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The early editors of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus knew only the B-text, which had its first edition in 1616, until in 1850 Alexander Dyce printed both the A-text of 1604 and the B-text of 1616, a procedure followed by Peter Cunningham. However, the next editor, A. H. Bullen, in 1885 selected the A-version as his copy-text on the belief that it alone represented the pure original play whereas the 1616 text was a later revised version containing the additions for which Henslowe on 22 November 1602 paid £4 on behalf of the Admiral's men to Samuel Rowley and William Birde, or Borne. Bullen's hypothesis was followed by Tucker Brooke in his influential 1910 edition of Marlowe. This view prevailed until in 1946 Leo Kirschbaum exploded the bombshell of "The Good and Bad Quartos of Doctor Faustus" (The Library, n.s. 26 [1946], 272-294), which effectively argued that the A-text represents a so-called 'bad quarto,' that is to say a memorial reconstruction of some acting version contrived without direct reference to any manuscript in the authorial line. Because of the paraphrases of this A-version in the anonymous Taming of a Shrew (1594) and an apparent reference in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600-1601) to a scene in the B-text not present in the A-text (combined with what Kirschbaum took to be internal cross-references in A to episodes present only in B), Kirschbaum concluded that the A-text was a memorial reconstruction of the B-text as we know it from the 1616 quarto and hence that neither text contained the Rowley-Birde additions.
Sir Walter Greg had been working on parallel lines, but he could not have escaped being seriously influenced by Kirschbaum's conclusions, which he made the basis for the extraordinarily intricate and detailed reconstruction of the history of both texts in the introduction to his parallel-text edition of Doctor Faustus in 1950. It was peculiarly
In the opinion of the present writer Kirschbaum's argument needs re-examination, and a more scrupulous examination of the problem (removed from the question of the A-text as bad quarto) will suggest that the A-text — if it is a report as seems most probable — refers back to the original version of the play whereas the B-text of 1616 contains not only the 1602 Rowley-Birde additions but also their revisions, chiefly confined to the comic middle part of the play, conventionally assigned as Acts III and IV, but also affecting the tragic action in Act V.[2]
Five parallel passages are commonly accepted as borrowings from Faustus in the anonymous Taming of A Shrew entered in the Stationers' Register on 2 May 1594 and often considered to be itself a bad quarto of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew instead of a source of that play. Two of these passages echo lines in which the A and B-texts agree.[3] One repeats the word from the B-text in a passage where both versions otherwise agree,[4] and one the word from the A-text in similar circumstances.[5] These have no evidential value in respect to the 1602 additions. On the other hand, the fifth case (if legitimate) may echo a passage in a scene of the play where the A-text is wanting and the B-text alone is available. This is A Shrew, IV.ii.60-61, 'This angrie sword should rip thy hatefull chest, | And hewd thee smaller than the Libian sands', generally taken to be derived from Faustus, 1397-98, 'And had you cut my body with your swords, | Or hew'd this flesh and bones as small as sand' (IV.ii). Moreover, although Greg (p. 28) admits that the parallel is not necessarily convincing, he and Kirschbaum agree that it can be strengthened by a reference in The Merry Wives of Windsor, IV.v.67ff. (TLN 2283-87) in Bardolph's speech, 'for so soone as I came beyond Eaton, they threw me off, from behinde one of them, in a slough of myre; and set spurres, and away; like three Germane-divels; three Doctor Faustasses.' This is taken to refer to the same scene, in which Benvolio, Frederick, and Martino are
If the B-text contains the additions of 1602, these two scenes of Benvolio's attempted revenge and its punishment by Faustus must be among them, for they are wanting in the A-text and are intimately bound up, also, with the Emperor Carolus scene and its quite different treatment of the scoffing knight in the A-text. A third piece, one that may be called internal evidence, has also been adduced by Kirschbaum (pp. 285-286) and approved by Greg. In the A-text the Horse-courser, entering wet, cries out, 'he bade me I should ride him into no water; now, I thinking my horse had had some rare Qualitie that he would not have had me knowne of, I like a ventrous youth, rid him into the deepe pond' (Greg, A-text, 1180-83). In the B-text Scene xv (IV.v) which is absent in the A-text, the Horse-courser's narrative in a different context reads, 'Doctor Fauster bad me . . . in any case ride him not into the water. Now sir, I thinking the horse had had some quality that he would not have me know of, what did I but rid him into a great river' (1540-43), whereas the parallel B-text of the incident itself (Scene xiv) as quoted above in the A-text has simply, 'I riding my horse into the water, thinking some hidden mystery had beene in the horse, I had nothing under me but a little straw' (1484-86). Because the language of the A-text seems to repeat that of the B-text in Scene xv wanting in A, not the language of the parallel B-text of Scene xiv, Greg believed that it established the presence of the text of Scene xv when the A-text was memorially reconstructed.
On these three pieces of evidence, in the last analysis, rests the whole case for the absence in the B1 quarto of the 1602 additions. It is now my task to re-examine Kirschbaum's and Greg's postulate, deriving from this evidence, that the whole B-text as we have it is a unified one that represents substantially the original composition of the play.
The most obvious point of attack are those scenes, or major parts of scenes, that are present in the B-text but wanting in the A-text. These are in order: (1) lines [831-835], 836-980 of Scene viii (III.i) which represent all but the opening of the scene and concern themselves with Faustus' decision to forgo the sights of Rome in favor of disrupting the Pope's feast, the rescue of Bruno, and the exit of the Pope and his train to prepare for the banquet; (2) Scenes xii-xiii
In Greg's view (pp. 23-29) these are all A-text subtractions from the B-text original, not B's additions to the A-form of the text.[8] Nevertheless, the evidence for at least some of this material points in the contrary direction. The first of these scenes, in Rome, illustrates with superior clarity the case for addition and revision. Both the A-text and the B-text prefix Scene viii (III.i) with Chorus 2 (753.2-778.1) — the A-text, however, omitting 760-772, 774 — which recounts Faustus' eight days' trip through the heavens and then, on a second trip 'to prove Cosmography', introduces him as first arriving in Rome in order to take part in St. Peter's feast that is being celebrated on this day. Both texts then continue with Faustus' account of his travels through France and Italy, and then his question where they now are, followed by Mephostophilis' reply and his description of Rome. Both then agree in Faustus' impatience to see the sights of Rome and in Mephostophilis' advice to remain in the papal palace to 'take some part of holy Peters feast.'
At this point the two texts diverge. The A-text continues, normally,
Stylistic evidence confirms addition and revision. The reviser of this scene was free with rhyming couplets whereas none had appeared earlier in the play; moreover, couplets have no place in the original opening of the scene. Liberal use of rhyme, indeed, sets off the work of this particular reviser, as well as his occasional practice of completing a part line with the opening line of the next speech, a convention only sparingly used, if at all, in the original manuscript.[10] This partiality for couplets, it must be emphasized, is no part of the play where the A-text is present: couplets occur only in certain of the scenes, or parts of scenes, in which the B-text is the sole authority. Thus they constitute the best stylistic test available to isolate the work of this reviser, for they are unique to him.
Scene xii (IV.ii), 1324.2-1430.4, contains at least fourteen rhyming couplets, and Scene xiii (IV.iii), 1430.5-1456.1, in its short length has nine. These two linked scenes found only in B depict the attempted revenge of Benvolio and the punishment Faustus gives to Benvolio, Frederick, and Martino. Little doubt can exist that these two scenes are the work of the author of the additions and revisions in Scene viii and hence that they participate in the additions made to the B-text. Scene xii has one completed line between speeches, and Scene xiii has four. The elaboration of the material here away from the simple dramatization of the Historie in the A-text of Scene xi is obvious, and the same difficulty exists here as with Scene viii in accepting the A-text as a memorial reconstruction. That is, the A-text knows nothing of the elaborate byplay marking Scene xi between Benvolio and his friends, or between Benvolio and Faustus, that associates this new material with revised Scene viii through the introduction of Saxon Bruno, and that leads to the revenge and its punishment. Although the exhibition of Alexander to Carolus is recalled in its salient details, the reporter of the A-text would need to have suffered a complete blackout when it came to the extensive comic material that is interwoven in Scene xi, so complete indeed that not a single detail was remembered and he was forced to return to the Historie to rebuild in an elementary and quite different action the lost original. This is not a hypothesis that lends itself to ready belief when the stylistic evidence as well as the evidence for elaboration, not for subtraction, associates this extensive section with the additions in Scene viii.
In Scene xviii (V.ii) the opening triumph of Lucifer, 1796.2-1819, has only one couplet (1811-12) but two completions of part lines. By common consent it stands out stylistically from what follows in the scene, it is wanting in the A-text, and thus it can be assigned with some confidence to the revision of the original play. In corroboration, a faulty join of the new material is revealed by the repetition in its brief interlude between Faustus and Wagner of information given in Wagner's soliloquy (present in both texts and therefore part of the original) beginning Scene xvii (V.i), a repetition reminiscent of the same overlapping of old and new material in Scene viii.[11] Finally, 1879.1-1925, another set piece later in Scene xviii, with its visions of heaven and of hell distinguishes itself from the surrounding action by containing at least ten couplets and two completed part lines. It is unknown to the A-text[12] and stylistically associates itself with the similar cases earlier of B-text additions.
The two crucial allied facts are that these noted scenes are unique to the B-text and, simultaneously, share distinctive stylistic characteristics not found elsewhere in the B-text (or in the A-text). The double association is critically significant in setting these scenes apart from the rest of the material that can be assigned as part of the original manuscript on the grounds that it is shared by both the A-and the B-texts. These scenes distinctive to the B-text are important in the comic action of Acts III and IV but they also touch up the tragic last scene. It now remains to examine the only other scene unique in the B-text, Scene xv (IV.v), 1504.2-1557.1, which instead is a part of the farcical action, with its conclusion in 1588.1-1668 attached to the comic action of Scene xvi (IV.vi).
In these two prose sections involving the clowns' drinking bout and their interruption of the magic show at Vanholt, the touchstone of couplets and completed lines cannot be applied, and little can be done to associate the language with that in the verse scenes by the couplet writer.[13] General probability, then, constitutes the argument. That is, all other scenes unique in the B-text can be isolated as distinctive additions set apart from the style and matter of the original manuscript as shown by the agreement of the two texts; hence some special circumstance would need to be present to justify any hypothesis that, alone of all the scenes wanting in the A-text, the tavern action in Scene xv and the aftermath at Vanholt in Scene xvi were omitted in A1 because of total memorial failure or the exigencies of provincial production.[14] Two small hints may, instead, suggest that these sections are also additions, presumably by the same reviser(s) who supplied the other unique B-scenes. In the first place, the original scene at Vanholt— although it exhausted its source in the Historie insofar as the Historie account could be dramatized[15] — was brief and relatively undramatic, especially after the more extensive Carolus episode presented in the original play (as reconstructed by the A-text). Since in the Carolus episode the reviser chose to expand the action of the magic-show by an extensive and completely original reworking of the Historie's account of the knight and his horns (reproduced from the Historie with some faithfulness in the A-text), it may be suggested that he would have felt even more keenly the need to piece out the spare and static magic business at Vanholt by similar extraneous material. In contrast to the Carolus scene where the Historie and the original version of the play suggested the action to elaborate, the Historie was of no use for the additions to Vanholt and the grapes. It may be conjectured, therefore, that with some ingenuity the reviser chose to extend the Horse-courser action beyond its conclusion both in the Historie and in the A-text original. He took hints about the eating of the hay
It will be observed that this hypothesis for the addition of the farcical scene in the tavern, with its transferred recapitulation of the Horse-courser's adventure with Faustus, answers Kirschbaum's and Greg's postulate (described above, earlier) according to which the A-text (1180-83 in Greg's numbering) in the original scene echoes language not of the parallel B-text but instead of the B-text recapitulation in the tavern scene, wanting in A, and hence provides evidence that this tavern scene had been present in the original manuscript where it affected the A-text memorial reconstruction of the earlier scene. Instead, if one hypothesizes the addition of the tavern episode, one may reasonably associate with this a corresponding revision in the earlier scene of the B-text Horse-courser's account of his adventure since it was to be repeated in the later tavern narratives of Faustus' mischiefmaking. Thus one need only take it that the supposed echo in A-text's Scene xiv (IV.iv) of B-text's Scene xv (IV.v), 1540-43, in fact represents no more than A's version of the original scene before its revision and hence before the B reviser's transfer of the fuller account in Scene xiv to the new Scene xv (with the corresponding reduction in B Scene xiv of the original details preserved in A). The narrative in Scene xv is thereby made no more repetitious than is effective in the retelling of a good joke, and the more precise detail transferred to the tavern scene leads naturally to the concluding jest of Faustus' wooden leg in expanded Scene xvi, which requires the tavern narrative as its motivation.[16] No technical objection on the evidence of the A-text
The view that the scenes unique to the B-text represent the Rowley-Birde additions of 1602 has been objected to on the ground that these are not extensive enough to warrant the payment of £4, close to the price for a new play.[17] At this distance it is difficult to adjudicate the merits of such a payment, which presumably would be based more on the intrinsic importance of the new material for reviving the popularity of an old play than on mere length. If the number of editions of the B-text (six between 1616 and 1631) is any guide to its popularity on the stage — and editions may sometimes coincide with revivals — Rowley and Birde earned their money. It is possible, however, that they earned it more thoroughly than is usually supposed. That is, the question of less identifiable revision as well as of the readily isolated new additions must be raised.[18] That there was revision of Scene xiv as a consequence of the addition of Scene xv has been suggested above, with some evidence in its favor. The new material that expanded Scene xi at the Emperor's court as preparation for the added scenes xii and xiii has also been mentioned as a revision of the A-text's elementary (or original) treatment of the scoffing knight dramatized from the Historie. Although these two cases of revision were required by the additions that followed, it is possible that other scenes were worked over in consideration of the £4 payment. In this connection it may be no accident that the B-text's Scenes vii (II.iii) and x (III.ii) substitute
Since one result of the reviser's observed ministrations was the overlapping or the awkwardness of his joins to original material as in the beginning of the scene at Rome and in the bequest to Wagner,[21] other such difficulties may reveal his hand. One of these is the very odd presentation of two magic books to Faustus, the first by Mephistophilis in Scene v (II.i), 543-551, and the second by Lucifer in Scene vi (II.ii), 717-720, in both cases Faustus' thanks being cast in identical words. It is just possible that the reviser was working over the Seven Deadly Sins action and then, moving back, excised the weak prose continuation of
Other anomalies in the play may refer back to the reviser. Some modern editors have found that the exhibition of Helen to the Scholars in Scene xvii (V.i) is inferior on the whole in the B-text to the A-text version.[24] In the same scene, moreover, the first speech of the Old Man is so completely different in both versions as to go beyond memorial corruption in the A-text and to require actual rewriting in one or the other form of the play. Similarly, it is perplexing whether the A-text's omission of the Scholars' discovery of Faustus' body represents Marlowe's original ending and a later production cut, or whether the
The alterations made in the B-text at a later time than the formation of the A-text are not confined, then, to the additions, important as these are, but also include revision and expansion of comic and farcical scenes already in existence as well as some reworking of the tragic action in Act V. That these alterations are on the whole extensive enough to be identified with the additions by Rowley-Birde for which £4 were paid in 1602 is the proposition I wish to advance. They cannot be identified with anything else, certainly. Indeed, the characteristics of the verse in the additions to Scene viii in Rome, with special reference
The question at last arises whether the evidence herein adduced for the special characteristics that set apart the unique B-scenes and the expansions of other scenes, together with the revision, all of which points irresistibly to the Rowley-Birde additions of 1602, is strong enough to stand against the three pieces of contrary evidence — from The Taming of A Shrew, from The Merry Wives of Windsor, and from the supposed memorial echoes in the A-text of unique B-scenes. The 'echoes' can be discarded immediately on the ground that they are as reasonably to be assigned to revisions in the B-text as to memorial recollection in the A-text. The suggestion that A Shrew, IV.ii.60-61, 'This angrie sword should rip thy hatefull chest, | And hewd thee smaller than the Libian sands' is a paraphrase of Faustus, 1387-98, 'And had you cut my body with your swords, | Or hew'd this flesh and bones as small as sand' in the unique B-scene xii (IV.ii) is, in Greg's words (p. 28), 'one of the least convincing of the parallels, and cannot be taken by itself to prove anything at all.' But Greg continues, 'It is, however, supported by a curious point relating to another of the scenes peculiar to B,' and he describes the allusion in The Merry Wives of Windsor to the punishment of Benvolio, Frederick, and Martino, and approves of the authenticity of this latter reference. He concludes, 'Since, then, The Merry Wives was probably written in 1600 to 1601, it follows that the scene in question was at any rate no part of the Rowley-Birde additions of November 1602.'
Although not so positive as Kirschbaum and Greg of the precise application of this reference to the B-text's Scenes xii-xiii,[28] I am not
In the midst of these uncertainties about the exact form of the Shakespeare text, therefore, no one can say for sure that the allusion to Faustus was present in The Merry Wives on its initial writing in 1600-1, given the known facts that suggest Folio alterations in the play.
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