The Text

     The quarto title-page reads:
          THE / THRACIAN / WONDER. / A COMICAL / HISTORY. /
          As it hath been several times Acted / with great
          Applause. // Written by John VVebster and / 
          VVilliam Rowley. // Placere Cupio. // L O N D O N:
          / Printed by Tho. Johnson, and are to be sold by
          Francis Kirkman, / at his Shop at the Sign of John
          Fletchers Head, over / against the Angel-Inn, on
          the Back-side of St. Cle- / ments, without Temple-
          Bar. 1661.
There was only one seventeenth century edition. In his
preface to A Cure for a Cuckold, Francis Kirkman notes of
his first three publications: "I have now this Tearm printed
and published three, viz. This called A Cure for a Cuckold,
and another called, The Thracian Wonder; and the third
called, Gammer Gurtons Needle. Two of these three were never
printed, the third, viz. Gammer Gurtons Needle, hath been
formerly printed, but it is almost an hundred years since."
     The Wonder quarto comprises thirty unnumbered leaves,
A2, B-H4, with A1v blank. There are twenty-two copies
extant, a respectable, but not unusual survival rate. Three
are in the British Library (82.c.26(5), 644.f.79,
E.1081(2)), two are in each of the University of Texas at
Austin (Ah/A100/661t, Wh/A100/661t), The National Library of
Scotland (Bute 607, H.28.e.2(6)), the Bodleian Library (Mal.
201(1), Douce WW 64., missing A) and Worcester College
(Plays 3.35 (5), Plays 2.17 (4), missing AH) and single
copies are in the Huntington Library (D W1225 109543(21)),
the Folger Library (T1078A, c.1), the Dyce collection at the
Victoria and Albert Museum (Dyce 10,498 26 Box 48/4), the
University of Sheffield (822.39(7) missing H2-4), the
Boston Public Library (XG.3977.53), the Library of Congress
(PR1241.L6 Vol. 144), Harvard University Library
(14434.29.7), the Morgan Pierpont Library (Room W Section 9
Shelf B), the University of Illinois (uncatalogued, no shelf
mark), the Williams Andrews Clark Memorial Library at the
University of California (PR 3184 T51), and the Alexander
Turnbull Library of the National Library of New Zealand
(REng WEBS Cure 1661). In addition, two copies bound with A
Cure for a Cuckold under the joint title Two New Plays still
exist, one at the Huntington (K-D 178) and the other in
the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library.
     With the exception of the Sheffield copy which I did
not inspect and the British Library Thomason copy which I
examined on microfilm, I have studied all the British copies
firsthand. All but two (the University of Illinois and
Californian quartos) of the single American copies, with the
exception of that of the Boston Public Library, which
supplied answers to my bibliographical questions, have been
examined by photocopy or microfilm. I did not inspect the
New Zealand copy.
     The quarto is well printed: no scene, or line, or even
word appears to be missing. The greatest flaw is an
occasional mis-heading of a speech. There are few variants,
none of which are substantive. Only four changes were made
during press, on E2r (line 6) to separate the words "no
coward" (3.2.142), on E4v (line 12) to change "Loufe" to
"Lover" (4.1.66), on H4r (line 15) to eliminate "He" and to
change "t" to "T" in "these" (5.2.286), this correction
probably knocking the final letter from "what" (H4r line 1,
5.2.274). Other minor problems are some missing letters
(though the words are not in doubt), the suspected
legitimacy of about half a dozen words (e.g., "snickfail,
""fallery"), and three or four inappropriate speech
prefixes. The main problem with the quarto and others
printed by Thomas Johnson for Kirkman, like A Cure for a
Cuckold and Anything for a Quiet Life, is, as Antony Hammond
puts it, that they are: "monuments to meanness in printing,
with almost all the verse as prose and the layout as
squeezed as possible, in order to contain the play within as
few sheets as could be managed." Therefore the main
editorial problem with Wonder is the restoration of its
verse.
     The play is divided into five acts, but only the third
has any scene divisions. Songs are often presented in two
columns separated by a rule. Stage directions are full. The
specificity of detail, including props, the attention to
exits and entrances, the noting of musical cues, the
constancy of speech prefixes and the anticipatory cue for
Pythia's speech on D1v (lines 10-11) may indicate that the
manuscript behind the quarto was a theatrical copy. 
     There have been three editions since 1661. The first
was by William Dilke in A Continuation of Dodsley's Old
Plays (1816). He modernized the spelling and restored the
verse which had been printed as prose. The reasons for his
emendations are given haphazardly; sometimes he explains his
reasoning, often not. Alexander Dyce was next, including the
play in The Works of John Webster (1830). He consulted the
quarto, restoring lines Dilke had inadvertently dropped, but
with a few exceptions he adopted Dilke's versification; and
the punctuation is primarily Dilke's. Most of Dyce's
emendations had been made first by Dilke, but he was more
thorough in his notes. He also added scene divisions.
William Hazlitt followed Dyce, with The Dramatic Works of
John Webster (1857). He seems to have read the quarto, but
he makes little use of it. His edition copies Dyce, though
occasionally he chooses an emendation by Dilke and on rare
occasions makes one of his own. His notes are unoriginal,
reproducing those of Dilke or Dyce.
     A fourth, unpublished, edition is the Memorial
University of Newfoundland Ph.D. thesis of Michael Nolan, of
which the accompanying old-spelling text of this disk is a
part. The thesis edition is in modern spelling, with
lineation, additional stage directions, and apparatus. There
is a full commentary and a thorough introduction which
examines dating, authorship, sources, as well as attempts to
place Wonder in pastoral drama.