 | |  |
notes
The unique copy of Q1 is at the Huntington Library (STC 18684); Q2 is reproduced in the Tudor Facsimile Texts series (1908). I have used this facsimile here, but I have checked it in any doubtful points with the original in the British Museum (C.34.a.6).
Sir Walter Greg pointed out in his Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration (I, 115) that "while Day's printing is much superior to Griffith's, there can be little doubt that [Q2] was set up from a corrected copy of [Q1]"; I trust that even that "little doubt" (should it exist) can here be resolved by the presentation of strictly bibliographical evidence.
The most accessible modern text of the play is that in Chief Pre-Shakespearean Dramas, ed. Joseph Quincy Adams (1924); references here are to that text.
A close study of the substantive variants shows that the corrector of Q2 was acutely conscious of extrametrical lines and corrected to bring them into the iambic pentameter scheme; in this line, as in a few others, he missed the extra syllable.
The two divergencies may require some conjecture. At V.ii.229 Q1 reads "(O Brittaine Land)", Q2 has only "O Brittaine"; if the corrector struck the word Land from Q1, he may have struck the parentheses at the same time. Two changes, one substantive, one accidental, occurring together may be attributed to the corrector. Second, at V.ii.272, the corrector may have together may be attributed to the corrector. realized that the Q1 expression "(O happie man)" is not a vocative at all but a truncated cry, usual at the end of such a drama as Gorboduc, "O happy [is the] man whom speedy death deprives of life." The important evidence is not in the divergencies but in the nineteen agreements.
| | |