This was the first of Jonson’s court entertainments not to be issued in quarto shortly after the performance, and was first printed in F1 , occupying signatures 4M3-4N1v, pages 965-74. It falls, therefore, into that portion of the folio, from 4M-4Q, which was extensively reset. In the initial printing, as Gerritsen (1959) and Donovan (1987) have shown, the printers failed to run off sufficient copies of these pages. The error was discovered ‘about the time that quire 4P was being printed’ (Donovan, 108), at which point the printer collected all the pages where the type had not been distributed and reimposed them within new skeletons. Those pages for which the type had already been distributed were completely reset. In summary: all the pages of quire 4M (except 4M2 and the bottom half of 4M2v), together with the formes 4N3.4v, 4N1v.6, 4O3v.4 and 4O3.4v were reset; and all the others were reimposed, save 4P3v.4 and 4P1v.6. Donovan’s exhaustive technical analysis should be consulted for details of the evidence. What is particularly significant in terms of the narrative of the printing of F1 is the fact that the ‘resetting in quires 4M-4O took place after the original imposition and printing of all the quires in the volume’ (Donovan, 113). The Textual Essay for Gold. Age suggests some important revisions to his account of the printing of the final pages of the Folio, but for Barriers the evidence clearly demonstrates that the whole text was reset, with the exception of the forme 4N1:6 outer, which was reimposed, with no variants on the page belonging to this masque.

The reset pages (State 2) were derived from the existing printed copies. The variants do not suggest any reference back to a manuscript, nor that Jonson was involved in any corrections. In general, indeed, the compositors normalized more extensively than they had originally done. The Jonsonian spelling of ‘aequall’ in State 1, for example, is routinely transformed to ‘equal’. Most of the variants are of capitalization, font, and punctuation, and are entirely indifferent. In the case of substantive variants, the majority clearly introduce, rather than correct error. In line 74 ‘my’ becomes ‘thy’; in 203 ‘nigh’ is replaced by ‘high’; in 416 ‘And this’ becomes ‘And if this’. Whilst the replacement of ‘of’ by ‘for’ in line 69 makes sense, as does ‘inticement’ for ‘incitement’ in 160, neither is an improvement, and both are explicable as compositorial in origin. Even the metrical correction of ‘ordinance’ in 309 to ‘ord’nance’ (if it is indeed anything more than a normal spelling variant) could have lain within a compositor’s power to spot. In the absence of any evidence of authoritative revision, I have followed State 1 throughout, with the single exception of this last metrical correction. I have, however, in modernising the text, accepted State 2’s expansion of the abbreviated form of ‘Saint’. A complete list of variants is provided below.

Prince Henry’s Barriers is not merely distinctive in being the first masque to be printed only in the Folio; it is also the first in which there is virtually no indication of dramatic action, nor any description of the set. In the earlier barriers which followed Hymenaei, by contrast, there is extensive evocation of the occasion. Equally noteworthy is the fact that the text offers no scholarly marginalia. Whilst the Hymenaei barriers also carry no marginalia, every other masque that had preceded this (and Oberon which followed it) is characterised by Jonson’s display of learning in his marginalia. One might argue that the absence of marginalia is a consequence of the genre of the entertainment, for the later Challenge at Tilt is similarly scanty in description, and devoid of explanatory notes. (Though in this case it might also be a consequence of Jonson’s embarrassed purging from the Folio of any mention of the marriage of Frances Howard which was its occasion.) Given that Jonson claimed he had researched his marginalia for Queens specifically at Prince Henry’s request it might still seem odd that no such effort was made in this case. But the strong probability must be that the absence of apparatus and description is an indication of the nature of the copy underlying F1.

The absence of stage directions, and of other details – such as the list of combatants which Jonson supplied for Hymenaei – suggests that this was a final draft of the text, completed before all such details were known – apparently the number and identity of the defenders changed until the very last minute ( CSPV 1607-10 , 406, Masque Archive, Barriers, 22). Though clearly Jonson knew the basic outline of the setting – Merlin’s tomb, the indication of the lake, Saint George’s Portico and the Cave of Chivalry – it is probable that this text was composed before the set was built, and, for whatever reason, Jonson felt no need, or had no opportunity, to return to his script to fill in the details after the event.

In its first state there are a number of indications that the printer’s manuscript was probably a Jonson holograph. It is an extremely clean text, with only one obvious substantive error (‘fee’ for ‘feet’ at line 3), and bears many marks of Jonson’s practice. In particular, the spellings of ‘aequall’ (20, 22, 23) ‘AEdifice’ (46), ‘Trophaes’ (62, 320), ‘AEternally’ (115), ‘AEgyptians’ (235), are characteristically Jonsonian, and a number of elisions exhibit his normal habits – ‘I’am’ (114) ‘to’assure’ (208), ‘’hem’ (244), ‘giue’him’ (285). So too, there are many examples of Jonson’s preferred ‘y’ spellings scattered throughout (though not of his characteristic ‘theyr’, which compositors seem to have removed). These are not infallible indications, but all things concur together to suggest that the title The Speeches at Prince Henry’s Barriers is an exact description of what the text represents – solely Jonson’s own contribution to the event.