Page:Titus Andronicus (1926) Yale.djvu/130

116 lines of the 1600 edition are not found in the First Quarto. On the title-page of the Second Quarto the name of the Lord Chamberlain's company is added to those of the three companies mentioned on the title-page of the First Quarto.

A third quarto, of which the 1600 edition was the original, was printed in 1611. Fourteen copies of the Third Quarto are known, one of which is in the Elizabethan Club at Yale.

The text of the First Folio of 1623 was printed from the Third Quarto with MS. additions, and contains one scene (III. ii.) which does not appear in any of the Quartos.

The history of Titus and Aaron on the stage falls into two general divisions: the period of about a quarter of a century after its composition until the death of Shakespeare, and the three centuries since that time. During the first three decades of its existence, Titus was one of the most popular of all the plays attributed to Shakespeare; for the last three hundred years it has had almost the scantiest stage-history of them all. The First Quarto bears the motto, Aut nunc aut nunquam, and never was a more appropriate motto affixed to a play. There was only one period in the history of the English stage when Titus Andronicus ever could have been popular, and popular it was then beyond all precedent.

The title-page of the Third Quarto assures us that the tragedy had 'sundry times beene plaide by the Kings Majesties Servants,' and from the other title-pages and Henslowe's Diary we learn that three different companies continued to play it, two of which changed their names at two different periods of their career; but under whatever name or sovereign, they continued to play Titus. The play is entered in Henslowe's Diary no less than fifteen times, if we may assume that all the Titus and Andronicus plays