Recently Recovered "Lost" Tudor Plays with some others
History
Recently Recovered "Lost" Tudor Plays with some others
English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600; Interludes, English; Moralities, English
NATURE. The text will be found on pages 41-133, together with a
reduced facsimile of the title-page of the unique copy now in the
British Museum (C34,_e_54). Bound up with it, at the end of the
volume, are two duplicate leaves. In several places (see 105,_c_;
106,_d_; 112,_d_; 114,_a_) the lower margins have suffered by
cutting; otherwise it is a good copy, but without date, place,
or printer's name. It is well printed, probably by John Rastell,
between 1510-20, and is in excellent preservation. When printing
my own text, I was not aware that a fragment comprising two
complete and well-preserved pages had been discovered in an album
consisting entirely of "Specimens of the English Printers from
Caxton to Robert Barker," which Sir John Fenn had collected for
the completion of Ames-Herbert's _Typographical Antiquities_,
and which was offered for sale by Mr. Bernard Quaritch in his
Catalogue, No. 237 (pp. 97-99), the price affixed being £280. For
the foregoing particulars I am indebted to _Materialen zur Kunde
des alteren_ _Englischen Dramas_, so ably edited by Prof. Bang of
Louvain University and other well-known English, American, and
Continental scholars. I have, so far, been unable to trace the
subsequent history of this volume; but I am not without hopes,
later on, of being in a position to supply full and detailed
particulars. What more nearly concerns the present purpose is
the fact that in vol. xii. of _Materialen_ are given facsimiles
of parts of each of these two pages, by means of which two out
of the four lines cut away, each on different pages, have been
restored, viz. at 112,_d_ and 114,_a_--a fortunate and happy
circumstance (see _Corrigenda,_ _etc., infra_). Another fragment
was known to exist at the Bodley. This is mentioned by Mr. Greg
in his _Handlist of English Plays_; but no particulars are
furnished, and on enquiry at the Bodley no trace of the fragment
could at first be found. I, thereupon, made search, and at last
unearthed it, finding it buried in a mass of uncatalogued early
printed scraps. This was after delving through a dozen volumes of
similar miscellaneous material, so let it now be ear-marked for
future reference. The Bodley shelf-mark is Rawl. 4^o 598 (12).
It came into the Bodleian with the Rawlinson collection of MSS.
and printed books in 1755. The fragment (Aiiii) is small, and is
apparently of the same edition as the British Museum copy, and
the extra leaves. As the Quaritch fragment is also undoubtedly
of similar parentage, it is unlikely that the play was printed
more than once. The Bodley fragment comprises (_a_) "But, if
Reason tickle ..." (last line p. 49) down to "... that from above
is sent" (p. 50, 11th line of text from bottom); and (_b_) "No
well-advised body ..." (page 51, 11 lines from top) down to "It
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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