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I
Let us first have a look at the editions McKerrow made for Bang's Materialien series. McKerrow was recommended to Bang by W. W. Greg in a letter of February 9, 1903.[3] Ten days later Bang wrote to McKerrow, for on
A few months later, on May 8, 1903, McKerrow shows his possible interest in editing Barnabe Barnes' The Devil's Charter. He asks Bang whether he knows of any reprint of this work: "I can trace no reprint in England, and it seems to me to be of some interest from its connection with the Faust-story". A letter of June 11 tells us McKerrow is making a transcript of The Devil's Charter, and at the same time we are told that the play is "of some length running to 93 pages in the 410. (38 lines to the page, probably about 3,400 lines altogether, excluding stage directions & c.)". A fortnight later the transcription is finished, but McKerrow wants to read it through before sending it to Bang, "as all the copies seem made up of sheets in different degrees of correctness" (June 27, 1903). In October, McKerrow is proofreading and returns proofs of sheets E and F with a couple of remarks, including on the carelessness of the printer as to the distinction between the letters e and c. About 25% of the e's look like c's: "The printer probably cleaned them with a nail when they got choked with ink and so destroyed the bar" (October 21, 1903).
In 1904 Barnabe Barnes' The Devil's Charter appeared as number 6 in the series.[4] In his introduction, McKerrow refers to the four copies (of the only early edition—1607) he made use of. As I have mentioned elsewhere, in this introduction he lays down one of the basic rules of analytical bibliography, pointing out that the forme, not the sheet, is the unit of printing (Introduction, p. XV-XVI). As a consequence, McKerrow gives a table of "most corrected", "intermediate" and "least correct" sheets, divided in outer and inner formes. For the text proper, he follows copy A, except for two sheets.[5]
As to the method of his "reprint" (as McKerrow calls it; it is in fact anew edition), "like other works in this series it is intended to represent as accurately as possible in every respect the original" (p. XVIII). And indeed, the 1607 text is followed page for page, with the original signatures and catchwords, and with its misprints, which are corrected in the explanatory notes (e.g. pp. 111, 113, 117). There are some modifications to the strict following of the copy, as in the case of the distinction between e and c. When an e was obviously required, the editor puts a c "only if it seemed fairly certain that the wrong letter really had been used . . .". Further, though several founts of commas are used in the original text, the editor does not distinguish between them. It was also impossible to distinguish turned n's and turned u's; and "no notice has been taken of the varying spaces between words". As to stage directions and signatures, they "are placed so far as
Emendations proposed have been placed with the explanatory notes, "as being more likely to be required by the reader" (pp. XVIII-XIX). Misprints are also mentioned in the "Notes". "Textual notes" give the variants between the different copies, with "the signature of each page . . . before the number of the line" (p. [97]).
McKerrow's next edition in Bang's series dates from 1905, and is in fact a product of the collaboration between Bang and McKerrow. Indeed, The Enterlude of Youth has both editors on the title page.[6] The edition is partly in German, partly in English. From McKerrow's letters to Bang we get some data as to genesis and plan of this work.
On December 15, 1903, McKerrow expresses his gladness at helping with the edition of Enterlude: "it will only mean very little work at any rate, as the whole thing is so short". At the same time, in this letter he gives a survey of the four copies known to him: two copies of an edition printed by Waley (W), one printed by Copland (C), and a (printed) fragment in the library of Lambeth Palace (L).[7] Both editions, as well as the fragment, are undated. However, "as they all have wood-cuts it may with luck be possible to date them pretty accurately". And indeed, in the introduction to the edition, McKerrow gives indications on the date of the fragment on the basis of the woodcuts: this, the oldest text, "was printed not earlier than 1528" (pp. XV-XVIII). As to the relationship of the three texts, McKerrow comes to the conclusion that C and W are not connected directly to L, but that there must be at least one intermediate edition.
As none of the three texts is superior to the others or of such a kind that it can be taken automatically as a basis for an edition (p. XXI), the three of them are reproduced "page for page and line for line with the originals" (p. XV). Apparently this was on Bang's suggestion, since McKerrow writes on February 27, 1905: "I have returned the Copland proofs. I had not realised that we were going to have both texts in [full canceled] full but it is just as well, I think—at any rate it absolves one to some extent of the responsibility of deciding which should be rejected".
On May 4, 1905, McKerrow sends Bang, along with remarks on the relationship of the three texts, a number of textual and other notes. As to the textual notes, McKerrow expresses his doubts about how and where they have to be put, as Bang already commented upon some in his explanatory notes (the "Erläuterungen"). Perhaps some notes have to be given in both places? Or: "One might of course given [sic] only variants in the text notes and leave misprints for the others, as I did in D[evil's] Ch[arter] but in that case I do not quite see how one would deal with misprints in C, which
In the "Textual notes" in the edition proper, McKerrow gives "Notes on Waley's edition (W), with such variant readings as are not merely meaningless misprints from Copland's edition (C) and from the Lambeth Palace fragment (L)". He also mentions that words divided into two parts, nowadays printed as one (for instance, for sake), are included in the notes (p. [65]). There must have been some remark in this respect by Bang, since McKerrow writes on August 4, 1905, that he did not mean to say that "forsake" is a misprint, he simply meant to show that such cases "were not—as some might otherwise suppose—errors in our reprint". A few days later (August 8), he informs Bang that he "added a note at the head". The note probably consists of the last sentences of the introductory statement, in which McKerrow expresses his fear that if forms like "for sake" would not be marked, readers might think them to be errors in the present edition;at the same time he states "that such division of words was extremely common at a somewhat earlier period" (p. [65]).
In conclusion, it is important to note that Bang and McKerrow publish the three texts in full (with some restriction for the fragment, of course), and that they do not give an eclectic text (although in this case it would have been perfectly justified, as there are no authorised versions).
In a letter of May 31, 1906, McKerrow informs Bang that seventeen plays, "the property of a gentleman in Ireland" have turned up, and will soon (on June 30) be sold at Sotheby's. More specifically McKerrow mentions the plays Wealth and Health, Impatient Poverty and John the Evangelist.A month later, on July 3, McKerrow writes that the British Museum has been able to buy all it wanted, including the three plays mentioned, and he informs Bang that it is possible that Greg will publish the plays. At the same time he refers to the new society Greg intends to set up (The Malone Society). Greg's edition "will however, I understand, be a mere reprint without introduction or notes, so will leave the way open for a more elaborate edition if you care to do one".[8] McKerrow is prepared to transcribe
There are apparently no letters from McKerrow to Bang left from the period between August 5, 1906, and March 9, 1907. Surprisingly, at the end of March McKerrow himself is working on the edition of Impatient Poverty!From March 29 until April 8, 1907, Bang almost daily sends remarks and notes to McKerrow concerning the edition of Impatient Poverty: six of Bang's postcards from this rather short period are present in the archive because McKerrow returned them to Bang.[9] In a number of remarks Bang wants to prove that some word forms in the play are clearly "Northern". In his card stamped on April 8, he puts it firmly: "I have not the least doubt that Imp. Pov. was written in the North". McKerrow has a more differentiated approach. In his introduction he speaks about "a northern element in the piece", but that does not mean that we can "with safety assign it to any particular locality". According to him it is quite possible that the play was originally Scottish and afterwards revised by a Southerner, or Northern English written down by a Londoner (p. XVI). Moreover, in the notes McKerrow sometimes explicitly points to southern word forms (e.g. p. 51: "414, 415 be] i.e. been. The form appears to be distinctively southern"; p. 64:" 1033 redemeth] The -eth termination of plural of the present tense is of course one of the chief marks of Southern English"). On the whole, McKerrow was very cautious to draw conclusions from the spelling or word forms as to the identity of an author or the location of a work.[10]
In this edition of Impatient Poverty, there is no distinction between textual and explanatory notes; they have been put together (as there is only one copy left of this play, there was no question of giving variants). As to the text itself, it is again a page-for-page reprint, and the editor has "endeavoured to reproduce the original text as exactly as possible, including all misprints. The more important of these, but not minor errors of punctuation, will be found corrected in the notes" (p. XIV). Along with the notes, there is an index.
The edition of this text of 1560 was finally published in 1911 as number
As far as the three plays hitherto discussed conform to the principles of the Materialien series, McKerrow wants to give a text representing the original as accurately as possible, whether there is only one copy left or more. In the latter case, either the different copies are printed, or the text of the chosen base copy is edited carefully and replaced by "corrected" formes when there have been press corrections.
Barnabe Barnes, The Devil's Charter. Edited from the quarto of 1607 by R. B. McKerrow. Materialien . . ., 6. Louvain, 1904.
The Enterlude of Youth nebst Fragmenten des Playe of Lucres und von Nature.Herausgegeben von W. Bang und R. B. McKerrow. Materialien . . ., 12. Louvain, 1905.
In a letter of February 11, 1904, McKerrow informs Bang that Mr. Macbeth has at last received permission to photograph the fragment.
In fact Greg edited The Interlude of John the Evangelist and The Interlude of Wealth and Health in the Malone Society Reprints (cf. De Smedt, p. 218).
Cf.: "I return the post-cards in case you would like to add anything from them" (McKerrow in a letter dated April 2, 1911).
Cf. McKerrow in one of his lectures from 1928: "It would at any rate, after 1590—perhaps after 1580—be quite unsafe to take the spelling of any ordinary printed book as representing that of its author, or to deduce from the spellings of any anonymous printed work anything as to the identity of its author, or even as to his age, education, or the part of the country from which he came" (McKerrow, "The Relationship of English Printed Books to Authors' Manuscripts during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (The 1928 Sandars Lectures)", ed. Carlo M. Bajetta, Studies in Bibliography 53 [2000]: 1-65 [p. 39]).
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