=Previous Editions and the Present Text.=--An edition of "A Mery Play
between Johan Johan, the Husbande, Tyb, his Wyfe and Syr Jhan, the
Preest, attributed to John Heywood 1533,"[227] was printed at the
Chiswick Press by C[harles] Whittingham "from an unique copy in the
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford," some time in the first half of the present
century.[228] The anonymous editor prefaces it with the following brief
"advertisement":--
"This is one of the six Plays attributed by our dramatic
biographers to John Heywood, author of _The Four P's_ (contained
in Dodsley's collection), of 'the Spider and Flie,' and of some
other poems, an account of which may be found in the Third Volume
of Warton's History of English Poetry. No copy of this Mery Play
appears to exist except that in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford,
from which this is a faithful reprint. Exclusive of its antiquity
and rarity, it is valuable as affording a specimen of the earliest
and rudest form of our Comedy (for the Poem is shorter, & the
number of the Dramatis Personæ yet fewer than those of the _Four
P's_) & of the liberty with which even the Roman Catholic authors
of that age felt themselves authorized to treat the established
priesthood."
The Ashmolean copy (now in the Bodleian Library) can no longer be
reckoned unique, another copy having been discovered in the Pepys
collection at Magdalene College, Cambridge. This copy has been used in
correcting the Chiswick Press text, and it may be as well to mention
that the following changes, besides a good many minor ones, have been
made on its authority, and are not surreptitious emendations of the
present editor.
l. 4, _myche_ for _muche_; l. 27, _Whan_ for _Whyn_; l. 31, _thwak_
for _twak_; l. 89, _enrage_ for _engage_; l. 94, _But_ for _Thou_; l.
121, _thou_ for _you_; l. 129, _lyk_ for _syk_; l. 132, _to go_ for
_go_; l. 137, _fare_ for _face_; l. 305, _waxe_ for _ware_; l. 335,
_for I_ for _I_; l. 471, _Ye_ for _le_; l. 497, _mych_ for _much_;
l. 540, _beyond_ for _beand_; l. 542, _a bevy_ for _bevy_; l. 552,
_beyond_ for _beyand_; l. 581, _v_ for _ix_; l. 604, _I am_ for _am I_.
In the apportionment of ll. 240-266 between the two speakers, my
predecessor, like myself, though not in the same manner, has departed
from Rastell's (clearly erroneous) arrangement of the speeches, but his
dislike of footnotes has caused him to omit any mention of the fact.
The title-page is a representation, not a _facsimile_. There is no
running head-line in the original.