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.
