The Author's Play: From Red Noses, Black Death to Red Noses

Abstract

Not only do the experiences of reading and seeing a play differ from each other, the play that is read differs from the play that is performed. In the Jacobean age, publishers sometimes tried to persuade readers otherwise: the title page of Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour (1601) claims that the volume presents the play As it hath beene sundry times publickly acted by the right Honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his servants. At other times, publishers promised to give readers more dialogue than audiences heard in a theater: the title page of John Marston's The Malcontent (1604) states that the text has been Augmented by Marston. Ingeniously, the publishers of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi (1623) employ both come-ons: the title page claims to print the tragedy As it was presented priuatly, at the Black-Friers; and publiquely at the Globe, By the Kings Maiesties Seruants. The perfect and exact Coppy, with diuerse things Printed, that the length of the Play would not beare in the Presentment-in other words, what was acted in private and public theaters plus passages that would have made these performances too long.' Anyone familiar with theater practice would agree that the first example is the least credible.