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Notes
I have remarked on this in a recent review of the New Arden Titus Andronicus . It is the general policy of the new series 'to preserve all older forms that are more than variant spellings' — policy which has not I suspect, been seen in relation to its logical linguistic conclusions. When Muir, for instance, in the New Arden Lear , followed the Folio's 'murther', what was he reproducing — the compositor's spelling or a scribal alteration of the Q1 spelling on the authority of the Lear prompt-book? If it was the prompt-book spelling, was it Shakespeare's? Further, if consonant variants, like 'murther' and 'vild', are preserved, why not the vowel variants in 'show' and 'shew 'blood' and 'bloud'? Why not the commoner 'alablaster' or 'abhominable' and (contrariwise), in early texts, 'clime' for 'climb' or 'limmes' for 'limbs'? Muir went so far as to reproduce Compositor B's arbitrary distinctions between — 'd and — ed of weak preterites and past participles in prose. But what will happen in the New Arden As You Like It where there are two compositors favouring different conventions? Modern English is one thing; the habits of the compositors of Shakespearian texts are quite another, and the arbitrary preservation of a selection of the latter has no linguistic principles behind it.
I do not, of course, rule out the possibility that we have in the Tragedies reprints (as here and there in the Comedies reprints) a third hand. What I suspect is that, if we have a third hand in these Folio reprints, we cannot isolate his normal habits from the influence of printed copy any more than we could isolate the normal habits of Roberts's compositors from Titus Q2. What is wanted, in order to determine how many compositors Jaggard employed, is a survey of all Jaggard prints between (say) 1619 and 1624 with special emphasis on works set up from manuscript.
That is, I believe the disturbing factor to have been printed copy. So far as my observations go, spelling tended to become progressively more mixed the oftener a text was reprinted. I am sceptical of attempts to explain mixed characteristics as due to transcription of the quartos. Jaggard's manuscript copy must have been very diverse. How came it then that transcripts of quartos were singled out for different treatment from other manuscripts ? And if a third hand was responsible for the mixed spelling of these texts, how chanced it he was not employed in the Histories and Tragedies which were certainly set from manuscript? None of these are in mixed spelling.
Roberts Y's work in Titus Q2 provides a parallel. In view of the fact that a compositor's spelling habits were not static and that some spellings must always have been more a matter of habit than others, we cannot assume that systematic changes were made with equal facility. Under stress, only spellings which were second nature may have been used at all systematically.
There are oversights, of course, in B's use of the apostrophe, which an editor should not normalise. A compositor's substantive errors, that is, should be corrected in the light of his normal habits, but this is no reason for all-out standardisation of what was variable in accidentals.
In Shakespeare Survey, VII (1954), 35 et seq. Inferences are drawn from the two Field prints and a selection of early quartos of the plays, without any investigation of the normal habits of the compositors who set them.
The one will often assist, or refine upon, the other. After a spelling analysis has been made, it may sometimes prove far from clear which variations are significant. Fredson Bowers's account of the Hamlet Q2 's running-title evidence, for instance, at once revealed to me which variants in spelling were important and which were of no account. On the other hand, as has been shown elsewhere in this volume with reference to L4v of Roberts's quarto, spelling tests may be necessary to refine on typographical evidence. In my experience, difficulties with compositors mostly occur when too limited a range of spelling tests is used or when 'block' spellings obscure some difference in the spelling of a particular word within the group. These last should be used with the greatest caution. Recognition of what is significant depends, I think, mainly on observation, and the following spellings, additional to those earlier listed on p. 9 of Textual Problems of the First Folio , materially assist in distinguishing the hand of Jaggard A from that of Jaggard B in the Histories and Tragedies. They should be amalgamated with those presented by Cauthen in an earlier volume of Studies in Bibliography . The combined lists will be far from complete, as I have no doubt that those who have repeatedly read these plays will be able to add others.
| A | B |
| --- | --- |
| madame | madam |
| wee'le (etc.) | wee'l (etc.) |
| prowd | proud |
| ta'ne | tane |
| ougly | vgly |
| widowe | widdow |
| honie | hony |
| Heauen | heauen |
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