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II
Once it is accepted that the same two compositors set Q2 Hamlet (1604/5) and The Merchant of Venice (1600), certain theories about the text of the former must be examined afresh: can it still be said that the 'chief trouble' is incompetent printing? Certainly it is no longer possible to blame an 'untutored dolt' for any of its short-comings, for The Merchant is a remarkably clean text throughout. It would seem that either these workmen were abnormally rushed while setting Hamlet-for which no certain evidence is yet known-or else their copy was abnormally illegible.
Before accepting either of these explanations, much more must be known about the printing of the quarto: its imperfections must be reexamined and their distribution studied, the press-work must be considered, and a more detailed knowledge about Roberts' printing house must be acquired. In the meantime, the text of Hamlet must be treated with added caution. For example, Professor Wilson thought that a considerable number of half- lines, phrases, and words found in the Folio text (generally thought to derive from a prompt-book),[8] and not found in Q2, had been present in the copy for Q2 but had been omitted through the incompetence of the compositor.[9] Professor Wilson's 'omissions' are from pages set by both compositors, neither of whom is known to have skipped numerous lines and words in other work. Until it is proved that they were both guilty of such incompetence, or that they were rushed in setting Q2 Hamlet, we must presume that they were both defeated by a peculiar illegibility of their copy, or else that the Folio Hamlet contains additions to Shakespeare's original foul papers. A glance at Professor Wilson's lists of 'omissions' will show how likely the latter explanation is; few of them contain any hard words which do not occur in neighbouring lines, and many of them involve mere repetition or the addition of particles. In the present state of knowledge, it seems possible that the 'omissions,' accepted as authoritative by Professor Wilson, have no stronger authority than that of a scribe or the players' prompt-book.
New knowledge about the compositors responsible for these two quartos will also illuminate the problem of the copy used for The Merchant of Venice. It is usually argued that this copy was closely related to Shakespeare's foul papers or autograph manuscript.[10] Obviously it cannot have been 'foul' to the same degree as the copy used for Hamlet and some other plays, and it is therefore risky to claim that it was in fact Shakespeare's autograph copy. But if the same compositors set both Hamlet and The Merchant and if we are agreed that the copy for Hamlet was autograph, it should be possible to compare the accidentals of the two texts and come to a more definite opinion about the copy for The Merchant.
First of all, it will be necessary to know how much the compositors habitually altered the spelling and punctuation of their copies, and what spellings are normal in texts of their composition. To get this information we must examine other books printed by Roberts about the same time as Hamlet and The Merchant.
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