Table xliii on pp.324–5 summarises my conclusions vis à vis memorial reconstruction (in descending order of probability) for each of the suspect texts surveyed in chapter 8. It is easier to argue that a playtext is not memorially reconstructed than it is to prove that it is; hence, the first row in table xliii, that which confidently proclaims its contents to be plays which are ‘Unquestionably Memorially Reconstructed’, is blank.

In the discussion which follows this table 1 consider some of the general points revealed by the tabulated material in chapter 8, highlight pertinent textual details (and lack thereof), and offer some conclusions on the material surveyed.

MEMORIAL RECONSTRUCTION

In editing Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy and Philaster, Robert K. Turner considered the possibility of memorial reconstruction in the respective Q1 versions of the plays, scrutinising the texts for the ‘classical stigmata’ (defined by Turner as brevity, external echoes, internal repetitions, actors' gags, and expanded comedy) of reported texts. Tables xlii in chapter 8 reveal the enormous variety of features and problems in texts grouped together as suspect, and show that ‘classical stigmata’ do not exist (either in suspect texts collectively, or in the seven for which a case for memorial reconstruction can be made). Everything we have been taught to identify as paradigmatic is for the most part conspicuously absent. Let us consider the more celebrated stereotypes.