My aim in this paper is to suggest what purposes compositor determination
may serve and, in view of these purposes, on what basis the analysis should
be made. The focus will be on the thirty years or so in which our
substantive texts of Shakespeare's
plays were printed; but although the focus is on Shakespeare
the matter is of interest to all concerned with printed books of the period,
whether as bibliographers or editors.
Very little is known about printing-house spelling. A philologist can,
of
course, relate spelling to the derivation of a word and to the sound
changes, or other influences, which at one time or another have affected it.
He knows why variant spellings like 'blood' and 'bloud' originated; but he
does not know what their distribution is in this period. The
O.E.D.
is, of course,
the main authority on the spelling of
printed books; but although it gives a good general conspectus (though not
always a complete record) or the range of spellings for a particular word,
and although it sheds a great deal of light on what lies behind anomalies in
modern spelling, it was no part of its programme to treat the subject either
comprehensively or systematically: it is a history of the meaning of words,
not their form. Thus, to take a simple example, it explains the origin of
the spellings 'show' and 'shew' and remarks that the two spellings reflected
different pronunciations originating in the Old English period and surviving
(on the evidence of rhymes) down to about 1700; it observes
that the 'shew' spelling was prevalent in the eighteenth century and not
uncommon in the first half of the nineteenth century; but it sheds no light
on the distribution of these two spellings in
Shakespeare's day or on the distribution of the longer
forms with a final 'e'. We cannot even be certain that the
O.E.D.
extracts from
this period (however numerous they may
be) necessarily
give a just picture. The extracts
cited were intended to illustrate meaning, not spelling: consequently,
though most of the reading for the Modern English period was of printed
books (not manuscript), some of the extracts were taken from modernised
texts. Thus, after remarking that the present-day spelling 'blue' was hardly
known in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the normal spelling
was 'blew', it cites under 'blue-bottle' a modernised (quarto) spelling for
2 Henry IV
, V.iv.20.
The Folio spelling with 'blew' follows
in parenthesis, but only because the Folio has the error 'blew- Bottel'd',
not because Jaggard's spelling differed
from
that of Simmes's quarto.
It is not, of course, surprising that no effort has been made to study
the spelling of Elizabethan and Jacobean books systematically. This is
partly because the view has been widely held that it was chaotic and, now
that it is recognised that there was certainly method in its seeming
vagaries and that investigation must proceed on the basis of compositors,
it
is clear that little good might have come of a survey even if it had been
made. The natural line of attack in the past would have been chronological,
by printers or by authors, and might therefore have failed to penetrate to
the compositor-basis which is of prime importance. The subject has,
anyway,
not roused much interest. The phonologist recognises that it was mainly
conventional spelling and out of touch with the spoken word. Consequently,
it can tell him little about the pronunciation of Shakespeare's day. His attention is focused on
the
'phonetic' spellings of uninstructed writers and, therefore, on manuscript
spellings — and the naiver the writer, the better for his
purpose. From a phonological point of view
John of Bordeaux
is far more exciting than the First Folio or even
Sir Thomas More
D
. Among textual critics, though wiser heads have never
supposed
that the spelling of printed books was the author's (the
Old
Cambridge
editors, for instance, rejected the idea of
an
old spelling Shakespeare on this
account), there
is even yet a great deal of muddled thinking. Spellings of one writer are
compared with those of another on the evidence of printed texts of different
dates from different printing houses[1] and
the vagaries of
compositors are being erratically introduced into modernised texts of
Shakespeare.[2] A systematic study of
printing-house spelling is plainly wanted, if only to act as a curb on this
kind of folly.
Unfortunately, Willoughby's
interpretation of
Satchell's observations on spellings in
Macbeth
was not at once
followed up, but Hinman's reopening of the matter has
stimulated keener
interest. This is partly, no doubt, because of the close link between
compositor-analysis and presswork, but partly too because it is now
recognised that an analysis of the spelling of printed texts can shed a
great deal of light on what has been the focal point of twentieth-century
Shakespearian textual criticism
—
the problem of transmission; and that we know all too little about the
stage in the transmission of substantive texts about which we could know
most — their metamorphosis into print — is now, I
think, generally recognised. The study of the ways of compositors should
enable us to isolate with some confidence not only the accidentals of
printed texts which were not due to copy but also (even more important) the
substantive errors of compositors.
The main purpose of compositor-determination as I see it is,
therefore,
to clarify a stage in transmission about which we know very little and ought
to know more. But we shall be neglecting a great many important
ramifications if the enquiry results in no more than a short list of words
which serve to distinguish the hand of one compositor from another. This
kind of rigidity is at variance with the fundamental characteristic of
printing-house spelling — its fluidity — nd the
treatment of the subject should partake of its character. Some habits of
compositors were fixed (at any rate over a period of years) and these fixed
habits included not only spellings which serve to differentiate between the
hand of one compositor and a fellow-workman but also spellings which
serve
to bind. From
The Merchant of
Venice
Q1
,
Titus Andronicus
Q2
, and
Hamlet
Q2
, for instance, it would appear
that both
of Roberts's compositors were 'doe',
'goe',
'heere', 'young', 'blood', 'devill', and 'yeere' spellers. At the same time,
spellings common to a pair of compositors (or peculiar to one) were liable
to alter, either temporarily (under the influence of copy) or more
permanently (possibly in response to changing fashions). We cannot even
treat the
First Folio
as a unit. My
own
differential spellings have special reference to the plays printed in
1623 Many of them (and certainly most of A's) are
no use for the
Comedies. Changes in habit can even
be seen in the plays printed in 1623 In the Comedies
printed
(according to Willoughby) in
1621
the capitalising of 'heaven' is erratic. In the plays printed in
1623, A's practice (almost invariable) is to capitalise the
word. B (almost invariably) uses a lower case letter until
Macbeth
. In this play
and thereafter B's practice (though
never so steady as A's) is to capitalise. Another change one can watch in
progress is the spelling of 'prithee'. The usual spelling in the
1621 Comedies was 'prethee'. This holds for
The Winter's
Tale
. In the Histories of 1623 there is
much wavering
and B's struggles to be off with the old love are interesting. It was
plainly his intention to substitute 'prythee' for
Q5
's 'prethee' in
1 Henry IV
.
He managed it on the first four occasions but succumbed to past habits and
the influence of copy on all but two subsequent occasions and continued as
a
'prethee' speller throughout
2 Henry
IV
. His new spelling
comes to the fore in
3 Henry
VI
and
Richard
III
, is established in
Henry VIII
, and never wavers
in the Tragedies.
Changes such as are apparent in the
Folio
are not, of course, exceptional. What serves to differentiate between two
Danter compositors in
1593 is
partly obsolete in 1594 What serves to discriminate
between
Roberts's two compositors in
The Merchant
of Venice
1600 is in some cases
irrelevant to
Hamlet
1604-1605 A pair of compositors might
draw together over some spellings but apart over others, and how often
their
spelling changed in one particular or another is of as much importance as
their fixed habits.
My expectation is that, if a study of printing-house spelling could be
made on a broad basis, including not merely what serves to distinguish
between one compositor and another but also what serves to unify, as well
as
what is variable and what is fixed, we should have an instructive and
serviceable conspectus of use to bibliographers and editors alike.
For the analytical bibliographer, compositor-determination is plainly
an
important link with press-work and there is no need for me to enlarge upon
the way in which the one kind of analysis is complementary to the other.
As
regards another field of bibliographical work, fuller information about
compositors, if broadly based, should serve to identify printers, where
other means fail, and to date (at any rate approximately) undated books and
cancels. There are, for instance, a number of plays in Greg's
Bibliography
whose printers are
either unknown or doubtful. These may have been written off as Lost
Property
merely because no one has had occasion to use them. They may even have
been
under scrutiny since the
Bibliography
was published. But
assuming they have not yet been assigned to a particular printer, I judge
that anyone acquainted with the spelling of
Simmes's, Creede's,
and Eld's compositors could determine,
almost at
a glance, to which of the three No. 242 (The
Fair Maid of the
Exchange
, 1607) should be assigned, and similarly
whether No. 278
(
Mustapha
,
1609 was Windet's or not. In Lodge's
Wounds of Civil War
,
printed by Danter
in 1594 for instance, there are
plainly two hands: the first characterised by the spellings 'prowd',
'young', 'friend', 'Romaine', 'sirra', 'powre', 'thrise', 'fruit' and
'poore'; the second by 'proud', 'yong', 'frend', 'Romane', 'sirrha',
'power', 'thrice', 'frute', and 'pore'. Both compositors were 'goe', 'here'
spellers (firm Danter compositor
characteristics
in 1593-4) and other Danter texts
exemplify the
ending 'icke' as common ground during this period. Not all of these
spellings are relevant to
Romeo and
Juliet
Q1, printed in
1597, but when we find that the first
Romeo and
Juliet
compositor (A-D) was a 'goe', 'here', 'young'
speller and the
second (E-K) was a 'goe', 'yong', 'frend' speller we are on the way to
establishing that Lodge's
Wounds
and
Romeo and Juliet
Q1 were set by the same pair of men. And
when we find in
Fair
Em
, assigned tentatively to Danter by Greg (on the
evidence of an ornament), the characteristic 'goe', 'here', ' —
icke', 'proud', 'power', 'yong' spellings of the second
Wounds
compositor, we
can be reasonably certain that Danter
was indeed the printer of this play. The quarto is undated, but the spelling
places it (as the
Malone Society
editor did)
before
Jack Straw
in
1593.
Reprints are, of course, a trickier problem than first editions, since
we
must expect the trail to be confused by the spellings of the print used as
copy. Roberts's reprint of
Titus
Andronicus
certainly gives a much distorted picture of the
habits of
the compositors who set it and suggests that it may be little use to try to
arrive at a compositor's normal practice from a reprint. This is, I judge,
what makes it difficult to identify the compositor (or compositors)
responsible for the
Folio
texts of
Titus Andronicus
and
Romeo and Juliet
. The
spelling is mixed not because the compositor was a 'mixed' speller but
because these texts (especially the latter) were hurried and careless
reprints.[3] By far the most systematic
spelling in
the
Folio
Histories
and
Tragedies
, on the part
of both Jaggard A and B, occurs in plays which were
certainly
set up from manuscript. In
1 Henry
VI
,
Julius
Caesar
, and
Macbeth
, for instance, spellings
which
fail to conform with the normal habits of the two compositors are strikingly
rare.
They are much commoner in
Richard
II
,
1 Henry
IV
, and in the half dozen plays set up, I
believe, from corrected quartos. It was, in fact, the somewhat 'mixed'
spelling of
2 Henry IV
,
Hamlet
, and
Othello
which partly led
me in the first place to range them
with
Richard II
,
1 Henry IV
,
Richard
III
,
Lear
, and
Troilus and Cressida
rather than with plays for which Jaggard must
certainly have had manuscript copy.
[4] In
Troilus and Cressida
for
instance, Jaggard A seems to have abandoned most of his
characteristic spellings in favour of Eld's.
Possibly the mechanical reproduction of copy induced relaxation of effort
in
the interests of speed and what caused steadier spelling in setting from
manuscript may have been the necessarily slower pace.
[5]
But although I suspect that reprints will seldom provide a safe- guide
to
a compositor's usual habits, the contamination from an earlier print that we
should expect to find can be turned to advantage. I feel certain that, if a
copy of
Titus
Q1 had
never come to light, an analysis of the
habits of Roberts's compositors when
working
from manuscript would have made it clear that the spelling of the
1600 quarto was too mixed to be that of a first edition
and a
legitimate inference would have been that some characteristic Roberts habits had been superimposed on an
earlier
print with 'here', 'yeare' and final ' — icke' spellings. It is
easy, of course, to be wise after the event; but what can be established on
the basis of this reprint and some Jaggard
reprints might be applied to other texts which may be reprints of a lost
predecessor. Is, for instance, the spelling of
Love's Labour's
Lost
Q1 fully typical of White? What
about
The Spanish
Tragedy
(Greg,
No. 110),
Edward II
(No. 129),
David and
Bethsabe
(No. 160)?
The need to know all we can about compositors' habits is manifestly
of
considerable importance to an editor. I do not for a moment suppose that
increased knowledge will enable us to recover enough of Shakespeare's own spelling to transliterate
substantive
prints into that; nor, on the other hand, will it ever be possible to
translate the vagaries of the early texts into a kind of standardised old
spelling The former would be a
mingle-mangle of spellings neither fully representative of Shakespeare nor of his compositors. The latter
would
be linguistic lunacy — much as if we were to devise a standard
Middle English and re-write texts from different parts of the country and
of
different periods in terms of that. Only one standardisation is possible
— full modernisation — nd for an old spelling text we
must accept the spelling of Shakespeare's
printers and explain their different conventions in terms of date and
compositors in the way that Middle English texts are explained in terms of
date, dialect, and scribes. For the rest, the most we can hope to recover
from behind the veil of compositors' spellings is a clearer impression of
the manuscript, or other copy, with a view to elucidating textual problems.
How disruptive any tinkering with the accidentals of a copy-text would be
is
plain from the spellings of
Sir Thomas
More
D. Even if we
made the unlikely and unwarranted assumption that Shakespeare's spelling was much the same from
the early
1590s to 1608, we could not introduce
'yf', 'yt',
'coold', 'shoold', 'woold', 'ar', 'wer' into, for instance, Jaggard texts, nor break down Short's consistent 'sheriffe' spelling of
1
Henry IV
, II.iv into the variable spellings of the
More
fragment.
It is the old spelling editor who naturally most needs the kind of
guidance which a survey of printing-house spelling will provide. It is
obvious that when the
Folio
error
'Vassailes'
(Antony and
Cleopatra
, I.iv.56) is emended to
Pope's 'wassails', all that is wanted
is the
substitution of an initial W for the
Folio's
V. It is equally obvious that
Hamlet
Q2's 'lowlines'
(III.i.46), to be corrected to the
Folio's
'lonelinesse', requires no more than the substitution of 'ne' for 'w' and
that it would be quite wrong to introduce the
Folio's
long termination into
Roberts's text where short spellings in 'nes' are
the
rule. It may be less obvious that when the Folio's 'counsell' is supplied at
III.ii.137 it must be altered to 'counsaile'. As our eyes get more critical
of old spelling we shall find increasingly offensive anomalies like Duthie's 'Then prethee' in
Lear
, IV.i.
This spelling (imported without alteration from the quarto) gives one a jolt
as it has no business in any of the Tragedies set by Jaggard B. Nor is the
Lear
quarto's
'dearer' the correct emendation of the Folio 'deere' (III.v.24); since
Jaggard B was a 'deere' speller, 'deerer' is
wanted.
To an eye trained to register the characteristic spellings of a
compositor, errors sometimes acquire an added significance. In
Romeo
and Juliet
Q2 (IV.i.83) the error 'chapels' (for 'chapless')
is not
a simple case of two letters having been accidentally transposed. The
termination ' — lesse' is invariably used throughout this text.
What the error signifies, therefore is that the compositor never intended to
set up 'chaplesse' but misinterpreted as 'chapels' the spelling of his copy
which must have had the short
spelling
'chaples'. If the copy had had the long spelling the error would not have
occurred. The correction of the error in an old spelling edition requires
notwithstanding 'chaplesse', since the Old Spelling editor must emend in
accordance with the compositor's normal practice. Similarly, Compositor
A's
error of 'Naples' (for 'napless') in
Coriolanus
, II.i.224,
would probably not have occurred if the manuscript had had the long
spelling. The error is best explained as due to the misinterpretation of a
manuscript short spelling, which (if Jaggard A had understood it) would
have
appeared in the
Folio
as
'naplesse'. Again,
if we accept the
Folio
correction
of Q1's
'that accord' to 'it action' in
Titus
Andronicus
V.ii.18, we
must postulate that the quarto compositor misinterpreted 'yt' (for 'it') as
the contraction. All the same, the text requires the 'it' spelling (not the
postulated 'yt' of the copy) since 'yt' in Danter's quarto would be anomalous. Similarly,
a
number of Jaggard B's errors in
Antony
and Cleopatra
, due to the misreading of final 'd' as 'e'
(owing
presumably to the absence of an apostrophe in his copy) require the
apostrophe when the correction is made: 'dumbe' at I.v.50, for instance,
should be corrected to 'dumb'd', since it was B's custom to use the
apostrophe.
[6]
It is perhaps failure to recognise that an Old Spelling edition of
Shakespeare requires primarily an understanding
of the
habits of compositors that encourages the idea that there is something
peculiarly difficult about it. The only difficulty is that it is an
expensive pastime — and I use the words 'expensive' and
'pastime' advisedly, because it demands freedom from all other
responsibilities and consequently considerable independent means. So far as
substantive readings go, the old spelling editor's task is no different from
that of the editor of a modernised edition; and so far as old spelling is
concerned, the problem is no different from that of editing any of Shakespeare's contemporaries whose works
survive only
(or mainly) in print. Consequently, attempts to penetrate to Shakespeare's own spelling (though important
for the
detection of errors in transmission) are irrelevant to the emendation in old
spelling of an Old Spelling text; nor can they wisely be made until
compositors' normalisations have been stripped from substantive quarto and
Folio texts set from autograph. A. C.
Partridge's recent inferences from
Venus and Adonis
and
Lucrece
exemplify,
for instance, the wrong way of
tackling the problem.[7] What
we need to know
is what the
normal habits were of the compositor who set these prints and until these
are known we cannot guess in what particulars he followed copy.
As some of the above errors (like 'chapels' in
Romeo and
Juliet
) show, a consideration of a compositor's normal
habits in
relation to his errors will sometimes throw light on the features of his
copy; but the most satisfactory evidence for the extent to which he followed
copy will be found in prints set in conjunction with another workman or in
reprints. Either will serve as a control, though the former is the better
evidence for accidentals and the latter for substantive readings. In
Hamlet
Q2, for instance
nearly all of the erroneous
apostrophes occur in the work of one compositor and we cannot therefore
suppose that these apostrophes were a feature of Roberts's manuscript. The same holds for the
frequency
with which erroneous apostrophes occur in the work of Jaggard B. There are no signs that he knew (or
even
tried to fathom) the difference between 'wert' and 'wer't', 'wast' and
'was't'. All the erroneous apostrophes in
3
Henry VI
and
Richard III
, for
instance, are in his stints and consequently
the large number of erroneous apostrophes in
Antony and
Cleopatra
which he set single-handed, were likely enough
not in the
copy at all any more than the apostrophe in 'dumb'd' (already mentioned).
On
the other hand, we must postulate, on the same evidence, that when
anomalous
apostrophes appear in the work of Jaggard A he
followed copy. We may not always find the differences between a pair of
compositors so marked as in the case of Jaggard
A and B, but the differences may prove greater, when analyses have been
made, than is immediately apparent.
I have so far concentrated on spelling as a main clue to compositor
determination. It is not, of course, necessarily the quickest and certainly
not the only way in which we can determine where the stint of one
workman
ended and that of another began. Typographical evidence and presswork
may
sometimes provide a speedier or alternative means of determining whether
more than one compositor was engaged on a print and may also assist in
diagnosing the maladies of a text. But, whatever the means which best serve
for differentiation, an analysis of spelling habits is none the less
necessary if full use is to be made of the evidence which compositors
provide for refining on what are, at present, often no more than
generalisations about the transmission of Shakespeare's plays and for establishing the
basis on
which Old Spelling texts should be emended in the appropriate spelling.
Anomalies representing manuscript spellings (or the spellings of other
prints) will look as alien as words introduced into one Middle English text
from another in a different dialect. And although I have kept the focus on
spelling, all accidentals (especially grammar and
punctuation) require analysis of the same kind. Very especially, work on
a single text or a few texts is quite useless. A compositor's hand needs to
be established in a sequence of printed texts before inferences can be drawn
concerning his habits. Anyone who generalises about Jaggard A's habits from
Troilus and
Cressida
will, for instance, get a sadly distorted
impression of his
normal spelling habits in the Histories and Tragedies.
Few editors of Shakespeare
are likely to be
confronted with the specialised problems of old spelling, though it should
be everyone's concern that the project of an old spelling edition is
realised as quickly as possible. A definitive text is an idle fancy, except
in so far as the facts about quarto and First Folio readings are concerned.
In this respect, what McKerrow
projected can be
more definitive than he foresaw, since mechanical collation has since made
possible what then seemed beyond attainment. But so far as certainty in
emendation enters into the matter, we are almost as much in the dark as
ever
we were about substantive readings; and although more knowledge about
compositors should make it clearer what kind of errors (and how many)
they
may have made, it will never locate the errors
or
emend them. What I judge from my own experience is most perplexing for
the
editor of Shakespeare is not general
issues, like
the choice of a copy-text or the authoritative text. Though problems remain
(as in the case of
Lear
),
an editor has in most cases (as
editors have always had) Hobson's choice. The teasing problems (and they
occur by the hundred) are individual readings — whether
emendation is necessary and, if so, how to emend. Was, for instance,
Portia
hedged by her father's 'wit' (as the quarto has it) or by his 'will' ? Were
the sweet bells of Hamlet's reason out of 'time' or out of 'tune' ? Is
Antigonus's threat to 'landdamne' the slanderer of Hermione right; if so,
what does it mean and, if not, what should be substituted? These are still
an editor's problems (as they always have been) and, whatever an editor's
personal decision may be, there can mostly be nothing definitive about it;
the verdict rests with the future. If the history of the editing of Shakespeare has anything to teach, it is that no
editor
(so far, of course, as we know) has always been right and that confidence
that the text of Shakespeare (or even
the text of
a single play) has been 'settled' has quickly brought down Nemesis. It is,
therefore, much to be hoped that no one will be encouraged to think that a
definitive text is within the compass of a single edition.
What is wanted from an old spelling edition is leadership —
the application of the lessons that have been learnt in the present
century, combined with recognition of what remains to be done and how to
do
it. Repeatedly making a fresh start is wastage of ground gained. Naturally,
an old spelling edition twenty years hence should achieve more than
McKerrow's
could, but
this is no argument for delay. On these grounds, it would be better to wait
two hundred years for greater certainty. An
Everyman
Shakespeare would meet the needs. There is no
need to
be pompous about old spelling (which in many ways presents fewer
difficulties than a modernised text) and, as we have old spelling in popular
editions of Chaucer and Milton, there is nothing peculiar about an Old
Spelling
Shakespeare. What is wanted is
merely an
up-to-date text with the kind of definitive
Folio
line numbering McKerrow used. It is little use our longing for
a more
sensibly planned and up-to-date Concordance and a more critical Shakespeare Grammar so long as reference is
tied to the
line numbering of an antiquated edition. Every editor must have felt at
times that undesirable and old-fashioned conventions in act, scene and line
division (hampering as they are) must be preserved, in order to keep in line
with out-of-date works of reference.
I have so far dwelt at some length on two points. I have first
emphasised
the need for as broadly based an analysis of compositor's spellings as
possible, in case it is not generally realised how little is known about
printing-house spelling in Shakespeare's day
(since its history has still to be written) and in the fear that, unless the
problem is tackled comprehensively from the outset, much of the reading
will
need to be done again if the fullest possible use is to be made of the
evidence — by bibliographers (in assigning and dating prints)
and by editors (necessarily concerned in determining the characteristics of
the copy which reached the printer). I have dwelt secondly on the
importance
of printing-house spelling for the Old Spelling editor, as this is the
spelling in which emendations must be made and because there seems a
persistent tendency to suppose that Shakespeare's
own spelling and an Old Spelling Shakespeare are
somehow more crucial problems than, say, Dekker's
own spelling and an Old Spelling Dekker. There is
no need for me to stress my third point — the need for
compositor-determination as one means of assessing the number and kind
of
substantive errors a compositor may have made. This is all the more
important in view of the mounting evidence that the reading of proof with
copy was the exception and not the rule, at any rate with Shakespeare's plays. Where we have collateral
texts,
the traditional method has been to use the evidence of the one as a means
of
estimating the damage sustained by the other in the course of transmission.
I believe the method to be sound, though one would naturally wish for as
much objective evidence as possible to show at what stage in transmission
and by whom the damage was done. Unfortunately, the text of most of
Shakespeare's plays rests on a single authority.
The
only means of assessing their trustworthiness in the past has been an
editor's literary taste and, however valuable
this may be, everyone would prefer to have all possible objective evidence
for the likely extent of corruption, its character and source. If the object
of the twentieth-century emphasis on transmission is (as I take it to be)
prompted by the determination to find out the facts, then compositor
determination at once broadens the basis on which the enquiry can be made.
We have, for instance, only one substantive text of Shakespeare's plays printed by Eld; but Eld was an active
printer of plays, and by reference to other plays set by the two compositors
concerned in the
Troilus and
Cressida
quarto we should be
able to eliminate much hazardous speculation about Eld's manuscript. In the case of Shakespeare's plays the maximum demand will
always be
for modernised texts and the reliability of substantive readings is,
therefore, every editor's concern.
What I have said about compositors must obviously affect, both now
and in
the future, the editing of nearly all Elizabethan and Jacobean writers. No
one concerned with printed books of the period can remain entirely aloof,
though editors concerned with dramatic texts, by reason of the varied
channels through which copy reached the printer, have perhaps most to gain
by taking a cross-section of Elizabethan and Jacobean works on the
compositor basis.
The task is one, in the initial stages at least, for the analytical
bibliographer, who is fortunate in being able to apply bibliographical
techniques which are complementary to compositor-identification on the
basis
of spelling.[8] We need, in fact, in
conjunction
with a conspectus of printing-house
spelling, a
press-work analysis of Shakespearian substantive
texts. The only way of tackling the problem of spelling is, of course,
chronologically and by printers, on the compositor basis, and the task may
not prove as arduous as might be supposed if compositors hung together
over
long periods, like Danter's two
compositors or
Roberts's. Prints of plays are
obviously a good
starting point by reason of the fact that many were printed from
unsophisticated copy and that spelling runs truer to type in verse than in
prose. Given the material on which to work, two or three could cover the
dramatic field in a year. What takes longer than compositor-determination
on
the basis of spelling is the assessment of the quality of the work,
especially in cases where texts have never been edited or have been edited
uncritically. Here, at any rate, the editor of Shakespeare has no lack of material on which
to
draw.
