IV
Studies in bibliography | ||
IV
If ever a genealogical problem needed sorting out, it is that of the relationship
between the Quarto (1600) and Folio texts of Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV. In his
Henry IV appear to be very seriously snarled in controversy',[28] thus summing up
two decades of work on the latter by four prominent scholars. Although M. A.
Shaaber, Alice Walker, J. Dover Wilson, and W. W. Greg had been able to agree
that the Folio restored eight passages (presumably cuts) omitted from Q cor-
rected and otherwise altered many of Q's stage-directions and speech-prefixes,
removed its profanity and colloquial or vulgar language, added its own mis-
lineations to two in Q, contained numerous differences of other kinds, and must
have derived from a manuscript of a 'literary' character, they had not been able
to agree whether F was typeset directly from that manuscript or from an example
of Q annotated by reference to it and containing both its variant readings and
possibly some initiated by the annotator.
In a long appendix to his Variorum edition, Shaaber had supported, not
infrequently with negative evidence, the position taken by the Cambridge edi-
tors (1864) that F's source was a 'thoroughly overhauled' transcript of
Shake-
speare's manuscript: he had argued, among other things, that the 32
supposed
errors shared by Q and F (and rejected by at least a majority of
editors) could
be reduced to three either because they were defensible,
lacked an agreed-on
editorial emendation, had a precedent elsewhere in F, or
could have derived
independently from a common source. Walker, however, had
put forward the
contrary view first in an article and a note, and then more
fully in her book on
quarto copy for the Folio; in her usual positive and
persuasive manner, she had
cited eight shared errors in wording and other
'common errors' in punctuation
and word forms, including 'maner', as
evidence that F was set directly from an
annotated copy of Q. The responses
to Walker's essays had been swift but differ-
ent. Wilson, who in his 1946
New Shakespeare edition had followed Shaaber, in
1952 had added at the end
of his discussion of the textual problems two sentences
that suggested he
had accepted Walker's conclusions (as set out in her article)
and would
thoroughly revise for 'a second edition'; he cited three passages for
which
notes had already been revised. Shaaber had reacted almost immediately,
employing the strategies seen in his Variorum edition to neutralize Walker's case
but adding some new observations.[29]
Almost simultaneously, however, Greg had
so-called 'massed entries' and other features with showing that they could not
have been drawn directly from the prompt-book, and had found his case for F's
direct dependence on manuscript persuasive, but had been impressed by the
common verbal errors (which he thought likely to number more than Walker's
eight), the shared nonsense, Walker's odd 'maner' spelling, and the instances of
mislining, all of which inclined him to believe that F was typeset from annotated
Q. 'And so the dispute continues without any certain conclusion in sight', Greg
wrote somewhat prophetically, not having seen Shaaber's article, published the
same year. [30]
By the end of the 1950s, then, discussion of 2H4 in the
traditional terms of
textual criticism had ended in a virtual stand-off,
with the main lines of differ-
ence regarding Folio copy defined, the
proponents clearly identified, and with
Greg and Shaaber agreeing
independently that more study was needed, either of
the kind seen in Philip
Williams' analysis of Q and F Troilus and Cressida (Greg,
p. 272) or of'the working methods of compositors' (Shaaber, 'The Folio
Text',
p. 144). In the editions that have followed and in other scholarship,
whether in
support of these editions or independent of them, there has been
much careful
analysis of the problem as defined by Shaaber, Walker, and
Greg, but (with one
exception) no significant new evidence brought
forward.
Shaaber's view of Folio copy has prevailed, though in various permutations.
A. R. Humphreys' 1966 New Arden Edition set the pattern in its thorough review
of the 'exasperatingly ambiguous' evidence and its general conclusion.
Running
a variation on Bowers' 1953 suggestion that F's copy was a
transcript of an
annotated Q,[31]
Humphreys hypothesized a scribal manuscript combining 'con-
currently' Q and an independent transcript 'showing some cognizance of stage
practice'—this despite his recognition that such a theory required
'mediation'
(transmission) of typographical details through both
transcription and composi-
tors and despite his decision to prefer 'about
eighty' of F's variants to Q's.[32]
David Bevington, revising Hardin Craig's Complete
Works, tentatively approved
the New Arden's manuscript and Bowers'
transcript as likely scenarios, without
Riverside Shakespeare, summarized the dispute and seemed to defer to the New
Arden's position.[33] In an overview of the play's textual condition, George Walton
Williams found no credible bibliographical links between Q and F, suggested F's
setting copy was the 'fair copy of the foul-papers made ca. 1598' which Walker
believed had been used to annotate Q, and proposed that it was 'a companion
piece to the manuscript from which the 1 Henry IV quarto was printed', both
of them made 'to prove to Oldcastle's angry posterity' that his name had been
removed from the play.[34] Peter Davison, uncomfortable with the New Arden's
adoption of 80 Folio readings, with another 100 being of equal merit to Q's, and
with F's 'excision, wholly or in part, of some twenty-five Quarto stage directions
that are superior to those remaining in the Folio', produced his Penguin edition
on the theory that F's copy was 'a transcript … made with the aid of actors'
parts, despite the trouble and expense' but 'with the Quarto at hand, an excellent
guide to the order of speeches'.[35]
More recently, manuscript as Folio setting copy has remained the preferred
scenario, but its precise character and the role of the quarto (if any) in
creating it
has continued to generate multiple hypotheses. Eleanor Prosser,
in a book-length
study now most valued for its observations on the
compression F's text underwent
in its first quire (g) and the expansion in
its second (χgg), thought that the manu-
script
conflated with Q was not a transcript but Shakespeare's own foul-papers.[36]
The long-anticipated Oxford Edition, though most notable for its view that
six of
the eight passages that F supplies and Q wants represent
Shakespeare's revisions,
ruled out annotated Q, partly on the basis of new
statistical evidence, speci-
fied a scribal copy of the prompt-book, but
stipulated consultation of Q by the
scribe.[37]
The New Cambridge Edition rejected many of the Oxford's arguments,
manuscripts, and the various agents involved in the transmission of their texts,
but ended up agreeing that for Folio copy the idea of an 'intermediate transcript
by an interfering scribe' was 'more plausible' than annotated Q, prompt-book, or
a 'transcript put together from actors' parts'.[38] Finally, the Oxford Shakespeare's
one-volume edition has also rejected the Oxford Edition's analysis of F's eight
unique passages, reverted to the traditional position that they were 'integral'
to the play 'from the beginning', revived Shaaber's argument (via Prosser) that
marking Q would have been 'a near impossible task', and concluded that Q and
'a post-1606 expurgated prompt-book' were 'collated in' a private literary tran-
script that later became printer's copy for F.[39]
Compositor B's speech-prefixes may shed some light on the central question
of Folio copy for this play. In his pages there are well over 50 forms that should
be useful for identifying his setting copy. On the whole, his long
speech-prefixes
in these pages, which generally conflict with his tendency
to set abbreviated
forms, indicate that certain Quarto forms—and a
significant number of them—
somehow found their way into F. But the
value and precise implications of the
evidence can only be properly assessed
against the background of B's handling of
speech-prefixes throughout the
Folio, especially in 1 Henry IV, and more narrowly
through analysis of the context in which the particular forms occur.
As to the larger background, B's pages of 1H4 on the whole
confirm that in
the Histories (as in the Comedies and Tragedies) his long
speech-prefixes, and
especially his full forms, should generally reflect the
variable forms of his copy.
There is every reason to expect that such
practices should have continued in B's
next play, 2 Henry
IV, which was begun on sig. f6v—the
forme-mate to f1, the
last page of 1H4 to be put into
type—and which occupies the next two quires.
At those points in 2H4 where speech-prefixes attributable to his copy appear in
B's pages, almost all find precedents in the Quarto.
This evidence is naturally of various weights, as the earlier review of B's
work throughout F would suggest. But here its value is especially affected by the
compression and expansion which characterize the pages of this play in
particu-
lar and which Hinman referred to generally as 'page justification'.
Hinman has
shown that 2 Henry IV was unusually
subject to such page justification because
the Histories were printed out of
order, beginning with all of King John and most
of
Richard II before the Comedies had been completed, then
jumping ahead to
Henry V and most of the Henry VI
plays, and then returning to 1H4 and 2H4 be-
fore the remainder of the Histories (the end of 3 Henry VI, Richard III, and Henry
VIII) were set. Since H5 had begun on sig. h1, the
end of R2 and all of 1H4 and
of 2H4 were to be packed into four quires (d–g), and
this obviously was found
to be impossible as the printing proceeded. The
adjustment of type matter to
alloted pages became critical during the
composition of 2H4, and consequently
the compositors
were under special pressure, as copy was cast off quire by quire,
to fit
text to the assigned pages, first by crowding as much of it into quire g as
possible, and then (after the decision was made to create an eight-leaf quire to
accommodate the rest of 2H4) to see to it that enough
text was left to make xgg7v
a proper part-page. As the more experienced of the two typesetters,
apparently,
much of the responsibility for this adjustment fell to
Compositor B, who set up
not only the entire second half of the last quire
(xgg5–8v)—where the
play was to
be made to end part way through xgg7v, and then eked out with an epilogue (xgg8)
and a list of actors (xgg8v)—but also xgg1, which he
composed as forme-mate to
his xgg8v before copy for the rest of the quire was cast off.
Following on Hinman's general suggestions regarding 'page justification' and
his more specific analysis of the production of quires g and xgg, Eleanor Prosser
has attempted to reconstruct precisely the
circumstances and sequence of events
that led Jaggard first to compress and
then to expand text in the two quires
ally altering the wording of the play in order to perform his master's bidding.
Although these attempts are not entirely successful and the arguments regard-
ing B's treatment of wording particularly shaky, there can be little doubt about
the general validity of her observation that the compositors, especially B, were
under extraordinary pressures to adjust the length of lines and thus of pages for
this play.[40]
In the first quire, most of B's pages (sigs. g1–3) exhibit some
compression,
though the first two he set up (forme-mates 3v and 4) appear relatively normal.[41]
In the second quire, however, sigs. χgg1 and
χgg5–7 betray signs of expansion,
which ceases in sig. χgg7v, the
part-page that, once reached, signalled success
in filling the eight-leaf
quire. How strong was the pressure to adjust lineation
and vertical spacing
to fit the text of the play into the allotted pages remains
debatable. But
mechanical matters, such as the length of speech-prefixes and the
placement
and spacing of stage-directions, would have been especially subject
to these
pressures, when they affected the number of lines of actual text that
would
occupy a column or page. These factors must certainly be considered in
an
assessment of the quality of B's speech-prefixes as evidence of the nature of
his setting copy for 2 Henry IV.
In about 40 cases B's full speech-prefixes indicate that his copy for 2 Henry IV
must have had forms identical to those in Q. Some of the best evidence is in
quire g (see table 1). In sigs. g3v and g4, B's
initial pages of the quire, it would
appear that B's work was generally less
affected by considerations of linear spac-
ing than elsewhere in the play,
and there are proportionately more full forms
here than in the other pages
of this quire.[42]
His general preference for 'Prin.' B
abandons
six times for the full form, which Q has uniformly throughout II.ii. A
few
of these forms may be affected by justification of the lines in which they occur
(TLN 873NL most likely, and perhaps 852L and 888L). The others, however,
seem
clearly to have been set independently of such concerns (800L, 879,
898L). The
Quire | TLN | Folio | Quarto |
Riverside Act.Sc.Line |
g3 | 616 | Hostesse. | Hostesse | II.i.1 |
g3 | 622 | Snare. | Snare | II.1.7 |
g3v | 800L | Prince. | Prince | II.ii.9 |
g3v | 847L | Pointz. | Poynes | II.ii.65 |
g3v | 852L | Prince. | Prince | II.ii.70 |
g4 | 873NL | Prince. | Prince | II.ii.92 |
g4 | 879 | Prince. | Prince | II.ii.98 |
g4 | 888L | Prince. | Prince | II.ii.106 |
g4 | 898L | Prince. | Prince | II.ii.117 |
single 'Pointz.' in sig. g3v (847L)
recalls B's practice in 1H4.[43]
But what is most
intriguing about this speech-prefix is that this
single instance of B abandoning
his standard 'Poi(y)n.' occurs where Q fails to have the 'Poy(i)nes' speech-prefix
otherwise found throughout this scene. The
parallels with 1H4 are striking and
tend to confirm
the view that B's 'Pointz.' in 2H4
reflects the peculiar state of his
Quarto copy at this point, in much the
same way that it did earlier.
As might be predicted, there are fewer long speech-prefixes in the remaining
pages of quire g, which were subjected to the crowding already discussed. Yet if
B in fact was trying to compress the text while setting sigs. g1–3,
then the two
full speech-prefixes that do occur in these pages (those at 616
and 622) are very
good evidence of his copy's influence on the forms he set.
Both are contrary not
only to B's general preference for shorter forms, but
to his specific aims in these
pages. In particular B's 'Snare.' is an unmistakable instance of a copy-derived
form. The
earlier 'Hostesse.' may exhibit not only the additional
influence of Q's
catchword on the previous page, but also of the full name
in the immediately
preceding stage-direction, though (as already shown)
stage-directions rarely ex-
erted so strong a force on B as to make him
depart from his usual inclination for
shorter forms in the absence of some
other inducement. Although predictably
not numerous, the full
speech-prefixes in these compressed pages are valuable
evidence of the
presence of Q's forms behind F.
Compared to this quire, the next one, where B was generally under pressure
to lengthen his type pages, should contain more long speech-prefixes, and they
should be more suspect as reliable evidence of the influence of his copy.
Such
forms are indeed more frequent in quire χgg (see table 2). Five of these full forms
(TLN 1693L, 2799L,
2809L, 2832L, 3254L) may be put down to B's expansionist
policy in this
quire, and four others are perhaps suspect on similar grounds (2712,
Quire | TLN | Folio | Quarto |
Riverside Act.Sc.Line |
χgg1 | 1673 | Wart. | Wart | III.ii.138 |
χgg1 | 1675 | Wart. | Wart | III.ii.140 |
χgg1 | 1685 | Feeble. | Feeble | III.ii.148 |
χgg1 | 1687 | Feeble. | Feeble | III.ii.150 |
χgg1 | 1693L | Feeble. | Feeble | III.ii.156 |
χgg1 | 1700 | Feeble. | Feeble | III.ii.163 |
χgg1 | 1705 | Feeble. | Feeble | III.ii.169 |
χgg5 | 2671 | Prince. | Prince | IV.v.138 |
χgg5 | 2712 | King. | King | IV.v.177 |
χgg5 | 2757 | Prince. | Prince | IV.v.220 |
χgg5 | 2764 | King. | King | IV.v.224 |
χgg5 | 2768 | King. | King | IV.v.227 |
χgg5v | 2775 | King. | King | IV.v.232 |
χgg5v | 2778 | King. | King | IV.v.235 |
χgg5v | 2795 | Dauie. | Dauy | V.i.8 |
χgg5v | 2799L | Dauy. | Dauy | V.i.13 |
χgg5v | 2804 | Dauy. | Dauy | V.i.18 |
χgg5v | 2809L | Dauy. | Dauy | V.i.22 |
χgg5v | 2817 | Dauy. | Dauy | V.i.29 |
χgg5v | 2822L | Dauy. | Dauy | V.i.34 |
χgg5v | 2826 | Dauy. | Dauy | V.i.38 |
χgg5v | 2832L | Dauy. | Dauy | V.i.43 |
χgg6 | 2905L | Iohn. | Iohn | V.ii.19 |
χgg6 | 2907NL | Iohn. | Iohn | V.ii.22 |
χgg6 | 2915L | Iohn. | Iohn | V.ii.30 |
χgg6 | 2930NL | Prince. | Prince | V.ii.44 |
χgg6v | 3070 | Dauy. | Dauy | V.iii.41 |
χgg7 | 3254L | King. | King | V.v.44 |
χgg7 | 3259L | King. | King | V.v.47 |
χgg7v | 3309 | Iohn. | Iohn | V.v.97 |
χgg7v | 3315 | Iohn. | Iohn | V.v.103 |
χgg7v | 3318 | Iohn. | Iohn | V.v.105 |
2757, 2804, 2826).[44]
But the other full forms in these pages would appear to be
reliable
evidence of the influence of his copy, rather than of page justification,
on
B's work.
The speech-prefixes 'Feeble.' and 'Prince.' (1685, 1687, 1700; 2671, 2930NL,
and perhaps 2757) are
especially valuable, because they contain more than four
letters, and such
forms are among the surest signs of his copy's influence on B.
The latter
particularly recalls B's retention of this form from Q5 copy in 1H4,
although a four-letter name, 'Iohn.'
also constitutes reliable evidence the six times
it occurs. As already
shown, B rarely uses such forms unless copy has them. More
Prince John, reproducing exactly its single 'P.Ioh.' on f5 and its two 'Iohn.' forms
on f5v, though characteristically shortening one 'Iohn.' to 'Ioh.', probably as a
result of the need to justify a line (2973L).
In repeatedly setting the full name of 'Dauy.' in V.i of
2H4, B uses the form
found in Q throughout this
scene. These eight complete names in χgg5v cannot
be easily explained away as the result of
either line or page justification.[45]
B also
reproduces this form in V.iii, despite the fact that he there
reverts to his usual
tendency to shorten speech-prefixes, setting both 'Da.' and 'Dau.'.[46]
In view of
his performance in the plays set from known quartos, most
of these must be at-
tributed to the influence of copy. The speech-prefixes
for this character, as well
as those for Feeble and the princes, in quire
χgg look very much like copy-derived
forms.
Of all the speech-prefixes in Folio 2H4 perhaps the least
reliable as evidence
for quarto copy are the seven for the King, which
invariably occur in B's pages
in the form 'King.', as
they do throughout Q. It is possible, as Howard-Hill at
one point suggests,
that B had 'settled' on the full form of this title after quire b
of Richard II. But it is equally possible, as Howard-Hill also
seems to recognize,
that B's inclination was to the 'Kin.' form and that the complete form exhibits
the influence of his
copy's persistent 'King.' on his work.[47]
Clearly this is the case
in LLL, where he
followed Q's uniform 'King.' on his first page, began to
shorten
to 'Kin.' on his next, and thereafter
alternated between this preference and Q's
form. It may be inferred that his
adoption of the full form midway through R2
is similarly traceable to his copy: both Q3 (printed by Simmes and probably
set
by his compositor A) and Q5 (the other print believed by some to have
provided
Folio copy) have 'King.' throughout. In 1H4 Q5's virtually uniform 'King.'
would
have reinforced such influence, but the presence of one 'Kin.' (2709) more than
half way through B's work on
this play suggests that he retained his preference
(however weakened by
repeated exposure to 'King.') for the shorter form. There
is no clear evidence in the Histories of an actual preference for the full
form, but
only of its domination of his pages, which presumably reflects its
persistence in
his copy. Acquiescence (in this case) is not the same thing
as preference.
Quire | TLN | Folio | Quarto |
Riverside Act.Sc.Line |
g1v | 332 | Ch.Iust. | Iustice | I.ii.58 |
g3 | 654L | Falst. | Falst. | II.i.46 |
g3 | 661NL | Falst. | Falst. | II.i.54 |
g3 | 681L | Falst. | Falst. | II.i.78 |
g3 | 687 | Falst. | Falst. | II.i.84 |
g3 | 729 | Falst. | Falst. | II.i.132 |
g3 | 733 | Falst. | Falst. | II.i.138 |
g3 | 739CW | Falst. (Fal.) | Falst. | II.i.143 |
χgg7 | 3217L | Falst. | Falst. | V.v.10 |
χgg7 | 3223 | Falst. | Falst. | V.v.16 |
χgg7 | 3250NL | Falst. | Falst. | V.v.41 |
χgg7 | 3258L | Falst. | Falst. | V.v.46 |
χgg7v | 3298NL | Shall. | Shall. | V.v.187 |
The 'King.' speech-prefixes in his pages of 2H4 may, then, be taken as some
evidence, though
perhaps the least unequivocal, of the influence of the full forms
of Simmes'
quarto on B. One could argue, of course, that such forms could have
been
present in the left margin of a manuscript serving as Folio copy (or provid-
ing the basis for such copy), where its scribe, unlike a Folio compositor, would
have been under no pressure to fit them within a narrow column along with
the
opening line of each speech. But a possibility, or at best a probability
of some
indeterminate degree, is not a certainty. Q's invariable full form
is an observable
fact and offers a credible explanation of the forms in B's
pages that is consistent
with other evidence.
Other traces of the forms of Q's speech-prefixes may be found in Folio 2
Henry IV. Although longer forms occur throughout,
the significant ones would be
in the pages where B was not pressed to expand
the matter (sigs. g3v, g4, χgg7v)
and especially in g1–3,
where he was actually trying to compress (see table 3).
Perhaps the single
most interesting speech-prefix in the whole play is the 'Shall.'
on B's last page (sig. χgg7v) in a one-line speech that nearly fills the measure
(3298NL). This is the only such form in B's work. Otherwise, he set 'Shal.' (the
norm) or 'Shallow.'
(under special circumstances).[48]
The length of this crowded
line would have encouraged B to use his
customary shorter form. His unique
'Shall.'
duplicates that in Q, which is, moreover, the only instance of this form
that B would have found there.[49]
The coincidence is too much to sequester be-
hind the skirts of
Fortune: F's unique 'Shall.' reproduces Q's equally odd
usage.
Some other long, but not full, speech-prefixes in these pages may also indi-
cate F's dependence on Q. The frequency of 'Falst.' in B's
g3 would suggest that
J/A—who on the evidence of 1H4 favored this and other longer forms—rather
that Q also has 'Falst.' here and could well have influenced B to vary from his
pronounced preference for 'Fal.', as exhibited in 1H4 and in B's first page of 2H4
(g3v).[50] Cumulatively, these 11 are the longer forms of greatest weight, but those
in χgg7 must largely be discounted because of the general expansion happening
there, even though they might not have occurred with such frequency without
inducement from copy.[51] On the other hand, the single most interesting 'Falst.'
is that in the catchword on g3, because earlier B had set the actual speech-prefix
'Fal.' at the top of g3v (739) in accord with his settled preference.[52]
Likewise, the many instances of 'Ch.Iust.' in these pages,
which occur despite
B's inclination to set the shorter and simpler 'Iust.', are misleading at first blush
(and therefore
not listed here). Some of them would have occurred in response
to
annotations in Q. But the most significant longer form for this
character—the
first 'Ch.Iust.' in the play
(332), which is the last B set—was apparently induced
by Q's rare
complete name ('Iustice') in combination with the preceding
stage-
direction (see Appendix, Note C).[53]
Although more complex than others in 2H4, these longer
speech-prefixes
reflect the state of the forms that B would have found in an
annotated copy of
Q. These longer forms, therefore, provide some support for
the view that Q was
B's basic copy for 2H4, but apart
from 'Shall.', and perhaps his odd 'Ch.Iust.', the
best evidence remains the full forms in his
pages.
This is so despite the presence of some anomalous ones, which prove to be
not altogether surprising given his practices in the Comedies and in 1H4. In 2H4
B set a total of 13 full-name speech-prefixes where Q has a shorter form,
four
together on sig. g3, the remainder in quire χgg (see table 4). The four anomalous
speech-prefixes on g3,
all 'Hostesse.' instead of 'Host.',
occur in one sequence. On
Quire | TLN | Folio | Quarto |
Riverside Act.Sc.Line |
g3 | 618L | Hostesse. | Host. | II.i.3 |
g3 | 621 | Hostesse. | Host. | II.i.6 |
g3 | 626L | Hostesse. | Host. | II.i.13 |
g3 | 632 | Hostesse. | Host. | II.i.20 |
χgg1 | 1654L | Shallow. | Shal. | III.ii.119 |
χgg1 | 1731L | Falstaffe. | Fal. | III.ii.196 |
χgg5v | 2824L | Shallow. | Shal. | V.i.36 |
χgg5v | 2850L | Falstaffe. | Falst. | V.i.60 |
χgg5v | 2881L | Warwicke. | War. | V.ii.1 |
χgg7 | 3171L | Hostesse. | Host. | V.iv.1 |
χgg7 | 3212L | Falstaffe. | Falst. | V.v.5 |
χgg7 | 3216 | Pistol. | Pist. | V.v.9 |
χgg7 | 3245 | Pistol. | Pist. | V.v.39 |
χgg1, where B again stood in for J/A, 'Shallow.' and 'Falstaffe.' replace
Q's 'Shal.'
and 'Fal.'. In the
latter half of quire χgg, these three full forms
reappear, along
with a 'Warwicke.' (Q: 'War.') and two instances of 'Pistol.'
(Q: 'Pist.').
Of the nine in quire χgg, all but two seem to be
traceable directly to the
policy of expansion which B was following in these
pages and which Prosser has
explored at some length.[54]
She notes particularly the 'Falstaffe.' forms as
products
of this strategy. But on these same pages, each of the 'Shallow.' forms allowed B
to overrun the matter into
an extra line, as did the second 'Pistol.' and the 'War-
wicke.' on χgg5v.[55]
Hence, only the earlier 'Pistol.' (3216) and a 'Hostesse.' (3171L) in
this quire appear to be
genuinely anomalous, and both may well reflect B's gen-
eral expansionist
tendencies in this part of the play. The latter, however, is like
the
earlier examples of this full form in that it might be related to the preceding
stage-direction. Indeed, this and the three other aberrant speech-prefixes
on page
χgg7 are all immediately adjacent to changes found in
the Folio's text. The first
'Pistol.' (3216) precedes
the deletion of a single word presumably struck to censor
oaths, but beside
the other three are stage-directions that had undergone major
alteration and
would have been heavily marked up and potentially distracting
had B's copy
been an annotated Q.[56]
In contrast, the four 'Hostesse.' speech-prefixes on g3,
early in II.i, cannot be
attributed to such general pressures on B, since if
anything he was compressing
in this page. Yet the brief sequence, which ends
with her long speech beginning
was called upon to stand in for J/A. On g3 B seems to have been temporarily
influenced, not by considerations of space, but by the three full forms that he
found in the opening stage-direction (615) at the bottom of Q's sig. C1, in the
catchword there, and in the first speech-prefix of the scene (616) at the top of its
C1v, which he reproduced.[57] In short, if we except the seven complete forms in
quire xgg that are almost certainly traceable directly to B's efforts to expand his
copy, the remaining aberrant instances parallel almost exactly those in B's pages
of 1H4, even if we ignore the markings that would have been present in an an-
notated copy of Q.
There can be little doubt that by and large the longer and full speech-prefixes
in B's pages of 2H4 exhibit the influence of Q's
forms. Or, to put it differently, a
significant number of B's
speech-prefixes in this Folio play are remnants of those
set in Valentine
Simmes's shop, presumably by his compositor A, some twenty
years earlier. As
such they may be regarded as the kind of direct bibliographical
links
between F and Q that Williams sought, unless a scribal manuscript that
preserved Q's forms intervened between the two books.
The purpose of this theory of intervening manuscript, which posits a docu-
ment incorporating not only the major Folio 'additions' that could not be written
upon the leaves of a copy of Q, but also all the other variants drawn from
the
prompt-book (or other theatrical manuscript) as well as the Quarto's
words and
forms, would be to account for those readings unique to F that a
critic or an edi-
tor wished to reject as not deriving directly from the
theatrical manuscript (or
from the Folio compositors). To the extent that
Q's speech-prefixes have been
transmitted to F in a manner similar to that
observed in the seven control texts
typeset from identified quartos, this
theory faces a serious impediment. For their
survival through an intervening
manuscript would have to be credited to the
slavish accuracy of its scribe,
who cannot then readily be blamed for changes in
the actual wording (as
opposed to forms) that it was his business to reproduce,
and whose
reputation as an 'interfering', 'cavalier', and 'overhauling' workman
would
therefore require considerable rehabilitation.
As genetic evidence of the dependence of F upon Q, the speech-prefixes of
Compositor B in 2 Henry IV may, then, be taken to bear
considerable weight
in attempts to sort out the question of the precise
printer's copy for the Folio
typesetting, as well as the more important one
of its text's derivation from that
of Q. One Shallow,
however, does not make a summer, and Taylor's statistics
for round brackets,
hyphens, and exclamations remain to be reckoned with, not
least because they
lack contextual analysis. On the other hand, should evidence
similar to B's
speech-prefixes (say, his spellings and typographical styling) con-
firm the
implications of these 'appurtenances', the case for annotated Quarto as
Folio copy would rest on a less ambiguous and more substantial basis than can
be provided by the substantive readings and anomalous features so long cited
and debated.
Bibliography and Textual Criticism, Lyell Lectures,
Trinity Term, 1959 (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1964), p. 171.
Matthias A. Shaaber, ed., The Second Part of Henry the
Fourth, New Variorum Edition
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott,
1940), pp. 463–515. Alice Walker, 'Quarto "Copy" and the
1623
Folio: 2 Henry IV', Review of English Studies n.s. 2
(1951), 217–225; 'The Cancelled Lines
in 2
Henry IV, IV.i.93, 95', The Library III, 6
(1951), 115–116; Textual Problems of the First
Folio
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1953), pp. 94–120. J. Dover
Wilson, ed., The Second Part
of the History of Henry
IV, The New Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1965),
pp. 115–123, esp. p. 123. M. A. Shaaber, 'The Folio Text of 2 Henry IV', Shakespeare Quarterly
6 (1955), 135–144. Shaaber had concluded his appendix by
registering his impression that
'no convincing similarities' of
spelling, punctuation, and typographical style could be found
showing
that F descended from Q; in his article he discussed numerous but unsifted
instances
of spelling and capitalization drawn from the first three
acts that defied analysis because he
was unprepared to distinguish the
insignificant from the possibly significant evidence. Wilson's
revisions survived, without further notice of Walker's 1953 book, at least
through the 1965 re-
printing. The summaries, or abstractions, here
and in the succeeding paragraphs conceal much
complex and sometimes
subtle analysis and argument. For another summary, see Thomas L.
Berger, ed., The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth,
1600, Malone Society Reprints (Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press,
1990), pp. xiv–xvi. Quotations of Q are by reference to this
admirable edi-
tion, though those in the tables that follow, like
those from F, have been copied from electronic
files generously shared
by the Oxford Text Archive and corrected against the copies in Trinity
College, Cambridge.
W. W. Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio: Its
Bibliographical and Textual History (Oxford:
Clarendon Press,
1955), pp. 262–276. About the common errors Greg wrote: 'critics can
usu-
ally be found to defend any nonsense and see in it proof of the
subtlety of the author's thought'
(p. 270).
Fredson Bowers, 'A Definitive Text of Shakespeare: Problems and Methods',
Studies
in Shakespeare, ed. Arthur D.
Matthews and Clark M. Emery, Univ. of Miami Publications in
English
and American Literature (Coral Gables, Fla.: Univ. of Miami Press, 1953), p.
26. Bow-
ers' hypothesis specified that the example of Q in question
had been annotated by comparison
with the original but worn-out
prompt-book and had then replaced it; the transcript was made
for
Jaggard's men in order to preserve the company's current prompt-book.
A. R. Humphreys, ed., The Second Part of King Henry
IV, The Arden Edition of the
Works of William Shakespeare
(London: Methuen, 1966), pp. lxviii–lxxxiv, esp. pp. lxxx, lxxxii,
lxxxiii.
Hardin Craig and David Bevington, eds., The Complete Works
of Shakespeare (Glenview,
Ill.: Scott, Foresman, 1973),
Appendix I, p. 1314. G. Blakemore Evans, textual ed., The
Riverside
Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), p.
923.
'The Text of 2 Henry IV: Facts and Problems', Shakespeare Studies 9 (1976), 173–182,
esp. p. 179. Williams (p. 182, n. 34), unlike other scholars since Greg,
confronts Walker's
'maner', a potential 'bibliographical link' which
he dismisses on two grounds: (1) F's form
may have also been used to
justify its line (an argument that, in turn, must be dismissed); (2)
the spelling represents the norm in Q1 1H4 (a telling
point if his theory is correct that the
manuscript behind that print
and F were by the same hand). J. K. Walton's The Quarto
Copy for
the First Folio of Shakespeare (Dublin: Dublin Univ.
Press, 1971) in its polemical preoccupation
with method, its reliance
on statistics of substantive errors, and its attacks on Walker's position
as well as Bowers', nonetheless seems to follow the consensus in its
view that F 2H4 was set
from manuscript, in its
view that there is 'little resemblance in accidentals' between Q and F
(p. 202), and in its citation of 'dowlny' / 'dowlne' as anomalous spellings
but studied ignorance
of Walker's 'maner' (pp. 206–207).
The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth
(Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books,
1977), esp. pp. 290,
293–294; 'The Printing of the Folio Edition of 2
Henry IV', The Library V,
32 (1977), 256–261, esp. p.
256.
Stanley Wells, gen. ed. & introd., Gary Taylor, gen. ed., John Jowett
and William
Montgomery, eds., William Shakespeare:
The Complete Works (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986);
Wells,
Taylor, et al., William Shakespeare: A Textual
Companion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987),
pp. 351–354;
supplemented by John Jowett and Gary Taylor, 'The Three Texts of 2 Henry IV',
SB 40 (1987), 31–50, Gary
Taylor and John Jowett, Shakespeare Reshaped:
1606–1623, Oxford
Shakespeare Studies (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1993), John Jowett, 'Cuts and Casting: Author
and
Book-Keeper in the Folio Text of "2 Henry IV"', AUMLA:
Journal of the Australasian Univer-
sities Language and Literature
Association 72 (1989), 275–295. The Oxford editors (primarily
Jowett
and Taylor) accept that Q was typeset from 'author's papers'
but argue that these included
a separate manuscript leaf containing
Shakespeare's addition of III.i (which the compositor
temporarily
overlooked) and that similar historical material found only in F represents
his still
later additions, rather than the cuts so long charged to
Simmes's book. The 'cavalier' scribe
of the Folio manuscript was
responsible for most of the remarkable features of F's text, some
of
them (e.g., excision of profanity and introduction of act divisions) in
accord with general
theatrical practice early in the seventeenth
century. Post-publication buttressing of these posi-
tions elaborated
some arguments and supported the rejection of annotated Q with comparative
statistics for frequency of round brackets, exclamations, and hyphens
throughout F, but without
analysis of context and particular
circumstances (Taylor, Shakespeare Reshaped, pp.
245–247),
which by implication must have been effectively
uniform. On the other hand, the editors note
that most of the QF
common errors they identify occur between TLN 1843 (Riverside III.ii.313;
Oxford III.ii.308) and 2119 (IV.ii.19; IV.i.245) and conjecture that
the scribe must have been
influenced to choose Q's readings here
(rather than those of his MS copy) either because F had
additional
passages or because change of manuscript leaves caused him trouble. Whether
or not
this solution is satisfactory, such desirable division of the
problem and particular analysis has
been, regrettably, wanting in some
past work, where the temptation to treat the play simply as
a whole
has not always been successfully resisted.
Giorgio Melchiori, ed., The Second Part of King Henry
IV, New Cambridge Shakespeare
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1989), pp. 189–202; 'The Role of Jealousy: Restoring the
Q Reading of 2 Henry IV, Induction, 16', Shakespeare Quarterly 34 (1983), 327–330; 'Sir
John
Umfrevile in Henry IV, Part 2,
I.i.169–79', REAL 2 (1984), 199–210;
'Reconstructing the Ur-
Henry IV', Essays in Honour of Kristian Smidt, ed. L.
Hartveit, P. Bilton, S.Johansson (Oslo: PPP,
1986), pp. 59–78.
Disposed to follow Prosser's assessments at many points, and regarding F as
having 'no real authority', this edition focuses on the muddles in Q.
It explains the eight Folio
passages missing there as having been in
the foul-papers which eventually provided Simmes's
copy, where they
were marked with deletions (sometimes unclearly) by a reviser 'acting upon
the players' instructions, with a view to preparing the copy for the
book-keeper in charge of
getting the prompt-book ready'. Doubling
figured in this 'revision' of the Q manuscript, which
also included
'one or two pages or leaves left over from the earlier version of the Henry
play'
that Shakespeare inserted from his original ur-Henry IV
manuscript in order to save buying
paper, though he did so only when
the printing of Q was at an advanced stage, and after the
'reviser'
had completed his job. This speculated process is meant to help explain the
many
odd and inconsistent speech-prefixes in Q and why the many
deletions and splices made in the
foul-papers were often
misinterpreted by the reviser, the scribe for F's manuscript copy, and
presumably the Q compositor.
Rene Weis, ed., Henry IV, Part 2 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1998), pp. 89, 97–99. In
this account the 1606 date
explains the purged profanity, but the playbook nonetheless retained
the politically sensitive passages. Despite his disagreements with the
Oxford editors (Jowett
and Taylor) regarding the play's textual
history, Weis's text ultimately resembles the Oxford
Edition's more
than any other predecessor's.
In the best of situations, such events could not be reconstructed in any
detail; here the
question is complicated by Prosser's inferences about
the actions of the scribe supposed to have
interfered in the text of
the manuscript she believes lies behind F (as well as Q). Compositor
J/A's apparent compression of sigs. χgg2v–4 (which she ignores) raises doubt about the
time
scheme she conjectures, and her views on B's alteration of
wording contradict what we can
conclude about his work on much surer
grounds. On this last, see Paul Werstine, 'Compositor
B of the
Shakespeare First Folio', Analytical and Enumerative
Bibliography 2 (1978), 241–263, and
his review of
Prosser's book in Modern Philology 81 (1984),
419–422. See also Taylor, Shakespeare
Reshaped, pp. 66–69.
Column b of sig. g4 may perhaps exhibit some liberal spacing around the
heading and
opening stage-direction of II.iii; it is here, too, that
the first major addition to the Quarto text
occurred in B's work. But
the evidence of compression or expansion in this page is very slim
compared to other pages in this quire and those in the next.
Since B set these pages before g1–3—they were in fact his
first ones in the play except
for f6v, where he
encountered only Rumour, Lord Bardolph, the Porter, and
Northumberland—
he might be expected to have reproduced more
full forms while he became acquainted with the
characters, in accord
with his general practice; however, this theory is not especially compel-
ling once it is recognized that he would have been familiar with many
of the characters from
having just set 1H4.
See the end of section II above and Appendix, Note B, for discussion of the
'Pointz.'
at 1H4,
214. As there, B's odd form might reflect annotation; the opening
stage-direction for
this scene (790) containing an earlier instance of
this form would have been either heavily an-
notated or entirely
rewritten. There is, however, a 'Pointz' in the
dialogue in this scene (818)
just above a deleted oath—as well
as in J/A's work, at 2430—and so the form could reflect
either
B's own preference or an annotator's. Even these possibilities do not really
affect the
value of this full and peculiar speech-prefix as evidence
of the relationship between F and Q
with its own unique form.
Considerations more or less aesthetic (akin to what we might now call
typographical
layout) could have influenced B to use longer forms in
these lines, which begin oddly lined
speeches that may reflect
attempts at page extension. Yet what was actually achieved by the
use
of such forms is far from clear.
Half of these speech-prefixes are in short lines, none in long lines that
just barely flow
over to create a second type line. The testimony of 4
is clouded but cannot be dismissed out
of hand: 2 (2809L, 2832L) begin
prose speeches that occupy several lines, though it is not clear
that
they were altered to full forms to justify the lines; 2 others (2804, 2826)
begin oddly lined
speeches, though it is not clear that the full forms
served any decisive purpose. Even if we cau-
tiously discount these 4
(as is done above), the other 4 remain, and it is noteworthy that Prosser
does not cite any of them in her analysis of expansion in these pages,
though she discusses lines
2804 and 2826 as instances of prose lines
divided so as to create extra type lines under the guise
of faux verse
(p. 97). 'Dauie.' (2795), B's first instance of the
full speech-prefix, may reflect the
additional influence of the
preceding annotated stage-direction in its -ie
spelling (as might the
immediately preceding word in the
dialogue).
Some of these shorter forms may have been affected by line justification,
but 2 (3086,
3101NL) definitely are not; nor is the 'Dauy.' in this page (3070).
Howard-Hill, 'Compositors B and E', p. 46. In the Histories, the shorter
form appears
7 times on sig. i5 (H5) and on
sig. p6 (3H6), besides its single appearance in 1H4 (see below).
Henry V, it will be recalled, preceded both 1H4 and 2H4.
There are 4 others, in the pages of the second issue of Q, but these would
have been
encountered not by B, but by J/A, if at all. (Opinion favors
the first issue, not the second, as
lying behind F—i.e., as
having been used for the manuscript that provided copy for it—but
the conclusion rests on uncertain grounds.)
B's pages of 1H4 have only 7 (1NL+6L) 'Falst.' forms, as against 19+2NL+45L exam-
ples
of 'Fal.', B's clear favorite. He carried this
preference over into 2H4: g3v
has only the short
form, instead of the 7 'Falst.' and 3 'Falstaffe' in Q. There is no
credible evidence that a need
to compress induced B to select the
short form in g3v against a contrary inclination,
whereas
such pressure was clearly in force in g3, where B nonetheless
set the longer form found in Q
more often than his preferred 'Fal.', and mostly in lines where justification was not
evidently
a factor.
Cf. the four longer forms clustered in column a of sig. f2 of 1H4, which seem to rep-
resent a temporary
departure from habit, perhaps associated with expansion in this page, as do
the 'Prince.' forms there (see section III and
note 24 above).
Aesthetics, it might be argued, could have induced B to aim at filling the
direction line
with as much letter as possible, but elsewhere he did
not shrink from three-letter catchwords
and set 'Tra.', for instance, on the first page of the play. Nor does this
seem to be the effect of
sort shortage, namely of the italic st ligature in a play that made unusual demands on it
(cf.
'Host.', 'Iust.', 'Hast.'). Exhaustion of
the sort, or sorts (there were two, one with the long s, the
other with the short, apparently mixed in the same
box), would have led B to use his favored
'Fal.', as would any tendency to conserve the sort against future
demands; if anything, then,
these forms testify to the strong
influence copy exerted in the face of contrary forces.
A similar case is B's only 'Beatr.' in Ado for the 'Beatrice.' of Q,
also set by Simmes's A
at almost the same time (see section III above
and Appendix, Note A). Apparently in response
to other annotations, B
also departed from his preferences when he set 'Officer.' (3186) once and
'Glou.'
twice (2906, 2912) towards the end of the play, despite his use of shorter
forms earlier; all
three of these occur where Q's speech-prefixes
would have been altered by an annotator.
See Prosser, pp. 95, 101 on some of these. The 'Shallow.' on χgg5v (2824L) appears in
any case to be a product of
justification.
As argued above, stage-directions were usually not sufficient of themselves
to cause
such aberration, but here major annotation potentially
complicates the picture. Systematic
study of the compositors'
performance where other annotations would have occurred is needed
before annotated quarto can be dismissed or confirmed confidently. Both of
these apparently
anomalous full speech-prefixes (3216, 3171L) could
turn around to be evidence not against but
for annotated quarto.
IV
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