ABSTRACT
Cognizant of Josephine A. Roberts’s deservedly high reputation as a textual editor, grateful for her many contributions to subsequent work on Lady Mary Wroth, most critics have accepted Roberts’s description and analysis of the putative manuscript of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus in the Folger Library, Folger V.a.104. To begin with, Wroth’s treatment of U13 and P76 lends itself to a possible rationale consistent with argument that the number of closural marks and the presence or absence of a catchword generally signals the extent to which texts are connected to each other. The principal implication of her use of the slashed-S supports these interpretations of Wroth’s groupings, though it raises further questions of its own. Major scholarly and critical questions about Wroth herself also emerge. Her scribal practices in other manuscripts might well reward further attention. Wroth reconceived Pamphilia to Amphilanthus more dramatically than most Wroth scholars have thought.
