Bartholomew Fair was not published in Jonson’s lifetime, even though it was first performed as early as 1614. Jonson began writing the play in 1613 (Riggs, 1989, 193-5). It has been suggested that it must have been near completion by November 1613 because Robert Daborne refers to a forthcoming Jonson play in a letter to Henslowe dated 13 November (Bradley & Adams, 1922, 85), but this seems likely to refer either to another play by Jonson or to a play by another playwright called Johnson (private communication from Martin Wiggins; the Master of the Revels was to refer to ‘Young Johnson’ as a playwright in 1623). Whereas all the earlier plays that Jonson acknowledged as his — with the probable exception of Epicene — had appeared in quarto a relatively short time after their first performances, and all were to be included in the 1616 folio , Bartholomew Fair appeared neither in quarto nor in that folio, nor was it to be listed before publication in the Stationers’ Register.

It can only be conjectured why the printing of this major play was so long delayed. For Herford and Simpson, this was not a problem, since they argued that F1 was planned and went to press by 1612 or 1613. Consequently there could not have been room for the late addition of such a lengthy play (unlike the comparatively brief masque-texts of 1613-16) (H&S, 1.331-5, 9.14-15). But this argument was long ago undermined (Greg, 1926b, 137-8); moreover, it is now agreed that the printing of F1 did not begin until 1615 at the earliest and lasted until very late in 1616, with time available to print a text as substantial as Every Man In His Humour late in the process. Consequently, the exclusion of Bartholomew Fair must have been deliberate. See Donovan (1987) ; Bracken (1988) ; Bland (1998b) , 10. See also Gerritsen (1957) , 123, and (1959) ; Riddell (1997a) ; Gants (1998a) , 134-5.

Did Jonson choose this, or was it forced on him? It seems futile to assert, with Herford and Simpson and Frances Teague, that Jonson was dissatisfied with the play, or, with Kathleen Lynch, that it ‘was not deemed worthy of literary preservation by its author’, since he went on to dedicate it to the King and give it pride of place in the intended second collection. See H&S, 1.70 ; Teague (1985) , 50; and Lynch (1996) , 135. Teague adds (59) that Jonson probably held the play back in order to re-write it; I argue below that the published text was unrevised. It seems equally redundant to propose, with Stallybrass and White, that the play with its ‘low’ forms ‘would certainly have compromised the haughty individuation of the classical to which Jonson so avidly aspired’ (1986 , 78).

One wonders, to take one instance of hundreds, what the opening of The Alchemist was doing in such a haughty volume. Hazelton Spencer suggests in his innovative but usually overlooked edition of Bartholomew Fair that it may have been omitted ‘because the Lady Elizabeth’s Men, who acted it, were unwilling to release a still successful piece’ (Spencer, 1933, 412). This is less implausible, and it may be significant that none of the few plays introduced to the stage by Lady Elizabeth’s Company in its first phase of operation — from 1611 till around 1615 — was published before 1618, when the company had ceased operating independently in London and its former leading actor, Nathan Field, brought out his Amends for Ladies. The company’s patent was issued on 27 April 1611, but from around 1615 till 1622 it seems to have been absorbed into the Prince’s Men, except as a touring company. Amends for Ladies is by some years the earliest printed of the five surviving plays introduced to the stage by the company in this initial period, according to Gurr (1996) , 412. The same is true of the more speculative and extensive list for these years in Harbage (1964) .

On the other hand, it is unlikely that for such a new and struggling company Jonson would have sacrificed his authorial independence and his common practice of publishing a play in quarto shortly after the first performance. The patenting of Lady Elizabeth’s Men meant that from 1611 there were six acting companies officially tolerated in London, while there were only five playhouses licensed by the Revels Office, and two of these were the prerogatives of the King’s Men. Apart from a short and troubled period at the Hope Theatre, it was about 1622 before a company bearing this name was able to establish itself at a satisfactory London playhouse. Four of Jonson’s last five plays had been written for the far more powerful King’s Men (as all the plays later than Bartholomew Fair were to be except the last of all, A Tale of a Tub), and in each case Jonson had retained control of his text and published it early. He was now at the height of his powers and reputation, and was receiving regular commissions from court. So in giving Lady Elizabeth’s Company such a substantial work as Bartholomew Fair, he was probably helping out his old friend and pupil Field and others of the Blackfriars Boys or Queen’s Revels, which had amalgamated with Lady Elizabeth’s in 1613 and for which in early years he had written Cynthia’s Revels and Poetaster, and more recently Epicene.