The printer of the earliest known edition of Marlowe's Edward
II, an octavo of 1594, is not named in either the imprint (on A1) or
the colophon (on M3) of the book:
(A1) Imprinted at London for William Iones | dwelling
neere Holbourne conduit, at the | signe of the Gunne.
1594.
(M3) Imprinted at London for William | Ihones,
and
are to be solde at his | shop, neere vnto Houlburne |
Conduit.
1594.
The printer of the octavo has usually been assigned as Richard Bradock for
the reason that the next known edition, a quarto of 1598 bearing Bradock's
name in the imprint, has two ornaments in common with the 1594 octavo:
the head-piece which appears above the head title on A2 of the 1594 octavo
heads the title page (A2) of the 1598 quarto; and the diamond-shaped
ornament appearing above the colophon on M3 of the 1594 octavo appears
below the middle of the title page of the 1598 quarto.
Richard Bradock, however, was not the printer of the 1594 octavo of
Edward II; for the ornaments which appear in the octavo, and
in Bradock's quarto of 1598, belonged to Robert Robinson in 1594. In fact,
it is doubtful that Richard Bradock printed anything in 1594. If the entries
for Bradock in Morrison's Index to the STC and the Index to
Arber's Transcript are complete, no extant book printed
between 1593 and 1596 bears Bradock's name in the imprint; nor does any
entry in the Stationers' Register during those years contain Bradock's
name.[1] Robert Robinson, on the
other hand, was reasonably active as a printer during these years and was
using the ornaments which appear in the 1594 octavo of Edward
II. In a Latin work printed by Robinson in 1594, Institutiones
Linguae Graecae (STC 5403), appear all three of the ornaments
which are present in the 1594 octavo of Edward II: the
head-piece above the head title
in Edward II appears on
A8
v of the
Institutiones;
[2] the diamond-shaped ornament
above the
colophon in
Edward II appears no less than three times in the
Institutiones;
[3] and a
circular ornament which appears on the title page of
Edward
II
appears on A7 of the
Institutiones.
[4] Further, the initial
M which
appears at the beginning of the text on A2 of
Edward II
appears
in a work
[5] printed by Robinson in
1596.
There is evidence bearing on the question of how Robinson's
ornaments passed to Richard Bradock and thus into Bradock's 1598 edition
of Edward II. First, it is likely that Robinson went out of
business as a printer in 1597 or early 1598; the last entry to him in the
Stationers' Register is dated 2 May 1597 (Arber, III.84), and no extant
book dated later than 1597 bears Robinson's name in the imprint (Morrison,
Index). Second, in the "rough Memoranda of Sir John
Lambe,"
written about 1635 and included in Arber's Transcript,
Richard
Bradock is said to have married the widow of Robert Robinson (Arber,
III.702). Since Robinson's ornaments appear in Bradock's books of
1598,[6] it is a reasonable conjecture
that Robert Robinson died in 1597 or early 1598 and that his widow was
not without a husband for long.
