INTRODUCTION

A. EDITIONS OF THE PLAY

Collations and Descriptions

Catiline was first acted in 1611, and published in the same year in quarto (Q1). There is no entry of it in the Stationers' Registers, but this lack is not unusual, for 'the Registers by no means include everything which appeared from the press. Those who held special privileges or monopolies for printing a certain book, or, maybe, a whole class of books, were not, apparently, under obligation to enter such books, and the royal printers were also superior to the rule so far as the works included in their patent were concerned.'1 However, the charter of the Company of Stationers was stringent enough to prevent the lawful printing of any work not entered on its books, unless exempt as above stated. Of course, numerous 'pirated' editions were issued by the secret presses; but the 1611 Quarto of Catiline can scarcely have been of this type, as a glance at its title-page will show: CATILINE his | CONSPIRACY | Written | by | BEN: IONSON. | LONDON, | Printed for Walter Burre. | 1611. | Walter Burre was a member in good standing of the Company, and had already issued editions of Jonson's Alchemist, Sejanus, and Volpone. This Quarto is a clearly printed volume, containing : title, one leaf (verso, heraldic device); dedication, one leaf; addresses to the reader, one leaf recto; commendatory verses, 2 one leaf verso, one leaf recto; names of the actors, one leaf verso; text B-03 in fours.

1 Cambridge Hist. Eng. Lit. 4. 433. 2 See Appendix, pp. 216 ff.

The addresses to the reader (also found in Q2) are decidedly Jonsonian in flavor. W. and G. introduced them into their editions. They read as follows:

'TO THE READER IN ORDINARIE.

"The Muses forbid, that I should restraine your medling, whom I see alreadie busie with the Title, and tricking ouer the leaues: It is your owne. I departed with my right, when I let it first abroad. And now, so secure an Interpreter I am of my chance, that neither praise, nor dispraise from you can affect mee. Though you commend the two first Actes, with the people, because they are the worst; and dislike the Oration of Cicero, in regard you read some pieces of it, at Schoole, and vnderstand them not yet; I shall finde the way to forgiue you. Be anything you will be, at your owne charge. Would I had deseru'd but halfe so well of it in translation, as that ought to deserue of you in iudgment, if you haue any. I know (whosoeuer you are) to haue that, and more. all pretences are not iust claymes.

But

'The commendation of good things may fall within a many, their approbation but in a few; for the most commend out of affection, selfe tickling, an easiness, or imitation; but men iudge only out of knowledge. That is the trying faculty. And, to those works that will beare a Iudge, nothing is more dangerous then a foolish prayse. You will say I shall not haue yours, therefore; but rather the contrary, all vexation of Censure. If I were not aboue such molestations now, I had great cause to think vnworthily of my studies, or they had so of mee. But I leaue you to your exercise. Beginne.

'To the Reader extraordinary.

'You I would vnderstand to be the better Man, though Places in Court go otherwise; to you I submit my selfe, and worke. Farewell. BEN: IONSON.'

All marginal notes are omitted in this Quarto.

The next appearance of the play was in the Folio of 1616. There are several mutually independent impressions of this,1 of which I have seen two-the one in the Yale Library (F1), and the one in possession of the Yale Elizabethan Club (F2). F1 reads: LONDON | Printed by William | Stansby. | Ano D. 1616. F2 reads: LONDON Printed by W: | Stansby. and are to be sould by Rich Meighen | Ano D. 1616. Although Aurelia Henry 2 mentions a copy in the British Museum reading similarly to F2, which varies in 'a few instances of punctuation, spelling, and typography' from F1, I can discover no differences in Catiline. A collation of the two texts reveals an absolute identity: title-page, verso blank; dedication recto, catalogue verso, etc. Even the misprint in Catiline, where page 713 is headed 317, is repeated. Fi has been chosen as the text of the present edition, because it exhibits the most consistency, and contains the fewest apparent errors. Although it varies in numerous particulars from the text of Q1, the fact that its variations have been pretty generally incorporated in the later printings indicates that it was from the first regarded as authoritative.

Following Catiline's appearance in the 1616 Folio came the Quarto of 1635 (Q2), reading, CATILINE | HIS | CONSPIRACY | WRITTEN | BY | BEN: IONSON And now Acted by his MAIESTIES Servants | with great Applause, | LONDON: | Printed by N. OKES, for I. S. | 1635. It is very carelessly printed, as its many

1 See W. W. Greg, Mod. Lang. Quart., Apr. 1904, PP. 26-29. 2 Epicoene (Yale Studies 31) xiii.

3 For collation, see Poetaster, ed. H. S. Mallory (Yale Studies 27), xii. A separate collation after the method proposed by Judson (ed. Cynthia's Revels, Yale Studies 44, xiv ff.) yields the same result with respect to Catiline in F1 and F2.