ENG 331: Corrigenda

FULGENS AND LUCRES (Broadview edition)

Part 1, lines 31-32: repeat the lines “And it were but for the manner sake, / Thou mayst tarry by license”. In the 1512 Rastell edition, these lines are repeated; editors have generally (and quite reasonably) dismissed these as a scribal error, which they most likely are, but they might also, possibly, have been repeated with purpose — for instance, B repeating A’s lines back to him as the two negotiate his emergence from the audience — so should not be discounted (Leslie 2023).

Part 1, line 193: add a note, replacing the editorial gloss of “Mary,” making clearer that the oath has by the late fifteenth century been so frequently and casually used (like the modern “bless you” after sneezing) that it has no real religious connotation here (Stefanov 2023).

Part 1, line 727: remove gloss on, and capitalization of, “by Yes.” There is insufficient support for this gloss; it could just as easily be a reduction of the then-common “by yea or nay” (Burzymowski 2023).

Part 1, lines 1018-20: remove insertion of “[to A]”; assign “Nay, for God… but only I” to B. This is Rastell’s arrangement and preserves a sense that the clever Joan is consciously manipulating, and stirring up a rivalry between, her suitors (Kumar 2023).

Part 1, line 1253-5: remove the missing line insertion at footnote 3; change “gentlewoman” back to “gentleman.” The meter is not consistent enough here to require the added line; Rastell’s original printing of “gentleman” makes reasonable sense as is. A often misinterprets what has been told to him, wilfully or accidentally; Gaius may hint to him, earlier, that he wants A to approach Cornelius aggressively, hence bringing the matter to pass by speaking to a gentleman (Cui 2023).

Part 2, line 99: remove the editors’ gloss of “lewd “ as “ignorant.” In early usage, the word can mean or connote ignorance, but it can also simply mean what present-day speakers mean by “lewd”; that latter meaning is surely the primary denotation here (Hayes 2023).

DIGBY MARY MAGDALENE (Broadview edition)

Lines 722-47: add a note that aligns the speech headings in this scene more closely with that of the manuscript (compare to Coletti’s SHs, which differ from these). The way that these various demonic speakers line up with the cast is not clear; the current invisible editing here may suggest a more streamlined cast than is implied in the manuscript (Singhania 2023).

Line 1561: remove editorial note (on trapdoors) entirely. Trapdoors were typical of early modern London stages, but there is less consistency across medieval staging outside London — so offering a wider range of possibilities, here too hastily limited by Scoville’s hypothesis. There is a similar cue for “sinking” at line 747, but that one is not noted as such; the connection between the two lines suggests some technological spectacle being used here, which could have been achieved in multiple ways, whether on a raised stage or not, trapdoor or not (Lollo 2023).