Publication History and Textual Note to the Ambitious Step-Mother, Tamerlane, and the Fair Penitent

In the Dedication to this play Rowe claims that, in performance, 600 lines of The Ambitious Step-mother had to be cut ‘by reason of the extreme Length’. ¹ These lines were apparently restored to the first, quarto edition of the play (ESTC T55547), which was printed for Peter Buck and published on 28 January 1701. The second edition, a quarto printed for Richard Wellington (ESTC T66014 and N2690) in 1702, claims, on its title page, to be published ‘with the Addition of a New SCENE’. ² In fact, there are no substantial additions to the first edition in the second edition of the play. Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume speculate that the new scene to which the second edition refers ‘was either available in time for the first edition or accidentally omitted from the second’. ³ Since there are no extensive variants in the third edition (T21812), a duodecimo (‘Neat Pocket Volume’) ⁴ published for Jacob Tonson in 1714, it seems most likely that the ‘new scene’ had already been incorporated by the time the first edition was published. It is possible that this scene was made up of the 600 lines cut from performance to which Rowe refers in the ‘Dedication’.