The Scottish History of James the Fourth. Robert Greene

      Published by Good Press, 2019

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      EAN 4064066218317

Table of Contents

       THE SCOTTISH HISTORY OF JAMES THE FOURTH

       List of Doubtful and Irregular Readings.

       List of Characters

THE SCOTTISH HISTORY

       OF JAMES THE FOURTH

       Table of Contents

      1598

      THE MALONE SOCIETY

       REPRINTS

       1921

      This reprint of James IV has been prepared by A. E. H. Swaen with the assistance of the General Editor.

      Nov. 1921.

      W. W. Greg.

      The following entries are found in the Register of the Stationers’ Company for 1594:

      xiiij^o maij /

      Thomas

       Creede./.

       Entred for his copie vnder thand of master Cawood warden / a booke

       intituled /. The famous victories of henrye the ffyft / conteyninge the honorable

       battell of Agincourt / … … … . … vj^d C

      Thomas

       Creede/

       Entred vnto him by the like warrant a booke intituled the Scottishe story

       of Iames the ffourthe slayne at Fflodden intermixed with a plesant Comedie

       presented by Oboron kinge of ffayres … … … vjd C /

      [Arber’s Transcript, II. 648.]

      No edition, however, is known before 1598, and it would be natural to suspect that the original impression had perished were it not for the fact that 1598 is also the date of the earliest known edition of the Famous Victories. In the circumstances we may suppose that publication was for some reason delayed. The impression of 1598 is a quarto printed by Creede in roman type of a size approximating to modern pica (20 ll. = 84 mm.). Of this four copies are known to survive. That in the British Museum wants the leaf A 4, which has been supplied in very inaccurate modern reprint. Fortunately the leaf is present in the Dyce copy at South Kensington, though in this H 1 is defective (a corner being supplied in not quite accurate facsimile) and sheet K is wrongly perfected. Another copy, formerly at Bridgewater House, is now in the possession of Mr. Henry E. Huntington; while a fourth is in a collected volume once in the possession of Charles II, which formed lot 8258 in the Huth Sale (25 June 1920). All four want the first leaf, which was presumably blank, except perhaps for a signature. It has not been possible to use more than the first two copies mentioned in preparing the present reprint.

      The title-page bears the name of Robert Greene as author, together with a motto used by him in other works, which suggests that the manuscript may have been in some manner prepared for press before his death in 1592. Three passages from the play are quoted, rather inaccurately, in England’s Parnassus, 1600, above Greene’s name. The title-page also states that the play had been ‘sundrie times publikely plaide’, without, however, mentioning any company.

      The plot is entirely unhistorical, and P. A. Daniel and W. Creizenach independently traced its source to the first novel of the third day of the Ecatommiti of Giraldi Cintio, a story in which, however, the identity of the characters is quite different. Whether Greene was also acquainted with Cintio’s play Arrenopia, based on the same story, is not known.

List of Doubtful and Irregular Readings.

       Table of Contents

      The play, evidently printed from a much altered and probably illegible manuscript, abounds in errors of every description. The following list is confined to such readings as are to some extent doubtful in the original and to a few literal misprints which might otherwise perhaps be thought due to the reprint. No irregularities recorded by previous editors are included. No variations of any importance have been found between the two copies collated.

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