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Notes
Different copies of Q1—Bodleian (in the Scolar reprint), British Library, Clark, Folger, Huntington (two copies)—show no press variants in the speech.
Twelve Famous Plays of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century, ed. Cecil A. Moore, The Modern Library (1933); The Works of George Farquhar, ed. Shirley Strum Kenny, 2 vols. (1988). Professor Kenny has unravelled the complexities of the early editions of The Beaux Stratagem in her introduction to the play (Works, 2: 148-152); see also her letter to The Times Literary Supplement, 17 September 1971. I have drawn upon her researches for the dates of Q1 and The Comedies of Mr. George Farquhar as well as other details. In addition to my debt to Professor Kenny's work, I wish to record my gratitude to Dr. Nati Krivatsy of The Folger Shakespeare Library, who checked the reading in Folger copies of two editions, to Professors Richard W. F. Kroll and Eugene M. Waith, who checked the Princeton and Yale copies of one edition, to Mr. John Bidwell of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library for much advice and assistance, and especially to my colleague, Professor A. R. Braunmuller, who patiently checked the reading in a number of the editions cited as well as in many about which I have only generalized.
Professor Kenny reports finding no copy of a first edition of The Works Of the late Ingenious Mr. George Farquhar. I assume that first edition to be the Comedies of 1708 because the "second" edition of the Works ("for Bernard Lintott") has a separate title page for the Comedies (for the four booksellers of 1708) similar to that of 1708 and a frontispiece identical to that in 1708.
The imprint is anonymous, but the title page bears Thomas Johnson's early device—cattle drinking at a fountain—and motto—non sibi sed omnibus—for which see H. L. Ford, Shakespeare 1700-1740 (1935), 51, 116.
The Comedies and the second and third editions of the Works are single-volume octavos. The 1718 fourth edition is a two-volume duodecimo. Its first volume received a fifth edition in 1721, which is sometimes found—as in the Clark copy—uniformly bound with a second volume in the fourth edition of 1718. The edition of 1728 is also a two-volume duodecimo, the first volume being the sixth edition and the second the fifth edition. Only the first volume announces itself as "Corrected," but the second volume was also, as The Beaux Stratagem is included in the second volume of the two-volume editions.
The London edition of 1728 prompted a Dublin "edition" in the same year which calls itself The Works Of the late Ingenious Mr. George Farquhar . . . The Sixth Edition. Plays in this "edition" have separate imprints. The Beaux Stratagem in the Yale copy of the "edition" has an imprint of 1729, seems to be the same as the British Library's copy of the separate play printed at Dublin in 1729, and fancifully calls itself an eleventh edition.
English Plays 1660-1820 (1935). Morgan notes that his "Text follows O1," which is identified in his sigla as Johnson's edition of 1710.
F. J. Tickner omitted Archer's speech in his edition of Restoration Dramatists (1930), but Tickner also omitted many other speeches from the play. His deletion accordingly represents something very different from an editorial solution to a particular crux.
Uhler merely lists without explanation his departures from Q1 and may well have arrived at version D independently, although he mentions in his textual introduction some of the early editions, including that of 1728 and the various collections of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.
Especially those designating the heirs' portions, which are considerable higher than the social averages. See John Loftis, Comedy and Society from Congreve to Fielding (1959), 47-48.
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