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The growth of the text
There are three possible models for the development of the two versions. The first, which I prefer, is that the A version preserves the original form of the poem and the B version is a later (perhaps much later) revision. The second, which has been assumed by all editors of Rochester, is that the B version preserves the original form and the A version is a revision, though in this case one that was already present at the earliest stage of circulation. The third is that the A and the B versions derived independently from a lost version that was either radically different from either of them, or so equally balanced between them as to be assignable to neither group. While such a derivation is textually possible, the historical evidence mitigates against it and it will not be considered further.
The case for the primacy of the A version rests on the form in which the poem was recorded by Haward and the fact that his version is the earliest by at least seventeen years of those that survive. Od8 carefully divides the poem into two sections with the second classified as "Additions." The simple sense of this would seem to be that the fourteen-stanza version preserves something close to the original form in which the poem was circulated at court in 1673, and that the additions represent a subsequent initiative, material from which in some cases found its way into an enlarged integral text. Under this assumption BLh17 would represent a version revised to the extent of incorporating lines 25-28, 33-36, 41-44 and 65-72, found in the Od8 additions, into the main text and rationalizing the order of stanzas, but not so far as adding the "pursuit" stanzas (ll. 81-92), which are present in Od8/2, though not in the concluding position they occupy in the B version. In fact, both Od8/1 and BLh17 conclude with lines 61-64, 73-76, though with the two stanzas in the reverse of this order in Od8/1. As mentioned earlier, all the B-version lines are to be found in one or other of the A-version sources. Under
An opposed view, tacitly accepted by Vieth, Wilson and Walker, is that it is the B version, not Od8/1, that represents the original form of the poem; that Od8/1, by implication, should be regarded as a cut-down version of this; and that Od8/2 is an assemblage of "lost" as well as added stanzas. (In fact none of the editors mentioned even discusses the problem of the versions, only Walker warning his readers that there are problems with the text of this poem.) This order of development is not impossible but requires us to assume a self-consciously literary origin for the poem, which seems at odds with its improvisatory, occasional air and the likelihood that its early transmission would have been as much in sung as in written form. (The B version is certainly the more polished.) It also seems to proceed from the assumption that the poem is the work of Rochester rather than, say, of some court singer, an assumption that is far less secure than editors have suggested. A further objection, already raised, is that, while we know from BLh17 and the marginal addition to OSe15 that the A version was known in the 1690s, there is no evidence prior to this date for the existence of the B version.
To gain further purchase on the dating problem it will be necessary to consider the political meaning of the satire both at the time of composition and at that of its renewed circulation in the mid-1690s. In its original conception it was an attack on the Yorkist party at court, whose position had been strengthened by the marriage of the Catholic heir to the throne to a Catholic princess. (This theme is particularly apparent in Od8/2, but the majority of the victims throughout were either Catholics or sympathisers.) Its circulation at this period was clearly anonymous and its substance elastic: Haward went as far as to leave a blank space for any future additions he might acquire or invent. Intended for singing, it was to be regarded as a performance piece rather than a work for the eye. Once its topicality departed, it ceased to be transcribed and is found in none of the many scribal anthologies of the later 1670s and the 1680s.
The reappearance of the poem in anthologies of the 1690s must have resulted from more than the chance survival of a copy. There could hardly have been much interest in the sexual taunts of twenty years earlier, but there would certainly have been in the connection with Mary of Modena, who had gone into exile in December 1688 and was now living near Paris with her husband, James II. The revival of a poem poking fun at the events of her marriage and at the morals of the Catholic nobility of that epoch would have an obvious polemic value to supporters of the Protestant succession. Moreover, if the renewed circulation of the satire at this stage, in anthologies written by professional scribes, was a deliberate anti-Jacobite initiative, it is also possible that the rewriting that produced the B version was done at that time. The compiler of BLh17 and the annotator of OSe15 were presumably interested in the poem for the same reason but had encountered it in the A version.
By accepting the hypothesis that Od8/1 preserves the earliest form of the poem and that all other surviving texts are derived from this version (or something like it), we are able to establish the place of BLh19 in the tradition. Its agreement in A-version readings against the scriptorium texts at 12 "chance get," 17 "The," 21 "My good," 30 "Harrys," 56 "fittest," 59 "With" and 84 "upon" (see list of variants) indicates that it cannot itself be descended from the Cameron scriptorium master copy, but is a collateral descendent from a higher-level ancestor. Reconstruction of the readings of this ancestor would require adjudication between those of BLh19 and those of the scriptorium master copy which can itself be reconstructed from its descendants. The printed text of 1703 may also be independently derived from the common ancestor of BLh19 and the scriptorium master copy, though the evidence for this is less marked, and I would place greater weight on its agreements with V90 which include the displacement of lines 33-36.[10]
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