[614] Pollard, F. and Q. 66; Sh. F. 45.
[615] There are analogies in Taming of the Shrew, 2, 3 Henry VI, and King John, which were not entered in S. R. with the other unprinted plays in 1623, and were probably regarded as covered by copyright in the plays on which they were based, although, as a matter of fact, the Troublesome Reign was itself not entered.
[616] Pollard, Sh. F. 53.
[617] They had risks to run. The Star Chamber fined and imprisoned William Buckner, late chaplain to the archbishop, for licensing Prynne’s Histriomastix in 1633 (Rushworth, Historical Collections, ii. 234).
[618] M. S. C. i. 364; Variorum, iii. 159.
[619] Moseley’s Epistle to F1 (1647) of Beaumont and Fletcher says, ‘When these Comedies and Tragedies were presented on the Stage, the Actours omitted some Scenes and Passages (with the Authour’s consent) as occasion led them; and when private friends desir’d a Copy, they then (and justly too) transcribed what they Acted’.
[620] See Epistles to Armin, Two Maids of Moreclack; Chapman, Widow’s Tears; Heywood, Rape of Lucrece, Golden Age; Marston, Malcontent; Middleton, Family of Love.
[621] Jonson, E. M. O. (1600), ‘As it was first composed by the Author B. I. Containing more than hath been publikely spoken or acted’; Barnes, Devil’s Charter (1607), ‘As it was plaide.... But more exactly reuewed, corrected, and augmented since by the Author, for the more pleasure and profit of the Reader’; Webster, Duchess of Malfi (1623), ‘with diuerse things Printed, that the length of the Play would not beare in the Presentment’.
[622] Pollard, Sh. F. 57; F. and Q. 117.
[623] The editors of the Shakespeare F1 claim that they are replacing ‘stolne, and surreptitious copies’ by plays ‘absolute in their numbers, as he conceiued them’, and that ‘wee haue scarse receiued from him a blot in his papers’; and those of the Beaumont and Fletcher F1 say they ‘had the Originalls from such as received them from the Authors themselves’ and lament ‘into how many hands the Originalls were dispersed’. The same name ‘original’ was used for the authoritative copy of a civic miracle-play; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 143.