University of Virginia Library

The scribal manuscript of John Fletcher's play, Bonduca, written between 1627 and 1637,[1] has long offered textual scholars significant evidence of the manner in which foul and fair copies of a Renaissance play were written. At the beginning of Act 5, the scribe, now identified as Edward Knight, book-keeper of the King's Men,[2] summarizes scenes 1 and 2 and the beginning of scene 3, explaining, "The occasion. why these are wanting here. the booke where by it was first Acted from is lost: and this hath beene transcrib'd from the fowle papers of the Authors wch were found."[3] The scribe thus informs us that his manuscript has been transcribed from incomplete foul papers; the variants between this text and the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher Folio text suggest that the latter text was printed from the recovered "booke where by it was first Acted."

At the conclusion of his 1925 essay, "Prompt Copies, Private Transcripts, and the "Playhouse Scrivener,'" W. W. Greg considered the evidence of

Bonduca (which he thought at that time to have been co-authored by Beaumont and Fletcher), and remarked of the lost original prompt-book which served as the Folio printer's copy: In his 1925 essay, Greg was not prepared to pursue this line of inquiry about the preparation of the fair copy and the possibility of authorial revision. But in 1931, he again asserted in his Commentary on Dramatic Documents from the Elizabethan Playhouses that a comparison of the two extant texts of Bonduca offered the opportunity to observe revision between the author's rough draft and the final theatrical version.[5] In his 1951 edition of the manuscript of the play for the Malone Society Reprints series, Greg acknowledged that determining whether the revisions were made by Fletcher, whom he then recognized as the sole author, or the scribe who prepared the prompt-book was "one of the critical problems of the play, but lies beyond the present discussion" (MSR, pp. xii-xiii); by 1954 he seemed satisfied with his earlier conclusion that there was no proof that the "appreciable amount of revision" in Bonduca was not done by Fletcher himself.[6]

Although he tentatively resolved the question of who was responsible for the revisions in Bonduca, Greg apparently did not settle the question of who was responsible for the preparation of the prompt-book of the play. Also, in none of his published discussions of the texts of Bonduca did he attempt to answer the other question he had posed in 1925 about the class to which the lost original prompt-book belonged, even though he noted at one point that a more detailed investigation into the relation of the manuscript and Folio texts was needed (MSR, p. xi, n. 4). However, Greg had carefully investigated the relation of the two texts, the source of the revisions, and the preparation of the prompt-book in an unpublished essay now in the collections of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. In "The Final Revision of Bonduca," a 63-page manuscript essay, Greg had posed and answered the question of whether Fletcher himself supplied the revised fair copy of the play which served as the prompt-book for the King's Men.

Greg's essay, which he thoroughly corrected and revised, is contained in a pamphlet file (RB 112111 PF) appended to the Hoe-Huntington copy of the 1647 Folio of Beaumont and Fletcher's Comedies and Tragedies. A few months after Sir Walter's death in March, 1959, his wife, Lady Elizabeth Greg, donated the essay, as well as his collations of the manuscript and Folio texts of Bonduca and The Honest Man's Fortune, to the Huntington for the use of scholars (Greg maintained a fifty-year correspondence with the librarians

of the Huntington).[7] He apparently wrote the undated essay shortly after his 1925 article on Prompt Copies and Private Transcripts in which he first took up the bibliographic problems of Bonduca. With Greg's essay is a letter dated 25 July 1927 in which A. W. Pollard recommends that either Greg cut the "The Final Revision of Bonduca" for publication in The Library, or use it to prepare an edition of the play.[8] The essay was not printed in The Library or elsewhere,[9] and Greg included very few of its comments about the preparation of the prompt-book in his Introduction to his Malone Society edition of the manuscript.

In spite of the extraordinary glimpse into authorial and scribal practice that Bonduca offers, the play's textual history has received attention from only a few scholars besides Greg, most notably, R. C. Bald in 1938, and Cyrus Hoy, who in 1979 was the first to produce an edition of the play based on both the manuscript and Folio texts.[10] Although Greg's unpublished essay on revision in Bonduca may appear outdated in some details, it provides the only in-depth examination of the relationship of the two texts of the play and of Fletcher's handling of the transmission of his text. More importantly, in this essay Greg first explores many of his theories which later became the foundation of modern Shakespearian editing.[11] Therefore, Greg's essay may yet be valuable to scholars engaged in literary and textual criticism of Bonduca or Fletcher in particular, and in general in the continuing controversy about editing possibly revised plays by other Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists, including Shakespeare.[12]

In order to present Greg's central arguments in "The Final Revision of Bonduca" here, his minor points have been summarized and only his major points relating to the authorial preparation of the prompt-book have been reproduced in full. Greg was the first scholar to collate both the manuscript and Folio versions of the play; thus much of his essay is concerned with giving parallel transcriptions of variant passages from the two texts. As Cyrus Hoy's edition of the play offers a complete collation of the variants between the texts, those portions of Greg's essay which present these variants have not been reproduced, although the variants have been noted in the context of presenting his main arguments.

At the beginning of "The Final Revision of Bonduca," Greg presents his thesis: he will attempt to reconstruct the original foul papers and the prompt-book of the play by separating scribal and compositorial variants from authorial variants in the manuscript and Folio texts. After dismissing the obvious non-authorial variants, Greg states,

Therefore, Greg plans to examine three main issues: variants in the manuscript arising from scribal error in reading the author's foul papers; variants in the Folio text arising from compositorial error in reading the recovered prompt-copy; and variants between the reconstructed rough draft and prompt-copy due to authorial revision.

In the first section of the essay, "The Foul Papers and the Errors of the Scribe," Greg terms the manuscript a "reasonably accurate text compiled by one rather particularly equipped for the task," but finds that the types of errors made by the scribe demonstrate that "the foul papers of Bonduca were not only at times illegible but at others filled with alterations either ambiguous or obscure" (MS, pp. 3-4). Greg begins his discussion of scribal "blunders" by noting the scribe's failure to provide a whole string of speakers' names in 4.2 and his miscopying of a few words which were unfamiliar to him.

However, Greg commends the scribe for his "honesty" in usually leaving blank spaces in his manuscript when he could not read his illegible copy, especially at 1.1.119 (135), 1.2.105-108 (347-350), 4.2.74 (1910), 4.3.157 (2079), 5.3.141-145 (2526-2530), and 5.3.163-164 (2560-2561).[13] Greg continues:

Greg cites examples of obscurities and alterations in the foul papers which produced corruptions in the manuscript at 2.1.3 (566), 2.2.50-54 (786-791), 2.4.91-94 (1201-1202), 3.5.46 (1527), 4.4.114-119 (2309-2314), 4.4.156-159 (2361-2365), 5.3.65 (2420), and particularly 5.3.119-131 (2496-2513), the death of Hengo, arguing that this passage is not, primarily, if at all, "a case of revision, but merely of corruption in MS. There is a framework of identical matter in the two texts, but two passages have got displaced in MS., distorting both sense & metre. . . . The natural inference is that there have been additions to the text as originally written & that there was some doubt as to the exact place to which they belonged" (MS, pp. 13-14). Greg later restated these comments about marginal additions in the Introduction to his edition (p. xii), and both R. C. Bald (p. 85) and Cyrus Hoy (p. 152) have similarly suggested that the manuscript of Bonduca offers examples of textual confusion, rather than authorial revision, due to the uncertain placement of some additions.

After briefly examining scribal errors due to uncertainty in the insertion of speakers' names in Fletcher's rough draft at such points as 1.1.151-154 (169-173), 1.2.129-131 (382-385), and 4.4.46-48 (2207-2210), Greg follows with "a series of blunders on the part of the scribe for which there seems no very obvious excuse" at 1.1.94 (106), 1.1.108 (123), 1.1.177 (199), 1.2.63 (291), 2.3.99 (1018), 2.3.125-127 (1047-1050), 3.5.116 (1618), and 4.3.16 (1951). Greg concludes this portion of the essay with a discussion of the scribe's summary of

the missing scenes in Act 5, noting that the scribe places the funeral of Penyus as the first scene, crosses it out, then describes the scene in which Swetonius mocks Petillius for his role in Penyus' death, and afterwards presents the funeral of Penyus as the next scene (MSR 2368-2380). Greg remarks: Greg's final point that only the author could have made the corrections needed between his very rough foul papers and the completed prompt-book which served as copy for the Folio printers becomes the focus for the rest of the essay.

In the second section of the essay, "The Prompt Copy and the Errors of the Compositor," Greg concedes that whereas there is no clear evidence of the Folio "having been actually printed from a playhouse manuscript there is I think one feature that points to its close dependence on such an original. This is the printing of a dash in place of anything that might be regarded as an oath." He does not find this feature characteristic of the 1647 Folio as a whole but does cite its occurrence in Bonduca, The Prophetess, and Four Plays in One, three Folio plays set by the same printer who did not restore the censored oaths as the other printers had.[15] Greg argues that although the copy for Bonduca was "probably a playhouse manuscript," it was not subjected to more censorship than the other plays in the Folio (MS, pp. 20-21).

Greg then clears "out of the way all variants that may be attributable to the compositor on the one hand and to the scribe [of the prompt-book] on the other" (MS, p. 23), citing probably compositorial or scribal errors at 1.1.48 (57), 1.1.184 (209), 1.2.89 (323), 1.2.111 (353), 2.1.57-58 (628-629), 2.1.113 (696), 2.2.56 (793-794), 2.2.82 (827), 2.3.50 (939), 2.3.59 (961), 2.3.80 (986), 2.3.87 (996-997), 2.3.90 (1001), 2.3.100 (1019), 2.4.61 (1148), 3.5.5 (1467), 3.5.79 (1568), 4.2.56 (1884), 4.3.95 (2029), 4.3.166 (2095), 4.4.76 (2243), 4.4.108-109 (2300-2301). He debates whether some variants suggest authorial revision or corruption rather than compositorial error, including those at 1.1.144 (162), 1.2.257 (523), 2.1.28 (598), 2.1.128-129 (715-716), 3.1.47-50 (1255-1258), 4.4.8 (2162). Finally, Greg finds the use of "you," "ath," "em" or "vm," to be characteristic of the manuscript and the use of "ye," "o'th," and "em" characteristic of the Folio. Greg later noted some of these compositorial variants and manuscript/ Folio characteristics in the Introduction to his 1951 edition of the play (p. xii).

In the next section of the essay, "The Stage Directions," Greg suggests that because the stage directions in the foul papers were "meagre and obscure," the manuscript scribe may have revised the original directions in the prompt-copy and thus repeated them when transcribing the manuscript (MS,

p. 31). In support of this argument, Greg cites minor variants at 1.1.0 (2-3), 2.2.50 (785), 2.3.66 (963-964), 2.3.116 (1032), 2.3.125 (1046-1049), 2.3.130 (1053), 2.4.31 (1107), 2.4.41 (1119), 3.1.50 (1258), 3.1.75 (1285), 3.5.0 (1461), 3.5.137 (1647), 3.5.141 (1653-1654), 3.5.150 (1666), 3.5.154 (1670-1671), 4.2.31 (1850-1852), 4.2.74 (1910), 4.3.178 (2108), 4.3.197 (2129-2131), 4.4.29 (2189-2192), 5.3.127 (2508-2510), and 5.3.188-189 (2587-2588), and concludes: However, Greg remains uncertain and does not offer any conclusive evidence for this point.

The remaining thirty pages of Greg's essay takes up "The Final Revision" by examining those variants which may be due to authorial revision between foul papers and the prompt copy. Greg first sets up the problem in the "abstract":

Greg's first point that the foul papers showed no sign of revision years after the transcription of the prompt-book has not been made by any other editor or critic of Bonduca. Greg's last point allows him to argue further that both classes of variants, indifferent and substantive, were introduced in the course of preparing the fair copy, rather than during a revision of the play for revival: "Except possibly in a single scene, there is hardly anything important enough to suggest that the play was ever overhauled for a revival: not much one would say of sufficient importance to justify the defacing of the promptbook for its introduction" (MS, p. 37). These second-thought revisions made during Fletcher's fair transcription of his foul papers, marks of "textual instability" as E. A. J. Honigmann later came to term them,[16] may stand side by side with other alterations made by another scribe or playhouse reviser, according to Greg.

Greg assigns little "weight" to such indifferent authorial variants as those at 1.2.23 (243), 2.2.66 (805), and 4.1.41 (1757) and questions those "individually slight" variants involving a change of the article at 1.1.103 (117), 1.2.145 (401), 1.2.165 (426), 1.2.205 (467), 4.2.45 (1868), 4.2.88 (1928-1929), 4.4.40 (2199), and 4.4.44 (2320), in which "the consistent superiority of F. suggests revision" (MS, p. 39). Greg examines other variants which demonstrate the idiosyncrasies of manuscript and Folio copy at 1.1.134 (151), 2.1.20 (706), and 3.1.83 (1297).

He attributes at least three variants, 1.1.87 (99), 1.2.62 (290), 2.1.70 (646), to the hand of the censor; Greg also noted these examples of censorship in the Introduction to his edition of Bonduca (p. xii).

These and other puzzling minor variants at 1.1.7 (10), 1.1.37 (45), 1.1.99 (113), 1.2.109 (351), 1.2.156 (412), 2.3.136 (1062), 2.4.46 (1127), 2.4.86 (1191), 3.3.13 (1424), 3.5.109 (1609), 4.2.53-54 (1880-1881), 4.3.26 (1961-1962), 4.3. 197-200 (2131-2134), and 5.3.137-138 (2521-2522) lead Greg to conclude that

In arguing for authorial revision in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy, Robert K. Turner also cites minor variants to make much the same point as Greg has made here. Turner states that "some conscious and deliberate change probably took place in these instances, and it is unlikely that anyone but an author would have troubled himself over such minor matters."[17]

Greg's strongest arguments for Fletcher having prepared the fair copy which served as the prompt-book of Bonduca appear in his examination of eleven major variants. Thus his citation of these eleven passages and his conclusions as to what they demonstrate about Fletcher's composition practices are reproduced in full here.[18]

Greg begins: "The major variants will need to be examined individually and in detail, since they afford, of course, the main body of evidence upon which our conclusions must rest. There are eleven of them.

1. [1.1.69-78; MSR 79-88]

MS. reverses the order of the lines within brackets. The parenthesis is in any case of awkward length, and the two lines are curiously parallel. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that they were alternatives in the rough copy that have got in inverse order into the two transcripts. If so, it must be admitted to be hardly the mistake one would expect of an author.

2. [2.3.58-66; MSR 958-964] The speakers are Caratach & Hengo (who enters):

MS. omits the first two of these speeches (Car. Sit . . . coming'.), in their place, and in place of the last has the following: No wholly satisfactory arrangement of the lines is possible. But it will be observed that in F. the metrical structure is impossible both at the beginning & end of the passage. In MS. 'thates my good chicken' completes the line 'why I dare fight with these' [above F, not MS.], and by bringing 'sir tis coming' into conjunction with 'and how doe you', continuity both of sense & verse is secured.[19] This points to Hengo's interruption ('Heng. Who are . . . chicken') having been in the rough draft an insertion the exact portion of which was doubtful. It is itself metrical except for one broken line. MS. adopts the arrangement which avoids disturbing the metre, and is therefore presumably original: on the other hand it may well be argued that F.'s arrangement is dramatically more effective, and was perhaps adopted in revision.

3. [2.3.95-113; MSR 1008-1029] This is a very similar case in the same scene. The speakers are as before, with Judas and the Younger Daughter:

MS. places Judas's speech, 'By this wine . . . I will do it', immediately after Caratach's 'Do it'. Both the metre & the verbal echo prove that these two speeches should follow one another. On the other hand the arrangement in MS. is dramatically impossible since it separates Judas's allusion to Junius from Bonvica's comment. The whole of the passage, 'Hen. Thou dar'st as well . . . Oh that I were a man', is clearly an addition—and a very unnecessary addition—in the rough draft, which cannot be forced anywhere into the original text without damage. It has two broken lines: 'What a mettle' (F.'s division is correct) and 'oh that I were a man'.

4. [4.2.62-70; MSR 1893-1904] Speakers Hengo and Judas:

In MS. the passage stands: It is clear that the arrangement in F. is unsatisfactory from the metrical point of view, but that of MS. is at least as bad. The slip which the scribe made at the end of the first speech shows that the line was originally continuous in the rough draft as in F. It follows that Judas's first speech, 'sure . . . dublett', was a marginal addition of uncertain position. I imagine that the words 'sirra, a brave captain' are another interpolation, & that at the end the draft originally read 'it is most certain'. If so it began by being metrical. That as it finally stood it was much confused is further shown by the scribe's absurd inversion of the second & third lines. The changes from 'eate thee' to 'kill thee' and from 'the damnd devill' to 'a dwarf-devil' (as it should presumably stand) and from 'shake' to 'charge' were made in revision.

5. [4.3.30-52; MSR 1966-1985] Petillius meets Regulus & Drusus, who are attending on Penyus:

Divergence begins with the third speech of Drusus, MS. reading: Here there has evidently been extensive revision, consisting of the elimination of Drusus's apparent suspicion of Petillius, and the introduction of the latter's soliloquy before he addresses Penyus. MS. is metrical (allowing for a redundant vocative) but requires some slight rearrangement, thus: F. is likewise metrical, but it is to be observed that the revision leaves a broken line at the exit. Fletcher's hand is evident.

6. [4.3.72-82; 2005-2013] The same scene:

The corresponding passage in MS. runs: This, though rather rough, is metrical: so is F. if we allow the redundant vocative 'Petillius'. The passage has been considerably amplified in revision, evidently by the author.

7. [4.3.86-87; MSR 2018-2021] Still the same scene:

Here MS. has: We have in F. judicious pruning which leaves the metre unaffected.

8. [4.3.97-113; MSR 2031-2034] Again the same:

This long passage is represented in MS. by four lines only: The expansion is rather loose in places, metrically, but of a piece with the rest, and clearly Fletcher's.

9. [4.3.118-119; MSR 2039-2042] Yet the same; Petillius is speaking:

MS. reads: Pruning again, and I think judicious, for the force of 'so long' is not as clear as it might be.

10. [4.3.129-141; MSR 2053-2059] This is the last of the many alterations in this scene:

MS. has merely: It is possible that at this point the rough draft was obscure or in confusion, for the MS. version is in part not verse at all. The F. version, much expanded, is metrical, but ends with a broken line.

11. [5.3.196-201]:

There is nothing in MS. corresponding to this passage which (with two broken lines) was inserted in the course of revision. This is clear from the fact that the lines immediately preceding, like the final couplet that follows, rime. When he came to his final revision Fletcher evidently found that he had forgotten to round off the Petillius affair.

It is a remarkable fact that more than half the major revisions occur in the scene in which Petillius persuades Penyus to commit suicide, and it shows the close attention which the author bestowed upon what must certainly have been the most difficult scene in the play to convey to the audience. It is not possible to say for certain whether these alterations were made later, as a result of actual experience on the boards, or in the course of preparing the fair-copy. The former is quite conceivable: on the other hand the MS. version of no. 10 really reads more like a rough note for a speech than anything Fletcher can

have seriously intended to stand. The other major revisions rather suggest to my mind alterations made in course of transcription, except the first in which it would appear that alternative readings have perhaps been preserved. Taken in conjunction with the minor revisions previously discussed, the evidence certainly seems to incline to the idea of transcriptional rather than independent revision, and therefore to the view that the author prepared his own fair-copy.

This provisional conclusion would of course be invalidated if it could be shown that there are any substantial errors, or any considerable number of minor slips, common to the two texts. It is certain that errors of a sort, namely of metrical division, do so occur. It may have been noticed that in variant no. 10 above, the first line is intolerably clumsy. The passage stands thus in F. [4.3.127-129; MSR 2051-2053]:

MS. has the same arrangement; yet it is obvious that the 'No', uttered by Penyus belongs metrically to the preceding line. Such errors of division, however, if errors they are to be called, occur not seldom in autograph manuscripts, and afford no evidence for denying the hand of the author. This could only be done by producing mistakes of a more substantial kind" (MS, pp. 44-58).

Greg concludes his study of manuscript and Folio variants by examining nine editorial changes made by Rev. Alexander Dyce in his 1844 edition, based solely on the Folio text, at 1.1.100 (114), 1.2.17 (237), 1.2.214 (478), 1.2.236 (501), 2.1.42 (613), 3.2.28 (1334), 3.2.68 (1382), 3.5.29 (1502), and 4.3.185 (2118). Because Greg finds that these Folio readings have manuscript support, he rejects Dyce's proposed emendations and cautions that "the scribe of the playhouse manuscript, whoever he was, understood the author's intention a good deal better than the modern editors have done" (MS, p. 63).

At the end of "The Final Revision of Bonduca," Greg draws two conclusions which he was to repeat thirty years later in his study of the Shakespeare First Folio: firstly, that an author may have been required to turn over foul papers to the acting company to prevent "double dealing," i. e., the sale of the original copy to a rival company; secondly that an author's foul papers would ordinarily contain alterations, including deletions, interlinings and false starts.[20] Greg finally remarks in this unpublished essay:

"If it be thought that I have succeeded in establishing a presumption that the prompt-copy of Bonduca was prepared from the foul papers by Fletcher himself, then there is one point which I should like to emphasize here, though I have mentioned it before in another article. It is the very remarkable fact that when the King's men took delivery of the piece they were not content with receiving the fair-copy which might serve as prompt book, but apparently insisted on the author handing over, and upon the

book-keeper preserving, the rough draft of the play as well. This is a detail of playhouse organization that may not be without important bearing upon bibliographical criticism.

"One point I think our investigation has established beyond question. Fletcher's rough draft was anything but faultless. 'What ever I have seene of Mr. Fletchers owne hand,' wrote his publisher in 1647, 'is free from interlining; and his friends affirme he never writ any one thing twice: it seemes he had that rare felicity to prepare and perfect all first in his owne braine; to shape and attire his Notions, to adde or loppe off, before he committed one word to writing, and never touched pen till all was to stand as firme and immutable as if ingraven in Brasse or Marble.' When he wrote these words there can be no doubt that Moseley had in mind these used by the first editors of Shakespeare: 'His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he vttered with that easinesse, that wee haue scarse receiued from him a blot in his papers.' Mr. Pollard has somewhere[21] remarked that if this statement is supposed to have any value it must be taken to refer to the original drafts of Shakespeare's plays & not to fair copies. That the latter should be free from alteration might be evidence of the author's neatness or patience or conscientious care, but never of his ready invention. There is no escaping from Mr. Pollard's logic, and Moseley's statements are even more precise. Yet it is abundantly manifest that the foul papers of Bonduca were full of alterations & revisions, often untidily made, and that further revision took place in the preparation of the fair copy. We can positively assert that Moseley's representations are quite untrue. And I for one do not for one moment believe that Shakespeare's foul papers were any exception to the general rule" (MS, p. 63).

Many of the specific arguments that Greg presented by 1927 about Fletcher's composition practices in Bonduca anticipated those of R. C. Bald in 1938. In discussing censorship in the Folio text, Bald cited many of the same examples of expurgated oaths; the theatrical nature of the stage directions in F similarly convinced him that this text was derived from a prompt-book; the types of variants between the manuscript and prompt-copy suggested to him either revision or authorial "afterthoughts" during the transcription of the fair copy (pp. 73, 78-79, 58). Bald also cited the major variants that constitute Greg's examples 2-6 and 8-10 to demonstrate cases of textual confusion due to authorial revisions written in the margin or on inserted slips of paper.[22] Cyrus Hoy similarly concluded that the foul papers of Bonduca gave the scribe trouble, and that a comparison of the manuscript and Folio texts shows signs of revision in the Folio, particularly, as Greg noted, in the portion of 4.3 between Penyus and Petillius, and in the extra six lines in 5.3 (pp. 151-152). However, neither Hoy nor Bald raised the question of the preparation of the prompt-book which served as copy for the Folio.

Scholars who have studied other plays by Fletcher, with reference to his early writing partner, Francis Beaumont, have followed Greg in their line of argument about the relation between manuscripts and early printed texts, echoing his two important conclusions about Bonduca, namely that Fletcher produced foul papers full of alterations that were difficult to decipher; and

that the revised fair copy served as prompt-book and later as printer's copy. For example, Robert K. Turner suggested that the high incidence of misreadings in the Folio text of The Tragedy of Valentinian may result from "a number of ill-written changes which could not be entirely deciphered by the compositors or difficulties on the part of the scribe in making out Fletcher's draft."[23] Fletcher may have transcribed fair copies of his plays other than Bonduca, including Monsieur Thomas and Women Pleased.[24] Either Beaumont or Fletcher may have prepared the fair copy which lay behind Quarto 2 of The Maid's Tragedy and Quarto 1 of The Scornful Lady.[25] Beaumont may have written the fair copies which served as printer's copy for the first Quarto texts of The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn [26] and Cupid's Revenge, which he co-wrote with Fletcher.[27] Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger may have each produced fair copy transcripts of their portions of The Tragedy of Thierry and Theodoret.[28] In addition to producing fair copies, Beaumont and Fletcher may have routinely revised their plays; modern editors have discussed possible authorial revision in The Maid's Tragedy, A Wife for a Month, Philaster, The Woman Hater, A King and No King, The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, Cupid's Revenge, The Noble Gentleman, and The Tragedy of Valentinian.[29]

Throughout his career, Greg returned to the evidence provided by Bonduca about the nature of Renaissance foul papers, fair copies, prompt-books, and printer's copy, whether he was discussing playhouse scriveners in 1925, dramatic documents in 1931, editorial problems in 1942, or the printing of the Shakespeare First Folio in 1955. Although R. C. Bald asserted that Bonduca "provides authentic examples of author's revision more definitely and frequently" than any of the other plays in the Beaumont and Fletcher 1647 Folio (pp. 83-84), the real value of the texts of the play may not lie in their examples of revision but in their illumination of the way in which an author himself handled the transmission of his text. Fredson Bowers has written that "logical thinking, great thoroughness, and always an original turn of mind operating on the frontiers of knowledge marked Greg's work throughout his life."[30] In this unpublished essay on the final revision of Bonduca we can again recognize these qualities in the work of Walter Wilson Greg.