Even Newer Facts and Theories about the Parnassus Plays

Hello. My name is Christopher Adams, and I am a fifth-year senior here at the College. I took last year off to study abroad in Beijing, China.

[Slide 1—Title Page]

The records for Cambridge University in December of 1601 record a riot that occurred between the students of Trinity College and St John’s College. According to depositions taken at the time:

Chute [of Trinity appeared. It is alleged] that he & abowte twentye more; did beate mr Binlesse into St Iohns Colledge. / Chute [confesses] that he & others did cast stones, and that he himself flange none but those which were put into his hands by others.

Incensed, one St John’s student named Thomson

Haveinge a drawen sworde in thone hande & a shorte Clubbe in thither with[out] a visor on his face; abowte .8. of the clocke in the evening; dyd come within the Barrs…of Trinitye Colledge…and said openlye…come the porwdest of you oute.

Certainly, altercations between testosterone-laden college students are a dime a dozen; however, what makes this fight of particular interest is the way in which the St John’s student is dressed. He has a visor on his face—at the turn of the 1600s, this meant a mask. Another deposition informs us that Thomson specifically was costumed as a stagekeeper—he was performing in a play, which had just been rudely interrupted by the Trinitarians and their rock throwing.

This fight serves as the background for my talk this afternoon, as the subject of my research is the play in question—The Return from Parnassus.

The Return from Parnassus is the third part of a trilogy performed in December of 1601 as part of a tradition of theater productions during the Christmas holidays; the first two parts were written and performed in 1598 (or 1599) and 1600. The plays were most likely written by a St John’s student or group of students and were performed in the St John’s great hall. [Slide 2—St John’s Great Hall]

The trilogy loosely follows a set of students as they enter Cambridge, proceed to their degrees, and graduate. The Return picks up right after graduation, in which the alums search for employment. Sadly, no one is willing to hire them. Clearly, not much has changed in 400 years. The ending of the play is particularly distressing—especially for me, and probably for most people in this room—as the characters decide to give up all hope of working in the city and become shepherds. Apart from its (sad) commentary on the job market of late Elizabethan England, the play is particularly noted for its biting commentary on the London theater scene. Whoever the author or authors were, he/they had a detailed knowledge of and opinions about the contemporary dramatists of the day, including Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and William Shakespeare.

I looked at three main aspects of The Return. The first—its history, context, and performance—I have already discussed to some extent. Secondly, I examined the play as a text. The Return was printed twice, both times in 1606. A manuscript copy of the play also exists [Slide 3—manuscript first page]—it’s housed in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. The Return presents challenges as a text because while the two printed editions contain some minor differences between themselves, the printed editions also vary considerably with the manuscript copy.  The manuscript, in general, is much cleaner and freer from error than the printed editions—in other words, the manuscript tends to make more sense than the print. Of the Latin quotations in the play—and there are many of them since one character, for instance, speaks almost exclusively in Latin, the printed editions consistently make errors, showing, perhaps, either the copy itself was unclear or the compositor—the man setting the type for the printed version—was unskilled in Latin. The manuscript, on the other hand, is much more accurate in this regard. Similarly, there are also other cases in which the manuscript adds in, and occasionally omits, words not present in the printed editions. However, two glaring inconsistencies appear between the manuscript and the printed versions. First, the character of Sir Raderick, the greedy, indolent, womanizing “bad guy” of the play who refuses to employ any of the scholars, is called [Slide 4—Sir Randall from MS] “Sir Randall” throughout the manuscript. Even more striking, however, is the complete deletion of half of Act II Scene II. The manuscript simply leaves a few etc’s in place of dialogue.

These are just a few of the differences between the printed versions and the manuscript, but they represent challenges and choices that an editor must make when dealing with this text. As part of this research project, I, along with two other students, created an edition of The Return [Slide 5—Return Edition]. We emended the text based on the manuscript source and printed editions; we also annotated the text, giving our readers notes to help them understand vocabulary and context that might not be immediately apparent upon reading the play.

So, in summary, I’m interested in the history of the play—who performed it, the context in which it was performed, the people that it mentions—as well as what the play actually says—the words on its pages, whether they be printed or handwritten. However, these two are subsidiary to my true interest in the play, and the focus of much of my research, the play as a printed, hold-in-your-hand object.

Let me back up a bit. Starting my freshman year, I began to get involved in a branch of scholarship known as bibliography. As a discipline, it is interested in looking at books as physical objects—as sheets of paper, as ink-stamped impressions, as binding designs and binding structures. Here, the goal is to recreate what went on in the print shop of the late Elizabethan era—how did this book come into being? Bibliography also has a companion field of study known as history of the book, which investigates broader questions—how did this particular book, or any book, get distributed to buyers? Who bought or read books in a given time period? How did book production and printing change a particular society? In my exploration of The Return I sought to answer questions from both fields by looking at the printing and publishing of the play in 1606 while also looking at how the play was treated and received by its readers throughout the past 400 years.

My methodology for carrying out my research involved traveling to libraries and examining printed copies of The Return. My travels took me to libraries in Washington DC, several in both England and New England, and California. In all, I examined some twenty-two copies of the printed editions.

I would like to explain a bit about what I mean when I use the word “examined.” When English major types use the word “examined” they often use it to mean “examined a text” or performed a close reading of a certain passage. Here what I mean is something entirely different. My examinations focused on the text as text—not its content or meaning—but as letters on the page. They also focused on the paper on which the text appears. My goal in examining copies was to determine how this book came to be printed.

To give an example, I will deal here with paper, since it proved to be the more fruitful investigation. Before roughly 1800, all paper was made by hand by dipping a mould into a vat of pulp. [Slide 6—papermakers] The mould consisted of an outer wooden frame with inner supporting ribs, running vertically along the shorter end of the mould. [Slide 7—paper mould] A thick wire, called a chainline, connected these ribs to the wire mesh that formed the base of the mould. When handmade paper is held up to the light, the imprints of these chainlines are easily discernible. [Slide 8—chainlines & watermarks] For purposes of bibliographic research, since the mould itself is a handmade object—no two are exactly alike—the spacing of these chainlines will be a unique pattern. It is possible to measure the spaces between the chainlines in order to create a “fingerprint” for each mould. [Slide 9—composite model] Essentially, this series of numbers is unique to the stock of paper that came from this one mould. All of this means, then, that you can look at the paper, measure the lines in the paper, and can then tell which paper stocks are the same.

It’s a time-consuming process to gather this data; however, the results that it yields are revelatory. I mentioned that the Return was printed twice in 1606. One of my questions in researching this play was whether or not both editions were actually printed in 1606—it’s somewhat unusual for a play of the time period and subject matter to go through two editions so quickly. And there are instances of printers sticking fake dates on title pages to avoid legal or economic repercussions. However, what the paper evidence has shown is that both editions were actually printed very close to one another. The same stock of paper that is in the ending of the first edition is the same stock of paper that appears in the second edition, showing that the two must have been printed in close proximity to each other.  

So that was the most technical part of my examination. But there is also a lot you can learn from a book by looking at how other people have interacted with it. For instance, simply looking the book’s inside cover is usually an effective way to gather information related to its collecting history and price. Many collectors make some note of the price they paid for their copy. In the case of Return, the earliest note appears in 1852, when one collector notes that he paid 3 pounds 12 shillings for his copy. The price of Return remained fairly low throughout the latter half of the 1800s; however, starting at the turn of the 20^th century, book prices became volatile. In 1904, one collector paid 100 US dollars for his copy, but only nine years later in 1913, auction records show that someone paid $22.50. In 1922, a British book-selling firm offered two copies for sale, priced at 210 and 250 pounds. That prices jumped so high so quickly is not unusual, given the players in the market at the time—names such as Huntington, Morgan, and Folger, all of whom collected Early Modern texts.  

In conclusion [Slide 10—Title page], the examination of books as physical objects leads to new ways of looking at the world. Bibliography and book history offer different paradigms for researching and approaching texts. The case of The Return from Parnassus shows that bibliographic methods of inquiry can reveal clues and patterns to a book’s printing history. Important, too, are the historical documents—such as the Cambridge records detailing inter-college fighting—that flesh out the backstory and context of a work. Both approaches are necessary to gain the most complete understanding of a text and serve to further scholarship and push it beyond its traditional boundaries.

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Before the advent of machinery in the 1800s, paper was a handmade object created by dipping a mould into a vat of pulp, known as stuff. The mould consists of an outer wooden frame with inner supporting ribs, running vertically along the shorter end of the mould. A fine wire mesh covers the mould, allowing water to drain out when removed from the vat of stuff. The mould has two identifiable sets of wires—wirelines, a fine mesh of thin wires that run horizontally across the length of the mould, and chainlines, thicker wires that tie the supporting ribs to the mould. [Try googling “paper mould” in google image search] When handmade paper is held up to light, the imprints of these wires are easily discernible. For purposes of bibliographic research, since the mould itself is a handmade object—no two are exactly alike—the ribs for each mould will bear a unique spacing pattern. Since this pattern is reflected in the chainline imprint on the paper, it is possible to measure the spaces between the chainlines in order to create a “fingerprint” for each mould. Moreover, because many moulds of the era bore a sewn-on wire design, creating a watermark, the combination of chainline spaces and watermark form a highly accurate description of any given mould. When describing paper, however, researchers must keep in mind Allan Stevenson’s remark: “Watermarks are twins.” The production of paper in the hand-press period was a two-man process involving a set of moulds. The vatman would dip the first mould into the stuff, give the mould a shake to lock the fibers, and pass the mould to the koucher, who would hand a second mould to the vatman. While the vatman was dipping the mould, the koucher would roll the paper off the mould using a sheet of felt, preparing the mould to be used again. In any given day, a paper-making team would be able to produce 2000 sheets of paper, each mould being dipped around 1000 times. Such constant strain on the moulds led to short lives—rarely more than a year; the sewn-on wires for the watermarks lasted six months (from Gaskell’s A New Introduction to Bibliography). Important to the description and identification of paper, then, is the idea that two moulds were in use to form one stock of paper—each sheet of paper has a twin. By looking at multiple copies of a work, it is possible to create a composite model for each mould and to accurately pair one mould with its twin.

Much of my thesis work included traveling to libraries that held copies of Returne in order to count the chainlines in the paper of each copy. The work itself sounds about as dry as its description; however, it proved especially useful in the case of Returne, as it demonstrated a shared paper stock between the first and second editions.

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For this project, I was the textual editor. Returne offers interesting problems for the editor, since three textual witnesses exist: two printed editions—both 1606—and a manuscript. Many major libraries in the UK and the US hold copies of the first and second editions of Returne; the unique manuscript (titled The Progresse to Pernassus) is housed in the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. The two printed texts are quite similar, only varying in a small degree; the manuscript, however, contains significant changes in wording, scene headings, character names, and title. For this project—which would eventually turn into my thesis—I traveled to said libraries/institutions to examine their copies of the Returne. I also spent considerable time at the Folger, pouring over their manuscript copy.

With my examination of copies, I felt I had finally “arrived.” Here was I, a researcher in the humanities, looking at copies of books that no one else had handled in a long time. In my examination, I was particularly concerned with three things: 1) The paper (a subject of another post) 2) The text (using a collator to compare copies against a standard 3) The markings. Since I was going to be looking at over twenty copies of this play, I wanted to find out how readers and owners of this play had interacted with it as an object. What did they write in their copies? How did they bind their copies? What did they pay for their copies? It became quickly apparent that many owners highly valued their copies—having them bound in fine bindings by the top bookbinders of the era. Others read through the text, meticulously correcting misprints and wrong readings. Still others penciled in provenance information or pasted bookplates onto the inside front covers as a sign of ownership. Such is the nature of the play as object. Scans or other digital facsimiles would not provide this kind of information; each play copy is a unique object—the play copies must be touched, handled, and investigated in person. Thus the note that appeared in a copy of Returne in the Bodleian Library: “Not to be disposed of as a Duplicate”.       

 *An article in Teaching Bibliography, Textual Criticism and Book History has disparaging things to say about students editing obscure texts, but all in all I think our final product served its purpose well.

So those are the circumstances. I talked with the lovely people at the Charles Center, who suggested I find another adviser—they didn’t want a “rogue thesis” on their hands. After dragging my feet for some time in the hope that the situation would magically resolve itself, I eventually e-mailed another professor in the English department and asked if she would be willing to advise me. I’m waiting to hear back, so I’ll update the blog when I find out.

           Lessons to be learned:

1) Switching advisers is not the end of the world.

2) Your thesis will not magically finish itself; nor will it magically find a new adviser.

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