University of Virginia Library

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