The Texts
INTRODUCTION
knowing the play is very strong. Foxe's epilogue, moreover, seems to echo Kirchmeyer's anticipation that Christ will provide his own catastrophe. Herford notes other incidental parallels: the surprise of Satan at not being met on his return from hell; allegorical heroines
(Veritas in Kirchmeyer, Ecclesia in Foxe); councils of the infernal characters (Christus Triumphans 1V.4, Pammachius IV.5); the villains' amazement on hearing news of the Reformation; the appearance of reformed teachers and the "angry interrogations about their doctrine"; and the final withholding of the dramatic climax of Christ's second coming.*? To Herford, these parallels "'yield a strong presumption that the younger writer, in spite of his silence, owed much of the form of [Christus Triumphans] to the greater artist and equally fervid theologian who had led the way." The case is strong, and I cannot refute it. But, as Herford himself admits, the details in all these incidents are different, and there are almost no verbal parallels between the two plays. In the earlier manuscript version of Foxe's play, moreover, and thus the version which presumably would have been most directly influenced by Pammachius, the central figure was not Ecclesia, but Sarcobius (that is, living flesh), brother of Psyche; that conception was more remote from Pammachius than is the revised version. It seems very likely that Foxe got certain broad ideas from Kirchmeyer, but his execution was essentially original.
'The Texts The format of this edition is self-explanatory except for the bracketed reference numbers appearing to the right of the Latin texts, e.g., [ f. 145v] or [p. 53]. These numbers refer to the leaves in the manuscripts of Titus et Gesippus and Christus Triumphans (identified as folio numbers) or to the pages in the first printed edition of Christus Triumphans (identified as page numbers). In the translation, which is as close to being literal as readability would permit,
I have not reproduced the formal characteristics of the Latin texts: thus, I have silently provided entrances and exits at appropriate places (the Latin texts have only lists of characters at the beginning
89 Herford, pp. 144-148.
INTRODUCTION
of each scene); I have interpolated a few stage directions to clarify stage business; I have not translated metrical headings, etc. The notes to the Latin text record mainly my emendations and comments on Foxe's unusual diction, together with some conjectural emendations which I have not adopted. Most of the abbreviations used in those notes are explained in the headnote to the Textual Notes, where a complete textual history is presented. Additional abbreviations used only in the notes to the Latin text are the following:
DuCange Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis.
LTL Lexicon Totius Latinitatis, ed. Aegidio Forcellinus et al.
(Padua, 1940).
TLL Thesavros Lingvae Latinae (Leipzig, 1900-date).
The notes to the Latin text do not normally record Foxe's phraseological borrowings from earlier writings. There are hundreds of such borrowings, mostly from Latin comedy but also from Cicero
(e.g., Titus et Gesippus I1I.9.3) and others, and a text constructed on the principles of the great tradition of classical editing would have noted them. Such a record here would have expanded the size of the work beyond reasonable limits without, I think, materially enhancing the usefulness of the work for those who will use it. The notes to the translation occasionally point to Foxe's material sources, particularly in Christus Triumphans, where Foxe (or his first editor) included some marginal references, not always accurate, to scriptural chapters; wherever possible I have narrowed these latter references by including in square brackets the specific verses echoed. The notes to the translation, moreover, besides glossing historical allusions and pointing out certain dramatic features, also record some of the more significant differences between Foxe's final readings and his earlier drafts.
In the Latin texts I have aimed at a conservative edition. I have not reproduced Foxe's diacritical markings and have silently normalized capitalization and punctuation; I have silently spelled out
INTRODUCTION
abbreviated speech prefixes, -que for -q,, nasal macrons, etc.; I have corrected palpable errors which might seriously interfere with the sense, noting the emendations in the notes to the Latin text and in the Textual Notes but (except for speech prefixes and character lists) not enclosing the emendations in square brackets.
Otherwise, I have tried to reproduce Foxe's wording even if that wording is imperfect by classical standards of grammar or metrics.
My copy text for Titus et Gesippus is, perforce, the only known version of that play, in British Museum. Lansdowne MS. 388.9?
Though I have argued elsewhere that John Lyly may have known the play,®! there is no evidence that it was ever printed. The manuscript, Foxe's foul papers, presents extraordinary editorial problems.
Only occasionally is there any serious difficulty in reading the words of the manuscript, and most such difficulties involve canceled readings. But it is often impossible to determine with certainty how
Foxe intended later revisions to be combined with earlier wording: he often failed to cross out words which he intended to delete, and in many revised passages, especially those involving multiple revision, more than one combination is possible. Metrical patterns provide little assistance. Even in his finished Christus Triumphans, where the metrical patterns are labeled, Foxe revealed frequent irregularities; in Titus et Gesippus, the patterns are both unlabeled for the most part and very rough, and the revised wording is often metrically unequal with the original wording. Many times Foxe apparently set down a thought without taking the time to integrate it with the earlier version. In general, I have adopted Foxe's latest thoughts (one or two exceptions are recorded in the notes to the Latin text), and as far as possible I have tried to fit them into the established metrical and syntactic patterns. But many of the resulting lines are nonmetrical, and a few of the sentences are syntactically awkward. I have not undertaken to improve Foxe's Latin. The redaction which Foxe sent to Dr. Hensey was probably formally
°° Ff. 121-146, 112-116v in the latest of three numberings (the pages are out of » order in all three). The leaves measure about 19.8 cm by 14.5 cm. Several exemplars of one watermark appear, very similar to Briquet No. 11370 (C. M.
Briquet, Les Filigranes [Paris, 1907], III).
* See "'Sempronia, John Lyly, and John Foxe's Comedy of Titus and Gesippus,"
PQ, XLVIII (1969), 554-561.
INTRODUCTION
better than the version which has survived; but, having no access to that redaction, I have attempted merely to reproduce Foxe's final intentions as of the time when he last touched the surviving version. I acknowledge the likelihood that other eyes may see better ways of combining some of these words metrically or grammatically than I have seen, but I can hope that the text which I present is at least substantially correct.
The editorial problems in Christus Triumphans are of a different sort.
I have adopted as my copy text the octavo edition printed in March, 1556, by Ioannes Oporinus. The variant manuscript version, found in Lansdowne MS.
1:045,?? is in Foxe's own hand, whereas the octavo has passed through at least one other person's hands, the compositor's. But the manuscript is an early draft, Foxe's foul papers, and the octavo is an authorial revision later than the manuscript: dozens of revisions in the manuscript show the abandonment of an earlier reading in favor of the reading which appears in the octavo. Since Foxe worked for Oporinus (with whom, in later years, he had a close personal relationship), it is a virtual certainty that the lost manuscript from which Oporinus worked was given to him by Foxe himself and was in Foxe's hand. On the other hand, the octavo contains a number of palpable errors which cast doubt on the total reliability of that text. If Foxe proofread the work, he did not proofread very carefully; but someone did proofread it, for there are some press variants and there is an errata page (sig. 15v).
A number of errors remain, however, and I have accordingly used the manuscript as an invaluable source of corrections. Sometimes
I have followed the manuscript even when the printed text has a possible reading, but only when I have had some reason for believing that Oporinus misread his manuscript. All such departures from the copy text are recorded in the notes to the Latin text and in the Textual Notes.
The surviving manuscript omits everything after V.5.67, but in Act II it presents two scenes omitted from the octavo. After II.1 is a 34-line scene in which Eve and Mary rejoice at the good news of 92 Ff. 132-155v. The leaves measure about 29.3 cm by 19.9 cm. The watermark found on several leaves, a gothic P surmounted by a. quatrefoil, is similar to Briquet No. 8653 (vol. III), but Briquet has none identical and notes that the class of this watermark is quite varied.
INTRODUCTION
Psyche's deliverance and Christ's transcendence; this is a natural follow-up of the scenes in Act I in which Eve and Mary are shown grieving over their children, but it adds little to the play and I see no reason to suspect that its omission was anything but deliberate.
After the present II.2, the manuscript has an 18-line scene in which Sarcobius is summoned to Mark's house by a boy named Rhodus to pray for Peter, who is said to be in Herod's prison. This is an obvious preparation for the scene (II.3 in the octavo) in which Peter, newly freed, goes to Mark's house; the name of Rhodus is clearly inspired by the name of the maid, Rhoda, in the Biblical passage which Foxe was following for this episode (Acts 12.13). The deletion of this scene must have been deliberate: it was part of an overall revision which materially altered the direction of the play. From numerous canceled passages in the manuscript it is clear that Foxe at first conceived of Sarcobius as the central figure of much of the play; his name, presumably meaning living flesh (from cdp£ and Bos) suggests that he occupied the place which Soma holds in the revised version, and like Soma he is the father of Europus, Africus, and Asia. But Soma does not appear in the revised version, and the emphasis has been shifted from the father to the suffering mother,
Ecclesia. Several of Sarcobius' speeches could be transferred to the new protagonist with only minor changes, like changes in the gender of pronouns; others required more drastic revision (see the Textual
Notes to III.1 and III.2). Foxe apparently decided that the short scene after II.2 did not suit Ecclesia and accordingly abandoned it.
He may also have wanted to shorten the play a bit: the Prologue (l. 37) apologizes for the length of the play, and following the revision the second act is now somewhat shorter than the other acts. 93
I have collated completely three copies of the 1556 octavo of Christus Triumphans (copies owned by the British Museum, Harvard,
?3 T have spoken of the manuscript as though it were of a piece, but there is some evidence of stratification. On f. 145v, for instance, Soma is the only name used for Ecclesia's husband (see IV.3.1, Textual Note). Again, some pages are much more heavily revised than others, and a few of these—especially toward the end of the play—remain, even in their final versions, more remote from the printed text than most. It is possible, then, that some pages survive from, say, the first draft and that other first-draft pages were discarded after recopying.
INTRODUCTION
and the University of Illinois), and I have partially collated the Bodleian copy. Ignoring insignificant pieing of type, I have found press variants in three forms:?* Signature Uncorrected Corrected
(E. 1:925
hoc (Bodleian) hoc, D5v, catchword ACY. (Harvard) ACT.
D6, l. 15
Et si (Harvard) Etsi (E tsi in Bodleian)?5
E8,1 1 inuasse (Harvard) 9 iuuasse I have also collated one copy of each of two later editions of Christus Triumphans. The 1590 Nuremberg octavo, printed from the 1556 octavo without reference to manuscript, is a very sound edition, and a number of the emendations made by the unnamed editor are confirmed by Foxe's draft manuscript. The 1672 London edition, by T. C. (Thomas Comber?), is a somewhat inaccurate reprint of the 1556 octavo. Substantive variants in these editions are recorded in the Textual Notes.?"
94 [ have completely collated only the text of the play, not the front matter.
One press variant in the front matter is noted; see Humphrey's "De Infirmo Christo et Scandalo Crucis," l. 22.
95 This change may have been caused by mere pieing of type after the form was loosened for the correction on D5v.
96 If T have correctly identified the corrected and the uncorrected states, the corrected state is wrong; see note ad loc.
97 Also recorded there are some (probably sixteenth-century) manuscript notes from the Harvard copy. Not recorded are some curious defacements of the Illinois copy, in which scores of lines (or parts of lines) are methodically crossed out without explanation or apparent pattern.
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