“With much labour out of scattered papers”: The Caroline Reprints of Thomas Heywood’s1and2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody

Abstract

Nostalgia can be a powerful and adaptable political idea that evokes a dislocation between past and present but, paradoxically, also collapses that temporal distinction by inscribing an idealized, selective past with the concerns of the present and announcing its contemporaneity.First performed and printed in the early Jacobean period, Thomas Heywood's 1 and 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody recall significant events from Elizabeth I's reign and were among a number of new Foxean history plays that registered some anxiety about England's future under the new Stuart king, James I. Their nostalgia for the Elizabethan past acquired new urgency and application through printed editions -and, indeed, Heywood's plays proved to have, on the basis of edition numbers, lasting appeal in print. Part 1 was printed eight times between 1605 and 1639, and Part 2 was printed four times between 1606 and 1633, which makes the former among the period's most frequently reprinted plays. 1 This article concentrates on the Caroline editions of Part 1 (1632, 1639) and Part 2 (1633) to demonstrate how Heywood's plays became part of an emerging "counterpublic" during the 1630s that was sometimes at odds with royal policy and to highlight the potential of reprints to generate new interpretations, when the political, theatrical, and economic factors shaping a play's first performance and publication have changed. 2 It argues that the plays' nostalgia for Elizabethan histories and figureheads acquires a topical, transnational currency during the Thirty Years' War, particularly through the collaborative textual communities that oversaw the reprinted editions. While plays are often seen as participants in a period's political culture, there is a very real exchange between Heywood's plays and the political context of their Caroline publication,