IN THIS STUDY I ATTEMPT TO DISTINGUISH, AS SIMPLY as the complexities will allow, the
several variants of Goldsmith's two plays.[1] Such an account necessarily includes an array of points not only in the
impressions commonly regarded as of the original octavo edition but in every subsequent
impression, each of which, whether labelled the "second" or the "fifth," is also part of the
first edition. From this wider perspective it will be seen that previous surveys have too
often mistaken the exception for the rule (an error which, of course, makes every normal copy
another exception), overlooked a number of concealed "editions" (i.e., impressions), asserted
as the proper sequence of variants one running contrary to the evident order of
impressions,[2] and inferred from
all this as quite "haphazard" a combination of sheets which proves to be entirely regular. To
each sequence there are indeed some few exceptions, but these
may now be
dismissed as the mixtures occasionally resulting either from the rapid succession of issues at
the time of printing or from intrusions of much later date. Whatever the occasion, they are,
at best, merely aberrations from the normal order and thus, in any representative account, of
no significance.
