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The Problem of Authorship of Eastward Ho

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Percy Simpson
Percy Simpson*
Affiliation:
Oriel College, Oxford
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Extract

Various attempts have been made to disentangle the shares of the three authors to whom the Eastward Ho is assigned on the titlepage—Chapman, Ben Jonson, and Marston. “J.C.” in a notice of Eastward Ho contributed to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (September, 1821) made a few vague suggestions. Jonson had not the chief part in the writing; it has no bold delineation of character, no highly wrought finish of dialogue, and none of his peculiar richness of humour. “Neither, on the other hand, is it distinguished by his hardness,” such as overelaboration of character. “The style bears more resemblance to that of Chapman,” but Jonson probably first sketched the plan and revised the whole; he can be traced in the character of Touchstone and in the concluding scenes.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 1944, pp. 715 - 725
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1944

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References

1 x, 127–136.

2 ii, 27–46.

3 The references are to the Oxford edition.

4 In the analogous dearly parted,“ Troilus and Cressida, iii. iii. 96.

5 Mr. Lawrence further suggested that the Quarto was revised before publication and “the gaps neatly closed” in order to get rid of offending passages; he explains the abrupt change in Act iii, scene ii, as an example, apparently, of this “neat” closing. He evidently did not know the text of the First Quarto; I have shown in the textual introduction of the Oxford Jonson (Vol. iv, pp. 495–498) how cuts were made, evidently by the publisher, for the gaps were not closed. See the facsimiles given of A 4 verso, C verso, and C 2 recto. A gap was closed only in the famous reference to the Scots on E 3 verso, E 4 recto: here revision was a necessity, and one of the authors was called in to supply it.

6 Dr. F. S. Boas's punctuation.

7 See the Oxford Jonson, iv., 495–496.

8 Ibid., ii., 38.

9 Compare in the same play i. ii. 271–272, iii. i. 281–282, iv. ii. 47–48, v. i. 113–114.

10 Parro explains the phrase as a reference to the brutality of Mezentius in Virgil, Aeneid, viii, 485–486:

Mortua quin etiam iungebat corpora vivis,
componens manibusque manus atque oribus ora.

11 Cf. Hamlet, iv. iii. 17–20. “King. Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius? Ham. At supper. King. At supper! where? Ham. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten.”

12 iv., 44.

13 George Chapman, 1875, p. 59.

14 Ed. Stephanus (1558), col. 842.

15 The Oxford Jonson, ii., 41.

16 First pointed out by H. D. Curtis in Modern Philology, v., 105–108. Professor Parrott gave a full account of the fortieth novella from which the episode is chiefly taken, and Dr. Harris in the Yale edition reprinted the Italian text of this and the thirty-fourth novella on pages 174–179.

17 Conversations x. iii. 273–276, in the Oxford Jonson, i., 140.

18 Act iv. i. 178–181.

19 Elizabethan Stage, iii, 150 n.

20 The Oxford Jonson, i, 41–43.

21 He prided himself upon it. See The Magnetic Lady, Chorus 4, where Damplay says a fifth act is unnecessary because everybody in the theatre can foresee it. “Stay, and see his last Act, his Catastrophe, how he will perplexe that, or spring some fresh cheat” and please the audience with “some unexpected, and new encounter.”

22 “Yellows” and “jealous,” a quibble.