The Text of “Paradise Lost”: A Study in Editorial Procedure by R. G. Moyles

Abstract

undercut, work as pro rather than antifeminist signs. Or, finally, her dis­ cussions of defences by women, notably the trio from whom Swetnam drew fire and, in the last case, brimstone: Rachel Speght, Ester Sowerman, and Constantia Munda. With her usual fairmindedness, Woodbridge sees the potential for feminism in their writings but also shows how none of their texts is really able to overcome the contextual handicaps in which it’s embedded. For all this and much else we should be grateful to Woodbridge, who writes with such an informed and eminently unpedantical quill. NOTES 1 I borrow the phrase from John O’Neill’s For Marx Against Althusser, p. 5. 2 Perhaps Henderson and McManus are more indebted to Woodbridge than it first seems. They follow her in their gloss (218) on Ester Sowerman’s riddling title-page description of herself as “ . . . neither Maide, / Wife nor Widdowe, yet really all . . .” . To the Woodbridge-Henderson-McManus gloss one might add that Sowerman, who brought out Ester hath hang’d Haman in 1617, could also have had in mind the 8th stanza of Sir John Davies’s “A Contention betwen a Wife, a Widowe and a Maide,” which appeared in the second (1608) and third (16 11) editions of Francis Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody. In Davies’s stanza the widow claims all three estates; the maid wins the debate, though, since the whole point of it is who will take precedence at a ceremonial offering to Astrea. 3 Swetnam the Woman-hater Arraigned by Women does get a chapter to itself, but the discussion is open ended and reluctant to foreclose. 4 First brought out by Macmillan of Canada in 1982; thereafter by Penguin Books, 1983; 1985. 5 Published by Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative Society in association with Chameleon Editorial Group, London, 1982. ian s o w t o n / York University R. G. Moyles, The Text of “ Paradise Lost” : A Study in Editorial Procedure (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), x, 188. $25.00 Analytical bibliography and textual criticism are rigorous, highly specialized disciplines which involve distinctive vocabularies and complex methodol­ ogies. Yet gifted practitioners like Fredson Bowers, Philip Gaskell, and D. F. McKenzie have demonstrated that the seemingly arcane findings of biblio­ graphical scholarship can be lucidly and gracefully communicated to non­ specialists. Professor Moyles, in his fascinating study of the textual history of Paradise Lost, reveals a similar ability to lead a reader through the biblio­ graphical intricacies of a text and of its transmission. The book carefully examines the relationship of the first edition of 1667 to that of the “Revised and Augmented” second edition of 1674; it surveys the subsequent publica­ 346 tion history of the poem, illustrating the editorial whimsy or wisdom of some of its most important editors; and it provides sound bibliographical and textual guidelines for any prospective editor of Paradise Lost. The first chapter focuses on the two editions of Paradise Lost which were printed by Samuel Simmons during Milton’s lifetime. Drawing on his own knowledge of the texts, and on the earlier work of Helen Darbishire, James M. Pershing, and Harris Fletcher, Moyles eliminates the confusion created by the seven variant title-pages of the 1667 Quarto. He places in proper perspective the accidental variants in both editions, and he illuminates the editorial problems posed by the new lines, the several revised passages, and the thirty-seven substantive variants introduced in the 1674 Octavo. Moyles carefully describes the seven title-pages of the first edition, and provides a facsimile of each. Four of them — dated 1667, 1668, 1668, 1669 — are distinctively different; another, dated 1669, has minor but noticeable changes in the imprint; and two more, dated 1667 and 1668, are simple variants, each with a single difference in printing. He concludes that “the text of Paradise Lost which accompanied the several title-pages variously dated 1667, 1668, and 1669 was printed off as a single edition between 27 April and 20 August 1667, not as several editions, as early observers had supposed. The title-pages themselves, however, were printed and affixed to this text at various intervals over the two-year period” (13). The only significant change in...