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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
There are dissenters, but scholarly opinion now generally agrees that The First part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster is a “Bad Quarto”, a reportorial version of Henry VI, Part 2. Most authorities likewise agree that The Contention is a memorial reproduction rather than a product of stenography. But on the question of who did the reporting, whose memory is behind the Q., there is little agreement. Peter Alexander, who devoted most attention to the problem of the reporter's identity, suggests that the pirates were two principal actors, one of whom played the part of Warwick while the other doubled as Suffolk and Clifford. Alfred Hart believes, however, that “the evidence for Suffolk and Warwick as the reporter of Contention is rather weak”, and C. A. Greer, while doubting that the play is a Bad Quarto, argues that these two actors could not have been the reporters because of the “stupidity” evidenced in their rôles. Chambers tentatively proposes the person who played the Citizen in iv, v, but prefers the theory that the bookkeeper was responsible for the reporting.1 It is the purpose of this paper to ascertain what data are available for determining the identity of the reporter, examine the claims of candidates in the field, and suggest another possibility.
1 Alexander, Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard III (Cambridge, 1929), p. 75. In an earlier article—“ ‘II. Henry VI.’ and the Copy for ‘The Contention’ (1594)”, TLS, Oct. 9, 1924, pp. 629–630—Alexander suggested that either Warwick also played Cade or there were three reporters, but he appears to have abandoned the idea in his later study. Hart, Stolne and Surreptitious Copies (Melbourne, 1942), p. 445. Greer, “The York and Lancaster Quarto-Folio Sequence”, PMLA, XLvII (1933), 683–684. E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare (Oxford, 1930), i, 283.
2 R. B. McKerrow suggested that the genealogical data in York's claim to the throne (II, ii) may be from the 1577 edition of Holinshed in the Bad Quarto and from the 1587 edition in both the 1619 Q. of The Whole Contention and the F., and he saw in this evidence of the revision of the source play after the reporting (“A Note on Henry VI, Part II and The Contention of York and Lancaster”, RES, ix [1933], 157–169).
3 Op.cit., pp. 121 f. The play was not necessarily presented in a cut version, however, despite the “two hours traffic of our stage.” As Leo Kirschbaum has pointed out, the Bad Quartos of Richard III and King Lear were both well over 3,000 lines, suggesting that full versions were acted (rev. of Hart, MLN, LIX [1944], 196–198).
4 The Editorial Problem in Shakespeare (Oxford, 1942), p. 55.
5 Alexander contented himself with citing superiority of Warwick and Suffolk in several scenes and referring to the marking of lines in Malone's edition, by means of which he calculated that Warwick's part has only 10% additions in the Q. These markings dis tinguish lines which appear in the F. but not in the Q., those which appear in the F. substantially different, and those which are practically identical. Malone, of course, was interested in The Contention as the source of Henry VI, Part 2, as were Miss Jane Lee, who tabulated “new”, “old” and “altered” lines, and Sir Sidney Lee, who separated “unaltered”, “more or less altered”, “dropped altogether” and “new” lines in the F. (Jane Lee, “On the Authorship of the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI, and Their Originals”, Trans, of the New Shak. Soc. [1875–76], p. 266; Sir Sidney Lee, A Life of William Shakespeare [N. Y., 1916], p. 121. These figures are quoted by Madeleine Doran, “Henry VI, Parts II and III: Their Relation to the Contention and the True Tragedy”, Univ. of Iowa Humanistic Studies, IV [1928], no. 4, p. 6.) Hart has made a more thorough examination of The Contention as a Bad Quarto and distinguished lines which are verbally identical, which have one word changed, which have two words changed, and which are substantially the same. But he appears not to have tabulated his results by characters or to have had the comparison of parts in mind (op. cit., pp. 68–70).
6 “An Hypothesis Concerning the Origin of the Bad Quartos”, PMLA, LX (1945), 702, 715.
7 It has not been considered practical, for instance, to try to distinguish errors which may have taken place in the compositor's stick or on the scribe's sheet from those for which the reporter was definitely and originally responsible; any variant is charged against the actor speaking the lines.
8 Of course a character may add more lines than he omitted and thus, according to this system, have more than 100% error. On the other hand, a character entirely omitted in the Q. will have 50% error, unless some of his lines are given to another part.
9 Op. cit., pp. 82–89. Hart also accepts the transcript theory (p. 413).
10 Greg, McKerrow, and Chambers all emphasize the technical obstacles to such a theory. McKerrow points out that play MS was usually written on both sides, whereas the passages which have been explained by recourse to transcript are always single and the sheets must needs have been written on one side only; and Chambers flatly declares, “I do not see any evidence for a fragmentary transcript, or know why any such document should come into existence”—W. W. Greg, Editorial Problem, p. 54; R. B. McKerrow, “A Note on the Bad Quartos of 2 and 3 Henry VI and the Folio Text”, RES, XIII (1937), 68; E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare, I, 283.
11 Those Nut Cracking Elizabethans (London, 1935), p. 160.
12 “A Note on the Bad Quartos”, pp. 64–72; Doran, op. cit., p. 83.
13 For example: II, i, 152; II, iv, 1; IV, ii, 129.
14 Chambers is inclined to think that the reporter had a Plot, which would explain the similarities in the stage directions and the occurrence, although infrequently, of the characteristic Plot phrase, “enter to X.” But where would the reporter have got a Plot? From those that are preserved mounted on stiff boards and ornamented with fancy titles, we may infer that there was only one Plot, that it was a permanent affair, and that it was as much a part of the play as the prompt book, for which it probably served as a cover. Fur-thermore, the Plot was not necessarily identical with the prompt copy in the wording of stage directions because it had to be concise to get the action of the whole play in two columns. The directions of The Contention are far from concise. Finally, if the reporter had a Plot, why should he have made mistakes in the action of the play?
15 E. K. Chambers, “Actors' ‘Gag’ in Elizabethan Plays”, TLS, March 8,1928, p. 170.
16 E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford, 1923), II, 128.
17 Adjusted percentages of error will regularly be given in parentheses following the absolute figures.
18 William Shakespeare, i, 283.
19 Harry R. Hoppe has shown the likelihood of such scribal errors in a dictated report: “John of Bordeaux: A Bad Quarto that Never Reached Print”, Studies in Honor of A.H. R. Fairchild (Univ. of Missouri Studies, xxi, No. 1, 121–132).
20 in page 1107 Similarly, in the stage directions to IV, vi, the F. has Cade strike his staff upon London stone, while the Q. changes it to sword. True, Holinshed also makes it a sword, but we would hardly suspect the reporter who made such a mess of the York genealogy of doing historical research; it is probable that the change is again a mistake and the pirate remembered only that Cade had some weapon.
21 in page 1111 It is interesting to note that the change of Jack Cade's weapon already observed occurred just after Scales left the stage.