INTRODUCTION 

1. Although a number of plays (written for the most part, but not always, in Latin) acted at Cambridge and Oxford in the Tudor and early Stuart periods are preserved by contemporary printed editions, manuscripts, or both, few of these had anything more than a local and ephemeral impact on the dramatic life of England. Thomas Legge’s 1579 trilogy Richardus Tertius, to be sure, was of considerable historical importance for being the earliest English Chronicle drama to be written in any language as well as for its probable influence on Shakespeare, and Leonard Hutten’s Oxford comedy Bellum Grammaticale (1581) NOTE 1 continued to be performed long after its original production. No academic play, however, enjoyed anything remotely like the longevity and popularity of George Ruggle’s 1615 comedy Ignoramus. Its success is attested in several ways. It is preserved in an extraordinary number of printings (eleven between 1630 and 1787) and manuscript copies (nine are known to survive). It was the subject of no less than three seventeenth century translations. The first was the work of Robert Codrington; it was printed (signed only “R. C.”) in 1662. The second, by Fernando Parkhurst, was written for production at the Cockpit in Drury Lane in 1660 - 62, NOTE 2 and the third, by Edward Ravenscroft, was printed in 1678 under the title The English Lawyer A Comedy: Acted at the Royal Theatre. It was a play that continued as a living item of the national theater well into the eighteenth century. Evidence has just been cited about its presentation, in translated form, in London popular theaters in the Restoration, and we hear of eighteenth century productions of the original Latin play at Bury St. Edmund’s, the Merchant Taylors’ School, and (repeatedly) at the Westminster school as late as 1763. Indeed, Ignoramus appears to be the only academic Latin play that has received a modern performance, an abbreviated one at Peterhouse Theater, Cambridge, on August 3, 2000, in connection with the convention of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies. NOTE 3 In introducing his edition of Parkhurst’s translation, Tucker described how the appearance of Ignoramus engendered a heated dispute between university-trained lawyers and practitioners of English common law, especially those associated with the Inns of Court In the following section of his Introduction he explored the play’s influence on seventeenth century literature, most notably on Butler’s Hudibras. NOTE 4
2. These considerations, together with the fact that Ignoramus judged in its own right is an excellent comedy, well-constructed, and possessed of considerable charm, energy, and humor, strongly recommend the play as the subject for a modern edition. John Sidney Hawkins’ 1787 edition is the most recent printed text. There is room for a considerably improved Latin text founded on the complete range of available evidence, as well as a coordinated English translation and modern commentary.

3. Before turning to the play, it would be well to say a few words about its author. NOTE 5 George Ruggle was born at Lavenham, Suffolk, in 1575. He was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1593, admitted to the B. A. in 1597, and proceeded M. A. in 1597. In 1598 he was elected a Fellow of Clare Hall (the modern Clare College), where he remained until he demitted the position in 1620. He died two years later. Although his university career was not especially spectacular, he was by all accounts a steady and reliable academic, and a benefactor of his College.
4. Ruggle may have made previous forays into dramatic activity. Hawkins (p. lxxii) reports a manuscript copy of the play which in 1741 had belonged to John Hayward (a Clare Hall M. A.) in which the owner had written “N. B. Mr. George Ruggle wrote besides two other comedies Revera or Verily, and Club Law, to expose the puritans, not yet printed. MS.” Revera is lost and this attribution is impossible to assess, but Club Law is preserved in one ms., and a modern edition exists. NOTE 6 Most authorities who have considered the value of this statement have sensibly judged that the two plays are so different in nature that a safe conclusion cannot be reached. Club Law, a English satire on Cambridge municipal authorities growing out of town-gown frictions at the end of the sixteenth century, has flashes of wit and good writing, but is scarcely comparable to Ignoramus. The difference, however, may be attributable to fifteen intervening years of artistic growth, and to the fact that Ignoramus is based on a well-crafted Italian model, itself an adaptation of a comedy by Plautus. And there is a certain generic similarity between our play’s Vince and Club Law’s bright and lively Cambridge student Nicholas Cricket. But non liquet is the only sound verdict. NOTE 7

5. By Ruggle’s day, dramatics were a traditional feature of university life, both because, according to Humanistic thinking, they were a valuable educational tool, and because they were a sanctioned means of ventilating youthful high spirits. At least as early as Elizabeth’s 1564 visitation to Cambridge, the discovery had also been made that lavish dramatic productions were also highly useful for entertaining the sovereign and other distinguished guests. NOTE 8
6. Accordingly, Ignoramus was one of the three plays produced for James’ visitation in March 1615 (new style). On the night of his arrival, March 7, St. John’s College presented a comedy, Amelia, now lost. On the next night Ignoramus made its debut, and on the third Trinity performed the comedy Albumazar by Thomas Tomkins. NOTE 9 A number of anecdotes exist about the king’s occasional exhibitions of tedium and impatience at academic dramas. NOTE 10 Ignoramus, however, met a favorable reception. In a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, dated March 16, John Chamberlain wrote: NOTE 11

Despite the fact that its performance took five hours, the play pleased the king so greatly that by April he wanted to see it again. At that time Chamberlain observed: NOTE 12

In his note on Sive decenalli foecundus lite patronu…Milton’s eighteenth century editor Joseph Warton plausibly suggested that this couplet describes Ignoramus. A revival during the period between February 1625, when Milton came up to Cambridge, and the following year, when he wrote this elegy, is not out of the question, or he may have simply heard reports of this famous play, or perhaps had read it. One of our manuscripts, described below, appears to contain a text modified for a revival performance, which Milton may have seen.

9. Ignoramus is based on the comedy La Trappolaria by Giambattista Della Porta (1535 - 1615), itself an adaptation of Plautus’ Pseudolus with additional elements drawn from several other Latin comedies. La Trappolaria was first printed at Bergamo in 1596 (with reprints in 1597, 1613, 1615, 1626. and 1628). There is no modern edition or translation - it is not included in Vincenzo Spampanato’s incomplete edition of Della Porta’s comedies published in 1910 - 11, and the most recent printing of the text appeared in Gennaro Muzio’s edition, Delle Commedie di Giovanbattista de la Porta Napoletano (Naples, 1726). Therefore, for the reader’s convenience, I have posted a transcription of Muzio’s 1726 text on the Web: to see it, CLICK HERE. The most important literary study of that work is that of Louise George Chubb; in the course of her book Chubb discussed the relationship of La Trappolaria to Ignoramus. She also provided a useful synopsis: NOTE 15

10. The reader can appreciate the many changes Della Porta has introduced into the Pseudolus plot. In Pseudolus, the emphasis is placed almost exclusively on the scheme by which Pseudolus and his confederate Charinus swindle the leno Ballio and the senex Simo in order to gain Phoenicium for the adolescens Callidorus. The love affair — if it deserves to be called such— between Callidorus and his girl friend Phoenicium is so secondary to the plot of the play that she does not appear as a speaking part. The plot complications of the twins and their betrothed Spanish brides, and of the one twin pretending to be the other, are Della Porta’s own additions, and so is part of Gabrina, and the characterization of Fagone as a voracious parasite (his Pseudolus counterpart, the adolescens Charinus, is nothing of the kind).
11. The main lines of Ignoramus’ plot are visible in the above synopsis of La Trappolaria, but Ruggle has introduced important changes and elaborations. One of these did not win Chubb’s admiration: NOTE 16

12. But Ruggle’s changes were made for a sound reason. In his first four Acts he follows the main outline of Della Porta’s plot with general fidelity, but in the conclusion of his play he breaks free of his model in order to improve on the single conspicuous defect of La Trappolaria: a very weak fifth Act. Its perfunctory recognition scene, in which Elionora is quite irrationally gripped by a hunch about Filesia’s true identity, and verifies it with a few quick questions, is implausible and undramatic. Much of the act is taken up with the possibility — which the audience knows to be untrue — that Arsenio has become the victim of a shipwreck, a quite needless plot complication that looks suspiciously like padding. The more melodramatic recognitions and reconciliations engineered by Ruggle are meant to give the play a more dramatically satisfying ending than Della Porta’s damp squib, and it is likely that many readers will feel that his Act V is decidedly superior. (This reader, at least, does not find Rosabella and Antonius any less lively than their Italian counterparts.)
13. Among Ruggle’s other innovations the most important, of course, are the satiric elements: instead of Plautus’ intended purchaser of Phoenicium, an entirely offstage miles gloriosus, or his highly stereotyped equivalent in Della Porta, Antonius’ rival Ignoramus is a burlesque of contemporary practitioners of English common law. Chubb (p. 282) claimed that Ignoramus “is also a vehicle for anti-Puritan satire, and to make him so, Ruggle endowed him with some of the characteristics of Butler’s Hudibras.” It is true that Musaeus claims Ignoramus’ birthplace was Magna Puritania (931), but I must confess I do not perceive much in his characterization that wears a distinctively Puritan look. Another form of satire, against Catholicism, is introduced in the Second Prologue and elaborated in II.3 by the clever device of having the itinerant book-seller Cupes hawk volumes with titles that elicit anti-Catholic gibes.
14. Another important change resulted cumulatively from the addition of many new scenes, and also of a number of new characters (Cola, Pecus, Musaeus, Surda, Banacar, Vince, Nell, and Richardus): a play of considerably enhanced length and complexity. We must wonder why Ruggle did this: for its success, after all, the plan Trico devises to gain possession of Rosabella only requires only himself and a single confederate who is unknown to Ignoramus and Torcol, Cupes. The extra characters are quite unnecessary, either for the successful execution of Trico’s scheme, or for the unfolding of the plot. One explanation for this change comes readily to mind: simply to make the play longer, since audiences of the time liked lengthy entertainments, just as congregations liked long sermons. And indeed, there are times we can catch Ruggle adding plot complications purely for the sake of doing so: for example, all the business in I.5 and I.6 about Rosabella becoming angry and frustrated over Antonius’ supposed departure for London would have been eliminated had he included an equivalent of La Trappolaria I.3, in which Arsenio immediately goes from his initial interview with his father and informs Filesia about his predicament. Then too, the exorcism in Act IV may be highly amusing for readers and theatergoers with a taste for slapstick, but it is scarcely necessary for the advancement of the plot. But surely Ruggle had some more important motive than extra complexity and length, and in a later context I shall suggest what this may have been.
15. Ruggle’s other important innovation was to write a comedy that to a large extent is about language. He did so in two ways. A good deal of the humor in Ignoramus’ characterization is generated by his inappropriate use of the barbaric-sounding terminology of the common law in everyday conversation, and from his mangled Latin. Also, Ignoramus is set at Bourdeaux, its French characters speak Latin (which we must understand to be French), and its English characters speak English. The play’s deceptions require several French characters to pretend they are English and speak accordingly, so they adopt linguistic as well as physical disguises. This last feature is admittedly taken from La Trappolaria, in which Arsenio and Filesia speak Spanish in order to convince Callifrone that they are Lelio and Eufragia. But the amount of Spanish spoken in the play is quite limited, and Ruggle went much farther in exploring the subject of bilingualism. A further linguistic complication in Ignoramus is added by having the Portuguese pander Torcol spout stage-Spanish. The result, at least in the final two acts, is not a standard university comedy written in Latin, but rather an amusing and highly effective macaronic farrago. And the play’s multilingualism facilitates another innovation, a comic look at differences of nationality and national temperament, (a theme that comes to the fore in such scenes as V.1 and V.2). Finally, anybody who compares Ignoramus with La Trappolaria will observe that at many points Ruggle has broadened the humor, adding a great deal of slapstick and physical activity that have no counterparts in the Italian play.
16. La Trappolaria was itself based on Plautus’ Pseudolus, and a number of echoes leave no room for doubt that Ruggle knew and learned from that play: see the commentary notes on Second Prologue 120, 160, and Ignoramus 5, 400, 426, 719, 768, 935, 956, and 1444. Indeed, the scene in which we meet Torcol as he presides over his bordello (I.4) imitates Pseudolus I.2, but has no equivalent in La Trappolaria. Ruggle imparts a Plautine flavor by the occasional use of archaisms, such as eccus, ipsus, faxo, qui = “how,” the subjunctive siem, vorto for verto, and question-introducing words ending in -in’. Occasional word-plays and alliteration are probably meant to look Plautine (42, Unde alium ab alio, haud alias, internovimus, and 295, Insuper cautelam cautelae addere cautius est, may serve as illustrations). Another feature designed to seem Plautine is that a number of passages are written in verse rather than prose. Often characters break into verse when they grow excited or impassioned, and although such passages were no doubt meant to be spoken rather than sung they function as a kind of equivalent to Plautus’ cantica (the nature of Ignoramus’ verse will be discussed in a later context).
17. A third play probably influenced the writing of Ignoramus. Edward Forsett’s 1581 Cambridge comedy Pedantius was scarcely the only comedy to present a buffoonish “expert” who inappropriately freights down his everyday conversation with the technical lingo of his trade, and who foists his unwanted attentions on a girl in the manner of an overeducated Polyphemus bathetically courting Galatea. One may mention Onophrius in Abraham Fraunce’s Victoria (ca. 1582) NOTE 17 or the title character in the anonymous Susenbrotus of 1616. NOTE 18 But only Pedantius anticipates Ignoramus in assigning its comical lover such a prominent role. One might say that Ruggle created his play by substituting a comically grotesque lawyer - lover for Forsett’s pedant - lover who, for understandable reasons, is a more standard figure in academic comedy. In this context is noteworthy that Pyropus, the cheated clothes-dealer in Ignoramus, bears more than a passing resemblance to the equally abused haberdasher Gilbert in Pedantius (IV.v). Likewise, Musaeus, Ignoramus’ disrepectful clerk, bears a certain resemblance to Parillus, a student of Pedantius with a similarly subversive attitude (cf. Pedantius IV.ii). Forsett himself perceived the similarity between Pedantius and Ignoramus. In old age, he was provoked to publish his play by the appearance of Ignoramus in print, and he prefaced his addition with a mock-polemic in which he pretends to proclaim the superiority of his own play but in fact adroitly manages to underscore the fact that the two plays make a nicely matched pair.
18. In the section of his introduction his edition of the Parkhurst translation entitled “The Lawyer as Vice Figure,” E. F. J. Tucker noted a number of previous plays that had included the figure of the “the ‘law-distracted’ madman who is thought to be possessed with evil spirits.” Thus, for example, the Clerk of Chatam in II Henry VI is put to death because his legal notebook is regarded as a conjurer’s grimoire. Tangle in Middleton’s The Phoenix (1607), who, like Ignoramus, lards his talk with legal jargon, and Voltore in Ben Jonson’s Volpone (1606) are subjected to exorcisms. Exorcisms figure in other plays which Ruggle may have known: for example, those of Malvolio in Twelfth Night and of Fitz-dotterell in Jonson’s The Divel is an Asse (1616) may be cited. Also “In John Jeffere’s The Buggbears (1565) …which, incidentally has a main romantic plot quite similar to Ruggle’s Ignoramus, the sly servant Trappola engages in mock exorcisms in order to help Formosus win the hand of his mistress Rosimunda.” NOTE 19 The hilarious mistreatment of Ignoramus in Act IV clearly belongs to this tradition and, as Tucker suggested, may well take its inspiration from some of these earlier plays.
19. Some reasons for Ignoramus’ popularity are self-evident. Lawyers tend to be unpopular, and humor at their expense is perennial. NOTE 20 Then too, based as it is on works by Plautus and Della Porta, Ignoramus is a very well-crafted play, far more so than the general run of university comedies. Even such a highly-regarded example as Pedantius suffers by comparison. Both plot and dialogue are interesting and lively, and if the characters are all stock comic creations, they have the merit of being very well drawn. For all its learned academic, classical, and legal allusions, plenty of elements would engage the interest of an lay audience. But Ignoramus is also strikingly Shakespearean, and, I submit, is one of the reasons for its success.
20. Consider the ribald language-lesson in V.1 (2650 - 2672): 

The reader in search of amusement might care to look at Hawkins’ lengthy note that begins “This word we have in vain searched for in all the dictionaries and glossaries which we have been able to meet with; nor can we assign to it any sense that will at all be consistent with the context.” Gradually he comes to the realization that “the word horse-tool should possibly have been wh***re’s tool, the sense of which the reader is at liberty to investigate.” Here we have a man who thought while, rather than before, he wrote, and one can savor his discomfort as the inevitable conclusion dawned. Had he been willing to think a trifle harder about a subject which caused such distress, he might have made the interesting discovery that this bawdy language catechism looks very much as if it took its inspiration from the equally ribald language lesson in Henry V III.iv. NOTE 21
21. More generally, we have seen that one of the important ways in which La Trappolaria was altered into Ignoramus was by the addition of more secondary characters. The great majority of these are memorable and endearing citizens of the “little world” of commoners, clowns, and rascals that coexists with the “big world” of Antonius, Rosabella, and Theodorus. By adding this plethora of secondary characters, Ruggle produced a comedy largely devoted to exploring the coexistence and interaction of these two worlds. The ongoing squabbles and reconciliations between Cupes and Polla come as close as anything in academic drama to being a “little world” sub-plot unfolding alongside the drama of the Antonius - Rosabella predicament, which is more elevated both sociologically and in terms of moral gravity. Pedantius has its own “little world” of townsmen (as represented by Pogglostus and Tyrophagus), and it comically investigates the collision of these amusing but wholesome and unpretentious rascals with the otherworldly, self-important, and rather morbid denizens of academe, Pedantius and Dromodotus. Ruggle does the same thing on a more ambitious scale, both by giving his “little world” a considerably larger population, and by devoting so many of his scenes to it.
22. At this point I return to Chubb’s criticism of the new ending Ruggle supplied in lieu of Act V of La Trappolaria. Increasing the (at least ostensible) seriousness of the love story and of the plays’ dénouement intensifies the contrast between the “big world” doings of Antonius, Rosabella, and Theodorus, and the “little world” activities of the play’s more humble, and more disreputable, characters. This social and ethical bipolarity is an essential feature of the Shakespearean comic formula, and the energetic farce it entails is especially calculated to appeal to English taste for broad humor. So it is worth making the suggestion that Ruggle added so much “little world” material, in imitation of Shakespeare. Therefore one of the secrets of his play’s success may be that it is so successful in replicating the distinctive flavor of the best known and most beloved plays in the English comic repertoire.

23. A standard article of faith among those who have written about Ignoramus is that it has to do with the town - gown controversies that troubled Cambridge at the turn of the seventeenth century. E. F. J. Tucker expresses the consensus omnium: NOTE 22

At least one member of the original audience, John Chamberlain, took matters a step farther when, in a passage already quoted, he wrote that the play featured “Brakin the recorder of the towne under the name of ignoramus a common-lawyer.” NOTE 23 Nobody would care to deny that Ignoramus is a generic parody of common lawyers, and it is likely enough that Ruggle was provoked into writing his comedy by a particularly irritating local specimen of the breed. But there are a number of reasons for serious doubt that the character of Ignoramus was meant to be a specific lampoon of Brackyn or anybody else. In the first place, he is devoid of the particularized mannerisms that would suggest personal attack; in this context, the contrast between him and Forsett’s Pedantius (undoubtedly meant to be the egocentric eccentric don Gabriel Harvey) is instructive. Equally so, for that matter, is the contrast between Ignoramus and Club Law, for that play lampoons individual municipal dignitaries of the time. Then too, in view of anecdotes about James growing bored during performances of academic dramas, it seems extremely unlikely that the university would have been so impolitic as to inflict on a him a comedy ventilating purely local grudges. Indeed, if Ruggle had wanted to write an ad hominem satire calculated to hold the royal attention, his target would probably have been Attorney General Edward Coke (which he could have done safely, since Coke was well advanced in his process of falling out of the royal favor). Yet there is no more of Coke in Ignoramus’ characterization than there is of Brackyn.
24. Furthermore, the notion that Ignoramus is supposed to represent Brackyn manages to ignore a fairly impressive amount of evidence that he is a London lawyer. Repeatedly (179, 302, 1061) he speaks of returning from Bourdeaux to London. He reckons time according to the sessions of the courts at Westminster Hall (179), the place he hopes eventually to best his adversaries in the play (2751, 3198), and speaks in the Epilogue of departing on a route that will carry him from Cambridge to London. More specifically, he expresses an appreciation of the trumpet that issues the summons to meals at the Inns of Court (2498), and it is probably relevant that Cupes boasts of having once served as an under-butler at the Inns (719). Cambridge is never mentioned in the play. There are therefore plenty of indications that Ignoramus is a typical London lawyer, probably housed in one of the Inns of Court, and nothing at all suggests he is a provincial Cambridge attorney. Nor, for that matter, does the play present any reason for thinking that he functions as any kind of municipal officer.
25. Ignoramus, in other words, has nothing at all to do with contemporary town-gown disputes. Rather, it comically exploits a quite different issue, the differences between university-trained civilians (practitioners of civil law) and common lawyers. A number of contemporary writers (together with pamphlets and satiric ballads provoked by the play) testify that Ignoramus stirred up a storm of protest from the common law profession as a whole, up to and including Coke himself. On 20 May, for example, Chamberlain wrote Carleton: NOTE 24

Another contemporary writer summarized the situation in an epigram of memorable pith: NOTE 25

Indeed, inasmuch as he was currently quarreling with Coke, the discomfiture it caused the Attorney General and the storm it stirred up may have pleased James as much or more than Ignoramus itself, and his second trip to Cambridge may have been undertaken, not merely to enjoy the play, but also to show the nation exactly where he stood in the controversy. But in any event, surely Ignoramus would not have provoked such widespread ill feelings, had it been generally understood as an attack on the single man Brackyn rather than on common lawyers as a class.
26. In certain ways, the inclusion of one of the plays’ minor characters is an embarrassment. Ignoramus’ clerk Musaeus expresses to Trico his disdain of his master, and makes a timely announcement of some information that helps Trico execute his plan (II.6). But this transaction raises an awkward question: if Musaeus is a secret ally in Ignoramus’ camp, why does Trico not assign him a more important role in his machinations? The answer is that Musaeus is not introduced into the play to further the plot, but rather to serve as a lightning-rod for the issue of civilian - common lawyer friction. In I.3 Ignoramus waxes contemptuous on the subject of the impracticality of his university education. In II.6 Musaeus reciprocates by expressing his disdain for Ignoramus’ half-baked learning, and in a lengthy quasi-canticum isolates Ignoramus from upstanding members of the profession, by whom, one suspects, he means formally educated civilians.
27. The contrast between common lawyers and civilians works itself out in another way too. Besides being endowed with the stock characteristics of comic villains (selfishness, hypocrisy, and so forth), Ignoramus’ most memorable feature is one we have already considered, his abuse of language, for he may be described as a man who is semiliterate in several languages. His employment of the uncouth terminology of common law, a mixture of mangled Anglo-Saxon, Norman French, Latin, and English is so strange and barbaric that the innocent might well assume that a man speaking this way is a victim of demonic possession (the reason for his comic exorcism in Act IV). Most significantly from the point of the university-educated, Ignoramus’ bad Latin is more than funny — in a profound sense it is the measure of the man.
28. To grasp this, one has to understand the role of Latin in Ruggle’s day. NOTE 26 England had developed three distinct albeit overlapping élite classes, the nobility, the wealthy, and the educated. The third class was, if not the class that ran things, at least the class that kept things running: clergymen, physicians, lawyers, the host of secretaries, pursuivants, sheriffs and the like, who collectively composed a nascent civil service, as well, of course, as their counterparts in the Anglican church.
29. Doubtless because government, the church, and society at large were aware of the necessity for this educated class, it was recruited from a quite democratic base. Many a boy of humble origins gained entry into the schools and universities because numerous scholarship schemes were in place, because gradated fee schedules were established for students of different social conditions, and because the Church of England was willing to hire boy sopranos with the coin of education. But very diverse entrants into the educational system were molded into a coherent class both by its curriculum and by the bonding experience that it offered.
30. Beginning with grammar school, the learning of Latin was the sine qua non for entry into the educational system, and so Latin instruction in grammar school can be thought of as the first and crucial fitness test for potential members of England’s educated meritocracy . Perhaps it is not entirely far-fetched to regard one feature of grammar school education that figures prominently in the popular mind, heavy reliance on corporal punishment, as an exercise in hazing or as a initiatory rite of passage. Shared knowledge of Latin and familiarity with a standard repertoire of classical authors went far towards giving the members of this class a sense of cohesion and mutuality of interest. This was especially so because everybody who passed through the educational system was subjected to the pretty much the same experiences and exposed to the same body of knowledge. Primary and secondary school curricula were remarkably uniform, at least partially by government edict, and all university men were required to take the Bachelor and Masters of Arts before passing on to more specialized studies in divinity, law, medicine, or music. In this Renaissance system, nothing like the rich variety of curricula offered by modern universities was available, so that any resulting internal division among the intelligentsia such as Lord Snow’s two cultures was out of the question.
31. Thus the acquisition of Latin often served as the first step towards along the road of social mobility, leading to a career in one of the professions. Latin was the language of the academic community and its daily life, not just of lectures and viva voce examination. The Latin language and its literature provided the common fund of knowledge and shared formative experience that transcended all normal distinctions of birth or economic status, and went a long way towards fusing those who passed through the educational system into an identifiable class.
32. It is equally true that this class transcended national boundaries: acquisition of Latin permitted university study on the Continent for those who wished it, facilitated communication with the learned abroad, and granted access to Latin writings produced in other countries including (most important of all for professionals) textbooks in such subjects as law and medicine. It was therefore possible for an educated Englishman to view himself as a member of a great and nearly perpetual fraternity, the respublica literarum, extending in space through all of Europe and in time back to Roman antiquity.
33. Membership in this educated class was prestigious. Any man admitted to the Bachelor of Arts was entitled to style himself a gentleman and to employ the title dominus (the origin of the word “don”). In another context, dominus was the Latin word used to translate “Sir,” so that in some sense the acquisition of a B. A. appears to have conferred a degree of prestige equivalent to a knighthood, or certainly to the possession of a coat of arms. If Latin was the entry ticket for educated society, it was also its distinctive membership badge, by means of which members of this class acknowledged each other, identified themselves to the rest of the world, and, when it suited them, excluded non-members from their discourse. And in some circumstances — funerary inscriptions, for example — Latin could be employed as a conspicuous status marker.
34. Bearing all of this in mind, we can appreciate that Ignoramus’ non-mastery of Latin marks him as a man excluded from the charmed circle of the intellectual élite, or, worse, as an alazon, a bogus claimant to membership, although his linguistic incompetence proclaims him an impostor. This is the inner significance of his bad Latinity, which must have been one of the features of the play that most delighted the audience.

35. Although written by a Fellow of Clare Hall and for the most part acted by Clare men, Ignoramus was put on in the dining hall of Trinity College suitably outfitted for the occasion, a room with a considerably larger seating capacity. With respect to Ignoramus and some other plays, I have discussed the problem of academic plays with more than two onstage “houses” elsewhere. I take this opportunity to make a few more detailed observations of staging and its problems, all involving Act III. In all probability, III.9 was played with Polla outside the house she shares with Cupes, and Rosabella appearing at a window. Then a curtain is drawn from the front of the “house” to reveal an interior scene: Cupes has hired a victualler, musicians, and strumpets for his entertainment; Polla, standing at the door, overhears herself being mocked and bursts in to wreak havoc; then she goes “indoors” by making her exit through a door in the back of the house (a similar rear door in the back wall of a “house” opened up for an interior scene is employed for an exit by Penelope in Act III of William Gager’s Ulysses Redux — cf. the stage direction after 1048). At the end of the scene the curtain is closed again, leaving Cupes standing or perhaps sitting glumly in his doorway. Next, at the beginning of III.11 Antonius arrives at Cupes’ house in the hope of finding Rosabella. Seeming difficulties are visible in this sequence of events: 1.) at the end of III.8 (1537) Cupes announces that he is departing to change out of his costume hic in proximo. What does he mean and where does he go? 2.) At what point in the sequence are the party-makers introduced into Cupes’ house? 3.) At the opening of III.11 (1703) Antonius informs us that Cupes has just now told him Rosabella is being kept at his house; when has Cupes had the opportunity to do this? The first two of these problems could be solved by having Cupes and his friends sneak into the side of his house in dumb-show while III.9 is being enacted between Polla and Rosabella. But as effective as this transaction might otherwise be, it fails to solve the third problem. The preferable solution, therefore, is to assume that a substantial passage of time is supposed to occur between III.8 and III.9, or between III.9 and III.10, although such an interval is unmarked in the text. An interval between III.8 and III.9 would have the extra advantage of eliminating the problem of where Cupes goes to change his clothes, as he could be shown going into his own home.

36. A critical text of Ignoramus must be based on a rather large and complex amount of source material, and the interested reader’s indulgence is requested for the lengthy and detailed discussion that must now follow. Evidence for establishing the text of Ignoramus consists of both printed texts and manuscripts. Although a large number of printed editions were issued, only those of 1630, 1658 and 1787 have any significance for an editor, the remainder being reprintings of the 1658 one. There are also nine extant manuscripts to be considered, making a total of thirteen independent sources. It would be well to begin with a detailed inventory of this material. 

37. MANUSCRIPTS

a A lost ms. that served as the basis for the two printed 1630 editions; the rubric a is used to indicate the contents of these two editions when they are in agreement. 

b Cambridge University Library Additional 7958, contained in a miscellany once owned by Joseph Diggon (matriculated from Clare Hall (now Clare College), Cantab., 1610), together with Thomas Legge’s trilogy Solymitana Clades and other material. As the latest datable item is some 1616 correspondence between King James and the University of Cambridge, it can be assigned to the the earlier seventeenth century: cf. the description here. The late secretary hand supports this assessment. In my microfilm some pages are only partially legible, either because the ink has faded or because some frames were overexposed by the photographer; these pages contain the beginning speeches of the First Prologue and Act v, from the beginning of scene 7 to the end of the play. The readings reported here should therefore be regarded as provisional and incomplete. Contains only the First Prologue, which is nonetheless identified as Prologus Prior. 

c Clare College (Cambridge) 1988/17: a partially preserved ms. lacking the dramatis personæ, Second Prologue, Act I, the final two scenes of Act IV, and the first five scenes of Act V. 

d Bodleian Library Douce 43: contains both Prologues, photographically reproduced in George Ruggle, Ignoramus, Prepared with an Introduction by E. F. J. Tucker (Renaissance Latin Drama in England series II.1, Hildesheim, 1987). 

e Bodleian Library Tanner 306/1 fols. 1 - 21 (a copy owned by Archbishop William Sancroft). Lacks both Prologues and list of dramatis personae, and the epilogue. It includes an extra scene, identified as Act II, scene ii (with the subsequent scenes in that act renumbered accordingly), featuring more conflict between Torcol and Surda. The copyist has written deest tota in ll. impressis to record his observation that this scene is not found in the printed copies, which shows that the manuscript was not executed prior to 1630. 

f Bodleian Library Rawlinson D 1361, another copy owned by Archbishop William Sancroft (an enthusiastic collector of mss. of these academic comedies). Contains a cast list, and both Prologues. Dated 1629. 

g British Library Harley 6869. Contains a cast list and both Prologues. The original copyist stopped work at the end of IV.5. The first few speeches of IV.6 are added in a second hand, then the text breaks off. Marginal corrections and variant readings indicate collation against a second source. 

h British Library Sloane 2531. Contains a cast list and both Prologues. An initial heading explicitly identifies it as the text of the May 1615 performance. In the same ms. with Thomas Randolph’s Cambridge comedy Aristippus (1626, printed 1630) and other items. Written in a late secretary hand, which supports a comparatively early dating. 

i British Library Egerton 2982. A fragmentary manuscript containing II.3 - IV.4, i. e. lines 677 - 1998. The first page, containing 677 - 722, is badly damaged. 

j Bodleian Library Tanner 306/1 fols. 22 - 41 (listed last to reflect that it represents a different version of the text). Written in the same hand as e. Lacks both Prologues and list of dramatis personae, and the epilogue. The part of Pyropus has been eliminated by the omission of II.5, IV.4, IV.5, IV.12, and V.9 with some rewriting to cover the omissions, including a very short scene between Trico and Cupes identified as “IV.4”, that splices the end of II.3 to the end of II.5. III.13 is also eliminated. These cuts were presumably made in the interest of producing a shorter text for a revival performance (see the discussion below). 

38. PRINTED TEXTS

1630¹ Ignoramus, Comoedia Coram Regia Maiestate Iacobi Regis Angliae etc. excudebat T. P [Thomas Purfoot]. impensis I. S. [John Spenser], London, 1630, 12^mo [Short Title Catalogue 1, nr. 21445, Early English Books I, reel 1582]. 

1630² Ignoramus, Comoedia Coram Regia Maiestate Iacobi Regis Angliae &c, Secunda editio auctor & emendatior. Una cum Argumentis unicuique Scaenae praepositis, ut melius totius fabulae scopus, qui aliter obscurior est, intelligatur. Typis I. H. Sumptibus G. E. [George Edmondson], London, 1630, 12^mo. [Short Title Catalogue 1, nr. 21446, Early English Books I, reel 1392]. A moderately corrected reprinting of the first edition, with the addition of Dulman in Laudem Ignorami and arguments to the individual scenes (which became a standard feature of the print textus receptus, including Hawkins’ edition, and are used here, in the original and in translation, as synopses; Hawkins’ edition of that text is employed). 

1658 Ignoramus: comoedia coram rege Iacobo et Totius Angliae magnatibus per academicos Cantabrigienses habita: cum eorum supplemento qua, causidicorum municipalium reverentia, hactenus desiderabantur, autore Mr^o. Ruggles…Editio tertia, locis sexcentis emendatior. Londini : Ex officina R.D., 1658. [Early English Books II, reel 750]. The presence of Dulman in Laudem Ignorami and Arguments to each scene, as well as the nature of the text, show that this edition is based on the second 1630 edition; it will be understood that the readings of the 1658 edition are identical to the ones of that one when not reported. 

1787 John Sidney Hawkins (ed.), Ignoramus Comoedia; scriptore Georgio Ruggle, A. M., Aulae Clarensis, apud Cantabrigienses, olim socio; nunc denuo in lucem edita cum notis historicis et critics: quibus insuper praeponitur vita auctoris, et subiicitur glossarium vocabula forensia dilucide exponens: accurante Johanne Sidneio Hawkins, arm. Londoni: prostat venalis apud T. Payne et filium, bibliopolas: necnon Gul. Ginger iuxta scholam regiam Westmonsateriensem mdcclxxxvii.

 39. Building on some observations made by Tucker (op. cit. 1987, 3 and 5 - 8), in the course of the following discussion I shall argue the following propositions: 1. ) all of this material is descended from a single archetype; 2.) the archetype was a ms. containing the text of the second performance, that of May 1615; 3.) it was a copy ms. containing a number of errors which therefore became pervasively incorporated in the extant textual sources.
40. We may consider the printed sources first. In his will Ruggle enjoined the destruction of his personal books and papers. Since academic plays circulated widely in manuscript, this did not prevent the survival of Ignoramus, but it managed to preclude a printing based on the best possible source, a holograph. A copy text, therefore had to be used for the purpose. The volume is marred by a very large number of typographical errors, probably because, when it came to Latin, the printer was himself an ignoramus.
41. Later in 1630 the same printer put out a second, corrected version. Now one senses the presence of a guiding hand. The new edition prefaces each scene with a prose summary of its contents, and an introductory Dulman in Laudem Ignorami. One is strongly inclined to suppose that the nameless individual who supplied this new material supervised the printing, since many of the mistakes of the first edition were now corrected (although a smaller number of new ones were introduced). It is likely that the anonymous editor of this second edition had the opportunity to collate the previous printed edition against a. It would seem he also employed a second one for collation: since a number of the readings in the original printed text are also encountered in our extant mss., they probably stood in the ms. from which the first edition was made and cannot be dismissed as printer’s errors. In essence, the second edition is no more than a somewhat improved reprinting of its predecessor: its many uncorrected glaring faults suggest that the job was done with an eye on the book market as much or more than out of any genuine concern for improving the text.
42. Thus the chief evidentiary value of the first two editions is that they bear witness to the contents of the (now-lost) manuscript from which the printer worked. When the two editions agree in preserving any feature, it is safe to assume that feature was contained in the manuscript (identified here as a).
43. In part, no doubt, because of the political disruptions of the times, no new edition appeared until the 1658 one, a considerably improved reprinting of the second edition. On the title page the anonymous editor makes the boast that he has corrected more than six hundred errors. This is a substantial exaggeration, but a large number of improvements were indeed made. While the possibility that some of these are editorial conjectures cannot of course be excluded, the fact that many new readings introduced in the third edition are also preserved in one or more of our extant manuscripts leaves no room for doubt that the editor collated the second edition against another manuscript. Since some 1658 readings are unique, it is equally clear that this source cannot be identified with any extant one.
44. The third edition served as the basis for large number of subsequent printings, in 1659, 1668, 1701, 1710 (?), 1731, 1736 (Dublin), 1737, and 1763 (?). These were all uncritical reprintings; some were so mechanically (or perhaps one should say so cynically) issued that the title page claim for six hundred improvements was reproduced verbatim. ^{NOTE 27}
45. The most recent printed text was edited by John Sidney Hawkins in 1787. Living in an age in which the art of textual criticism had acquired considerably greater sophistication, Hawkins claimed (on the first page of his Introduction) that his edition is based on a collation of all extant manuscripts. Although this assertion has a reassuringly scientific sound, a glance at his text shows that, as an editor, his achievement was considerably more modest. Some of the new readings he introduced were appropriated from extant mss., identified here as d, e, f, g, h, j, and possibly also i. But what are we to think of the readings he introduced that cannot be documented from other sources? Hawkins was a punctilious scholar and it seems unlikely he would have played fast and free with unacknowledged conjectural “improvements.” We have already seen that he had access to “Mr. Hayward’s ms.” from which he drew the information that Ruggle had written Club Law. This manuscript is lost, or may be owned privately (as was b until recently). It is likely enough that it furnished him with otherwise unattested readings.
46. The great merit of Hawkins’ volume was that he was expert on English common law and its arcane lingo, and so his commentary is invaluable (as of course are the textual improvements he made that are based on his specialized knowledge of this subject). The reader may take it as blanket statement that all of the information provided on that subject in the commentary here is taken from him, and he was also responsible for identifying many of Ruggle’s quotations and literary parodies. His lengthy biography of Ruggle is also valuable. But insofar as his text goes, the overwhelming impression one receives is of a lack of method. At many points it is difficult to grasp exactly why Hawkins felt that the 1658 text was in need of improvement. And, when he thought that it did, it is equally hard to understand the principle according to which he selected a reading from one manuscript rather than another.
47. But his editorial work is liable to a far severer criticism. He was the first edition to compare several textual sources of this play, and on the basis of the evidence he saw he ought to have been strongly impressed by the most salient feature of Ignoramus’ textual tradition: a number of passages are written as verse in some sources but as prose in others. Surely a methodical editor should decide which is which. Yet this was an issue to which Hawkins was entirely indifferent, and he uncritically imitated the print textus receptus in this respect. In sum, his text may be described as the 1658 one, with a limited number of changes, sometimes but not always for the better.
48. We may conclude this section of the discussion, therefore, with the generalization that, from first to last, the print textus receptus has been the text of a with a gradual accretion of corrections and improvements produced at least chiefly by collation against manuscripts.
49. We may now take a synoptic look at the full range of evidence. It is first necessary to argue that all of this material represents the text of the second performance. This is manifestly true for those versions of the text which contain both the First and Second Prologues. Two sources lack it: b end e. Presumably because of his personal inclination the copyist of e omitted both of the Prologues and also the Epilogue. At first sight b is more interesting because it may well be our earliest text of the play, and the argument has been made (by the staff of the Cambridge University Library, cited by Tucker, op. cit. 1987, p. 5) that, since it contains only the First Prologue, it may represent the text of the original performance. But Tucker pointed out that in this ms. the First Prologue is identified as Prologus Prior, which suggests that the copyist was well aware of the existence of the second one, “a probability confirmed by the two and a half folios left blank immediately following the First Prologue.” Another point may be made. Line 694 of the play, Et liber et ille, “ibit ab excusso missus ad astra sago” (quoting a line from Martial), referring to Davy Drummond’s books being hawked by Cupes, alludes to Ignoramus’ recommended sentence in the Second Prologue that Davy be iactus sursum, Anglice tost in a blankett (107). Obviously 694 was added for the second performance (otherwise it would make no sense), and we can confidently conclude that any textual version containing it emanates from that performance. The line stands in all our texts save i, which is marked by many errors and omissions; i contains the same handful of errors common to the rest of the textual tradition, discussed below, that go to show that all our texts derive from a single archetype, and it shares a huge number of peculiarities with h; this manuscript contains no positive signs of representing the text of a different performance, and we should conclude that it too preserves the version acted in May 1615.
50. We have no clear idea how much that version may have differed from its predecessor. Hawkins (p. xxxix n. a) quotes a statement from Coke’s Detection of the Court and State of England (third ed., 1697, I.74) that “Never did any thing so hit the king’s humour as this play did, so that he would have it acted and acted again; which was increased with several additions, which yet more pleased the king.” It is possible that this relatively late statement preserves a genuine tradition, and we can only wonder what additions so pleased the king: perhaps the hits at the Gunpowder Plot and Gaspar Schioppius in II.3, which match similar material in the Second Prologue? Then too, on May 15, a week before the second performance, the eyewitness John Chamberlain recorded that “[James] was fully resolved to heere ye sayed Comedye acted agayne, whereuppon the Actors weere suddaynly called together and they made speedy preparacion as well for ye altering and adding [of] some things to the plott.” NOTE 28 Perhaps Chamberlain was only describing a rehearsal of the Second Prologue (which requires five actors). It would be well to bear in mind Chamberlain’s complaint that the March performance was too long for his taste; this suggests that whatever new material was added for the May one was probably not extensive.
51. I raise the unanswerable question of multiple versions because it has a bearing on various features our textual evidence. e contains a short extra scene inserted after II.i, with the subsequent scenes of the act renumbered accordingly; this scene is reproduced in an appendix here. In it, Torcol dismisses Surda from his service; a new minor character identified as a baiulus (porter) also participates. Hawkins (p. 74) asserted that this could not have stood in the play, since at the end of III.6 Torcol tells Cupes Ego ad Surdam eo nunc (1500). This may be so, although Torcol’s excuse for an exit is scarcely convincing — at that point of the play why should he say he is going to see Surda? — and the suspicion perhaps exists that ad Surdam represents a corruption in the archetype, so that this objection could be eliminated by an ingenious emendation. But what is really problematic about the extra scene is that it does nothing to advance the plot. We are left wondering whether this extra scene emanated from another version of the text written for a different performance, very possibly by someone other than Ruggle (for it is visibly substandard), and somehow came to the attention of the e copyist, so that he inserted it at what he at least imagined to be a suitable point, although it only serves to interrupt the flow of the action. NOTE 29 Certainly, save for its inclusion of this extra passage, there exists not the slightest reason for doubting that e, otherwise an unremarkable manuscript, represents the text of the May 1615 performance.
52. j otherwise presents a standard text but, in the manner previously described, a good deal of material has been eliminated. Since it contains line 694, the possibility that it preserves what Ruggle originally wrote for the March performance can be excluded: the ms. presents is a doctored version of the May text, and it is difficult to imagine any motive for these alterations other than to produce a shortened text for an actual or at least intended revival. Two other features of the ms. tend to support this diagnosis: the absence of both Prologues and the Epilogue (none of which would be suitable in the absence of the King) and the presence of an X mark of deletion against line 692. Although the copyist included this line, incomprehensible in the absence of the Second Prologue, he then realized it ought to be omitted. Or, more likely, the X indicates that the entire passage referring to Davy Drummond (690 - 4) ought to be dropped from the text, for the same reason. Certainty is of course impossible, but, for reasons already mentioned, one wonders whether j preserves the text of a performance seen by the undergraduate Milton.
53. To revert to our main subject, Tucker, op. cit. 1987 (p. 3) asserted that all of our manuscripts derive from a single copy text. The rightness of this view is shown by the existence of a substrate of errors shared by them all. Examples may be cited: Second Prologue 141 furatus est (l. furatus es), 178 est (l. es), Ignoramus 179 Octabis (l. octava), 280 unus lex (l. una lex), 520 de praesenti (prob. l. depraesenti, cf. Petronius 583 depresentiarum), 596 volet (l. velit ), 1252 quare (prob. l. praesto:), 1266 Quam curtesii! (l. Quam curtesius! ), 1396 physnomia (l. physiognomia, as the 1658 editor realized), 1446 nasale (cf. 1195 nasutum), 1512 oriunda (l. orta), 1541 attachiari (on the basis of his legal learning Hawkins substituted attachiare), 2112 confessor (surely the humor of the context requires compotor), 2459 funis (l. funibus), 3014 putabo (l. patebo), 3029 quod (l. quoad), 3348 hoc noctis (l. hac nocte), 3361 Eidemque or Iidemque (l. Itidemque); see also the commentary notes on 1042, 1080 and 2345.
54. Only one passage of the play is preserved by a witness external to the textual tradition. In the mss. (except in those where it is garbled even more), Cupes’ little song lampooning Polla (1641ff.) is: 

As printed in John Playford’s A Musical Companion (1673), the text is substantially different: 

With its foursquare stress rhythm and suitability for musical setting, Playford’s version is clearly superior, and hints at how far the archetype of our tradition was capable of straying from what Ruggle originally wrote.
55. We now come to the major difficulty posed by the Ignoramus textual tradition. With reference to the 1578 Cambridge comedy Hymenaeus (probably by Abraham Fraunce), Horst-Dieter Blume wrote: NOTE 30  

At least as applied to Ignoramus, this statement requires important modification. In our play the passages printed as verse may not be such in actuality, but neither are they merely prose. I.1 and I.2, for example, are not written in properly scanning iambic senarii, but their lines contain so many iambic units that they have the distinctive sound of that meter (as do the passages at 440ff., 466ff., 586ff., 942ff. and 1749ff.) Likewise, the first lines of 221ff., 311ff. and 390ff, could be called “trochaic.” Some other passages written as verse may not be so readily identifiable, but it is obvious that Ruggle made a distinction between his quasi-verse, the closest approximation to actual Roman comic verse possible in his time, and prose, that is appreciable to the ear as well as the eye.
56. Among our surviving texts there is considerable discrepancy in writing out individual passages as verse or prose. In editing Ignoramus I have been guided by the assumption that, when a given passage is written as verse in some sources but as prose in others, those that exhibit verse are correct, under the theory that it is easy to imagine verse being written as prose by careless or unconcerned copyists, but not vice versa. With the omission of songs and Ignoramus’ execrable poetry, here is a table displaying the passages in question (V = verse in whole or at least in part, P = prose, blank = missing text):

57. We must now attempt to assess the relationships obtaining between the sources of our text. The complexity of the evidence (so fertile in possibilites of cross-contamination between manuscript and printed copies) precludes production of a detailed stemma codicum that reconstructs the history of the text in detail and locates each manuscript in this historical scheme. All I can do is paint a generalized picture employing a broad brush, to explain the understanding that has guided me in producing this edition.
58. Let us have a look at Act III, the only act of the play represented by all extant mss. As a first step, I list all instances in which two or more mss. present the same feature two or more times. This list does not exactly correspond to the apparatus criticus, to which are relegated readings not accepted into the text. For the present purpose, it is more illuminating to count instances in which a minority of mss. share a given reading, whether or not it stands in the text or the apparatus : ab 4, abc 2, abe 4, abf 3, ad , ae 2, af 3, ahi 2, bcdf 2, bd 3, bde 4, bdehi 2, bdfh 2, bdg 2, bdhj 2, bg 2, bhi 2, cdefj 2, cdegi 2, cdfgi 2, cdfhi 2, cdhj 2, cfhi 2, de 5, def 2, defh 3, df 17, dfh 3, dfhi 3, dg 3, dgi 4, dh 3, dhi 3, di 2, efhi 2, ehi 2, fh 2, fhi 3, fi 3, fj 2, ghi 2, hi 58.
59. The very close relationship of h and i, and the strong affinity of d and f are obvious. A negative result is more important: the number of combinations involving a is hardly great. Although it is plausible to suppose that a number of our manuscripts were written after 1630, the single most salient feature of the ms. tradition is that the existence of the printed text exerted no especial influence on it; there is no reason for imagining that copyists used printed copies for collation. Indeed, in describing e I have quoted the copyist’s observation that an extra scene in Act II does not exist in the printed text, and in view of his familiarity with that version it is striking that he failed to use it for collation. It is also notable that at a number of points a’s text contains elements that have not found their way into our mss.. In Act III such extra features in a are the fuller text of Ignoramus’ indictment of Polla for witchcraft at 1556ff., the stage direction after 1604, an extra line (1702) in Cupes’ lament over his ruined dinner, and the stage directions at 1706 and after 1759.
60. Further information can be gained by noting the combinations of shared readings that occur in Act III, as represented in the following table:

This table illustrates up the affinities of h and i, clearly derived at no great remove from a common ancestor, and of d and f, and it also reveals a considerably stronger affinity between d and e (although there is no similar one between e and f). There are a number of readings shared between a and b, but except for this a is a rather distant relation from the rest of the mss. One suspects that, were it possible to display the relationship of these mss. in a stemmatic diagram, with the exception of its evident relation to b, a would be occupy an isolated position on a side branch.
61. Let us now consider the evidence of the significant additions and omissions encountered in multiple mss. 989f. exist only in hi; 1772 is only found in ab; and 2359 is only found in ab. Uniquely shared by hj are the expanded speech at 2090, 2149 - 51, and 2385 - 7 (Hawkins printed these latter lines in his edition)..
62. This evidence suggests that, although this is not revealed by the combinatory statistics just given, h and j have a common ancestry. It is possible to think of hij forming a distinct branch of the ms. tradition; this would not run afoul of combinatory evidence, insofar as j has no greater number of shared readings with any ms. other than h (although admittedly it shares an equal number with d). At this point the reader will perhaps find it useful to be reminded that, although the actual ms. j appears to represent a version of the play shortened for some revival performance, save for some rewriting introduced to cover cuts it presents a standard text in all its undoctored passages.
63. I turn to the substantial omissions. These are: 165 - 7 Aha . . . caleor om. ef; 182f., abbreviated speech df; 416f. abbreviated substitute speech df; 486 speech omitted df; 850 - 53 speeches omitted dfg; 1053 - 56 speeches omitted bcdfg; 1474 - 78 speeches omitted df; 1546 - 51 speeches omitted, df; 1625 - 29 speeches omitted d, 1626 - 9 omitted f; 1985 - 7 speeches omitted d, misplaced cfghi; 2062 speech omitted df; 2267 - 70 speeches omitted ab; 2611f. speeches omitted defh; 2665f. omitted d, 2666 omitted f; 2670 line omitted def; 2831 second sentence omitted df; 3367f. ut . . . poeta omitted df, 1658.
64. The principal value of this evidence is to emphasize the affinity between d and f. Three instances involve def, and another involves ef. We may therefore draw a similar conclusion about def, that it represents another identifiable branch of the tradition. Omissions involving larger numbers of mss. probably originated at an stage of the history of the text before the def and gij clusters had become differentiated. It is also noteworthy that one grouping involves ab, and that only one other grouping involves b. One presumes the ab grouping grew apart and distinct before speeches began dropping out of the mainstream of the tradition (in this context it may be relevant to remind the reader that b appears to be the earliest extant source for the text). This separation apparently occurred in such a way that b retained greater affinities with the textual mainstream than did a. Subsequently def and hij emerged as two subgroups. c and g fit into no equally identifiable groupings (although combinatory statistics suggest a certain affinity between g and i, although no very strong one). They are probably descended from a developmental stage earlier than the differentiation of def and hij.
65. Without proceeding any further (which I do not believe possible), these findings provide sufficient information to permit an editor to get on with the job. To the guiding principles already set forth (that all our evidence derives from a single copy manuscript, already containing some errors, which preserved the text of the May 1615 performance, with of course the corollary that, since errors had already infiltrated the archetype, it is both legitimate and necessary for an editor to introduce conjectural corrections), some further ones can now be added. 1. ) No reason has emerged for excluding on a priori grounds the possibility that any textual source might uniquely preserve authentic readings of the archetype. 2.) The lost ms. a, the ultimate source of the print textus receptus, represents a distinctive side-branch standing well outside the mainstream of the mss. textual tradition. This enhances rather than diminishes a’s value, as the possibility sometimes arises that it preserves authentic features of the archetype that have been lost from some or all of the manuscripts; the reverse possibility always exists too. Operationally speaking, this means that an editor is on occasion required to choose between print and manuscript features. 3.) Ceteris paribus, a reading that stands in more sources than any one of the identifiable subgroups is earlier and therefore more likely authentic than one that exists only in a single subgroup. All things, however, are not always equal, and the first of these three additional principles must always be remembered. A final guiding principle can be added: 4.) since Ruggle only wrote quasi-verse in the manner described above, it would be unduly dangerous to use considerations of scansion to select between alternative readings, and under no circumstances should an editor introduce conjectural changes for metrical reasons. Indeed, not having any idea what precisely what Ruggle was trying to achieve, I do not know what importance to attach to the occasional differences in colometry between textual sources, or how to handle them editorially.

 

66. For the purposes of the present edition, it would be pleasant to use one of the seventeenth century translations in lieu of a modern one. But, to varying degrees, each of these was shortened and adapted to suit contemporary Restoration tastes and performance requirements. Of these three, only that by Fernando Parkhurst is sufficiently faithful to the original that it can be set alongside the Latin here. More precisely, this remark applies to the first of three successively shortened and simplified versions of that translation, preserved in a Houghton Library manuscript. NOTE 31 This is lively and vigorous, and is written in a surprisingly successful imitation of the language of the time of Parkhurst’s grandparents, which probably already sounded somewhat quaint to the Restoration ear.
67. Although this version is on the whole complete and accurate, if it is to be used here, certain alterations are requisite: various omissions must be supplied, places where the translation differs from the Latin text need to be touched up, and in the interest of reader comprehension some orthography, and much punctuation, are modernized. Therefore the reader should hold me responsible for the translation given here. I do this all with an easy conscience, since what Parkhurst wrote has already been published by Tucker. Parkhurst of course did not include either of the Prologues written for performance in the presence of King James; nor did he translate the Epilogue or the arguments to individual scenes that first appeared in the second 1630 edition and became a standard feature of the print textus receptus. and are employed as synopses here. The translations of this material are my own.