 | |  |
Notes
The investigation of the material in this study was performed in the summer of 1972 with the assistance of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, which I gratefully acknowledge.
Cyrus Hoy, "The Shares of Fletcher and his Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon (III)," SB, 11 (1958), 87-89, 100.
The objections of J. H. Dorenkamp, ed., Fletcher and Massinger: Beggars Bush (Mouton, 1967), pp. 33-37, to the presence of Beaumont are vitiated by his attempts to assign Hoy's Beaumont sections to Massinger, a transfer that can scarcely be defended on stylistic or linguistic evidence. The difficulties with authorial assignments and the problem whether the play was an old one revised by Massinger or a new one written by Massinger, Fletcher, and some unknown are treated in the Textual Introduction to my edition of Beggars Bush in the third volume of the Cambridge University Press edition of The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon (1974), from which my act-scene-line references are drawn.
Compositor A never set periods. The periods come in the work of Compositor B in the Folio stage-directions after names at II.iii.o.1; III.iv.o.1,97.1; III.v.o.1; IV.i. o.1, where in an extreme case one period and three commas occur. Only the first time at II.iii.o.1 does Compositor B set a period after Enter in the Massinger manner. Since Compositor A set only conventionally punctuated directions, it is a reasonable assumption that more of such directions existed in the underlying printer's copy for the Folio (if indeed they were not there exclusively).
There can be no dispute about the assignments made to Fletcher and to Massinger, but in the nature of the case we cannot be equally positive that the third hand was Beaumont's. Nevertheless, Dr. Hoy believes that it is, and he does not recognize the linguistic characteristics of the third hand as those of any other known collaborator with Fletcher; thus the odds would seem to favor Beaumont. (For what it is worth, E. H. C. Oliphant argued that Beggars Bush was perhaps a Princess Elizabeth play transferred to the King's Men in 1616: The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher [1927], pp. 257-259). That Massinger made a fair copy of the papers of the other two dramatists for sale to the company is not unusual and has nothing to do with any case for revision versus original authorship: for example, Beaumont seems to have made a fair copy of his own and Fletcher's share of Cupid's Revenge for the company's acceptance. Indeed, the linguistic evidence that Massinger made his fair copy from the other authors' papers, and that he may not even have troubled to copy out Beaumont's share of Act V, does not suggest a revising author in the 1620's working over an earlier play. Until contrary evidence is adduced, it seems relatively safe to take it that Beggars Bush represents a play by Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger, of about 1613, sold to the company at that time in a Massingerean fair copy which was preserved in the theatre and recopied at a later date by Edward Knight into a new prompt-book.
These periods for Massinger and colons for Knight may be most conveniently viewed in Massinger's fair copy of Believe as You List with added directions by Knight, reproduced in the Malone Society Reprints (1927).
In fact, throughout the two texts the agreement in the use of parentheses is strikingly uniform.
The evidence is presented in detail in the third volume of The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon.
It is probable, for example, that not all prompt-book markings in the margins have been transcribed by the MS scribe and brought into the text.
The omission of numbering was not inadvertent. Just as I.iii is numbered I.ii, so IV.vi is numbered IV.v.
In The Shakespeare First Folio (1955) Sir Walter Greg wrote of Bonduca, "the 1647 folio adds a division into scenes, which suggests a playhouse addition, unless it was introduced at the time of printing" (p. 144), and, later, about the Shakespeare Folio Richard III, "F introduces an imperfect division into acts and scenes. . . . The division was most likely introduced at the time of printing" (p. 197). In the latter case, certainly, the conditions would appear to have approximated those in Beggars Bush.
Only three boors have speaking parts and are present. The direction sounds like a general one in an author's working papers before he wrote the scene.
In fact, MS ends the direction with 'Singing:' but then heads the following lines as 'Song', a title wanting in F where it seems to have been attached to the direction in error.
Actually, this wording comes from MS; the F compositor misread his copy when he set 'and the rest of the Boores'.
Of course, it may have been that these exits were omitted in the prompt-book because they were not present in Massinger and that the F compositors supplied them. Perhaps there was a mixture; the evidence is uncertain.
Whether it was Knight or the MS scribe who was in error here cannot be determined. Only one sailor is required, and in MS at line 33 he is given a simple Exit direction. Of course, Knight for effect may have wanted to bring on several sailors, only one of whom had a speaking part, or he could have split up the assignment of different speeches among several sailors at lines 15, 16, 18, 20. If so, however, the prefixes do not distinguish different sailors nor is anything done about the gift of money to only one at line 32. Probably this is a case of simple error in adding a plural -s.
Knight's mistake thus provides no exit for Van-dunk and the guests, unless they are supposed to remain on stage as mutes to follow Bertha in a general exit to end the scene after her soliloquy in lines 108-111. Florez' address 'nay pray goe in Sir' is clearly to Van-dunk, and thus the repeated 'Sir' in 'I will not stay; beleeve Sir' is necessarily addressed to him as well, not to Gerrard, as indicated by its being a response to Van-dunk's promise 'he cannot stay long from her'. Moreover, Florez never addresses the beggar Clause as Sir. No doubt can exist what Massinger intended; but his failure to note an exit for Gerrard after his last speech confused Knight, who made a snap judgment without fully considering the action.
It is noteworthy that in MS this oath is transcribed in an Italian hand like the songs, with which it is perhaps confused.
Against such a hypothesis, however, is not only the specific reference in this case to the subject of the song, but also the case at III.i.96.1 in which the title 'Song' as a heading has been confused in F as part of the stage-direction, 'and a boy singing the Song' (see above and footnote 13).
One cannot tell whether the possibility that Herbert might still refuse to license Believe as You List in its new form had anything to do with making up the prompt-book from Massinger's fair copy without re-transcription. Greg cites a few prompt-copies in the hands of the authors but feels that Believe as You List was not typical and that the usual authorial fair copy was re-transcribed to make up the prompt-book (Dramatic Documents from the Elizabethan Playhouses: Commentary [1931], pp. 198-200). It would seem that Beaumont copied out Cupids Revenge for submission to the company, including Fletcher's scenes, and that this fair copy was preserved and later given to the printer of the quarto (Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, 2 [1970], 323-324, 330-331).
| | |