Jonson’s Entertainment at Britain’s Burse survives among the State Papers Domestic in the National Archives (SP14/44/62*, fols 144-147: JnB 574.5). It comes from the archive of Sir Edward Conway (1564-1631), later Viscount Conway, secretary of state to James I and Charles I. It was customary for secretaries of state to retain their own archives on leaving office, and Conway’s papers ended up in his family’s main English home at Ragley, Warwickshire, where they were recovered in a decayed state by Horace Walpole in 1758 and eventually passed to the then State Paper Office in 1857 (Beal, 1980-93, 1.1, 247-8; Knowles, 1999b, 118). The distribution of this family’s papers is complex: some remain in Northern Ireland, others at the Warwickshire Record Office, with the bulk at the National Archives and volumes of ‘literary’ materials at the British Library. The history of the collection is also multi-layered, as the 2^nd Earl of Conway was also a major collector of poetry separates and a significant bibliophile. The removal of much of the contextual evidence about the development and structure of the collection, combined with the involvement of at least two generations in literary collection, create formidable problems in understanding the relationships and networks embedded within the archive (for a useful corrective, see Starza-Smith, 2012, 164).

The precise connection of Conway and Jonson is hard to establish, as Conway was at the time serving as Deputy Governor at Brill in the Netherlands and was largely resident there, although some portion of his library was moved to Warwickshire after 1610 (National Archives, SP14/57/114B). Conway owned several Jonson items including (perhaps) two copies of Sejanus (Knowles, 1999b, 124). His main political connections were, however, with Robert Cecil and with the Vere family. More marginally (and unsurprisingly) he was linked to Prince Henry’s circle, probably in a military capacity: he was involved in Prince Henry’s Barriers in 1610 (Knowles, 1999b, 125 and 129, 39n.). Conway is a classic instance of a cultural agent or broker in this period, precisely the function he served for Prince Henry in contacting the Dutch painter Michiel Jansz Miereveld in 1611 (Knowles, 1999, 125; Hearn, 1996, 203-4). Given his later collections, which included dramatic works by Jonson and Middleton, the Burse manuscript may have been acquired for his own use, perhaps as political intelligence and news- gathering (another facet of his collection), but it is also possible that he was acting as an agent or go-between for others. If so, the identity of who sent the material to him, its destination, and any planned uses of that text are unknown (Knowles, 1999b, 122).

This has bearing on the text of the Entertainment, as the nature of the copy is debated. In 1999 I argued that the text was a private transcript, that is, a copy of poetry or drama produced as political or cultural intelligence, rather than a theatrical document (Knowles, 1999b, 122). The key problem here is how we might ascertain comparator texts. The taxonomy of dramatic manuscripts produced for the public stage is complex enough, but in the case of masque and entertainment manuscripts, the variation is notable. It is quite likely, given the overlap of personnel between the masque-making and playing communities, that parallel systems were employed in producing texts, but (in contrast to many masque writers) Jonson also regarded his occasional texts as poems, and often created different textual versions, even recreations, of the event through manuscript and print. He was also capable of using masque manuscripts, manuscript material added to printed copies, and masque publication as part of his complex self-presentation as ‘Poet’. It would appear that Jonson’s sophisticated deployments of manuscript included the circulation of versions that differed from the version as staged and were even, potentially, at odds with the patron’s intentions (see Theobalds, Textual Essay; Knowles, 2010).

Recent scholarship on the nature of theatrical manuscripts and on the variability of the concept of an authorial (and other) presentation volume has complicated and broadened both concepts. JnB 574.5 belongs to neither. Jonson’s copies of masque materials are offered in carefully written, subscribed versions, frequently stamped with statements of authorship, and often on high-cost Italian papers. JnB 574.5 differs from these in its paper, in the spacing and layout of the text, and in offering neither a full post-performance re-imagining (as in The Masque of Queens MS), nor a shorter extract offered to a patron, perhaps for further correction (as in the Two Kings MS). Instead, it offers theatrical material transmuted into information: speech headings, stage directions, and any descriptive materials are missing, and instead of which we have the bare bones of the ideas.

The Physical Nature of the Copy