The printing of the quarto

Though Dudley Carleton referred, on 7 January 1605, to ‘a pamphlet in the press’ which would save him the pains of describing the Masque of Blackness to John Chamberlain (Lee, 1972, 67 ); Masque Archive, Blackness, 00), Jonson’s first court masque was not printed until 1608, when it was issued together with the Masque of Beauty and the Haddington Masque in a single quarto. Meanwhile Hymenaei had already been published. The title-page of the quarto, which opens: ‘The / Characters / of / Two royall Masques. / The one of blacknesse, / The other of beavtie’, confirms the intimate narrative link between these two works, and suggests that publication was delayed until the diptych – clearly planned from the outset as a pair – was complete. To have refrained from issuing the masques until their aesthetic, narrative, and iconographic programme was fulfilled would certainly accord with Jonson’s high sense of purpose in his court entertainments, and their interconnectedness is further confirmed by the fact that these two masques are printed as a sequential pair in F1 , rather than being placed in chronological order, whereas Haddington was printed in its correct chronological place in the sequence of masques.

The incorporation in this quarto of Haddington, one of the two masques that had intervened to delay the completion of Blackness’s programme in Beauty raises a number of questions. The entry in the Stationers’ Register by the quarto’s publisher, Thomas Thorpe, on 21 April, 1608 reads:

Thomas Thorpe Entred for his copie vnder thandes of Sir George
Bucke and Thwardens The Characters of Twoo Royall Maskes.
Invented By Ben. Jonson vj^d

There is no mention of Haddington, which was not separately registered. It was, however, certainly printed at the same time, since the signatures run on continuously, and the style is consistent throughout. The fact that Haddington has its own title-page, coupled with the absence of running-heads, suggests that its printing might have been something of an afterthought. Of the ten surviving copies of the quarto, however, five lack the Haddington masque, and in one of the British Library copies (that which contains a dedicatory inscription to Anne) it is bound as an independent work (though this separation was probably made during eighteenth-century rebinding). This raises an intriguing question. The absence of Haddington in half of the surviving copies might imply that although it was convenient to print all three masques together, it may have been imagined that they constituted two distinct ‘works’, which could be sold separately, even though it would seem odd, and awkward, to cut the sheet on which Haddington continued directly from Beauty in order to offer the masques for sale as independent items.

Nonetheless, the fact that these three masques were printed in a single quarto means that it is convenient to discuss their printing as a unit. The collation of the quarto is: A1 blank; A2, the title-page with the verso blank; A3-C2, The Masque of Blackness; C2v-E2v, The Masque of Beauty. These pages have the running title The Queenes Masques. E3 bears the title-page for Haddington; E3^v blank; E4-G4v The Haddington Masque, without any running title. As Lavin (1970) has shown, the printer was George Eld, who was also responsible for the quartos of Sejanus (1605), Eastward Ho! (1605), and Volpone (1607), as well as part of The King’s Entertainment (1604), co-printed with Valentine Simmes. All three masques are printed in a consistent style, with the text of the speeches and songs in italic, the prefatory matter and stage-directions in roman. An oddity in the printing is the fact that there are five variations in the catchwords: at A3 ‘Plynie’ where text reads ‘Plinie’; B2v ‘oce.’ for ‘oceanus’; C1 ‘æthi.’ for ‘æthiopia’; C2v ‘colour’ for ‘coullor’; D2v ‘digni.’ for ‘dignitas’.

Collation of the surviving copies reveals that stop-press alterations were introduced into seven formes, and that the title-page, A2, was corrected twice. There is no compelling evidence to suggest that Jonson was involved in the corrections, though some reference back to copy might have been required for the provision of a reference for the Iliad citation on B1, and the correction of ‘PERPHERF.’ to ‘PERIPHERE’ on B4v if he were not. The correction of an accent on the Greek on A4 suggests an attentive, though not necessarily an authorial eye. None of the other emendations would be beyond the wit of in-house readers. In general the masques are carefully printed with hardly any manifest errors, save for the eye-skip which omitted an essential part of the description of the masquers at line 48, fortunately salvageable from the Royal MS discussed below. The complete collation of all surviving quarto texts is as follows:

1. British Library C.34.d.4

2. British Library 841.a.1

3. British Library Ashley 957

4. Cambridge University Library

5. Bodleian Library, Oxford Antiq.e.E.1608.7

6. Victorian and Albert Museum Dyce 5354 (call no. D.25.A.86)

7. Boston Public Library G.3973.10

8. Harvard University Library

9. The Huntington Library, San Marino, California 62071

10. University of Texas, Austin Pforz 543

A inner	state 1	State 2	state 3
A1 10	, &c.	,&c.	~
13	White-hall	~	White-Hall
19	Paules	in Paules	~
A3v 7	East-ward	east-ward	~
A4 note h	Ω’κεανος^òν	Ω’κεανος^ὂν	~
note h	Aenid.	Aeneid.	~

 

state 1: 7

state 2: 1, 2, 9. 10

state 3: 3, 4, 5, 6, 8

Notes: Some type shifts during the printing of state 2. At A1, 10, in both BL copies the full stop after ‘&c’ has begun to move upwards; in H the ‘&c’ has begun to follow. At A4 note h, the breathing and accent on the omicron becomes detached from the characters, which move, in some copies, to the right.

B outer	state 1	state 2
B1 15	Ceremonies	~
note k	Iliad.	Iliad. ξ
B2v 11	These words	These words
B3 note u	gouernes. As	gouernes. A^s
B4v 6	PERPHERF.	PERIPHERE.
12	Daunce	Daunce

 

state 1: 7

state 2: all other copies

Note that on B3r the separation of ‘s’ from ‘A’ is progressive.

 

C outer	state 1	state 2
C4v note a	aThe daugh-	^The daugh-

 

state 1: all copies except 5

state 2: 5

 

D outer	state 1	state 2
D1 9	Queen^e	Queen
D3 r-t	Masques.	Masques.

 

state 1: 7, 9

state 2: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10

 

D inner	state 1	state 2
D1v 16	ſea	Sea
28	Adornd	adorn'd
D218	Cleare	cleare,
D3v  1	Torchbearers ... bowes	Torch-bearers ... Bowes
8	Lieuerets pickd	Leuerets pick'd
15	Attird	attir'd
16	With the laurell gyrlonds	with Laurell gyrlonds
20	White	White,
23	Whereon ... seemd	wheron ... seem'd
D4r 3	East	East:
4-5	3. varied / Motions at once	three va- / ried Motions, at once,
5-6	shot it selfe to / the Land	shot it / selfe to the Land
19	Inuention	inuention

 

state 1: 7, 9

state 2: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10

  

E outer	state 1	state 2
E1r 9	WALSINGHAM.	WALSINGHAM.
10	The dauncing	These dauncing

[note: the stop is dropped below the line in state 1]

state 1: 1, 7

state 2: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10

 

G inner	state 1	state 2
G1v 10	We	he
G4r 20	too·	too.

 

state 1: 7

state 2: all other copies

The British Library Copy, shelf-mark C.34.d.4 (BL1), contains on the back of the blank leaf facing the title-page the inscription:

      D. Annae
M. Britanniarū Insu. Hib. &c.
Reginae
Feliciss. Formosiss.
Musaeo
S.S.
Hunc librū vouit
Famae & honori eius
Seruientiss.
imò addictissimus
Ben: Ionsonius
Victurūs Genium debet habere liber.

The inscription is problematic, as the abbreviation ‘S. S.’ cannot now be recognized. Possibly it is short for ‘summae sapientia’, which would give the following meaning: ‘To Lady Anne, Queen of the Islands of Great Britain, Ireland, etc., most happy, most beautiful, a library of exquisite wisdom [?], Ben Jonson, most attentive, indeed most devoted, to her fame and honour, dedicates this book: “A book that is to live must have a Genius”.’ The last line is from Martial, 6.61.10.

The quarto is the most authoritative text for all three masques. F1 is derived from it, and has no independent authority. Whilst it corrects a few obvious printing errors in the each of the three masques, it introduces far more. Its printing is discussed below.

Other textual witnesses: a) songs

Songs from all three of the masques were published in Alfonso Ferrabosco’s Ayres (1609) . They are arranged for solo voice with lute and bass viol accompaniment, reflecting the domestic, amateur audience at whom this publication is aimed, rather than representing the manner of their performance in the masques themselves. A number of these songs are transcribed in Christ Church, Oxford, MS Mus. 439. While some of these versions have a musical interest in presenting highly ornamented versions of the vocal lines of the originals, it seems virtually certain that these, like all of the other songs in the manuscript, were derived from printed sources. There are a number of variants between the texts of the songs in the Ayres and in the masque quarto. None is compelling as an emendation of the version in the printed text, though this is not necessarily to deny that, printed so relatively close to the performances of the masques, they might actually represent what was actually sung to the court – composers always exercise some freedom (or carelessness) in modifying the texts they choose to set.

The songs included in the Ayres are here listed according to the masque in which they occur, rather than their sequence in the musical publication.

Blackness

‘Come away, come away’ (255-60). No 3 in Ayres . This has only minor variants in punctuation.

Haddington

‘Why stayes the bridegroome to inuade’ (354-63). No 11 in Ayres . This is the fifth stanza of the Epithalamion, which, Jonson tells us, had been sung as ‘several songs’ rather than continuously. The significant variation in the printed song is the omission of the final refrain line: ‘Shine, Hesperus, shine forth thou wished star’. It would seem unlikely that this final line, which completes the lyric’s rhyme-scheme, was not sung at the masque itself – though composers always have the independence to modify lyrics as they set them – rather, it might be that in the performance this line was sung as a chorus refrain in parts, and that it was considered musically detachable as Ferrabosco collected and published his songs for a domestic market. The highly ornamented version, JnB 684, transcribed in Chan (1980) , 193-5, also lacks the final line, though it almost certainly had been derived from the printed text.

Beauty

‘So beautie on the waters stood’ (264-72). No. 21 in Ayres. There are no variants.

‘If all these Cupids, now, were blind’ (278-99). This three-section song is printed in Ayres as nos. 18-20. The variants from the masque text are at lines 280, 286, 287 and 295; none is particularly significant, though any would have been perfectly acceptable at the original performance. A version, without variants, is in JnB 682.

‘Had those that dwell in error foule’ (304-9), No. 22 in Ayres . Variants are at lines 306 and 308. Neither are better readings, but, like others, could have been heard in the performance.

Other textual witnesses: b) the manuscript of Blackness

If the printed song texts might indicate what was actually performed at court in each of these masques – and the relatively close date of their publication to the occasion of their first performance might increase that likelihood to some degree – the most interesting textual witness, the manuscript of the Masque of Blackness, stands in a much more complex relationship to the event and to the published text.

The manuscript, BL Royal MS 17.B.XXXI, (JnB 683) is a high-quality transcript of the masque, ‘carefully written out on single half-sheets of the same paper with line-fillers, catchwords, and ruled red margins which leave a writing space of 145 × 110mm, in a scribal secretary hand with a distinguishing italic for proper names, foreign words, and the six songs’ (Heaton, 2003, 55). It ends with a holograph inscription ‘hos versiculos feci’ (I made these little verses) and Jonson’s signature. This quotation is from the first line of a poem attributed to Virgil in Donatus’s Life of the poet, where it continues ‘tulit alter honores’ (another took the honours) (Heaton, 53) – suggesting perhaps the importance to Jonson of asserting his central part in the production.

The manuscript, however, opens with something of a puzzle: a title-page that reads:

THE
Teares of the Howers.
IUSTICE.PEACE.& LAWE.
wept
into the bosome of
the best K.
M<u>tare dominum non potest liber notus.

This title-page is on a single leaf, and is followed, on fol. 2, by another title page that reads ‘The twelvth nights Reuells’. The text of the masque then runs from fol. 3 to fol. 8^v, with fol. 9 left blank. Gabriel Heaton notes (pp. 51-2) , that the first title page is written on the same paper as the masque, and may well be in the same hand. It is, however, distinct from fols 2-9, which form ‘a discrete bibliographical unit’ (Heaton, 52 ). Though Percy Simpson suggested that ‘Teares of the Howers’ could be an alternative title for Jonson’s ‘Panegyre’ (H&S, 7.69; see the ‘Panegyre’ Textual Essay ), Heaton rightly points out that it scarcely describes this poem, which is emphatically celebratory rather than ‘tearful’, and he suggests that it must refer to another, lost text (though noting that it is curious that no poem answering to this title appeared in the folio of 1616). It would seem, then, that two works were offered as presentations to royal recipients, probably in December, 1604, but that the first of them has disappeared from view.

To which member of the royal family the copy of the masque was offered is not declared. Simpson suggested that it was ‘the copy submitted to the Queen for the performance on 6 January 1605’ (H&S, 7.164 ), but, as Heaton notes, it is not a draft outline for approval, as is the case with the plan for Queens, and since Queen Anne had been closely involved with the preparations for the masque, it is equally likely that the manuscript might have been presented to the King to inform him of what he was about to witness. It is, however, absolutely clear from the present tense of all descriptions and stage-directions that this manuscript is a pre-performance copy, and that it must have been prepared at a point quite close to the event itself since it includes details of the setting and costumes that can only have been known once rehearsal and preparations were well advanced. It is therefore quite different in kind from the texts of many of the later masques printed in F1, which consist almost entirely of the verses Jonson had composed, and which may therefore reflect a script more or less in the form it was sent to the other participants in the early stages of the masques’ preparation. It is equally distinct from the quarto texts of this and other masques, which are self-consciously records of a past event, and which, in their citation of sources in the elaborate marginalia, attempt to elevate the self-consciously literary text into something more than a mere script of a transitory event.

In looking at the variations between the manuscript and the printed text it is essential to recognise that neither of them necessarily accurately represents the event itself. Jonson’s penchant for tidying up the texts of his masques after the performance is well attested, whether in the suppression of unfortunate realities such as the refusal of the ladies to dance in Love Restored, or his presentation of the ‘Epithalamium’ at the end of Haddington as a continuous text, privileging it as a poem ‘meant to be read’ (282). Interpretation of the variations, then, must be carefully undertaken. The printed text certainly represents Jonson’s final thoughts – but not therefore exactly the event witnessed in 1605.

In only one case – at line 49 – does the manuscript evidently offer a correction to the quarto text, repairing a compositorial omission, though there are two other points – at 72 and 281 – where the MS contains stage directions which just might have been omitted by printers rather than by Jonson himself. There are other incidental details present in the MS which might not have found their way into the printed copy because of changed performance decisions. This, for example, might have been the case at 27, where the MS offers the additional detail that Oceanus and Niger entered ‘arme in arme enfolded’. One wonders whether the omission in the description of the light-bearers’ ‘faces and armes blew’ (49) represents a change in make-up, or is another simple omission of detail. Other changes might be taken to indicate developments between the time of writing the manuscript and the actual performance: at 171, for example, the moon appears in a silver throne, rather than in the manuscript’s ‘chariot’. More difficult to interpret is the manuscript’s anticipation of the scene’s ‘openinge in manner of a Curtine’ (16-17), which becomes the quarto’s ‘falling’. This might seem straightforwardly to record a factual change in the manner of presentation, though Carlton’s description of the event begins: ‘The presentation of the mask at the first drawing of the traverse was very fair’. Did he report what he actually saw, or not? Is the quarto accurate in its description, or is it a later textual modification which does not necessarily reflect the performance itself? Certainly if the curtain actually fell it would have had to be tidied up in some way if it were not to become an awkward obstacle to the masquers in their descent to the dancing place.

A further, related problem is posed by the quarto’s inclusion of extra lines of verse (79-92) in which Oceanus invites Niger to explain how the fresh-water river has managed to maintain his identity in crossing the salt sea. We simply cannot know if these lines were added before the performance, or afterwards to answer objections offered to Jonson by literal-minded members of his audience (see commentary note).

The comparison of the two texts, then, raises a number of questions about the nature and status of the printed text as a report of the event. It also invites speculation about the various stages that might have been involved in the preparation of what turned into the final copy for the printers. The evidence of the later, balder masque texts suggests that Jonson began with a script consisting only of his verses; he must then have amplified this basic text to prepare the presentation manuscript. One would like to know how far the descriptions of costume and scene in this expanded text reflect the outcome of discussions between himself and Inigo Jones, how far they might suggest that Jonson himself prescribed details of the iconography and visual appearance of the characters of the masques to his designer. One would then like to know how, and when, Jonson set about transforming the present-tense narrative into the past-tense report of the printed text – the operation of the ‘later hand’ to which he self-consciously refers in the quarto’s prefatory matter (8). Did he work from his own original copy that underlies the presentation manuscript, so that the variations between it and the printed text are to be taken as considered alterations, or was he working afresh from a somewhat sparser original? If this were the case, then it would imply that manuscript and quarto exist as parallel derivatives from an earlier draft. It would certainly be improper to assume that the text of the manuscript necessarily stands directly in a line of transmission leading to the quarto. It is impossible to know; but the value of the evidence provided by this manuscript is precisely that it indicates the fluidity of the evolutionary processes that underlie all the printed texts of Jonson’s masques.

Copy for the quarto

Determining the nature of the copy underlying the printed text is a matter of informed guesswork. It might have been a holograph manuscript, or else a scribal transcript at one or more removes from a Jonsonian original. Conventionally the markers of Jonson’s holograph have been taken to be the frequency of classical spellings (e.g. ‘aequal’, ‘trophaees’, etc.) and the presence of his characteristic elision patterns (e.g. ‘’hem’, I’have, etc). James Bracken (1987a, 1987b ), however, has pointed to the most consistent marker of Jonsonian spelling preference in the manuscript of the Masque of Queens and other autograph manuscripts – his overwhelming preference for final ‘y’ rather than ‘ie’, and almost exclusive use of medial ‘ay’, ‘oy’ ‘ey’ spellings rather than ‘ai’, ‘oi’ and ‘ei’. So, for example, in the Queens manuscript the spelling ‘theyr’ is used 86 times, as against three instances of ‘their’; ‘hayre’ is used 5 times, with no ‘haire’ spelling. Overall, 71 different words appearing 131 times are spelled ‘ay’, as against only 4, appearing 6 times, as ‘ai’ (I am very grateful to James Bracken for supplying me with a copy of his word-list for the manuscript, from which these figures are derived). The distinctiveness of Jonson’s habits might be underlined by noting that a search of Chadwyck-Healy’s Literature Online database between the dates 1590-1620 produces 61,601 instances of ‘their’, as against a mere 1033 for ‘theyr’ (98% as against 2%), while for ‘hair(e)/hayr(e)’, out of a total of 2583, 86% favour ‘hair’. Admittedly this database is notoriously unreliable in its transcription of texts (and because it takes its Jonson texts from the folios it does not include the ‘theyr’ spellings which are found in the quartos), but figures as overwhelming as this are, nonetheless, persuasive evidence for the fact that Jonson’s was very much a minority preference.

The question, of course, is how far this very clear Jonsonian habit might be expected to survive the transmission from holograph, through scribal transcript, to print, as the successive imposition of scribal and compositorial spelling preferences modified Jonsonian features. And here the manuscript of Blackness is an interesting witness, since we might presume it to be at only one remove from Jonson’s original. In this manuscript there are a considerable number of ‘y’ spellings – of ‘maydes’, ‘fayre’, ‘hayre’ etc., but there is not a single instance of the spelling ‘theyr’. It is not surprising that this should be the case – the overwhelming cultural preference for ‘their’ makes it extremely likely that a scribe would transcribe using this form, where the other ‘y’ forms might have been less obviously marked as unusual, and therefore be more likely to be carried over. The excision of ‘y’ spellings is even more marked in the quarto text of Blackness. Not only does it have no instance of ‘theyr’, it accepts ‘y’ spellings in only 7 out of 21 instances where the manuscript employs them, and adds only one which is not present in the manuscript. This might be taken to illustrate the way in which ‘y’ spellings were successively eliminated in the stages of transmission, and suggests quite strongly that the printed text of Blackness derived from a scribal, rather than an authorial manuscript.

The case is rather different in the other two masques printed in this quarto, for, exceptionally, both Beauty and Haddington retain examples of the Jonsonian ‘theyr’ – in Beauty one finds 13 instances of ‘theyr’ as against 34 of ‘their’, in Haddington 5 against 19. (In the 1616 Folio, set from the quarto, all examples of ‘theyr’ are eradicated.) Both masques also contain a number of other ‘y’ spellings, and both – but especially Haddington – manifest characteristic Latinate spellings (‘praesiding’, ‘praeposed’, ‘trophaees’, ‘praefect’, ‘fruicts’ etc.). These latter, interestingly enough, also largely survive in 1616 – which renders them less robust evidence for Jonsonian copy than has sometimes been supposed. Precisely because the words themselves are more unusual it is likely that the classical spellings would survive. Given the vagaries of scribal and compositorial spelling habits it would be dangerous to build too confidently on evidence of this kind. Nonetheless it seems to me likely that the copy for the first of the three masques in the 1608 quarto was a scribal transcript, whereas there is a much stronger likelihood that the other two were derived from holograph manuscripts.

The printing of the 1616 folio

Blackness occupies 4F3-4G1r (pp. 893-901) of the folio under the title ‘THE QUEENES MASQVES. The first, OF BLACKNESSE’. Below a rule, Beauty begins towards the bottom of 4G1, under the title ‘THE SECOND MASQUE. Which was of BEAVTIE’, and continues to 4G5v (pp. 901-10). Haddington is correctly placed chronologically, after Hymenaei, beginning on a new page at 4I5v, and continuing to 4K4v (pp. 934-44). Only one stop-press correction has been noted, on 4G3, p. 905 line 1 (Beauty, 120), where ‘Singes,’ is corrected to ‘Singers’. This is observed in David L. Gants’s collation of the folio in copies at Boston Public Library (XfG .3811 .5), and the University of Virginia (E1616 .J64). For the rest, though F makes some corrections of minor errors (principally of spacing) in Q, it generally introduces new error. The collation of substantive variants for each masque is as follows:

Blackness

35 footnote letter i] Q; omitted F1

35 Oceaniae] Q; OCIANAE F1

44 of the] Q; of F1

54 conspicuous] Q; conspicious F1

82 thy] Q; the F1

170 Above] Q; About F1

189 thy] Q; the F1

Beauty

123 hight] Q; height F1

128 thy] Q; the F1

141 an] Q; a F1

186 ingenuous] Q; ingenious F1

197 of] Q; on F1

206 scene] Q; Scene / pio F1

208 Scorpio, and] Q; Scor- / and F1. ‘Having omitted ‘-pio,’ at the beginning of the line, the printer by error put in the missing letters at the beginning of the last line of the preceding paragraph after ‘Scene’ (H&S, 7, 189 )

Haddington

340 laughters] Q; laughter F

It is clear, then, that F was set from a copy of Q, and that no variants indicate revision which might be attributed to authorial oversight of the printing.