University of Virginia Library

Some years ago, in their justly admired edition of Ben Jonson, Herford and Simpson[1] established what they thought were the original and the corrected versions of the last two pages of the Jonson Folio of 1616, based on what they considered to be sound bibliographical evidence. The pages in question are those on which are printed the concluding passages of Jonson's masque The Golden Age Restored. Initially, Herford and Simpson suggested that "it is possible that the original ending [of the masque] was used at the court performance and that the revision was an afterthought designed to give a more significant ending to the Folio" (VII, 420). They amplified this observation later in their "Survey of the Text," but in a strangely self-contradictory way. "The Masques, of which Stansby registered a number in 1615," they contend,

If the "transposing" of the speeches was a stop-press "correction," as it surely must have been since both versions are extant and the type was not reset,[2] how could it have been made by Jonson—who, we are told, "cannot have read the proofs"? I can think of no answer. What, then, could have led such careful scholars into such a muddle? The answer seems to be that they were convinced that the large-paper sheets of all of the gatherings of the Folio were printed after the small-paper sheets,[3] and since the large-paper copies have the "corrected" version of the masque, Jonson must have been responsible—even though they must contradict themselves to make the contention. But it is a mistake to assume that the large-paper sheets were always printed first. Kevin Donovan has demonstrated conclusively that in the case of the masques large-paper sheets were sometimes the first printed, for instance in gatherings 4M-4P.[4] The same holds true, in fact, for many gatherings in the Folio, which Doctor Gerritsen has been aware of for over thirty years, and which I hope to demonstrate in the not-too-distant future.[5] In the case of The Golden Age Restored, Donovan has also shown that "the version ending with the speech of Pallas and the praise of Jove [is most probably] the revision" and that the other way round "is much less likely." I shall show that the other way is in fact impossible.

But first I should like to call attention to some of the directions that commentary and criticism have taken in recent years as a result of the Oxford editors' assumptions about the "original" and "corrected" versions of the two pages. It would, in fact, be fair to say that influential interpretations of the ending, and therefore of the masque itself, have been misdirected because the "original" and "corrected" versions have been wrongly construed. In a note to his edition of the masques Stephen Orgel somewhat extends the speculation of Herford and Simpson by suggesting that The Golden Age Restored was "Performed twice, January 6 and 8, 1615. This precedes Mercury Vindicated. Possibly Jonson printed it out of chronological order because the descent of Astraea and closing paean to King James made The Golden Age a more effective conclusion to the 1616 folio, in which it appears as the final work."[6] Giving due credit to the Oxford editors, he amplifies this a bit by saying that the final speech of Pallas originally followed that of Astraea, and the two "are so printed in some copies of the first folio. Originally, that is, the masque concluded by moving with Pallas from earth to heaven; but Jonson changed his mind while the volume was in the press, and in the revised version Astraea decides to remain on an earth transformed by the excellence of King James."

Jonathan Goldberg, interested in demonstrating Jonson's participation in "an age where all is bought and sold," goes beyond Orgel in explaining why Jonson chose to end the collection of masques and thereby the Folio with The Golden Age Restored rather than with Mercury Vindicated. For Goldberg, the changed ending reveals yet more striking insights into Jonson's motives—and want of success—than Orgel had ventured. Jonson wanted the king to give him money ("crassly put, the masque concerns James's largesse, for the simplest terms that translate the restoral of the golden age are monetary ones"); but even though Jonson rearranged the ending of The Golden Age Restored in an effort to press his case, he had but little luck: "[James] went on giving and grudging, and although Jonson revised the printed version of The Golden Age Restored to leave the kingdom of Jove quite firmly 'present here' (line 215), the poet's power in that instance remained something

he could only exhibit in his text and not with the monarch he tried to imprint."[7]

Joseph Loewenstein takes the process one step further. He omits the "original" printed version. He talks as if there were only the "original" version, the one which was a part of the masque when it was performed at court, and another version, "printed with a text that manifestly scrambles the conclusion as it was performed in 1615."[8] Curiously, Loewenstein may be right about the order of the speeches in the court performance, but for the opposite of the reason he adduces. That is, if the Astraea/Pallas ending is the corrected one, as I am convinced it is, it may very well be that of the court performance. What accounts for the Pallas/Astraea version being machined first I do not know. It has the masque ending with "Galliards and Coranto's," which might have made sense to a compositor; a couple of pages of Jonson's manuscript may have been mixed up; possibilities for conjecture are numerous.[9] Whatever caused the original setting to be as it was, someone soon intervened to get it right. Although it has been thought that Jonson had relatively little to do with the printing of the masques—unlike the bulk of the volume, in which he took extraordinary interest—he may have been the one who intervened.[10]

In any case, Loewenstein builds an argument that depends upon the Pallas/Astraea ending being the "corrected" one, one which reflects Jonson's attempt to make a statement on the printed page that, in effect, subverts the statement he "originally" devised:

Perhaps it is useful to speculate about iconographic meanings that attend Jonson's manipulations of the printed versions of his works. It is unfortunate to base such speculation on a bibliographical assumption that turns out to have been wrong. In the following pages I shall argue that the Astraea/Pallas ending makes much more sense, and, for reasons both bibliographical and literary, must be what Jonson intended. It is the former, of course, that I take to be the clinching argument.