VI. Textual History of Richard II
If this hypothesis about Q1's omission and F's provision of an
abdication
episode is correct, then the relationship of the two underlying manuscripts
becomes easier to understand. Scholars have generally agreed that Q1 was
set from something other than a promptbook; whether the papers were foul
or fair, whether autograph or scribal, has been disputed, but
there seems little doubt that the manuscript was reasonably clean; Q1 shows
no discernible evidence of extensive corruption or sophistication. The
simplest assumption, one which at least accords with the available evidence,
is that the manuscript was holograph; we may conveniently classify it as
'foul
papers', so long as we recognize that some foul papers are much fairer than
others.
[54] As suggested above, the
omission of the original abdication episode from Q1 can be explained as the
result of censorship by one or other agent, directly interested in the printing
rather than the performing of the text. Long before this manuscript was
delivered to the printers, however, a transcript of Shakespeare's foul papers
must have been prepared for use in the theatre. Such a transcript might be
scribal or authorial; the number of minor verbal variants in F which seem
to
result from authorial tinkering suggests that Shakespeare at some stage
made
his own transcript
of the foul papers. This autograph fair copy might have been transcribed yet
again, or it might simply have been marked up for direct use as the
promptbook; the latter is the more economical assumption (though not
demonstrably the correct one). This promptbook (whether autograph or
scribal) would then have been submitted to the Master of the Revels; he
might well have demanded that the original abdication episode be altered.
The play was revived in 1601 (at the time of the Essex rebellion) and at
some time before 1608 (when Q4 refers to, and apparently acquires its text
of the abdication episode from, recent performances). Some time after the
publication of Q5 (1615), someone discovered that one page was missing
from this manuscript, and patched the gap by transcribing the text of the
affected passage from that edition, with some alterations to the stage
directions which suggest that a performance was intended. Some time
between 1615 and 1622, copy for Jaggard's compositors was
prepared by marking up an exemplar of Q3 (1598), by reference to the
promptbook. The annotator supplied act and scene divisions; the latter were
almost certainly editorial, but the former may have been present in the
manuscript. (Certainly, the King's Men were regularly providing
act-intervals
in performances after c. 1610, so that if a post-1615 revival did occur, the
act divisions could have been supplied then.) The annotator also
systematically collated stage directions and speech prefixes, transferring
promptbook readings to Q3; he collated dialogue variants as well, but
performed this function much less systematically.
On the most economical assumptions, then, Q1 was set from foul
papers, or a transcript of them, censored for printing; F was set from an
exemplar of Q3 which had been collated against an autograph promptbook,
containing a version of the abdication episode and one short passage
transcribed from Q5.[55]
The consequence of such a textual history is that the Folio text
demands
more attention than it is usually accorded. Shakespeare may have revised
the
abdication scene; certainly, the absence of the episode from Q1 puts the
state
of the text in Shakespeare's original papers beyond confident recovery. And
given that edited texts supply the Folio abdication scene, it would be logical
for them to include other Folio readings which also seem to be
Shakespeare's
minor revisions. The state of innocence would appear to be unattainable.
Besides, the Q1 text, though unsullied by the stage, had apparently not, in
some of its finer details, reached maturity. Where we can find it, we may
prefer to opt for the sprinkled authority of experience.
