[3]The scene opens in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the year 1668, where
in one of the college buildings a contest between two rival printers had
been waged for some years. Marmaduke Johnson, a trained and experienced
printer, to whose ability the Indian Bible is largely due, had ceased to
be the printer of the corporation, or Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in New England, but still had a press and, what was better, a
fresh outfit of type, sent over by the corporation and entrusted to the
keeping of John Eliot, the Apostle. Samuel Green had become a printer,
though without previous training, and was at this time printer to the
college, a position of vantage against a rival, because it must have
carried with it countenance from the authorities in Boston, and public
printing then as now constituted an item to a press of some income
and some perquisites. By seeking to marry Green's daughter before his
English wife had ceased to be, Johnson had created a prejudice, public
as well as private, against himself.{1}