The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVII: Prose, 1668-1691: An essay of Dramatick Poesie and Shorter Works

Textual Notes

TEXTUAL NOTES This page intentionally left blank Textual Notes 487 Introduction CHOICE OF THE COPY TEXT The copy text is normally the first printing, on the theory that its accidentals are likely to be closest to the author's practice; but a manuscript or a subsequent printing may be chosen when there is reasonable evidence either that it represents more accurately the original manuscript as finally revised by the author or that the author revised the accidentals . REPRODUCTION OF THE COPY TEXT The copy text is normally reprinted literatim, but there are certain classes of exceptions. In the first place, apparently authoritative variants found in other texts are introduced as they occur, except that their purely accidental features are made to conform to the style of the copy text. These substitutions, but not their minor adjustments in accidentals, are recorded in footnotes as they occur. Second, the editors have introduced nonauthoritative emendations, whether found in earlier texts or not, where the sense seems to demand them. These emendations are also listed in the footnotes. Third, accidentals are introduced or altered where it seems helpful to the reader. All such changes also are recorded in footnotes as they occur. Fourth, turned b, q, d, p, n, and u are accepted as q, b, p, d, u, and n, respectively, and if they result in spelling errors are corrected in the text and listed in footnotes. The textual footnotes show the agreements among the texts only with respect to the precise variation of the present edition from the copy text. For example, in The Life of Plutarch at 11.614-615, the footnote "fountains:] /—. 01-4" refers only to the punctuation; Oa-4 actually read "Fountains." Certain purely mechanical details have been normalized without special mention. Long "s" has been changed to round "s," "VV" to "W"; swash italics have been represented by plain italics; captions, display initials, and any accompanying capitalization have been made uniform with the style of the present edition; stanza numbers have been corrected; wrong font and turned letters other than q, b, p, d, u, and n have been adjusted; italicized plurals in -'s have been distinguished (by italic final "s") from possessive? (roman final "s"); quotations if marked with inverted commas have been marked at the beginning and end only and always; spacing between words and before and after punctuation has been normalized when no change in meaning results; the common contractions have been counted as single words, but otherwise words abbreviated by elision have been separated from those before and after if the apostrophe is present; if the elided syllable is written out as well as marked by an apostrophe, the words have been run together (f'speak'it"). 488 Textual Notes TEXTUAL NOTES The textual notes list the relevant manuscripts and printings, assign them sigla, and give references to the bibliographies where they are more fully described. The textual notes also outline the descent of the text, indicate which are the authorized texts, and explain in each instance how the copy text was selected. A list of copies collated follows. If differences among variant copies are sufficient to warrant a tabular view of them, it follows the list of copies collated. The sigla indicate the format of printed books (F = folio, Q = quarto, O = octavo, etc.) and the order of printing, if it is determinable, within the format group (F may have been printed after Qi and before Qa). If order of printing is in doubt, the numbers are arbitrary, and they are normally arbitrary for the manuscripts (represented by M). Finally, the variants in the texts collated are given. The list is not exhaustive, but it records what seemed material,viz.: All variants of the present edition from the copy text except in the mechanical details listed above. All other substantive variants and variants in accidentals markedly affecting the sense. The insertion or removal of a period before a dash has sometimes been accepted as affecting the sense; other punctuational variants before dashes have been ignored. Failure of letters to print, in texts other than the copy text, has been noted only when the remaining letters form a different word or words, or when a word has disappeared entirely. All errors of any kind repeated from one edition to another, except the use of -'s instead of -s for a plural. Spelling variants where the new reading makes a new word...