20General Characteristics of Q

Only one quarto edition of An Humorous Dayʼs Mirth, printed in 1599, survives at the present time in seventeen extant examples; it is does not appear to have been recorded in the Stationersʼ Register. The play quarto contains thirty unnumbered leaves and collates as follows: A-G4 H2. Gregʼs bibliographic description is numbered 159. The title page can be described thus:

A pleasant Comedy/ entituled: / An Humerous dayes / Myrth. / As it hath beene sundrie times publikely acted by / the right honourable the Earle of Not- / tingham Lord high Admirall / his seruants. / By G. C. / [device 142] / AT LONDON / Printed by Valentine Syms: / 1599.^[159]

21Device 142 features a ‘boy with wings on one arm and the other holding a weightʼ,^[160] and is also found on the title pages of other plays printed by Valentine Simmes, including Shakespeareʼs Richard II (1597 and 1598).

Title page of Q Title page of Richard II (1598)

The first page of text, A2, is headed with an ornament commonly used by Simmes in this place, and also featured in Richard II (1597), Richard III (1597), 2 Henry IV (1600), and Hamlet (1603). Above the colophon on H2r, Simmes uses a type ornament. The title page names no publisher or bookseller, and the authorʼs initials ‘G.C.ʼ have been identified as referring to George Chapman without question.