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Notes
The definitive edition of Cupids Revenge is that of Fredson Bowers in the forthcoming second volume of The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, (1966 —) which I have had the opportunity of consulting in proof on completion of my own independent investigations. To Fredson Bowers I am deeply grateful for his advice and guidance during eighteen months of 'bibliographical apprenticeship.'
How and why he should have acquired them in 1615 is not documented. The printed versions of both plays, although hardly based on the actual prompt-books, show definite signs of mark-up for the theatre. Harrison's copy of Cupids Revenge, at least, is therefore likely to have originated from the company. (The complex question of copy for Cupids Revenge is exhaustively discussed in Bowers, Textual Introduction, pp. 321 ff.) We know that after the Children of the Queen's Revels had amalgamated first with the Lady Elizabeth's players in 1613 and 1614, and then, in 1615, also with the Prince Charles's Men (see Chambers, ES, II, 60; 244; and especially Bowers, p. 331, for the probable connection of these facts with Harrison's acquisition of the play), it was Philip Henslowe who was their 'manager' and who would therefore have been the likely person for the publisher to deal with in securing his copy. As for Hector, the wording of Smith's dedication of the play to Sir John Swinnerton seems to suggest that the author himself had been anxious to get it printed. It is not improbable that Henslowe, again, may have acted as Smith's agent in his efforts to find a publisher. Smith knew Henslowe, since he had formerly collaborated a good deal on plays for the Admiral's Men. He might in this instance even have tried to interest one or the other of Henslowe's companies in his play. For, as it happens, the Admiral's Men were now the Elector Palatine's Men. Smith, in his dedication, praises the players who gave Hector its world premiere. But, if we are to believe the title-page, he has also written "new Additions"; and what he may really have desired when approaching Henslowe may have been to get the play performed by the professional actors of one or the other of the troupes of those patrons whose marriage he had been inspired to celebrate by writing his less than masterful history play. Perhaps all Henslowe could do for him, however, was to suggest publication. But these guesses cannot be substantiated and are only put forward here in an attempt to probe the possibilities of a common source for Josias Harrison's copies for the two plays which he may well have acquired as a pair, since he also secured the rights for them and published them together.
See Chambers, Elizabethan Stage (1923), II, 23; 59-61; Harbage/Schoenbaum, Annals (rev. ed., 1964, and Supplement, 1966); and Bowers, "Textual Introduction", p. 331.
See further the "Introduction" to L. W. Payne, Jr. (ed.), The Hector of Germanie . . . , by Wentworth Smith. Publ. of the University of Pennsylvania, Series Philology and Literature, Vol. XI (1906).
Cupids Revenge: A 2 B-L4 (L4 blank); Hector: A-H4 I2 (cancel title-leaf printed on I2); Greg, Bibliography, nos. 328 and 329.
In "Thomas Creede's Pica Roman", SB, XXIII (1970), 148-153, W. Craig Ferguson asserts that Hector (STC 22871) was set in Thomas Creede's fount no. 6 of pica roman which came into use in his shop in 1613. From the demonstrably close links between the quartos there can be no doubt that the same type was used for Cupids Revenge.
The evidence necessary to secure the division is summarized in Bowers, "Textual Introduction", pp. 317-321.
Within this stint, the appearance of B3v is puzzling. X spreads an uncommonly small amount of text over the page, dividing up a prose passage into irregular short lines, some only three or four words long. I do not believe that he proceeded by formes in sheet B, setting B(o) before B(i) as the appearance of B3v would in that case have it; nor can I detect signs of a cut in the text. But neither is there any other explanation from the analysis of the composition, unless one assumes that for some reason the positions of the Priest's 'Measure' at the bottom of B4, and of the Song beginning B4v, had been predetermined, with more space left on the preceding page and a half than there was text to fill it.
Dialogue could have been left out around lines 8-10, and again around lines 31-32. There is even a slight possibility that Y tampered with the end of X's page E2v to make room for essential passages of text. At the bottom of E2v, there are two short speeches by Leontius in succession, both prefixed Leon. This just might indicate a cut to ensure that the page ended with Leontius' necessary exit line, to be followed by Timantius' comment and concluding remarks which head page E3. The second of the Leon. prefixes is punctuated by an inverted period — or by a hadly inking colon; a colon would be a characteristic of Y. Also, the catchword on E2v does not conform to X's, but rather to Y's styling.
Incidentally, the assumption of separate type-cases for the two compositors is hereby also reinforced; for Y is never beset with a shortage of P's. For example, he uses the letter seven times in his first stint of Hector alone.
A coherent hypothesis from the evidence of I's alone, however, is this: there was no distribution before H1, or none even until the composition of H1v was completed. Seven I's were left over from G2, the eighth I on H1 and the solitary one on H1v are additional pieces of inexplicable origin (foul-cased?), raising the total to 115. After the distribution of D3v before H2, and the setting of H2, X consequently had not one, but three I's to spare, and six, not four, after H4. He did not set his section of H2 from his own cases, but did use his own type in I2v from line 20 onwards, setting a total of 54 I's (48+6) between I2v, line 20, and I4v, line 14. This makes numerical sense, but could override such conflicting evidence as the reappearance of a P from D3v on H1v, and especially the typographical change at I2v, line 15, only by support from incontrovertible proof — which, alas, cannot be ascertained; for this line of argument would lead to a further, and rather tempting, speculation, namely that the typographical and the orthographical shifts on I2v should perhaps be distinguished in their origin as indicating a change of compositors in line 20, but a new leaf of manuscript in line 15. Admittedly, though, the assumption of such an alteration in the manuscript, occurring as it does in the middle of a scene, would not exactly uncomplicate the over-all hypothesis about the nature of the copy for this play.
Whether C1 was distributed together with B4v before the completion of E1, or in a separate operation between E1 and E1v, cannot of course be determined.
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