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I

As always, Greg sought clues to the nature of the underlying manuscript in the stage directions of the printed text. But when, like Greg, one addresses the stage directions of Comedy of Errors with questions about whether their origin is authorial or theatrical, one finds that they offer divided testimony. Some provide information essential to a reader, but not strictly necessary to the book-holder in an acting company: 'Enter Adriana, wife to Antipholis Sereptus, with Luciana her Sister'; 'Enter Adriana . . . and a Schoolemaster, call'd Pinch' (TLN 273-274, 1321-22).[4] These may have been written by the author with a view to guiding his company through the play when he first read it to them, or they may have been directed either by the author or some other agent (perhaps a Folio "editor") toward a post-production reading audience.

Another of the directions is indefinite in its reference to the number of actors taking part in a scene: 'Enter three or foure, and offer to binde him: Hee strives' (TLN 1394-95). Now this, we might think, is almost certainly authorial, for it compares closely to authorial directions in the extant dramatic manuscripts The Book of Sir Thomas More ('Enter [t]hree or foure Prentises of trades' [Malone Society Reprint (1911), l. 453]) and The Launching of the Mary ('Enter Lo. Ad: [Lord Admiral] wth .2. or .3. attendantes' [Malone Society Reprint (1933), l. 1216]). Yet such comparison is possible only because the manuscript directions survived transmission through the hands of theatrical book-keepers; both More and Launching are listed as "prompt-books" by Greg himself (Dramatic Documents I, 243-251, 300-305). Thus even though the call for 'three or foure' in Comedy of Errors may originate with the author, its appearance in the printed text does not necessarily rule out the possibility that printer's copy was a theatrical manuscript, rather than the author's "foul papers."

A third kind of stage direction in Comedy of Errors names properties that may have been of interest to a book-keeper and so perhaps suggests his hand, although these directions, too, may well be authorial, since Shakespeare was so familiar with the needs of the stage: 'Enter Angelo with the Chaine'; 'Enter Dromio Eph. with a ropes end'; 'Enter Antipholus Siracusia

with his Rapier drawne, and Dromio Sirac' (TLN 955, 1288, 1440-41). On the whole, the stage directions in Errors offer no decisive evidence for editorial identification of printer's copy either as an authorial manuscript or as a theatrical playbook.[5] There are certainly authorial touches, but these could have been transferred to a playbook. As Greg wrote in Dramatic Documents of the Elizabethan Playhouses, "It is time we asked the question: What treatment did the book-keeper mete out to the author's stage-directions? The answer is that as a rule he left them alone" (I, 213).