Paperback edition of The Courier’s Tragedy

The Paperback edition of The Courier’s Tragedy is a disputed, apparently pirated text whose variant lines give Oedipa Maas a concrete lead in her search for Trystero. Yet the book does not settle what happened: it complicates the play’s textual history and leaves open whether Randolph Driblette encountered its version, chose the lines for artistic reasons, or responded to a private change.

Discovery and Physical Form

Oedipa brings the paperback to Emory Bortz after quoting the lines that name Trystero: “No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trow,” followed by “Who’s once been set his tryst with Trystero.” The wording comes with a precise location in the play, Act IV, Scene 8. Bortz is startled that Oedipa has reached the line and asks how she got into the Vatican Library; she shows him the paperback, making the small book the immediate basis for their conversation about versions of the play.

Bortz inspects the volume rather than accepting its authority. He checks the front matter for whoever re-edited his edition of Wharfinger, notices that the publisher is identified as K. da Chingado and Company of New York, and remarks on its offset printing, misprints, and corruption. His reaction turns the book from a transparent carrier of evidence into a material object whose production defects demand scrutiny. He drops it onto the grass and asks how a text like this could have entered the Vatican.

A Contested Version of the Play

Bortz says the Vatican contains a pornographic version of The Courier’s Tragedy, one he did not see until 1961. He distinguishes that text from what Oedipa saw at the Tank Theatre: in his view, Driblette’s production was typically virtuous, and the Vatican version was an obscene parody. The paperback thus appears connected to a textual variant associated with a radically different treatment of the play, but the evidence does not establish who made it or how it reached the Vatican.

The dispute centers on the play’s ending. Bortz says that in the text he personally accepts, the other couplet’s final line is suppressed. He identifies “Who once has crossed the lusts of Angelo” as an addition by the printer of the 1687 Quarto and calls the Whitechapel version corrupt. For him, Driblette did the best thing by omitting the doubtful passage altogether. This account makes textual uncertainty central: the lines are not simply present or absent but differently authorized across editions and versions.

The Paperback and Driblette’s Production

Oedipa insists that Driblette did use the Vatican lines during the performance she attended: he spoke the word Trystero. Bortz answers that Driblette was both director and actor and therefore had discretion over what to stage. When Oedipa asks whether inserting another couple of lines could have been mere whim, a graduate student recalls that whatever was troubling Driblette tended to emerge onstage. He may have examined many versions to apprehend the play’s spirit rather than adhere only to its words, and in doing so may have encountered the paperback’s variation.

The paperback therefore supplies a possible route by which the Trystero lines entered the production, but not a conclusive explanation. Oedipa concludes that something in Driblette’s personal life must have changed drastically that night and caused him to add them. That remains her inference, not a fact established by the book: Bortz’s account and the student’s recollection offer possibilities, while Driblette himself cannot explain his choice in this exchange.

Evidence and Uncertainty

The paperback matters because it gives Oedipa a tangible text against which to test what she remembers hearing. Its printed lines connect the play to Trystero, and its apparent proximity to the Vatican version makes the connection more suggestive. At the same time, its misprints, uncertain editorial history, and resemblance to a corrupted or parodic text weaken its standing as a dependable witness. The object offers evidence while displaying reasons to distrust that evidence.

That tension matches the larger inquiry’s reliance on records that can point toward a hidden pattern without resolving whether the pattern is real. Oedipa’s question about what Driblette performed cannot be answered by treating one edition as final: Bortz’s preferred text suppresses the line, the paperback prints a Trystero couplet, and Oedipa remembers hearing it onstage. The volume consequently serves not as a key that unlocks the mystery, but as a disputed artifact that makes the contradictions impossible to ignore.