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I. Collation and Pagination
THE FOURTH FOLIO OF SHAKESPEARE (1685) was printed in three sections by three different printers, the first of whom Professor Bowers has recently shown to have been Robert Roberts.[1] The collation of F4 is i 2 iA4 A-Y6 Z4, 2B-2Z6 *3A-*; 3D6 *3E8, 3A-4B6 4C2. Roberts' section, which, as Bowers demonstrates, includes the preliminary sheets, contains the Comedies and ends with Z4; the second section contains the Histories and Troilus, Coriolanus, Titus, and Romeo and ends with *3E8; the third contains the rest of the Tragedies and the apocryphal plays. In the second section errors in signatures are uncommonly numerous, and some of these are not without interest. The most serious of the errors consist of the misprinting of sigs. 2B1 through 2C3 as B, B2, B3; C, C2, C3. 2D3 is printed D3. 2E3 is not printed. 2O1 is printed Pp. *3E1 and *3E2 are printed without the asterisks; but *Eee3 and *Eee4 are correctly so printed. Being important in the gathering and folding of sheets, signatures are in most books printed much more carefully than pagination; we do not often meet with such gross carelessness as these sheets exhibit. Nor was it here allowed to pass unnoticed. On the contrary, once these errors were discovered the printer took drastic steps to correct at least those most likely to make trouble. The discovery appears to have occurred while 2O1 was in the press and near the
The pagination of the volume is A1-H6, 1-96; I1-O1, 99-160; O2-X5, 163-254; X6-Z3, 253('243')-272; 2B1-*3E8, 1-328, 3A1-4C2, 1-302. In addition to the errors indicated in this formula which affect the total count of Section 1, the following simple errors occur in all copies (ten in number) in which I have examined the pagination: 109 is printed for 107, 111 for 109, 186 for 190, 187 for 191, 221 for 219, 234 for 246, 243 for 253 bis. In nine of the ten copies 33 is misprinted 23, and in three 164 is misprinted 160, and 169-171. This carelessness in the printing of page numbers is not uncommon either in kind or, I believe, in degree. Far more unusual is the excellent pagination in Section 2, where I have found no errors of any kind. Section 3 falls but little short of this ideal, having, so far as I have found, only one simple misprint: 176 for 167. All the errors in Section 1 noted above (as well as that in Section 3) may be seen in the Methuen facsimile, with the exception of pp. 164 and 169.
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