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.