1931), p. 208.
They are Dekker and Middleton, The Roaring Girl (1611), Dekker, If it be not Good, the Devil is in It (1612), J. Cooke, Greene's Tu Quoque (1614), W. Smith, The Hector of Germany (1615), and The White Devil.
Cf., for instance, the theatrical cuts in the MS of The Honest Man's Fortune (Dyce MS. 9); they are described ibid., ed. J. Gerritsen (1952), pp. xx-xxi.
This note is not found in all copies; the point will be discussed with other variants in a subsequent article.
For a summary of investigations on this point, see F. P. Wilson, "Shakespeare and the 'New Bibliography,'" The Bibliographical Society, 1892-1942 (1945), pp. 110-111.
Brooke, op. cit., p. 247. The description was first quoted, E. E. Stoll, John Webster (1905), p. 29.
Probably only Antonio and Delio would have to be added as the Cardinal and Bosola, seem to leave the stage before 1.83 (at ll. 45 and 69 respectively).
R. Pallant who is in the actor list only joined the company in 1619-20; cf. Greg, review of Lucas, RES, IV (1928), 454.
F. P. Wilson, "Ralph Crane, Scrivener to the King's Players," The Library, 4th ser., VII (1926), 195.
E.g., T. Middleton, A Game at Chess, ed. R. C. Bald (1929), pp. 171-172; W. W. Greg, "Some notes on Crane's Manuscript of 'The Witch'," The Library, 4th ser., XXII (1942), 212-219; T. Middleton, The Witch, ed. W. W. Greg and F. P. Wilson (M.S.R.; 1950), pp. xiv-xv; and J. Fletcher, Demetrius and Enanthe, ed. M. McL. Cook and F. P. Wilson (M.S.R.; 1951), pp. ix-xi.
Because of this clear difference from the other plays printed by Okes, it has not been thought necessary at this stage to discuss the work of individual compositors in his workshop; this must wait until the collation of all the known copies of The Duchess of Malfi is completed when the question can be considered in the light of the variant readings.
This, and following discussions, of Crane's habits are indebted to the previous work detailed in note 47.
The White Devil has 2949, The Duchess of Malfi 2931 lines. These totals represent the lines of print in the first quartos; lines used wholly for stage directions, etc. were not counted and, when two or more adjacent lines of verse could be resolved into one decasyllabic line, only one was counted.
These figures, and all those subsequently given, refer to the text of the plays only; the preliminaries etc. are not included. The number of capitals is to the nearest 50 because it is sometimes difficult to decide whether a particular word is used as a title or not. The printing of colons in The White Devil is not always clear; a maximum computation is given from the Bodleian copy. The number of brackets denotes all uses for punctuation, a pair counting once only.
The references in The Duchess of Malfi are: 'neu'r' I.i.185(B3v), I.i.374(C2), I.i.376(C2), I.i.505(C4), I.i.557(C4v), II. iii. 92(E2v) (misprinted as 'nea'r'), III.iii.88 (H1v), IV.i.169(I3). 'you'll'd', IV.ii.272(K3); 'I'll'd', I.i.371(C2), I.i.384(C2v), III.v.142(H4v), V.ii.118(L3v), V.iv.21(M4v); 'they'll'd', I.i.288(C1); 'I'ld', I.i.439(C3); 'I'l'd', IV.ii.233(K2v), and 'Youl'd', IV.ii.62(I4). The references in The White Devil are: II.i.80(C3v), IV.ii.97(G4), and IV.i.50(G1v).
The references are, III.ii.162(G1), III. ii.224(G2), III.v.88(H3v), IV.i.59(I1v), V. iv.45(N1), V.iv.62(N1), V.iv.74(N1v), and the misprint 'caside' (II.iii.84; E2).
The references are: 'noyce', I.i.486(C3v), II.iii.16(E1v), II.v.67 (F1), IV.ii.6(I3v), IV.ii.39(I3v), IV.ii.71(I4), V.iv.5(M4v). 'Whether', III.v.124(H4), V.i.17(L1), V.ii. 316(M2v). 'sencible', IV.ii.369(K4); 'sencibly', V.iv.12 (M4v); 'doong', I.i.313(C1v) (the form 'doung' also occurs, II.i.150; D3). 'beutifie', III.iv.18(H2); and 'hether', II.i. 115(D2v) (the form 'heither' also occurs, I.i.227; B4). 'somme', I.i.213(B4), and 'dombe', III.ii. 122(F4v).
The references are: The Duchess of Malfi, 'falce', II.iii.71(E2); 'Cursses', III.v.138(H4v), and 'curss'd', IV. ii.308(K3v); and 'wincke', etc., III.i.8(F1v), I.i.390(C2v), III.i.94(F2v), III.ii.184(G1v), V.i.83(L2), V.ii.349(M2v), I.i.407(C2v), III. iii.87(H1v), III.ii.47(F3v), I.i.136(B3), III.i. 87(F2v), IV.i.79(I2), IV.ii.391(K4v), and V.i.53(L1v). The White Devil, 'falce', V.vi.169(L4v), V. vi.254(M2); 'Cursse', II.i.390(D4); 'Vnckle', etc., III.ii.321(F2v), V.iv.25(K4v), V.vi.286 and -9(M2v), V.i.83(I1v), V.i.102(I1v), V.i. 210(I3), V.ii.75(I4v), and V.iii.118(K2).
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