The Little Gest of Robin Hood: A
Note on the Pynson
and Lettersnijder Editions
by
J. C. T. Oates
Pynson's edition of The Little Gest of Robin Hood
(STC 13688), a quarto with 31 lines to the page, survives
only
in the following fragments: (1) a leaf signed cii, in the University Library,
Cambridge (Oates, Catalogue of the Fifteenth-Century Printed
Books, &c., no. 4206); (2) 1½ leaves formerly in the
possession of Mr. Boies Penrose (A Selection of Rare Books . . .
from the Library of Boies Penrose, &c., p. 29) but now by his
gift
in the Folger Library (The Folger Library: A Decade of Growth,
1950-1960, p. 25); (3) a leaf in the Bodleian Library, Douce
fragments f. 51 (3). I shall call these leaves ULC, BPF1, BPF2, and
BLO.[1]
ULC has been recovered from a binding. It was acquired in
September 1888 by Francis Jenkinson (Cambridge University Librarian,
1889-1923) and was presented to the University Library by him on 20th
August 1917. It is the fragment registered by Duff, Fifteenth Century
English Books, No. 362 ('Private Library') and STC.
BPF1,2 have also been taken from a binding. They are doubtless the
fragments offered for sale in 1927 by Myers & Co. of London,
catalogue
257, item 270. BPF2 is the upper half of the leaf only, containing the first
fourteen lines. BLO is very defective. This leaf was known to F. J. Child,
The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 117. He cites
it
as e but does not attempt to give it a printer or date.
Since there are 31 lines to the page, the deficiencies of BPF2 and
BLO are easily supplied from Child's text, if allowance is made for a
cross-heading, perhaps with a white line above and below it, at the
beginning of each 'Fytte'. I give the first and last lines of each page and
identify them in Child, using his system of reference (stanza-number
with a superior number denoting the line within the stanza). The 'Fyttes'
run thus: I, 1-81; II, 82-143; III, 144-204; IV, 205-280; V, 281-316; VI,
317-353; VII, 354-417; VIII, 418-456.
ULC |
recto |
And euill thyrfte on thy hede . . .} |
2201-2273
|
|
|
No force therof saide robyn} |
|
verso |
Agaynst the lawes and ryght} |
3194-3272
|
|
|
And went hym on his way} |
BPF1 |
recto |
And Robyn hode wente to grene wode} |
3273-3351
|
|
|
Whan she cam in the forest} |
|
verso |
The truthe than tell thou me} |
2432-2504
|
|
|
A moche better borowe} |
BPF2 |
recto |
Under the grenewode tree} |
3124-3193
|
|
|
[Thou kepest here the kynges enemys]} |
|
verso |
For curtesy can he none} |
2274-2352
|
|
|
[Of all this longe day]} |
BLO |
recto |
[With hym] all for to gone} |
4354-4432
|
|
|
[It may no better be]} |
|
verso |
[Seuen nyght I gyve] the leve} |
4433-4511
|
|
|
[Yet he was begyled, i-wys] |
It is apparent that BLO is the only leaf on which the verso text follows on
correctly from the recto. The text printed on the other leaves extends from
220
1 to 335
1 — a total of 461
lines, to which must be added the
headings &c. at the beginning of Fyttes V and VI, making material for
15 pages in all. The contents of these pages may with reasonable certainty
be reconstructed thus:
- 1. 2201-2273ULC
recto
- 2. 2274-2352BPF2
verso
- 3. 2353-2431
- 4. 2432-2504BPF1
verso
- 5. 2511-2583
- 6. 2584-2662
- 7. 2663-2741
- 8. 2742-2813
- 9. 2814-2892
- 10. 2893-2971
- 11. 2972-3044
- 12. 3051-3123
- 13. 3124-3193BPF2
recto
- 14. 3194-3272ULC
verso
- 15. 3273-3351BPF1
recto
Since ULC recto is signed c2, it follows that BPF2 verso is c2 verso,
and that BPF1 verso is c3 verso. If the book were a quarto in fours,
BPF1 recto would be e1, or d1 if it were a quarto in eights, but in fact
BPF1 is unsigned. It follows that the book must be a quarto in sixes. Thus
BPF2 recto (of which the lower half is missing) is d2 recto, ULC verso is
d2 verso, and BPF1 recto is d3 recto: or, to state the facts another way:
- ULC contains c2 recto backed with d2 verso
- BPF2 " d2 recto " " c2 verso
- BPF1 " d3 recto " " c3 verso
At this point readers of
Studies in Bibliography will not find
it
necessary (as I did) to fiddle about with folded pieces of paper in order to
conclude that, all the formes of c and d being in type at the same time, c
(i) has been perfected with d(o) both in the outer sheet of the quire (leaves
1, 2, 5, 6) and in the inner half-sheet (leaves 3, 4).
A simple interchange of the heaps before the sheets were perfected
accounts for the mistake in the outer sheet. As regards the inner halfsheet
the problem is a little more complicated, there being two different ways in
which the mistake might have been made:
- (1) The paper may have been cut before printing began and the
half-sheets c3.4 and d3.4 each worked from two two-pages formes. The
mistake would then have been caused, as with the outer sheet, by an
interchange of the heaps before perfecting.
- (2) The half-sheets may have been printed by half-sheet imposition
('work and turn'). The mistake would then have arisen by an interchange
of the heaps after the sheets had been turned end-to-end before
perfecting.
Of these two methods of working the half-sheet the first, since it
doubles the labour involved, cannot be regarded as anything more than a
theoretical possibility. The second is therefore the more likely.
Since we know that sigs. c and d each had six leaves, and since c2
recto begins at 2201 while d3 recto ends at
3351, we can now
attempt to reconstruct the collation of the whole book. There are 402 lines
of text and two cross-headings (for Fyttes VII and VIII) between the
beginning of d3 verso (3352) and the beginning of BLO
recto
(4354). This is material for the thirteen pages d3 verso-e3
verso. BLO
therefore becomes e4. The last line of its verso is 4511,
and only 23
lines of text remain before the poem ends at 4564. The last
quire
therefore seems to have been e6, with text ending on e5
recto; we may
presume a device on e5 verso, and that e6 was blank.
In reconstructing the first two quires it will be necessary to take into
account certain features of the other early editions which are extant. There
are two editions by De Worde, both in quarto, of which
the earlier (
STC 13687, Child's text
c), dated
[1500]
by Duff,
op. cit., No. 361, survives in two leaves at the
Bodleian Library. His later edition (
STC 13689, Child's text
b), which Dr. F. S. Ferguson dates [1506?], survives in the
unique copy at the University Library, Cambridge. Its collation is
A-D
6
E
8. It has a short title and a wood-cut, composed of three
factotums,
on A1 recto and De Worde's device McKerrow No. 19 on E8 verso. The
text begins on A1 verso beneath a drop-title which, with the white lines
above and below it, occupies the equivalent of nine lines of text. The third
extant edition (not in
STC, Child's text
a)
survives
in the unique but imperfect copy in the National Library of Scotland, being
the eleventh and last item in the celebrated volume which contains nine
unique tracts by Scotland's first printers Walter Chepman and Androw
Myllar. Robert Proctor (
Jan van Doesborgh, Bibliographical
Society,
1894, p. 24) attributed it to the press of Jan van Doesborch at Antwerp and
dated it [1510-1515?]. Nijhoff-Kronenberg (
Nederlandsche
Bibliographie, &c., No. 3080) admits the probability of this
attribution but points out that there can be no certainty since the
Lettersnijder type in which it is printed was used by many Dutch printers.
This edition (which I shall call the Lettersnijder edition) is most easily
available in Dr. William Beattie's facsimile edition (
The Chepman
and
Myllar Prints, &c., Edinburgh Bibliographical Society, 1950).
I
shall try to show at the end of this article that it is a reprint of Pynson's
text. For the moment it is only necessary to note that the text begins on the
first recto beneath a two-line short title and a reduced copy of the woodcut
of the Yeoman which Pynson used in his
Canterbury Tales
of
[1492?] and 1526 (Hodnett No. 1643).
We can now return to Pynson's edition. The text preceding c2 recto
(stanzas 1-219) with cross-headings for Fyttes II, III, and IV must have
occupied about 880 lines, of which 62 are required for c1. The remaining
818 lines are too much for 26 pages (806 lines), unless we suppose that
some early pages had more than 31 lines. It seems more likely that they
occupied 27 pages (837 lines) and that the gap of some 19 lines was filled
either by a lengthy drop-title ornamentally set out, as in De Worde's later
edition, or, more probably, by the woodcut of the Yeoman, as in the
Lettersnijder edition. These hypothetical calculations cannot, of course,
claim to be more than approximately accurate: but 19 lines of Pynson's text
measures 90 mm., and the Yeoman cut is 85 mm. in height. In either event
we have fourteen leaves (a8 b6, or, less
probably, a6 b8),
with the text beginning on the first verso, as in De Worde's later edition;
and we may visualize the first recto as
carrying a short title and either Pynson's device or the Yeoman woodcut,
whether the latter appeared on the verso or not.
The complete collation, as here reconstructed, is therefore:
a
8 b-e
6,
32 leaves; a1 recto, title with device or woodcut; a1 verso, text begins
beneath woodcut; e5 recto, text ends; e5 verso, device; e6, blank.
R. Dickson and J. P. Edmond (Annals of Scottish
Printing, p. 68) thought that the Lettersnijder edition had been
printed
in Scotland. 'The text of the piece', they wrote, 'is, with trivial variations,
the same as that of the 'Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode', printed by Wynkyn
de Worde, without date.' They then draw attention to certain features, to
which I shall return, of the Lettersnijder edition, but do not comment upon
them. That the Lettersnijder woodcut was copied from Pynson's Yeoman
was first noticed by Frank Isaac (English & Scottish Printing
Types, 1501-35, 1508-41, in his discussion of his figs. 92-3). Isaac
knew that an edition of the Gest of Robin Hood printed by
Pynson survived in the leaf recorded by Duff. 'We must infer,' he
continued, 'that whoever printed the present edition had before him this
fifteenth-century one or some other from Pynson's press in which the
woodcut of the yeoman . . . was made to serve for Robin Hood, while the
text, as
it easily might, agreed fairly closely with De Worde's.'
The lines of text common to both the Lettersnijder edition and
Pynson's as they survive, the one imperfect and the other in fragments
only, are 3142-3161 and
3194-3351. A collation of the two
editions within these 70 lines shows only three variants of any significance:
3194, L lawe / P (and De Worde)
lawes;
3273, L (and De Worde) to / P wente
to;
3311, L the / P this (De
Worde
that). On the other hand L agrees with P on 22 occasions
where
P differs from De Worde, the most important of them (I give the LP
readings first) being: 3153, xl.dayes /
twelue
dayes; 3161, clothes were spredde
/ clothes
spred; 3234, were so (o) noble and
gode / noble
were and good; 3261, Go nowe home shyref
sayde our
kynge / Go home thou proud sheryf;
3323, led
hym to / lad hym home to; 3324,
Bounde bothe
fote and hande / I bonde both honde
and fote; 3332, rode / a
tre; 3333,
C.li/ hondred pounde; 3341,
harde
(herde) / lady. Similarly, L differs from P in spelling
and
capitalisation much less frequently than L and P agree against De Worde.
Isaac's inference is thus completely supported by an examination of the two
texts.
A printer reprinting another man's edition of a popular text may be
expected to do so as economically as possible. We have seen that Pynson's
edition probably contained 64 pages, including a title-page, a page with his
device, and a blank leaf at the end. The collation of the Lettersnijder
edition has been reconstructed with, I think, complete certainty (though Dr.
Beattie cautiously queries the number of leaves in the last signature) as
A6 b6 c4
d6 e4, 26 leaves, of which the surviving
copy lacks leaves 6, 7, part of 8, 13-18 and all after 20. It has no titlepage,
and the last page must have been fairly full. Its only concession to
commercial embellishment is the woodcut which precedes the beginning of
the text. It has no white lines above or below the cross-headings for the
Fyttes, and the cross-heading for Fytte VI is printed on the same line as the
last line of Fytte V. From A5 recto onwards the surviving leaves have 33
lines of type to the page, but by printing two lines of text, with a
paragraph-mark between them, in one line of type the printer has got two
or three additional lines of text into every page except b4 recto, into which
he contrived to get no fewer than eleven additional lines. All these
peculiarities are characteristic of a cheap reprint in which economy of paper
is more important than appearance.
The book's most curious feature, however, is that stanzas 1-12 (with
1½ lines omitted from stanza 2) are printed as prose, beginning beneath
the woodcut on the first recto and ending half-way down the first verso.
The desire to save paper might reduce a compositor to so desperate a device
as he approached the end of his copy, but hardly at its beginning; nor is it
likely that at stanza 13 the Lettersnijder compositor received a sudden
revelation that what he was setting was verse, not prose. The explanation
of this curiosity must surely rather be that in setting the early pages the
compositor failed to leave space for the initial woodcut, whether negligently
or ignorantly or because the decision to insert it was not taken until after
work had begun. The opening stanzas were therefore reset as prose in order
to create the necessary space; and there was some consequent adjustment
of the succeeding pages. A2 recto has 33 lines of type and 35 lines of text;
but A2 verso is
unnaturally short, having only 28 lines of type (and 28 lines of text), while
the pages of A3, 4 show an unusual regularity in that each of them has 32
lines of type and 32 lines of text. It seems probable that the compositor by
his resetting made a little more space than he actually needed; but he could
not adjust his type-pages beyond A2 verso since A3, 4 (the inner half-sheet
of the quire), being ready for the press before the outer sheet, had already
been partly or wholly printed off.[2]
Notes