“With much labour out of scattered papers”: The Caroline Reprints of Thomas Heywood’s 1 and 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody

Abstract

ostalgia can be a powerful and adaptable political idea that evokes a dislocation between past and present but, paradoxically, also collapses nthat 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. This article concentrates on the Caroline editions of part 1 (1632, 1639) and part 2 (1633) to demonstrate how