Jones's Pen and Marlowe's Socks: Richard Jones, Print Culture, and the Beginnings of English Dramatic Literature

To the Gentlemen Readers: and others that take pleasure in reading Histories.

Gentlemen, and curteous Readers whosoeuer: I haue here published in print for your sakes, the two tragical Discourses of the Scythian Shepheard, Tamburlaine, that became so great a Conquerour, and so mightie a Monarque: My hope is, that they wil be now no lesse acceptable vnto you to read after your serious affaires and studies, then they haue bene (lately) delightfull for many of you to see, when the same were shewed in London vpon stages: I haue (purposely) omitted and left out some fond and friuolous Iestures, digressing (and in my poore opinion) far vnmeet for the matter, which I thought, might seeme more tedious vnto the wise, than any way els to be regarded, though (happly) they haue bene of some vaine cōceited fondlings greatly gaped at, what times they were shewed vpon the stage in their graced deformities: neuertheles now, to be mixtured in print with such matter of worth, it would prooue a great disgrace to so honorable & stately a historie: Great folly were it in me, to commend vnto your wisedomes, either the eloquence of the Authour that writ them, or the worthinesse of the matter it selfe; I therefore leaue vnto your learned censures, both the one and the other, and my selfe the poore printer of them vnto your most curteous and fauourable protection; which if you vouchsafe to accept, you shall euer more binde mee to imploy what trauell and seruice I can, to the aduauncing and pleasuring of your excellent degree.

Yours, most humble at commaundement,

-R. I. Printer¹

Richard Jones's 1590 octavo edition of Tamburlaine the Great is for many reasons a significant publication. Not only does it constitute the earliest extant printed edition of Marlowe's dramatic work, but it also is one of the only printings of adult professional drama to reach three editions before the beginning of the seventeenth century.² Jones's preface (reproduced above) makes Tamburlaine a singular object as well. Besides being one of the first examples of an English stationer introducing a work of professional drama, "To the Gentlemen Readers" offers invaluable information about Elizabethan theater culture, and it has contributed to a number of contentions about the cultural status of Marlowe's work at the beginning of the 1590s, about the perceived differences between printings and performances of professional drama, and about printed professional drama's course of commodification at the close of the sixteenth century. Absent from these arguments, however, has been any real engagement with the author of Tamburlaine's prefatory material. In fact, though an understanding of Jones and his career would seem a necessary part of any critical investigation into his important preface, he has in essence been treated by editors and critics alike as an empty signifier.

The bulk of this critical treatment has been in the service of preserving an image of Marlowe as a playwright not of "fond and friuolous Iestures" but of elite drama. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, editors of Tamburlaine-when they included Jones's preface and considered him at all-routinely imagined him as an active defender of Marlowe's highbrow intentions.³ Alexander Dyce, Arthur Henry Bullen, and Una Ellis-Fermor all imagined Jones purposefully cutting "some fond and friuolous Iestures" from his copy of Tamburlaine because they presumed that Jones's copy-text came from the theater and that, as a result, his actions complimented what they took to be Marlowe's intentions: "[T]hat [Marlowe] was responsible for the vulgar touches of low comedy," wrote Bullen, "I am loth to allow. . . . It would be well if [Jones] had used his pruning knife with even greater severity and had left no trace of these excrescences of buffoonery. There can be no doubt that these 'vain and frivolous gestures,' of which the publisher complains, were foisted in by the players."⁴ Faced with the unnerving possibility (following new theories of "foul papers") that Jones's copy-text...