AS STUDENTS OF THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH drama are only too well aware, the year 1661
saw a sudden spring for one of the more lucrative ventures in commercial publishing, the
pirating of popular plays. With the theatres once again open, and the stocks of play-books
understandably low, here was a heaven-sent opportunity for the less scrupulous publisher, and
there is evidence that he took it. A name that looms large in all accounts of the matter is
that of Francis Kirkman. For a general account the reader may be referred to Professor R. C.
Bald's article in Modern Philology, XLI (1943), 17-32, and to Mr
Strickland Gibson's Bibliography of Francis Kirkman, Oxford, 1949
(Oxford Bibliographical Society), unless he wishes to immerse himself in Kirkman's own, and
not unamusing, The Unlucky Citizen, 1673.
Kirkman, in fact, denied all responsibility, though not quite all complicity, stating that
he had been drawn in by others and that he, for his part, only printed three play-books, which
were his own proper copies. Whatever truth there be in this — and we may note that Mr
Gibson accepts it more or less implicitly —, the owners of the copyrights were not
impressed, took the simplest way out, and had Kirkman's stock seized. And Kirkman, as he tells
us himself, never got any redress.
At this day, it is doubtful whether we shall ever know the ins and outs of the matter, but
what can be said with certainty is that Kirkman, whether or not he was the principal culprit
(and unlike any of the
other candidates with the exception of his printer,
Thomas Johnson) can be connected with most of these piracies.
That this is so was borne in upon the present writer in a rather unusual way. On 17
September 1955, while examining the Folger Shakespeare Library's holdings in Beaumont and
Fletcher, he came upon an excerpt from the 1647 folio, signatures 2K2-2M4v, consisting of exactly one play, Beggars Bush. And the point
of the examination at that stage being watermarks, it was not less than startling to note that
the marks in the excerpt did not belong in the folio. A cursory examination of the text,
however, was enough to show that this was not an excerpt from the folio at all, but an
independent print, made to resemble the folio as much as possible. Signatures and lay-out were
the same, there was even the same row of fleurons at the head of the text, but the ornamental
initial I was different, the tailpiece was different, and the spelling was rather more modern,
beginning with the head-title itself, which reads BUSH, not BVSH.
Now there would be an obvious explanation handy in the recollection that both for the 1616
Jonson first folio and the 1685 Shakespeare fourth folio, under-printed sheets had been
reprinted at a later date to make up complete sets when the stock of these sheets fell short.
But this explanation seemed just a little too pat. For though the cases just mentioned are
well-established, and though for the Jonson the resetting was much more extensive than has
been realized, it seemed rather fortuitous that resetting should have been necessary not
merely for six consecutive sheets, but for six consecutive sheets containing exactly one
play.
These considerations seemed sufficient to reject the supplementary reprint theory as a
working hypothesis, and to cast about for a better one. And in this connexion one fact was
thought not without possible significance. Beggars Bush was printed in
the 1647 folio, which means that Moseley, like ourselves, did not know of any earlier edition.
The first known print outside the folio, in fact, was the quarto published by Humphrey
Robinson and Anne Moseley, the owners of the copyright, in 1661. Now in some copies of this
quarto there is a note on the title-page which did not look without its possibilities in the
context:
You may speedily expect those other Playes, which Kirkman,
and his Hawkers have deceived the buyers withall, selling them at treble the value, that this
and the rest will be sold for, which are the onely Originall and corrected copies, as they
were first purchased by us at no mean rate, and since printed by us.
What no-one had explained so far was why, of all plays, Beggars Bush
should have been selected for reprinting and for carrying this note, unless that play itself
had been pirated. And the accusing finger pointed at Kirkman seemed well worth the trouble of
examining all the books printed for him and connected with him in the years 1660-1662 that
could be found. The total came to just over twenty, and among these, two were of particular
significance: John Dauncey's A Compendious Chronicle of the Kingdom of
Portugal, 1661, and the same author's The English Lovers, or, a Girl
worth Gold, 1662. The first of these gives Thomas Johnson for its printer, both are
printed for Kirkman and one or two others, and both have at the end an identical catalogue of
books printed for and to be sold by Francis Kirkman,[1] followed by an Advertisement which, with a fine insolence, runs as
follows:
Those books and playes specified in the preceding Catalogue, I acknowledge to be
my own Copies, and printed by my direction and order, but whereas in the title page of a Play
called Beggers Bush, I am charged with printing and publishing that
play and others, and to have exhausted the Prices of them, I desire notice may be taken that
I printed none of them, but whosoever did, though he have printed them in a fairer Character
and better Paper, yet can and will afford them as cheap as any whose Covetousness makes them
print them in a Character, and Paper not fit for any Gentleman to look on.
Though that is
not its main significance in our context, it may be noted that the phrasing of the
advertisement leaves an interesting loophole, for all that Kirkman really says, after having
first been so explicit about 'my direction and order' and 'printing and publishing', is that
he never printed any of them. Since he never was a printer, that, doubtless, is entirely
true.
What is, however, of special importance for our investigation is Kirkman's amplification of
the Beggars Bush accusation. Though the use of the words 'those other
Playes' clearly implied that the play itself had been pirated, Robinson and Mrs Moseley did
not actually say so. But Kirkman, the dramatic specialist, who in at least five of his
publications
offered to furnish anyone with 'all the Playes that were ever
yet printed', and who published a list of nearly 700 after
Tom Tyler and his
Wife, not only acknowledges the charge
expressis verbis, but also
does not deny the piracy's existence. And for a very good reason, for he is offering it for
sale in the front of the very book, the
Chronicle, in which the
Advertisement first appears. There, in a list of works of which he has 'sufficient numbers',
and heading the section
Playes, we find:
The
Beggars Bush, a Comedy written by Fran. Beamont and John
Fletcher, both in folio, and in quarto.
And the list goes on:
The Humerous Lieutenant; a Comedy, in
folio.
Taken by themselves, these two Beaumont and Fletcher entries might be, and generally have
been thought to refer to excerpts from the 1647 folio. But surely, Kirkman would never have
had 'sufficient numbers' — and the works are mentioned 'more especially' for this reason
— of just two excerpts from the folio. There was thus, not only, a piracy of
Beggars Bush, but also one, still to be recovered, of
The Humorous Lieutenant.
What we know then, so far, is that our Beggars Bush was in existence
in 1661, and probably appeared not very long before the quarto, as a member of a larger series
of piracies. Now three piratical reprints, The Elder Brother, A King and no
King, and The Maids Tragedy, are known with the imprint London,
Printed in the Year, 1661, which at least leaves no doubt about their date. But five others
have at various times been assigned to this year, though they all have the same imprint as the
previous legitimate edition. They are, another Elder Brother, '1637'
(STC 11067, Greg 515c); Loves Mistress, '1640' (STC 13354, Greg 504c);
Philaster, '1652' (Greg 363g, not in Wing); and two reprints of The Scornful Lady, '1651' (Wing B 1608, Greg 334g; and Greg 334h, not in
Wing). To these we may now add Beggars Bush, folio, and our
hypothetical The Humorous Lieutenant, folio, making ten in all. And the
only man ever to advertise them all, is Francis Kirkman.[2]
Links between Beggars Bush and the others are not far to seek, nor
are links between the piracies and the other publications of Kirkman and his syndicate around
1661.
It is true that Beggars Bush is set apart from the rest by its format
— a pirate who wished to be undetected was obliged to reprint in
folio — so that we need not look for the use of standing type, but enough distinctive
features remain to make identification easy.
The main fount, to begin with, is a peculiar one. Basically a normal pica fount, measuring
81 mm for 20 lines, it is notable for the addition of small caps and titling caps cast on the
same pica body, used indiscriminately instead of the normal size.[3] Apparently the fount had once fallen short on capitals,
but the use of titling caps to make good the deficiency is highly uncommon and makes the fount
very easy to spot.
Now this fount has long been known to occur in some of the 1661 piracies, but that is not
its only appearance. We find it in both the '1637' and the 1661 Elder
Brother, in A King and no King, in The Maids
Tragedy, and further in Hells Higher Court of Justice (Wing D 27,
1661), The English Lovers, Tom Tyler, the Catalogue, all 1661, and finally in The Wits,
printed for Henry Marsh, 1662.
We may further note that the titling B on 2K2va, l. 11 from below, of
Beggars Bush was printed by the identical type which printed that on
B3v, l. 19, of the '1637' Elder Brother, while
the King and no King uses for its act headings the same fount as does
the Beggars Bush, the identity being proved by the u of Tertius on
2L1v of the latter, which was put there by the same type that printed
the second u of Secundus on B3v of the former.
Moreover, we find another link with Tom Tyler in that the same rather
coarse ornamental I opens both plays, an I which also appears in Matthew Griffith, The Fear of God and the King (Wing G 2012),[4] which was printed for (and by?) Thomas Johnson in 1660.
Now Tom Tyler, in its turn, shares probably its watermark, and
certainly its ornamental block of a vase and flowers, with the '1637' Elder
Brother. The latter, again, shares another ornamental block and an ornamental initial N
of the same series as the I with the 1661 Elder Brother, and on iA2 it has the identical setting of fleurons which we find at the top of
A2v in The Presbyterian Lash, or, Noctroff's Maid
Whipt, printed 'for the use of Mr. Noctroff's friends' in 1661. The Lash has some importance for dating purposes, as it was received by Thomason on 25
March. It is a skit, written to annoy the Rev. Zachary Crofton, and it has a preface signed by
K. F. On the same principle
which turned Crofton into Noctroff, K. F. is
customarily read as F. K., i.e. Francis Kirkman.
The Lash, besides assuring us that the '1637' Elder
Brother was actually printed in March, 1661, further links up with Hells Higher Court through a defective large capital C on the title-page of both, and
another defective italic capital C occurring on the title-page of the former and in one of the
headlines of the latter. The '1637' Elder Brother, moreover, shares an
initial B of the same series as before with the King and no King.
The English Lovers, next to be considered, is a more intricate case.
Like the Lash and Hells Higher Court, it
presents evidence of more than one text fount, but unlike these, it was not so clearly set up
in one shop. No reservations need, however, be made in stating that the first five sheets of
this octavo volume were printed in the same shop as the others now under consideration. On B1
we find the same large C already noticed in the Lash and Hells Higher Court; on B4 we find a large lower case O which recurs in the
head-title on B1 of the 1661 Elder Brother, and on the title-page of
this play we see that the d of Elder was printed by the same type which printed on D6v of the Lovers. Similarly, a large titling E on
A4v recurs on the title-page of The Maids
Tragedy. And to confirm the correctness of our identification of the text fount, we
notice a pica titling S on C8.
These nine books, then, Beggars Bush, the '1637' and 1661 Elder Brother, Hells Higher Court, the Lash, A King and no King, The
Maids Tragedy, Tom Tyler and its Catalogue, and the first section of the Lovers form a compact
group and leave no doubt that they come from one shop. A similarly compact group can be found
if we now examine the remaining piracies and the other productions of the Kirkman group.
The piracies still to be accounted for are the '1652' Philaster, the
'1640' Loves Mistress, and the two reprints of The
Scornful Lady, both dated 1651. The relation, if any, of the second Scornful Lady, Greg's no 334g, to the rest is not clear, though it is certain that it
was set partly from the other (334h) and partly from the true 1651 edition. But the first Scornful Lady shares with Loves Mistress a damaged
titling N of medium size, occurring on the title-page in both volumes, and, as already noted
by Professor Bowers,[5] the fleuron
band on A1v of Loves Mistress recurs, with the
addition of two parentheses, on A2 of The Scornful Lady. Similarly, we
find on A2 of Loves Mistress a certain
obliquely
decapitated fleuron which recurs on A2 of
Philaster, and also on A2 of
A pleasant Comedy,
called, The Two Merry
Milk-maids, printed by Thomas Johnson and sold by Brook, Kirkman, Johnson and Marsh,
i.e. the same consortium of
Tom Tyler, 1661. And moreover,
Loves Mistress now turns out to have similar links with the
Milk-maids, of which we may mention the two E's of READER on A2 of the
latter, which recur in PHENIX and EDWARD on respectively the title-page and A2 of the
former.
Some further links in our chain are now easily come by, since they were already worked out
by Professor Bowers in his article just cited, and we may add The Thracian
Wonder, A Cure for a Cuckold and Gammer Gurtons
Nedle without further comment, except for noting that they are all dated 1661 and all
mention Thomas Johnson for their printer, with Kirkman and his group, including Johnson, for
publishers. The year's productions can now be rounded off with A merry
Dialogue between Band, Cuff, and Ruff, printed for F. K., 1661, another little gadfly
affair like Hells Higher Court and, to some extent, the Lash, but far from new. It presents an immediate link with Philaster, as they have an identical fleuron setting and enclosing rules
— with slight extra leading in Band, Cuff and Ruff — on
their title-pages.
The only publication which now remains,[6] besides the one Scornful Lady, is Bottom the Weaver (Wing S 2937), which was printed for Kirkman and Marsh in 1661, could
well belong to either group, but has nothing that will serve for a definite link.
There is, however, one further publication that should be linked to this group, and one
which, between its covers, crystallizes the problem of the relation between the two groups:
The English Lovers.
As already observed, the Lovers' first section unambiguously belongs
with our first group. But as stated on an earlier page, it also has at its end a catalogue and
advertisement of Kirkman's which appeared in the identical type-setting, except for minor
corrections made in the Lovers, at the end of the Chronicle of Portugal. In both books they form an integral part of the work, not a
separate final section as do some other advertisement lists, and all necessary conjugacies can
be easily established. The Chronicle is a signed Johnson book, and
though, as an unadorned octavo, it provides no typographic links with the second group, which
is also certainly Johnson's work, it is yet sufficient to link the Lovers also with that group.
The Lovers, indeed, is a complicated book. Its collation, 8°:
A-E8,
2A-M
8, is modestly intriguing, but the evidence
from headlines and type is very much so, though at least they go together: 1: (A) B-E; 2:
2A-D,
2K-M; 3:
2E-I. Or more
explicitly, the book begins with five sheets signed A-E, all in the same pica text fount, and
with the same sets of headlines persisting from B through E. There we find the signatures, and
pagination, starting all over at A and 1 again, with a different set of headlines and a
different pica text fount, while the text begins with Part I, Book II. And though, with four
pages of that Book to go, the text is continuous from
2D to
2E, after
2D type and headlines suddenly jump five
sheets to pick up at
2K and quietly finish the book, while in between,
sheets
2E-I, we find a third pica text fount and a third set of
headlines. And as if cutting the book into sections of five, four, five, and three sheets
respectively were not enough, we moreover discover that K was already printed off by the time
I was being set, since the compositor of I, three lines from the end of I1
v, concluded that he had not enough copy left to fill his sheet and decided to make it
do so all the same by turning in his pica cases and using english instead.
[7] This time he cast off correctly, and
the larger type did the job.
Our problem, whether our two groups of books are both from the shop of Thomas Johnson,
therefore resolves itself into the question whether The English Lovers
was entirely set up in it or not.
Now the division of copy seems rather peculiar for work in more than one shop, and the
signatures will not countenance it at all, unless we are to assume that by the time printing
started, only about half the book had yet been written, a hypothesis that has little to
commend itself, also in view of the continuous printing from 2D to 2K. But if the whole copy was available before the book was allocated to
its printer(s), then the division of the copy into four shares does not fit with division
among either two or the maximum three shops, because of the sandwiching of one printer's stint
between two stints of another.
Moreover, if the copy was originally divided between several shops it would have been cast
off first, and we should not expect a perfect link from 2D to 2E and such an imperfect one from 2I to 2K.
But what especially argues against division among shops is the signing. If the copy had been
cast off before division among shops,
the signatures would have been marked
in it, and not only would the second printer not have started with A again, but the third
printer, whether or not he was identical with the first, would never have begun to sign his
stint with E.
If, however, the whole book was the work of a single shop, it is not difficult to account
for what happened. With an original cast-off only so far forward as to ensure a proper join
between the first two sections, the missigning in the second section can be explained as the
result of the second compositor's notion that he had the first sheet of text, his colleague at
the other press the preliminaries, including the beginning of the text. That this is not
far-fetched is demonstrated by this colleague himself, who also missigned the first page of
the sheet following the preliminaries A, instead of B.[8] And of course the consequential missigning in 2E becomes automatic.
There are some further links between the two groups, though none of them of a compelling
nature. Thus a particular found of handsome titling capitals, easily recognizable because its
E's and I's came from faulty matrices and invariably show a more or less clear white hairline
about mid-way across the shank, is in evidence in both. The E's mentioned for Loves Mistress and the Milk-maids belong to it, and
similar E's are to be found in the 1661 Elder Brother and in the first
section of the Lovers, from the other group. And in fact there are some
indications that our group differences are indeed differences, not between shops, but between
compositors in one shop using distinct typecases in their charge. The evidence for this
consists in a headline peculiarity, and if this interpretation is right, it means that the
compositor who used the mixed fount first encountered in Beggars Bush
was in the habit of setting up his headlines in larger type than did his colleagues. In the
few cases where use of another fount with the mixed fount, within one book, is attended with
use of different headline sets, we invariably find a set or sets in larger-than-text type, and
usually a set or sets in text type. And perhaps we have here an indication that the remaining
Scornful Lady belongs with our piracies after all, for its first
section only again shows larger-than-text headlines, nineteen different ones, so help us.
One further link remains, and this brings us back to Kirkman again. Four of our plays, two
from each group, share a rather uncommon watermark, a peacock in his pride. They are The Maids Tragedy
and
A King and no King from the first group,
Philaster and
Band, Cuff and Ruff from the second.
Three piracies, that is, and one dialogue printed for Kirkman. If, as was common, the paper
was supplied by the publisher — and in Kirkman's case we know that he did so at the
outset of his career and near its close
[9] — this would place responsibility for the three piracies squarely on his
shoulders, whoever printed them.