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"The Final Revision of Bonduca": An Unpublished Essay by W. W. GREG
by
Grace Ioppolo [*]

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

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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:
We know that in some instances authors themselves prepared fair copies of their plays, which could then be used for the purposes of the playhouse (e.g. Munday's John a Kent, Massinger's Believe as You List, Daborne's Bellman of London); but other prompt copies that have come down to us were clearly prepared in the playhouse from rougher drafts supplied by the authors (e.g. Barnavelt, Massinger's Parliament of Love). To which class did the lost 'originall' of Bonduca belong? The differences between the text of the manuscript and that printed in 1647 suggest that the authors may have prepared their own fair copy, subjecting the play to revision in the process.[4]
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

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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,

we shall be in a position to compare the play as it stood in the rough papers with the text of the playhouse-copy, or in other words we may be able in a general way to determine what alterations were made in the course of the final revision that resulted in the authoritative text of the tragedy. And these should in turn enable us to form an opinion as to whether the preparation of the prompt-copy was the work of the author himself, and perhaps obtain what our literary friends would probably call a peep into Fletcher's workshop. (MS, p. 2)
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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:

Once our attention has been drawn, by the frank confession of the scribe, to the difficulty he found in deciphering the foul papers, ample evidence of their obscurity and frequent alteration may be found in numerous passages of obvious corruption in the manuscript. The tempting opportunity thus afforded of catching Fletcher in the very act of composition makes it worthwhile pursuing the matter in some detail, though it is so closely interwoven with the separate question of the final revision that no complete treatment is possible at this stage. (MS, p. 8)
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

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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:
Turning to F. we find that the lost scenes are rather more complex than is here indicated, but the remarkable thing about them is that the first & second occur in the reverse order, the funeral preceding the mocking. The scribe's first instinct was right & it was only when he tried to elaborate it that he went wrong. The point is of some importance since it shows that where the foul papers failed him he had only his memory to rely on and was not able to consult a 'plot'. Considering the state of things revealed in the foul papers it may fairly be argued that no one but the author himself could have reduced them to such satisfactory shape as we find in the folio.[14] (MS, pp. 19-20)
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,

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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:
We cannot be sure that any or indeed all of these directions may not be due to the scribe's imagination or his recollection of the actual performance, but it is at least tempting to suppose that some at least may preserve or be based on notes of the author's own, that were pruned away in preparing the prompt-copy, or perhaps even struck out from it in the course of adapting it for stage use. (MS, p. 35)
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":

The central point to be borne in mind is that, however the revision was made, it was not made on the foul papers, since ex hypothesi, these bore no trace of it at a date long subsequent to the preparation of the prompt-copy. Either therefore the revision was made in the course of the preparation of the playhouse-copy, or it was made later on playhouse-copy—or, of course, it may have been made partly in the one way and partly in the other. If therefore, we come to the conclusion (i) that the revision shows the hand of the author, and (ii) that it is of a nature unlikely to have been undertaken on a subsequent occasion, we shall be brought to conclude that Fletcher prepared his own fair-copy for the playhouse. (MS, p. 36)
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).

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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

the alterations are sometimes in the direction of the remoter, more definite, and forcible, sometimes in that of the more obvious, vaguer, and less emphatic, but in either case the change seems to have been made with taste and judgment; having regard to the context. The numerous variants not cited are, I think, generally of the same character. To my mind at least they speak strongly of the hand of the author. Even when directly dictated by stage considerations, they are rather too subtle to be credited to a playhouse adapter, nor does it seem likely that such an agent would have troubled to make them. (MS, p. 44)
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]

Ten times a night
I have swom the Rivers . . .
and still to try these Romanes, whom I found
(and if I lye, my wounds be henceforth backward,
and be you witnesse, gods, and all my dangers)
as ready, and . . . as valiant . . .
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):

Car.
Sit down poor knaves: why where's this wine
and victuals?
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who waites there?

Suit. within.
Sir, 'tis coming.

Hen.
Who are these Uncle?

Car.
They are Romans, Boy.

Hen.
Are these they
that vex mine Aunt so? can these fight? they look
like emptie scabbards, all, no mettle in 'em,
like men of clouts, set to keep crows from orchards;
why, I dare fight with these.

Car.
That's my good chicken. And how do ye?
how do you feel your stomacks?

MS. omits the first two of these speeches (Car. Sit . . . coming'.), in their place, and in place of the last has the following:
Cara:
thates my good chicken.
sitt downe poore knaves. why wheres this wine and victualls.
who waightes there.

wthin:
sir, tis com͂ing.

Cara:
and how doe you.
how doe you feele your stomackes.---Enter: wth wine / & Meate:

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:

Jud.
Delicate Captain,
to doe thee a sufficient recompence,
I'll knock thy brains out.

Car.
Do it.

Hen.
Thou dar'st as well be damn'd: there knock his
brains out,
thou skin of man? Uncle, I will not hear this.

Jud.
Tie up your whelp.

Hen.
Thou kill my [MS. noble] Uncle?
Would I had but a sword for thy sake, thou dry'd dog.

Car.
What a mettle}
[one line in MS.]
this little vermine caries.}

Hen.
Kill mine Uncle?

Car.
He shall not, child.

Hen.
He cannot: he's a Rogue,
an onely eating Rogue: Kill my sweet Uncle?
oh that I were a man.

Jud.
By this wine,
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which I will drink to Captain Junius,
who loves the Queens most excellent Majesties little daughter
most sweetly, and most fearfully, I will do it.

Hen.
Uncle, I'll kill him with a great [om. MS] pin,

Car.
No more, Boy.
I'll pledge thy Captain: To ye all, good Fellows.

2 Daugh.
In love with me? that love shall cost your
lives all.

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:

Heng.
When, Sir?
I long to kill thee; come, thou canst not scape me,
I have twenty ways to charge thee; twenty deaths
attend my bloody staff.

Iud.
Sure 't is the devil,
a dwarf, devil in a doublet.

Heng.
I have kill'd a Captain, sirha, a brave Captain,
and when I have done, I have kickt him thus. Look here,
see how I charge this staff.

Iud.
Most certain
this boy will cut my throat, yet.

In MS. the passage stands:
Hen:
when.
I have twenty wayes to charge thee. twenty deaths.
I long to eate thee. come thou canst not scape me.
attend my bloody staffe: I have killd a captaine sirra,
a braue captaine. & when I have done
I have kickt him thus. [look here, deleted].

Iud:
sure tis the devill
the damnd devill in a dublett.

Hen:
looke here.
see how I shake this staffe.

Iud:
most certaine
the boy will cutt my throte yet.

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
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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:

Petill.
Good morrow, Gentlemen; where's the Tribune?

Reg.
There.

Dru.
Whence come ye, good Petillius?

Petill.
From the General.

Dru.
With what, for heavens sake?

Petill.
With good counsel, Drusus,
and love, to comfort him.

Dru.
Good Regulus
step to the souldier, and allay his anger;
for he is wilde as winter.
Exeunt Drusus and Regulus.

Petill.
O, are ye there? have at ye. Sure he's dead,
it cannot be he dare out-live this fortune:
he must die, 't is most necessary; men expect it;
and thought of life in him, goes beyond coward.
Forsake the field so basely? fie upon't:
so poorly to betray his worth? so coldly
to cut all credit from the souldier? sure
if this man mean to live, as I should think it
beyond belief, he must retire where never
the name of Rome, the voice of Arms, or Honour
was known or heard of yet: he's certain dead,
or strongly means it; he's no Souldier else,
no Romane in him; all he has done, but outside,
fought either drunk or desperate. Now he rises.
How does Lord Penyus?

Pen.
As ye see.

Petill.
I am glad on't;
continue so still. The Lord General,
the valiant General, great Swetonius---

Divergence begins with the third speech of Drusus, MS. reading:
and loue to comfort him.
Drus:
I feare thy nature
and will not be far of. good Regulus
step to the soldier. and allay his anger.
for he is wild as winter.

Regu:
Ile doe my best.
and when occasion offers. call.

Drus:
I will: ---Exeunt: Regulus. & Drusus:

petill:
how does lord penius.

peni:
sure he mockes me.

petill:
sir. how doe ye.

peni:
as you see sir.

petill:
the lord Generall
the valiant Generall great Swetonius.

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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:
Petill.
How does lord Penius?

Peni.
Sure, he mocks me!

Petill.
Sir,
How doe ye?

Peni.
As you see [sir].

Petill.
Th'lord Generall . . .

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:

yet durst doubt, and be damned.
Petill.
It was an errour.

Pen.
A foul one, and a black one.

Petill.
Yet the blackest
may be washt white again.

Pen.
Never.

Petill
Your leave, Sir,
and I beseech ye note me; for I love ye,
and bring along all comfort: Are we gods,
alli'd to no infirmities? are our natures
more then mens natures? when we slip a little
out of the way of vertue, are we lost?
is there no medicine called Sweet mercie?

Pen.
None, Petillius;
there is no mercie in mankinde can reach me,
nor is it fit it should; I have sinn'd beyond it.

The corresponding passage in MS. runs:
yet durst doubt. and be damnd.
petill:
that was an error.

peni:
a fowle one; ô a black one.

petill:
It may be cur'd though.

peni:
never with credit

petill:
now ye are ith right on't.

peni:
I am ith right: I knowe petillius,
there is no mercy in mankinde can reach me,
nor is it fit it should. I have sind beyond it.

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:

to be so stupid, to arrive at pardon.
Petill.
O but the General---

Pen.
He's a brave Gentleman. . .

Here MS. has:
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to be so stupid to arrive at pardon.
petill:
O but the Generall. the noble Generall.
you doe not knowe sir.

peni:
Is a braue gentleman . . .

We have in F. judicious pruning which leaves the metre unaffected.

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

Petill.
What would ye do?

Pen.
Die.

Petill.
So would sullen children,
women that want their wils, slaves, disobedient,
that fear the law, die. Fie, great Captain; you
a man to rule men, to have thousand lives
under your regiment, and let your passion
betray your reason? I bring you all forgivenesse,
the noblest kinde commends, your place, your honour.

Pen.
Prethee no more; 't is foolish: didst not thou?
by-----thou didst, I over-heard thee, there,
there where thou standst now, deliver me for rascal,
poor, dead, cold coward, miserable, wretched,
if I out-liv'd this ruine?

Petill.
I?

Pen.
And thou didst it nobly,
like a true man, a souldier: and I thank thee,
I thank thee, good Petillius; thus I thank thee.

Petill.
Since ye are so justly made up, let me tell ye
'tis fit ye die indeed.

Pen.
O how thou lovest me!

Petill.
For say he had forgiven ye;say the peoples whispers . . .

This long passage is represented in MS. by four lines only:
petill:
since ye are so Iustly made vp, let me tell ye
nor is it fit you should. ye foole yor waight in't.
breake yor owne groundes of rule, that have cõmande,
nay say he had sir. say the peoples whispers . . .

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:

must not these kill ye?
Say they are won to pardon ye . . .
MS. reads:
must not these kill you.
dare you stay so long penius.
peni:
honest captaine

petill:
say they are wun to pardon you . . .

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:

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Pen.
No, by no means: I am onely thinking now, Sir,
(for I am resolved to go) of a most base death,
fitting the basenesse of my fault. I'll hang,

Petill.
Ye shall not; y'are a Gentleman I honour,
I would else flatter ye, and force ye live,
which is far baser. Hanging? 't is a dogs death,
an end for slaves.

Pen.
The fitter for my basenesse.

Petill.
Besides, the man that's hang'd, preaches his end,
and sits a signe for all the world to gape at.

Pen.
That's true: I'll take a fitter poison.

Petill.
No,
't is equal ill; the death of rats and women,
lovers, and lazie boys, that fear correction.
Die like a man.

Pen.
Why my sword then.

Petill.
I, if your sword be sharp, Sir . . .

MS. has merely:
peni:
no. by no meanes. I am only thinking now sir.
for I am resolued to goe. of a most base death.
fitting the basenes of my faulte.

petill:
by no meanes: that were abhominable.
and wolld still showe you poorer and poorer.

peni:
why then my sword petillius.

petill:
I. if yor sword be sharpe sir . . .

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]:

Swet.
Petillius, you have shown much worth this day,
redeem'd much errour,
ye have my love again, preserve it. Junius,
with you I make him equall in the Regiment.

Jun.
The elder and the nobler: I'll give place, Sir,

Swet.
Ye shew a friends soul.

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

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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]:

there is a mercy for each fault, if tamely
a man will take't upon conditions.
Pen.
No, by no means: I am onely thinking now, Sir . . .

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

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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

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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.

Notes

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[*]

"The Final Revision of Bonduca" and the letters of Lady Elizabeth Greg and A. W. Pollard are reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

[1]

W. W. Greg, Introduction, Bonduca, (Malone Society Reprints, Oxford University Press, 1951), p. v. Hereafter cited as MSR.

[2]

In the Introduction to his MSR edition of the play, Greg identified the scribe as either Edward or Anthony Knight (p. vi); later editors, including Cyrus Hoy, identify him as Edward Knight (see Textual Introduction to Bonduca, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, gen. ed. Fredson Bowers, Vol. 4 [Cambridge University Press, 1979], p. 151).

[3]

MSR, p. 90. The manuscript of another play of the period, the anonymous The Faithful Friends, also contains missing scenes for which the scribes have substituted summaries and "plotts" (see The Faithful Friends, eds. G. M. Pinciss and G. R. Proudfoot [Malone Society Reprints, Oxford University Press, 1975]).

[4]

Greg, "Prompt Copies, Private Transcripts, and the 'Playhouse Scrivener,'" The Library, 4th ser., 6 (1925), 156.

[5]

Greg, Dramatic Documents from the Elizabethan Playhouses: Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931), pp. 321-324.

[6]

Greg, The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare, 3rd edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), pp. 29-30. Greg first made this statement in the 1942 first edition of this book.

[7]

Lady Elizabeth Greg's letter, dated 11 July 1959, to the Huntington Librarian reads: "Dear Sir: Professor F. P. Wilson of Merton College, Oxford is Literary Executor for my late husband Sir Walter Greg, and he has been helping me to pick out works which he thinks may be acceptable to various people & Libraries as tokens of remembrance of my late husband & his work. I am sending you these facsimiles & manuscript in the hope that you will care to accept them as such. I am sincerely, Elizabeth Greg" (HEH Inst. Arch. 33.1.7.4. FL. 28). I wish to thank Thomas V. Lange, the Associate Curator of Early Printed Books at the Huntington Library, for providing me with information about the acquisition of Greg's essay.

[8]

A. W. Pollard's letter reads in part, "I am conscious that I haven't been able to do justice to your paper, but it certainly throws light on what scribes & authors & compositors may respectively have done in a given case. The point I have not sufficiently disentangled is as to how much you have introduced for the elucidation of Bonduca as contrasted with what has a wider applicability. From the point of view of the reader as well as of the Editor of a magazine, the length is rather daunting. I've never read Bonduca; if it is a decently good play & worth printing, I am inclined to think a lot of your matter would come better as notes to an edition. Between this & the end of October when I shall be making up the December Library, you might consider whether you could get Oxford to print the play, & write an article in The Library, which would call attention to the Edition only presenting your general conclusions without so much detail. This is all I can suggest at present, but The Library is so heavily indebted to you for your help that you may be sure it will do its best to print anything you want printed" (HEH RB 112111 PF).

[9]

Greg did not include "The Final Revision of Bonduca" in either of the two lists of his writings which he prepared (printed in The Library, 4th ser., 26 [1945] and 5th ser., 15 [1960]), but these were of his published writings only.

[10]

See R. C. Bald, Bibliographical Studies in the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio of 1647 (Oxford University Press, 1938), and Hoy, pp. 151-259.

[11]

Many of Greg's theories have lately been re-examined. For a discussion of the modern categorization of manuscripts and printer's copy, see Gary Taylor's General Introduction to William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion, by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor with John Jowett and William Montgomery (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 10 ff.

[12]

For a discussion of some current trends in editing Shakespearian plays which may have been authorially revised, see David Bevington, "Determining the Indeterminate: The Oxford Shakespeare," Shakespeare Quarterly, 38 (1987), 501-519.

[13]

All act-scene-line references are to Cyrus Hoy's edition of Bonduca (his collation of the texts appears on pages 249-259); the corresponding lines in Greg's MSR edition of the manuscript are given in parentheses.

[14]

Greg has added the last sentence in pencil in the manuscript.

[15]

In support of this point, Greg refers readers in this essay to his article, "The Printing of the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio of 1647," The Library, 4th ser., 2 (1921), 109-115.

[16]

Honigmann argues that an author's first draft may show indifferent and substantive variants when compared with a draft with "second thoughts" made soon afterwards and before delivery to the actors. These two "unstable" drafts represent "not so much a fastidious author's determined attempts to improve passages that fail to satisfy as an author so unconceited with himself and so fluent that little verbal changes, not necessarily always for the better, ran quite freely from his pen when the process of copying refired his mind" (The Stability of Shakespeare's Text [London: Edward Arnold, Ltd, 1965], pp. 2-3).

[17]

Robert K. Turner, Textual Introduction, The Maid's Tragedy, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, Vol. 2, p. 22 (Dramatic Works hereafter cited as DWBF).

[18]

As Greg's reproduction of the following passages in his unpublished essay is sometimes

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incorrect, I have reproduced the Folio passages as they appear in Greg's photostatic copy of the 1647 Folio text (now in the Huntington Library rare book collection) and the manuscript passages as they appear in his 1951 MSR edition (Greg renders all commas in the manuscript as periods in the MSR edition).

[19]

Greg noted in the margin of this passage that he had erred in originally assigning to MS. the completion of the line "why I dare fight with these" with "thates my good chicken."

[20]

Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), pp. 107-110. Greg had also made these points in The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare (1942), pp. 27-30.

[21]

Greg has footnoted in pencil, "Where was it?" in the manuscript, with the inked response, "Shakespeare's Fight with the Pirates, 2nd ed. (1920), p. 60."

[22]

Bald, pp. 84-89. Bald also cited the variants at 2.4.91-94, 5.3.124-127 and 5.3.129-131 which Greg had cited earlier in his essay (Greg had at first also included the passage at 2.4.91-94 in his discussion of major variants but deleted it, perhaps after he realized that he had already discussed this passage in his section on "The Foul Papers and the Errors of the Scribe").

[23]

Robert K. Turner, Textual Introduction, The Tragedy of Valentinian, in DWBF, Vol. 4, p. 274.

[24]

Hans Walter Gabler concludes of the 1639 Quarto of Monsieur Thomas that "the absence of directions and notations of an exclusively theatrical nature and the presence in high proportion of Fletcherian linguistic forms according to Cyrus Hoy's classification suggests authorial papers as printer's copy, further defined as a fair copy in Fletcher's hand by the virtually error-free verse lining" (Textual Introduction, Monsieur Thomas, in DWBF, Vol. 4, p. 418). Gabler draws the same conclusions about the Folio printer's copy for Women Pleased: "The proximity in transmission of the copy-text to a fair copy in the author's hand is suggested by the general cleanness of the text and its arrangement—there is little corruption to be emended in the words, the verse-lining, or the verse/prose division—as well as by the marked incidence of Fletcherian forms such as the 'em and ye colloquialisms" (Textual Introduction, Women Pleased, in DWBF, Vol. 5, p. 443).

[25]

Robert K. Turner argues of The Maid's Tragedy that "although there is little direct evidence to show that either Beaumont or Fletcher made a fair copy which lay behind Q2 and even less to indicate which of the two performed the task, an authorial transcript seems the best choice among the possible alternatives; and the failure of Fletcher's linguistic practices to force their way into the passages found only in Q2 allows the inference that Beaumont was the transcriber" (Textual Introduction, The Maid's Tragedy, in DWBF, Vol. 2, p. 20). Similarly, of The Scornful Lady, Cyrus Hoy states that "whether the manuscript behind Q1 was prepared by one of the dramatists (if either, it is more likely to have been Beaumont, in view of the scarcity of Fletcher's famous ye's), or, as seems somewhat more likely, by a scribe, the quarto print exhibits a number of features, specifically with reference to stage-directions, that are more likely to be traceable to an authorial manuscript or a transcript thereof, than to a manuscript that had been prepared for use in the theatre" (Textual Introduction, The Scornful Lady, in DWBF, Vol. 2, p. 456).

[26]

Fredson Bowers conjectures that certain textual variants between Q and F of The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn result either from a reworked manuscript behind Q, or from the fact that "Beaumont himself wrote out the printer's copy manuscript for Q and in the process made a few improvements in the theatrical form of the text" (Textual Introduction, The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, in DWBF, Vol. 1, pp. 120-121).

[27]

Fredson Bowers concludes of the copy for the Folio text of Cupid's Revenge: "That Beaumont may have copied out the play, revising it in the process from the combined foul papers in order to produce a copy suitable for submission to the theatre company, is a hypothesis that the general uniformity of the accidentals save for the noted compositorial characters appears to support, especially since Fletcher's individual linguistic preferences are obscured" (Textual Introduction, Cupid's Revenge, in DWBF, Vol. 2, p. 324).

[28]

Robert K. Turner finds that certain features of Quarto 1 of The Tragedy of Thierry

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and Theodoret "suggest that the underlying manuscript consisted of the authors' papers, possibly fair copies by each" (Textual Introduction, The Tragedy of Thierry and Theodoret, in DWBF, Vol. 3, p. 368).

[29]

For a discussion of revision by Beaumont and Fletcher in these plays, see the Textual Introduction and Notes to DWBF, Vols. 1-6; also see A King and No King, ed. Robert K. Turner (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963); Robert K. Turner, "Revisions and Repetition-Brackets in Fletcher's A Wife for a Month," Studies in Bibliography, 36 (1983); Philaster, ed. Andrew Gurr (London: Methuen, 1969); The Maid's Tragedy, ed. Andrew Gurr (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1969).

[30]

Bowers, "Walter Wilson Greg, 9 July 1875-4 March 1959," The Library, 5th ser., 14 (1959), 172.

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