The First Edition of Greene's Quip
for an
Upstart Courtier
by
I. A. Shapiro
[*]
I
Only two copies of the first edition of Greene's Quip for an
Upstart Courtier (STC 12300) are known to survive: one is in the
Bodleian and the other in the Huntington Library. They appear to be
identical save in signatures E and F, where important differences are found.
A mistaken ordering of these variant readings has obscured the history of
the Quip's text. A collation of the two copies has already
been
printed in Studies in Bibliography
[1] and is therefore omitted here, but
it is
necessary to review fully the variant readings in signatures E and F. It will
be convenient to discuss the latter first.
In the outer margin of F1, opposite the passage in which Greene
asserts that knavish curriers are evading the statute forbidding them to buy
leather hides or backs from tanners, the Bodleian copy has the following
side-note:-
Wel sho[uld]/ the lords [of]/ the Coun[cil]/ do to
loo[ke]/
to those b[ase]/ knaue s[hoo-]/ makers t[hat]/ ioyne wi[th]/ coosenin[g]/
curriers [a-]/gainst th[eir]/ own com[pa-]/nie to the [vn-]/doing of [ma-]/ny
hones[t]/ poore m[en]/ of that tr[ade.]
[2]
In the Huntington copy this side-note does not appear, but otherwise the
setting of the page seems identical with that in the Bodleian copy.
Another variant in sig. F occurs on F4v. In the Bodleian copy the last
six lines of the page (the last of sheet F) read as follows:-
your faults. And for you goodman Baker, you that are co- /
sine to Christ in brooking the pillorie as hee did the crosse, /
the world cries out of your wilinesse, you craue but one /
deere yeare to make your daughter a Gentlewoman, you /
buy your corne at the best hand, and yet will not be content /
to make your bread weight by many ounces, you put in /
The corresponding six lines in the Huntington copy read:-
your faults. And as for you goodman Baker, that delight to /
be seene where most people resort, euen on the pillory in the /
cheefe market place, the world cries out of your wilinesse, /
you craue but one dere yere to make your daughter a gen-/
tlewoman, you buy your corne at the best hande, and yet /
will not be content to make your bread weight, you put in /
The type and setting of the rest of this page are the same in both copies. It
should be obvious, though it has not been so, that the Huntington text of
F4v is a revision of that found in the Bodleian copy, and that the text was
changed to remove the blasphemous comparison of the baker's behaviour
in the pillory to that of Christ on the cross. It is astonishing that the version
in the Bodleian copy should ever have been set up, let alone printed off and
used.
There is nothing in this alteration to indicate that the author
necessarily had any hand in it; indeed the wording of the revised version
suggests rather that the printer or publisher (in this case the same, John
Wolfe) was responsible for it. Clearly the first step was to remove the
offending words, 'And for you goodman Baker, you that are cosine to
Christ in brooking the pillorie as he did the crosse,' and find a substitute
of about the same number of letters. It looks as if the printer began by
substituting 'And as for you goodman Baker, that delight to be seen where
most people resort, euen on the pillory', and, finding himself still left with
blank space, added the otiose 'in the cheefe market place'. Having thus
overcompensated heavily, he was driven to omit from the last line the much
more meaningful phrase 'by many ounces', for he had to end the page with
the same words as formerly, 'you put in', so that the opening words of
signature G should follow on naturally. His
concern on this last point is evidence that at least some substantial portion
of signature G was already set up before F4v was altered.
There can be no reasonable doubt that Greene's original text is to be
found in the Bodleian copy of F4v and that the Huntington's variant must
be a revision. There seems every reason to suppose that the side-note found
on F1 in the Bodleian copy, but not in the Huntington, was removed at the
same time as F4v was revised, since both pages are in the same (outer)
forme. The alteration on F4v was evidently made to avoid possible, or
rather inevitable, offence. No doubt the same motive accounts for the
removal of the side-note on F1. The Lords of the Privy Council might well
have been annoyed by Greene's jaunty admonition that they 'should do well
to look to' one of their responsibilities. There is little likelihood that the
side-note was omitted through some accident in the printing-house. It is
much more probable that the prudent publisher, looking over a proof of the
outer forme of F, decided to play for safety and remove the side-note from
F1 at the same time as he ordered a
revision of the blasphemous passage on F4v.
For the original text of signature E we have to turn to the Huntington
copy, a facsimile of which is now available.[3] This contains, on E3v-E4, the
attack on
the Harvey brothers which provoked Gabriel Harvey's famous reply in his
Foure letters . . . Especially touching Robert Greene . . .
1592.
Greene's references to the Harveys fill the last 13½ lines of E3v and
the first 8⅓ lines of E4, which also has, in the outer margin, a long
side-note designed to make it quite explicit that Richard Harvey and his
brothers are here referred to.
In the Bodleian copy the original leaves E3-4 have been replaced by
a cancel consisting of two conjugate leaves, the contents of which differ
substantively from those of the corresponding leaves in the Huntington copy
chiefly by omission of the passage about the Harveys and its accompanying
side-note. The original leaves are signed 'E3' and 'E4' whereas the cancel
is signed 'Eiij' and 'Eiiii', the variation in the numerals conveniently
distinguishing them for reference purposes. The omission of the allusion to
the Harveys was compensated for largely by resetting the rest of the text
into thirty-three lines on 'Eiij' and its verso, into thirty-four on 'Eiiii' and
into thirty-five on its verso, as against thirty-seven lines on all the original
leaves, and by reducing slightly the length of the lines of type in the new
setting. As well as spacing the diminished text more generously, the
compositor of the cancel has stretched it further by frequent use of longer
spellings such as
bee, twoo, dooth, woorthy, manne, writtes, Infourmer,
aunsweare. He also inserted many final and some medial
e's, even indulging in the unusual pieece and
learge, though otherwise his spellings keep within Elizabethan
norms. He has also taken advantage of opportunities to expand
abbreviations, changing M. to Maister, 3 to
three, & to and (twice) and
qd. to
quoth (thrice; he unaccountably ignored a fourth opportunity
in
E4r, l. 26). His substitution of upon for of in
'bestow some odde Angell of Maister infourmer' (E3r, l. 33) may have
been prompted by idiomatic considerations as well as by desire to fill more
space. More important than the changes so far reported are the textual
expansions he permitted himself. These begin in the middle of
Eiijv and
end at the top of Eiiiiv where, presumably, he realized he
now had
sufficient material to fill the final page of the cancel. His expansions are
of interest in several connections, and are therefore given below with their
immediate context, the additional matter being italicized; page and line
references are to the context in the original version:
- E3v, ll. 14-15: you may apparently see I am made
a
curtall, for the Pillory, (in the sight of a great many good and
sufficiente witnesses,) hath eaten off both my eares,
- l. 21: with a good crab-tree cudgell
- E4r, l. 25: but questioned with them
of
their seuerall occupations.
- l. 26: the seconde a Shoomaker, and the third a
Curriar:
- E4v, l. 2: by the aunciente lawes and
Statutes
When the compositor of the cancel text came to the beginning of a
new paragraph in the middle of Eiiiiv he found it
expedient to follow
the rest of E4v line for line. But since the length of a line of type in the
cancel is shorter than in the original, and the same fount was being used,
the compositor was now compelled to set his type more closely, and to
reverse the procedure he had followed hitherto. In the second half of
Eiiiiv final and medial e's are dropped
almost as frequently
as earlier they had been introduced, and we find the occasional spellings
Lether, shomaker, coms, although in adjacent lines the same
compositor used the spellings normal in Elizabethan texts.
Since the compositor of the cancel had obviously taken care that the
last line of his last page should end with the same words as his copy, it
follows that the cancel was set up at earliest after the outer forme of
signature F had been printed off, for had that not yet been done it would
have been quicker and cheaper to re-arrange any type already set, no matter
how far composition had proceeded. In fact there is nothing to suggest that
the cancel was printed before the whole book was completed. Thus there
is no reason to question the statements of Gabriel Harvey and Thomas
Nashe that the offensive allusion was cancelled only after the
Quip was in circulation. Now that we know how scurrilous
were the lines removed, there seems more probability than McKerrow
allowed to Gabriel Harvey's assertion that Greene paid the printer to omit
the offending passage for 'feare to be called Coram for those
forged imputations'.[4]
Although we possess only two copies of the first edition of the
Quip, the range of variants they chance to include proves that
at least three different states of the Quip must once have
existed. The first copies put on sale must have contained E3-4 in its
uncancelled form (as found in the Huntington copy). This is confirmed by
what we know from other sources about the effect of the pamphlet's first
publication. Since the Huntington copy contains a revised state of sheet F,
it will be safer to assume that no impressions of F's unrevised state (found
in the Bodleian copy) got into this first batch. After the Quip
was already in circulation the two leaves E3-4 were removed from unsold
copies and replaced by the cancel Eiij-iiii (found in the Bodleian copy).
Thus the new state of the Quip must have contained a number
of copies which combined the cancel Eiij-iiii with a revised version of F;
it may indeed consisted entirely of copies so constituted. Of
this state no copy has survived though, as we shall see, its former existence
is proved by the readings of the second edition. The Bodleian copy
represents yet a third state of the first edition. If it was not always unique
(which is possible) it must be one of a relatively small number with
that make-up, for there is no reason to suppose that many unrevised
versions of sheet F were printed. If, however, any others were used,
obviously one or two copies of the first edition may once have existed in
yet another state, in which the original E3-4 was combined with the
unrevised version of F.
It should now be clear that an editor who wishes to produce a text of
the Quip as close as possible to what Greene wrote must
reprint
signature E from the Huntington copy of the first edition and signature F
from the Bodleian copy. Undoubtedly these present the text as Greene sent
it to be printed. We cannot determine certainly whether the changes in
signature F were made by Greene or by the printer (with or without
Greene's knowledge or approval); but since the rewording of F4v in its
second state drops, without absolute necessity, a phrase Greene would have
wished to retain,[5] it will be safer to
attribute these changes to the printer.
II
Each of our only two copies of the first edition of the
Quip shows two different and important variants. It is by this
chance that we know the original contents of sheet E, and also that sheet F
was revised during printing. Quite possibly changes were introduced into
the text of other sheets during printing but if so, the chance that gave us
variants of E and F has left us with duplicates of the same state of any
other sheets that may have been altered. The Huntington and Bodleian
copies do not represent all the different combinations that existed even of
the varying states of sheets E and F, for it is clear that the copy of the first
edition followed in the first reprint of 1592 must have contained the
cancelled version of E (as in the Bodleian copy) and a revised version of F.
It could not have been the Bodleian copy or another exactly similar to it,
for the original comparison of the baker in the pillory to Christ on the
Cross does not reappear in the reprint.[6] Moreover the 1592 reprint
which Mr Miller believes to be the earliest of that series seems to be
following here an improved version of the Huntington text of signature F.
The Huntington reading has already been cited above; the Westminster
Abbey copy of the Quip reads instead (E3, lines 16-21):-
. . . . And for you / goodman Baker, you that loue
to be seene in the open Market place / vpon the Pyllory,
the world cries out of your wilinesse, you craue / but one
deere yeare to make your daughter a Gentlewoman, you /
buy your corne at the best hand, and yet will not be content
to make / your bread weight by many ounces, you put in . . .
This follows the original (Bodleian) wording exactly from 'the world cries
out . . ." onwards, and is clearly better than the revision in the Huntington
copy, for it gets rid of the Huntington's redundant 'where most people
resort' and restores the significant phrase 'by many ounces'. We must
conclude either that there was a second revision of sheet F (and
consequently a third state, now lost), or that the printer of the first 1592
reprint, finding the reading of the revised version of F4v (as in the
Huntington copy) unsatisfactory, sought out a copy of the original version
(as in the Bodleian) and conflated the two texts to produce a better version.
I find the latter explanation difficult to credit, and therefore conclude that
sheet F was revised twice during the first printing of the
Quip.
There are other grounds for holding this view.
Mr Miller has found that some at least of the type of Wolfe's 1592
reprints of the Quip was kept standing.[7] Is it possible that Wolfe, a shrewd
printer
and publisher of somewhat unorthodox business methods, realizing that
Greene's Quip might be a 'best-seller', kept the type of the
first
edition standing, ready to meet any unexpectedly heavy demand for copies?
If so, we have a very simple explanation of how several states of sheet F
came to exist, for standing type lends itself in many ways to the generation
of variants. If this surmise is correct, the first edition of the
Quip may have been much larger than was usual, perhaps
even
larger than was officially permitted. Whatever its size, the disappearance
of all but two copies shows how widely Greene's pamphlet was read, and
thumbed out of existence, on first publication. It is also a warning that the
total number of variant states may have been greater even than those
postulated above, and that most of the textual alterations (possibly all except
the cancellation of the passage about the Harveys) may have been
introduced by the printer and publisher.
III
It would help towards solving a variety of problems about Elizabethan
printing practice if we knew whether E3-4 and Eiij-iiii had been set by the
same compositor, or by two different members of John Wolfe's printing
house. On the whole it seems more than probable that the two texts are by
different compositors. The cancel was set up by a compositor with a strong
preference for spellings with y rather than i; he
set
bewrayes, slye, exclayme, wype, smylinge, wyll, tryall, hys,
villanyes, tyme, hym, wyth, (to take the first examples that occur)
whereas his copy spells all these with i. It might be supposed
that this spelling variation was adopted only to fill space in the cancel, since
the letter y occupies more space than i. But this
inference must be rejected because the same compositor equally consistently
sets a final -y instead of the longer (and numerous)
-ie spellings of his original, although, if his preference for
y spellings were merely an expedient to fill space, one would
have expected him to set -ye always instead of
-ie
or y. This he does only twice (Eiij, line 27:
anye;
Eiiii, line 28: commoditye);
in the latter case at least he was clearly under more than ordinary pressure
to fill his line with another letter. Significantly he drops a final
-
e after
y (E3, line 5; E4v, line 17) three times.
This abundant evidence that the compositor of the cancel would not
suppress his personal preference for -
y instead of
-
ie
endings, even when it was expedient to do so, makes it certain that he
cannot have set up the original leaves E3-4. It also warns us not to assume
that his other substitutions of
y for
i were made
solely, or even partly, to fill space.
Notes
[*]
When this was in galley proof, R. B. Parker's
note on "Alterations in the First Edition of Greene's A Quip for an
Upstart Courtier (1592)" was published in Huntington Library
Quarterly, XXIII (1960), 181-186. Mr Parker anticipates my
reversal
of the accepted order of the two states of sheet F, but differs in his
interpretation of the evidence and in his conclusions about the authority of
the alterations.
[1]
See E. H. Miller, 'Greene's Quip for an
Upstart Courtier', SB, VI (1954), 108, 111-112.
[2]
My text differs slightly from that reconstructed
by E. H. Miller, op.cit., p. 111.
[3]
Ciceronis Amor and A Quip for an
Upstart
Courtier by Robert Greene; facsimile reproductions, with
Introduction
by Edwin Haviland Miller. (Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints,
1954).
[4]
For fuller information see McKerrow's
Nashe, V, 78.
[5]
"by many ounces"; cf. ante, p. 212.
[6]
E. H. Miller is mistaken in supposing that the
second edition was based on the text of F as found in the Bodleian copy;
op.cit., p. 112.
[7]
Op. cit., pp. 109-110,
114.