=1631.= Owing to irregularity in contents and arrangement in different copies, the second volume of the First Folio has been much discussed. Gifford speaks of it as the edition of 1631-41.[2] Miss Bates, copying from Lowndes, gives it as belonging to 1631, reprinted in 1640 and in 1641.[3] Ward says substantially the same thing.[4] In 1870, however, Brinsley Nicholson, by a careful collation,[5] arrived at the following results. (1) The so-called editions of the second volume assigned to 1631, 1640, and 1641 form only a single edition. (2) The belief in the existence of ‘the so-called first edition of the second volume in 1631’ is due to the dates prefixed to the opening plays. (3) The belief in the existence of the volume of 1641 arose from the dates of _Mortimer_ and the _Discoveries_, ‘all the copies of which are dated 1641’, and of the variant edition of _The Devil is an Ass_, which will next be described. (4) The 1640 edition supplies for some copies a general title-page, ‘R. Meighen, 1640’, but the plays printed in 1631 are reprinted from the same forms. Hazlitt arrives at practically the same conclusions.[6] The volume is a folio by measurement, but the signatures are in fours. Collation: Five leaves, the second with the signature A_3 B-M in fours. Aa-Bb; Cc-Cc_2 (two leaves); C_3 (one leaf); one leaf; D-I in fours; two leaves. [N]-Y in fours; B-Q in fours; R (two leaves); S-X in fours; Y (two leaves); Z-Oo in fours. Pp (two leaves). Qq; A-K in fours. L (two leaves). [M]-R in fours. A-P in fours. Q (two leaves). [R]-V in fours. The volume opens with _Bartholomew Fayre_, which occupies pages [1-10], 1-88 (pages 12, 13, and 31 misnumbered), or the first group of signatures given above. 2. _The Staple of Newes_, paged independently, [1]-[76] (pages 19, 22, and 63 misnumbered), and signatured independently as in the second group above. 3. _The Diuell is an Asse_, [N]-Y, paged [91]-170 (pages 99, 132, and 137 misnumbered). [N] recto contains the title page (verso blank). N_2 contains a vignette and the persons of the play on the recto, a vignette and the prologue on the verso. N_3 to the end contains the play proper; the epilogue being on the last leaf verso. One leaf (pages 89-90) is thus unaccounted for; but it is evident from the signatures and pagination that _The Diuell is an Asse_ was printed with a view to having it follow _Bartholomew Fayre_. These three plays were all printed by I. B. for Robert Allot in 1631. Hazlitt says that they are often found together in a separate volume, and that they were probably intended by Jonson to supplement the folio of 1616.[7] Collation made from copy in the library of Yale University at New Haven.