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IV

We are now in a position to consider the probable nature of the printer's copy for the A1 quarto. In order for Compositor X to be able to set the end of Act IV scene i at his pair of type-cases while Y simultaneously set the beginning of the next scene at his (as they did for E3r), each would need to have had the copy for his scene at his own case, probably held by a visorum.[26] Apparently, the manuscript leaf that contained the end of IV.i was physically separable from the leaf on which the beginning of IV.ii was written. That this division of copy between the two compositors was possible throughout the setting of A1 suggests that every fresh scene in the manuscript began on a new page. Bowers (discussing Faustus in another text and context) asserts that he knows of "no preserved dramatic manuscript which does this" but adds that "it might well be a convenience for the foul papers of a collaboration" ("The Text of Marlowe's Faustus," p. 199). In fact, in the only preserved

example of the foul papers of a collaboration, The Book of Sir Thomas More (B.L. MS Harl. 7368), three of the scenes written by the collaborating playwrights do begin on new pages (see fol. 7v, 8r, 12r).

Another manuscript that may have some application here as well is the fragment of The Massacre at Paris. This manuscript leaf, now in the Folger Shakespeare Library (MS J.b.8), may be in Marlowe's own hand, and, if so, it is one of the few preserved examples of a playwright's foul papers.[27] The approximately 7" X 8" manuscript leaf contains exactly one scene of the play, beginning with Enter at the top of the recto, and ending with Exeunt halfway down the verso; the rest of the page is left blank. If the leaf is genuine then we may have evidence that Marlowe's method of composition was to begin and end individual scenes on separate pieces of paper. There are, however, enough doubts about the authenticity of the leaf that any such conclusions can only be tentative.

Whatever Marlowe's practice when he was writing alone, it is generally agreed that Doctor Faustus was something of a collaborative effort, and a collaboration might necessarily entail special methods of composition. Before speculating further about the nature of the manuscript (or manuscripts) that the collaborating playwrights produced, we need to consider how that collaboration may have progressed. Specifically, was the writing of Faustus an interactive collaboration, or did the collaborator merely inherit a play that Marlowe had left unfinished?[28] Greg contends that Marlowe "planned the whole" and farmed out certain scenes to another dramatist, but Roma Gill speculates that Marlowe's "encounter at Depford brought his writing of Dr. Faustus to an untimely end" so that the actors were left with "the

beginning and end of a great tragedy, and the problem of how to bridge the twenty-four years."[29] Although Gill's conjecture has a certain attraction, it does not account for inconsistencies in the text that seem to point instead to a collaboration in which the two dramatists were writing their scenes separately and simultaneously. For it appears that the collaborator was, to a certain extent, unfamiliar with Marlowe's section of the play.

Indeed, to speak of Renaissance dramatic "collaboration" may be something of a misnomer, because playwrights who worked together on a play generally worked apart. Rather than a line-by-line collaboration (such as that employed by the twentieth-century team of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart), the usual division of labor was the separate composition of individual acts and scenes.[30] Writing in relative isolation, one collaborator would often not know exactly what the other was doing: Shakespeare was using a different source for his share of The Two Noble Kinsmen than Fletcher was using for his.[31] Nashe, who wrote only the induction and first act of The Isle of Dogs, complains that Ben Jonson, who wrote the other four acts, did not have "the least guess of my drift or scope."[32] In Shakespeare's additional scene for More, he seems unaware of both the original version of the play and the revisions made by his fellow collaborators.[33]

Tucker Brooke was the first to point out that the author of Mephistopheles's complaint in the Faustus scene with the clowns—"How am I vexèd with these villains' charms! / From Constantinople am I hither come / Only for pleasure of these damnèd slaves" (III.ii.33-35)—contradicts Marlowe's conception of the effects of conjuring at I.iii.43-57, where Mephistopheles explains that he was not "raised" by Faustus's conjuring speeches but came of his "own accord."[34] Greg, while noting that we need not expect the philosophical outlook of the serious scenes to be maintained in the farcical scenes, agrees that this contradiction "may legitimately be cited as confirmation of the manifest difference of authorship" (Parallel Texts, p. 360).

Moreover, it has not been previously noticed that two of the collaborator's

scenes refer to specific incidents from the prose History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus (1592) that do not appear in the play. At the end of the Show of Sins scene, Lucifer promises to send for Faustus at midnight for a visit to hell (II.ii.171). The promised trip to hell takes place in the Damnable Life (chap. 20), but not in the play.[35] In the collaborator's Robin and Rafe scene, Mephistopheles says that he has come "from Constantinople" (III.ii.34). Although an important episode takes place in Constantinople in the Damnable Life (chap. 22), there is no corresponding scene in the play. Apparently, the collaborator assumed that the play, like its source, would include both a scene of Faustus's visit to hell and a scene at Constantinople. If the collaborator was given a copy of the Damnable Life from which to dramatize certain scenes (i.e. the scene at Rome [chap. 22], the scene at the Emperor's court [chap. 29-30], the Horsecorser episode [chap. 34], the scene at Vanholt [chap. 39]), but was unaware of exactly what other material from the source Marlowe was incorporating into his share of the play, the inconsistencies in the collaborative text might easily have resulted.[36]

It would make sense, or, as Bowers says, it would be a "convenience" for a collaborating playwright to begin each of his scenes on a new page so that they could later be collated with those of his collaborator (as appears to have been the case in the collaborative revision of The Book of Sir Thomas More). Such a supposition, which may seem sufficiently obvious, is corroborated by Thomas Dekker's testimony that playwrights conceived of collaboration in terms of writing separate acts on separate pieces of paper. In a libel suit brought by Benjamin Garfield over the portrayal of his mother-in-law in the subplot of Keep the Widow Waking, Dekker asserts that he only "wrote two sheets of paper containing the first act" (Bentley, p. 233). It is reasonable to suppose that Marlowe and his collaborator proceeded in this fashion. Presumably, their separate foul papers would then be combined and, perhaps after some stitching and reworking, a fair copy would be transcribed (either

to be used as or preparatory to the promptbook). In such a transcript the scenes would follow one after the other, with no necessary relation to the beginning or end of the pages on which they were written. Bowers is essentially correct in that there is no extant fair copy dramatic manuscript in which every fresh scene begins on a new page, but we might expect new scenes to begin on new pages in the foul papers of a collaboration.

I would suggest, then, that the printers of A1 Faustus had as their copy the original foul papers of Marlowe and his collaborator.[37] A certain amount of shuffling and reshuffling of the combined papers might have occurred when they were first transcribed or during the more than a decade that they spent in storage; such a manuscript would have been anything but orderly, and we would not be surprised to find certain scenes out of place in a text that was printed from it. And, indeed, it has long been suspected that the two Robin/Rafe scenes, which follow one immediately after the other, are not in their proper positions; the Act IV Chorus, which is obviously intended to introduce the Carolus scene but comes two scenes too early in A1, is certainly misplaced.

This type of manuscript, in which Marlowe's scenes could be easily separated from those of his collaborator, would have facilitated the unusual method of composition found in the A1 quarto: it would allow one compositor to set a scene (Marlowe's) while another simultaneously set the following scene (collaborator's). This hypothesis gains considerable strength when we compare the compositors' stints with the shares of the play that have been traditionally assigned to Marlowe and to his collaborator. Compositor changes often coincide with authorship changes: on D1r, Y set Wagner's chorus (Marlowe's), while X set the beginning of the scene at Rome (collaborator's); on D3r, X set the chorus (Marlowe's), while Y set the beginning of the Robin and Rafe scene (collaborator's). The compositors are here able to divide up their copy at the exact points at which authorship changes. This textual feature can perhaps best be explained if the copy that they had to work with was the foul papers of the two playwrights.[38]