University of Virginia Library

2. Speed of Publication in the Early Seventeenth Century

Donne had a habit, whenever he published anything, of presenting copies not merely to friends but to patrons and other important people from the King downwards. The presentations copies of Pseudo-Martyr

given to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and his old friend Rowland Woodward have survived; his correspondence makes it clear that other copies were presented to the King, Prince Henry, and Sir Robert Cotton's "lord"—presumably the Earl of Northampton. Some of this information is contained in a letter from Donne to Cotton, written from Royston on 24 January [1610], informing him that he has an appointment with the King to present his book that evening (after the day's hunting was over, no doubt), so Cotton may now safety present the copy left with him for his lord.[8] Obviously, the copy presented to the King would be the first copy in circulation, so that in effect one can determine precisely the date of publication of Donne's book. It consists of 54 sheets, and was entered in the Stationers' Register on the previous 2 December. Presumably the interim was occupied by the printing of the work, though whether printing was begun before registration is uncertain.

More precise information is afforded by some of Donne's sermons. One knows the date of the delivery of the sermon, the date of the entry in the Stationers' Register, and the date on which a copy was presented. With a letter of 1 December 1622 to Sir Thomas Roe at Constantinople Donne sent copies of two of his sermons, one preached at Paul's Cross on 15 September and the other to the Virginia Company on 13 November. The dates of the presentation of two others (Encaenia and A Sermon preached at Whitehall) are derived from the Bridgewater copies in the Huntington Library. The Earl of Bridgewater has written his name on the title pages, followed by "ex dono authoris" and the date.

Further examples which provide the same sort of information are to be found in two of Laud's sermons and in the speech he delivered in the Star Chamber at the sentencing of Bastwick, Burton, and Prynne. The principal source here is Laud's Diary, as printed in The History of the Troubles and Tryal of William Laud, 1695.[9] The data are best presented in tabular form.

                 

DONNE	Delivered	Entered S. R.	Presented	No. of Sheets
Sermon on Judges, 20.15 at Paul's Cross	15 Sept. 1622	31 October	1 December	9½
Sermon on Acts, 1.8 to the Virginia Company	13 Nov. 1622	28 November	1 December[10]	7
Encaenia	22 May 1623	13 June	20 June	6½
Sermon preached at Whitehall	24 Feb. 1625/26	6 March	12 March	7½
LAUD
Sermon at the opening of Parliament	6 Feb. 1625/26	(no entry)	26 February	7
Sermon at Whitehall	5 July 1626	18 July	16 July	7
Speech delivered in the Star Chamber	14 June 1637	1 July	25 June	11½

There was a certain immediate interest in all these pieces, and one realizes that many of these sermons had the same sort of appeal as a pamphlet on one of the more engrossing issues of the day. Donne's Sermon on Judges, 20.15, preached at Paul's Cross, was a defence of the Directions concerning Preaching which James I had recently issued; Laud's Sermon at the Opening of Parliament was intended (unavailingly) to induce a properly submissive state of mind in the Commons and persuade them that it was their duty to supply the King's financial needs; and his Speech in the Star Chamber was an extreme statement of the royalist point of view. All these pieces were published "by command," usually by royal command; the exceptions were Donne's Sermon to the Virginia Company, and Enaenia, preached at the dedication of the new chapel at Lincoln's Inn. Only in one instance is the date of "command" known; Laud's diary states that it was on 8 July 1626 that the King told him to publish the sermon he had preached three days previously. The letter from Viscount Doncaster conveying the command of James I to Donne to publish his Paul's Cross sermon is extant,[11] but unfortunately it is not dated. James, however, could not be expected to read maunscripts as fast as the official licensers, and Donne's letter to Roe, already cited, mentions that the King still has the sermon (on 1 December) that he had preached on 5 November, the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot. One suspects, therefore, that a large part of the interval between 15 September and the entry of the Paul's Cross sermon on 31 October 1622 was due to the time it took James to read Donne's manuscript. Charles I heard Donne's sermon at Whitehall and Laud's two sermons, so that in these instances the command came without the necessity of reading any manuscript.

In spite of such royal approval the sermons still had to receive the imprimatur of the regular licensers before they could be entered in the Stationers' Register and secure copyright. Whether the licensers conscientiously read through the sermons under such circumstances is another question; nevertheless the securing of their approval must have consumed a certain amount of time, especially when rapid publication was urgent. The one occasion when the regular licenser was dispensed with was in the case of Laud's Speech in the Star Chamber; as Archbishop of Canterbury, and therefore the supreme authority with licensing power, Laud licensed his own manuscript.

The size in sheets of each publication has been given, and it will be noticed that any of the better printers of the period could have produced these pieces, especially if the authorities insisted on their urgency, in the time specified. Laud's Sermon at Whitehall was produced in eight days; it consists of seven sheets, and a sheet a day was within the capacity of two compositors and a single press. Similarly, the Speech in the Star Chamber, consisting of 11½ sheets, was produced in eleven days, perhaps more hastily and with a sense of greater urgency.

One comes to realize, however, that the date of entry in the Stationers' Register is not as reliable an index as it was once thought to be. In the examples considered it is always closer to the date of publication than the date of delivery. It is clear that entry could not be made until the licenser had set his hand to the manuscript, and if he were conscientious the time he took to read it must always be reckoned with. On urgent occasions, one would guess, the printer may have taken a chance and gone ahead, provided more than one manuscript was available. Even so, the time taken by the licenser will not explain all the dates of registration in the examples cited. Donne's Virginia Company sermon was entered only three days before publication, and two of Laud's pieces were actually presented to the king before they were entered. We probably have to reckon also with the simple fact that publishers did not enter works immediately they received the licensed copy or began to print it; they waited until it happened to be convenient to drop in at Stationers' Hall and go through the formalities of registration.

Some further works remain to be considered, most of them longer than the pieces already discussed. Donne's Pseudo-Martyr has already been mentioned; here only the date of entry and the date of presentation are ascertainable. The work consists of 54 sheets, and it might just have been possible to print it between 2 December (the date of entry) and 24 January (the date of presentation) especially if additional compositors and more than one press were made available for the book. Nevertheless, the copy for the King would no doubt have needed a special binding, which would have consumed a few extra days. Still, Pseudo-Martyr was hardly the kind of book to cause the presses to work overtime, so the entry was probably made when the printing was well along. Walton says that Pseudo-Martyr was written in six weeks; this is possible, but only if the author had already assembled the greater part of his materials. That Donne may have done this in advance is suggested by the fact that, as the "Advertisement to the Reader" makes clear, "the Heads and Grounds handled in this Booke" had been in circulation for some time before the book appeared or, apparently, was even written. Donne had first shown the outlines of his intended argument to a few friends, and then they had been passed on to others. A letter to Sir Henry Goodyere contains the request: "I pray send to my lodging my written books; and if you may stay very long, I pray send that letter in which I sent you certain heads which I purposed to enlarge, for I have them not in any other paper,"[12] and this letter to Goodyere seems to have been the kernel from which Pseudo-Martyr grew. Unfortunately, neither the letter asking for the return of the earlier letter nor another written soon afterwards in which Donne reiterated his request is dated. All we have is his statement that "these Heads have beene carried about, many moneths."

There are more details available for a longer work by Laud but, as will be seen, they do not satisfactorily answer all the questions a modern enquirer cannot help asking. The work is A Replie to Iesuit Fishers answere to certaine Questions propounded by his most gratious Maisetie King Iames, by Francis White, Dean of Carlisle, to which was annexed A Conference of the right R: B: of St. Davids with the same Iesuit, 1624. On 24 May 1622 Laud had debated with Fisher in the presence of the Duke of Buckingham and his mother. The event is duly noted in his Diary. Then, on 18 September, he received information that "Mr. Fisher had spread certain Copies of the Conference had between him and me, May 24. into divers Hands." Soon afterwards

he got a copy of Fisher's report, and "made an Answere to it." Then, during the Christmas season following, Laud was at court, and he reported: Then follows a gap of just over a year; the next mention of the work is on 11 Janaury 1624, when Laud notes that he showed the King the prefatory epistle to his book, and that James approved of it. On 4 February he supplies the unusual information that the work was "this day put into the Press: being licensed by the Bishop of London," and on 16 April there is the note that "My Conference with Fisher the Jesuit Printed, came forth."

The dates here are apparently precise enough, but the complicating factor is due to Laud's work having been printed as an appendix to White's larger one. The two works have separate signatures and are occasionally found separately, but they were entered in the Stationers' Register together and are usually found together, preceded by a general title page which names them both. One would guess that the long delay between Laud's writing of his reply and his prefatory epistle was caused by White rather than by Laud himself. But when Laud says that his book was "put into the Press" on 4 February one cannot even be certain whether this refers to White's book as well as his, or whether White's was finished and only Laud's part now remained. When he says that his work was licensed by the Bishop of London (and there is, of course, no reason to doubt his word) he makes a statement that is not confirmed by the Stationers' Register. The Bishop of London possessed licensing authority second only to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his imprimatur was made use of from time to time. When Archbishop Abbot refused to license Montague's Appello Caesarem and Sibthorpe's assize sermon at Northampton the authorities made use of the Bishop of London (George Mountaigne) to get both books into print. Nevertheless, the Stationers' Register entry reads:

One would guess that there were two licensers because one approved

White's part of the book and another Laud's. But the Bishop of London did not appear in the matter as far as the Stationers were concerned. Finally, it may be noted that the book was not registered until more than two months after it had gone to press, and only two days before publication.

If some books such as the Conference with Fisher were not entered until publication was imminent or had already occurred, Donne's Sermon of Commemoration of Lady Danvers was entered at the earliest possible moment. Lady Danvers was buried on 8 June 1627, but because of other engagements Donne was not able to preach the commemoration sermon until 1 July. The sermon was entered "vnder the handes of Master Doctor Worall and both the Wardens" a little less than a week later, on 7 July. The little book also contained a collection of verses to the memory of his mother by George Herbert. It has already been suggested that, since the book was not issued by Donne's usual publisher, the arrangements for publication were probably made by Herbert. It can be further inferred, I think, that, first, Herbert's poems were composed during the weeks between his mother's death and the memorial service at which Donne preached, and secondly, that Donne knew from the beginning that the commemorative volume was planned and that, while he normally preached from notes only, this was one of the occasions (though not by any means the only one) when he wrote out his sermon in full, with the result that he was able to hand it over to the printer as soon as it had been preached. How long the book was in the press is uncertain, since the publication date is not known.

The final example, Donne's Devotions, is at once the most spectacular and the most fully documented case. Now that Mr. Shapiro has diagnosed the nature of the illness that gave rise to the Devotions [14] one can speak with a degree of precision not previously possible. Donne's illness, Mr. Shapiro shows, was relapsing fever, a fever that ends by a crisis on the fifth to the seventh day of the fever. Constance Donne was married to Edward Alleyn on 3 December 1623, and we have Alleyn's word for it that the marriage occurred while Donne was ill: "Thus past itt on till the beginning off your sickness and then you desire[d] our maryag showld bee performed with as much sped as might bee."[15] If Donne had not passed, or had only just passed the crisis of his fever by 3 December, he must have fallen ill during the last few days of November. The Devotions were entered in the Stationers' Register on 9 January, presumably after having been scanned

by the licenser and, if Donne's correspondence is to be believed, after having been seen by more than one of his friends. There is an undated letter in which Donne enquired of his friend Sir Robert Ker (who was in the service of Prince Charles) whether the Prince would accept the dedication of the book. The friends who importuned Donne to print the Devotions and had presumably seen part at least of the manuscript were probably Henry King and Dr. Mountfort, both canons of St. Paul's and in daily touch with Donne. When the letter was written printing had already begun ("That being in hand") although a draft of the dedication in manuscript was enclosed with the letter to Ker, since Donne requests him to "cast your eye upon the title and the epistle, and rectify me in them." Yet, in spite of all this activity, Donne opens his letter by declaring, "Though I have left my bed, I have not left my bedside. I sit there still, and as a prisoner discharged sits at the prison door to beg fees, so sit I here to gather crumbs."[16] On 1 February Donne was able to send a presentation copy to the Queen of Bohemia enclosed in a dated letter to one of her ladies, who was to hand it to her.[17] The book turned out to be larger than Donne anticipated, as it consists of 27 sheets, and thus would have taken about a month to pass through the press. If we assume that the book was in the printer's hands for the whole of January, we must then assume that the book was written during December. Yet this forces us to believe that the book was written in only a few weeks by a man who had very nearly died, whose body was weak and exhausted by his illness, and who was in the early stages of a long and slow convalescence.[18] Even when the book was in the press, he was barely able to sit up in a chair in his bedroom, but had been unable as yet to leave it. For the circumstances of its composition Donne's Devotions can have few, if any, parallels in the annals of literature.