The Pirated Quarto of Dryden's
State of
Innocence
[*]
Fredson Bowers
In "The Early Editions of Dryden's State of Innocence"
appearing in the present volume, Dr. Marion H. Hamilton establishes
the very curious fact that Q9 (Macdonald 81c) was printed not in
1684 as stated on its title-page but instead in 1695 or later.
Moreover, although this misdated edition made an obvious effort to
imitate a printing peculiarity of Q4, dated 1684 (M 81d), as well
as its title-page, in fact it used Q8 of 1695 (M 81h) as its copy
although Q4 seems to have been collated for certain readings on
sigs. C1v, F1, and F1v. However odd
these facts are, as Dr.
Hamilton argues they point unmistakably to an act of piracy.
My purpose in this note is to examine the reasons why Q9 may
have drawn its text from Q8, though imitating the appearance of Q4;
but more especially to endeavor to explain the curious clustering
of variants, presumably drawn from Q4, only in two widely separated
sheets of Q9.
The story must begin with the peculiar collation of Q4 as
A-E4 F2 G4, with G1
missigned F1 although G2 is correctly
signed. Two possible explanations suggest themselves. When the
typesetting of an edition is divided between two or more
compositors and presses, the estimated division may prove to be
inaccurate. If there is too little material assigned him, the
compositor of the first section may be unable to space his setting
to join exactly with the already-printed first sheet of the second
section. In such a case, the first press will print its final
gathering in less than a full sheet. As opposed to this, if the
first press has been assigned more than its proper share of
material, it will need to print an extra leaf or leaves. Since Q4
is not a paginal reprint of its copy, Q3, some such confusion might
have developed. If so, the signing of G1 as F1 would point rather
to extra than to insufficient material
given to the first compositor (if the outer forme were first on the
press), since it would seem that half-sheet F was an
afterthought.
This explanation, though possible, is not very satisfactory. If
the point of division was originally assigned as between gatherings
E and F, the play would have been so nearly typeset as to preclude
any such plan ordered from the beginning. Normally a play to be
printed simultaneously in two sections is divided close to the
halfway mark.[1] Hence it would be
necessary to conjecture that with Q4 a second press was ordered
into action to print only the final sheet and thus to speed
publication. If so, however, one might expect some evidence of a
different compositor and press. Although the lack of running-titles
prevents definite determination, there is nothing either in the
length of the printer's measure or in the general typographical
layout to lead one to suspect the presence of a second compositor
and press. Moreover, if the missigning of G1 as F1 indicates an
original plan to compress the Q3 makeup, the correct signing on
G2 shows that the proper position of the sheet was known by the
time the inner forme was sent to press. In other words, by the time
the second, or inner, forme of G was machined, the compositor of
the first section would have found that he could not include all of
his material in sheet E.
This reconstruction is not impossible, but it does not carry
conviction, largely because such a major error in casting off
printed copy so near the end of the book would be highly unusual.
The second explanation, for which I am indebted to a suggestion
made by Dr. Giles E. Dawson, is therefore to be preferred.
According to this hypothesis, only one compositor and press were
concerned with the entire printing of this edition, but when the
time came to make up the formes for sheet F, four pages of text
were inadvertently passed over. Accordingly, the final eight pages
of type were imposed, outer forme first, and this outer forme was
sent to the press, signed F. Sometime during the printing of this
forme the error was discovered, and thereupon the forme was
perfected, correctly signed G2 on the second leaf. To repair the
mistake, half-sheet F was imposed and printed with the omitted four
pages. Although I have not seen a close analogy for such an error
in imposition,
this explanation conforms most closely to the evidence of the
quarto and is very likely correct.
When we examine Q9, we see that the printer chose to disguise a
piracy by imitating the makeup of Q4, an out-of-date edition and
one containing a particularly noticeable aberrancy in its
half-sheet F. The choice of Q4 to pirate, rather than Q8, was
doubtless dictated in part because copies would not be common to
provoke comparison, in part because the stationers named in its
imprint were by 1695 with one exception inactive, and in part
because reproduction of the Q4 abnormal makeup would be supposed
sufficient to allay suspicions. These considerations would not
operate if an attempt were made to pirate the most recent edition,
available in quantity, and readily to be compared against an
imitation.
This may be sufficient to explain why the form of Q4, and not
that of Q8, was pirated, but it fails to account for the odd fact
that Q8 was used as printer's copy instead of the natural candidate
Q4. One possible answer could appeal to the common custom of
utilizing the last printed edition as copy for the next, a custom
which seems to have had as a basis not only its obvious convenience
but also, perhaps, some feeling that a late edition was textually
superior to its predecessors. With our knowledge of the
degeneration of texts in the course of reprinting, this
attitude—if indeed
it were held—would seem to have been singularly naive. Yet from
one point of view, at least, and this could have operated very
powerfully on a printer's thinking, a late edition was indeed
superior in that it offered for copy a modernized form of the
texture to an age critical of old-fashioned ways. Moreover, a very
practical reason could be present. If a printer is to make a
line-for-line and page-for-page reprint, clearly it is more
convenient in setting lines which will require a minimum of
justification to choose as copy a text which in its accidentals
will be nearest in modernity to those of the compositor setting the
new edition.
If this explanation is valid, we should have the reason why the
pirating printer of Q9 chose to set up what is substantially a
page-for-page reprint of Q8, disguising it by imitating the
title-page of Q4, and the Q4 aberrant half-sheet F, instead of
utilizing Q4 as his copy.[2]
The chief problem in Q9 is the necessity to explain the
particular pages on which variants appear, indicating collation
with some earlier edition, very probably Q4. Here the
bibliographical evidence of the running-titles is important. In the
first place, only one skeleton-forme was used to print the entire
edition, this skeleton imposing the type-pages for both the inner
and outer formes of every sheet. This evidence shows that the Q9
edition-sheet was a small one, in which presswork would normally be
faster than compositorial speed.[3]
Secondly, the printer made sure of following his Q4 model by
completing first a paginal typesetting of sigs. F1-2v from
Q8
and then sending these four pages to the press as F2
printed by
half-sheet imposition. Then he started the normal text by imposing
and machining the inner forme of sheet C.
This order can be demonstrated by the lucky chance that a variant
typesetting of one running-title appears only on C3v and
F1r,
thus establishing that the same state of the skeleton-forme printed
inner C and half-sheet F, one following the other. However, when
this same skeleton imposed the outer forme of C and all subsequent
formes, the running-title on C3v had presumably pied and
was
reset. This evidence shows, moreover, that half-sheet F was printed
before inner C, since otherwise we should need to assume that inner
C was run off but before perfecting it the printer set and machined
half-sheet F.
The importance of this reconstruction lies in the fact that,
with two possible exceptions, the Q9 divergences from Q8 copy to
restore earlier readings are confined exclusively to half-sheet F
and to the inner forme of sheet C, which can be shown to have been
printed one following the other. Such a remarkable coincidence of
bibliographical and textual evidence cannot be fortuitous.[4]
Two alternative explanations may be advanced for this
peculiarity. The first and the simplest is that proof was read
against Q4, Q8 being in the compositor's hands, and that these
variants are therefore proof-reader's markings. The second is that
the compositor hastily and incompletely collated the Q8 text
against some early edition, probably Q4, before typesetting, and
made notes in his Q8 copy of the variants he happened to observe or
thought to be sufficiently significant to warrant alteration. A
choice between these can only be speculative. Against the
hypothesis for a proofreader is the fact that in general proof does
not seem to have been read on reprints, and certainly not against
copy. This last is unusual enough even for first editions. Against
the compositor is the unusual care and initiative the process would
evince. But since these variants manifestly were made by collation
in some fashion against an early edition, more than usual care is
shown,
at least at the start of the printing.
This last fact is of interest, for the demonstrable variants
cease after the printing of half-sheet F and inner forme C
(specifically, C1v). The evidence may suggest, therefore,
that
the compositor was the collator, that he was setting by
formes,[5] and that he stopped
probably after collating C1v. The reason is not far to seek,
I
think. Since the edition was small, as evidenced by the use of only
one skeleton-forme, typesetting was almost certainly slower than
presswork once distribution had to be started, and hence it soon
became clear that the luxury of collation could not be managed
without delaying the press inordinately. It was, therefore,
discontinued, and the remainder of the play was set directly from
uncollated Q8 copy in the most expeditious manner.
Notes
