The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon ed. by Fredson Bowers, et al (review)

REVIEWS The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon. Ed. Fredson Bowers et al. Volume IV. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979. Pp. viii + 645. $75.00. The prices of the four volumes published so far in Fredson Bowers’ edition of The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon demonstrate strikingly the financial problems faced by publishers and purchasers of scholarly books. Volume I (1966) cost $18.50, vol. II (1970) $22.50, vol. Ill (1976) $45, and now vol. IV (1979) $75. If this trend were to continue— an average increase of about 60% per volume—the tenth and last volume would cost more than $1,200! How­ ever, future volumes are expected to appear at shorter intervals of time— and, one hopes, of price. Beaumont and Fletcher scholars must have access to this edition: it replaces as standard the ten-volume Works published by Arnold Glover and A. R. Waller in 1905-12 and A. H. Bullen’s variorum Works containing twenty plays in four volumes (1904-12). Of the fifty-four plays in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon, fifteen are thought to be the unaided work of Fletcher, and they include the five in volume IV. The text of each play has been prepared by a dif­ ferent editor. The Woman’s Prize: Or, The Tamer Tamed (c. 1611), edited by Bowers, is an amusing sequel to Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew in which Petruchio’s second wife Maria declines to “discover . . . The happy Islands of obedience” (Il.i.57-58) and tames her husband. The play was censored for “oathes and bawdry” in 1633; it is extant in the Folger Library Manuscript, a favor copy made from a prompt book and providing a pre-censored text, and in the 1647 Folio version, which was printed from the manuscript on which the censorship was actually done. Since the censored manuscript behind the Folio was closer to Fletcher’s papers than the prompt book behind the Folger Manuscript, the Folio text is authoritative, subject to correction from the Folger Manuscript. The next two plays (both c. 1612) are tragedies set in heroic Roman Britain or in the sex-and-honor world of ancient Rome. Of Bonduca, edited by Cyrus Hoy, there is a British Library manuscript that precedes the 1647 Folio: although the manuscript is incomplete and generally inferior, it provides a few new readings, and Hoy is the first editor of the play to make full use of it and to publish a complete list of its variants. Robert K. Turner, Jr., has edited Valentinian from the 1647 Folio text, which was printed from what was probably “a scribal tran­ script of Fletcher’s working papers” (p. 274) worked over by the play188 Reviews 189 wright himself; it seems to have provided difficult copy for the com­ positors. The remaining plays—Monsieur Thomas (c. 1612) and The Chances (c. 1617)—are lively comedies of misunderstanding and con­ fusion. The former was apparently unsuccessful in the theater, whereas the latter has a long theater history with adaptations by the Duke of Buckingham and David Garrick. Monsieur Thomas has been edited by Hans Walter Gabler from the quarto edition of 1639, which was prob­ ably printed from “a fair copy in Fletcher’s hand” (p. 418); the play was omitted from the 1647 Folio, and the 1679 Folio text is based on the quarto. The Chances, edited by George Walton Williams, was printed in the 1647 Folio from copy whose nature remains undetermined. As in Bowers’ editions of Thomas Dekker’s Dramatic Works (4 vols., 1953-61) and Christopher Marlowe’s Works (2 vols., 1973), the Beau­ mont and Fletcher edition maintains a sharp focus on textual matters. Each play is preceded by a “Texual Introduction” of from four to thirteen pages. Notes at the bottom of each page of text are limited to recording the facts of substantive departures from the copy-text. Each play is followed by ‘‘Textual Notes” (from one page—three notes— for Bonduca to twelve pages for Valentinian) that provide glosses or his­ torical information only as part of a texual discussion (although Turner’s note on the song “Care charming sleep...