University of Virginia Library

On the First Folio Text of Henry VIII
by
R. A. Foakes

AS ALICE WALKER RECENTLY EMPHASIZED[1], THE study of the ways of compositors in spelling and other usages in Shakespearian texts may help to shed light on their "metamorphosis into print", and a knowledge of the compositors' habits at each stage of their work in the First Folio is useful as filling out a picture from which generalisations may at some time be drawn. The following remarks on the Folio text of Henry VIII may then have some general interest. As far as this play is concerned, they support the conclusion of W. W. Greg[2] that the text derived from a "carefully edited" fair copy, and they suggest further that it was in a single hand. Discussion of the play has been complicated by the question of authorship, a bogy which arose in the nineteenth century,[3] and has troubled editors and critics ever since. These have usually divided the play between Fletcher and Shakespeare, and a distinction between the work of the two compositors who set the Folio text also has a direct bearing upon this.

The well-known main differences in the spelling used by Jaggard A and Jaggard B, the compositors who between them set most of the Folio in type,[4] reveal a clear division of labour in the text of Henry VIII. The shares of the compositors are as follows:

• Compositor A (16 pages): t4r-v2r; v3r, v3v; x3r, x3v
• Compositor B (13 pages): t3r, t3v; v2v; v4r-x2v

The evidence of the spellings is best presented in tabular form:                  

	Compositor A	Compositor B
goe	11	0
go	1	6
doe	43	0
do	4	25
here	6	0
heere	16	14
young	6	0
yong	0	3

Some words which have been observed to reveal spelling differences in other plays[5] do not occur frequently enough in this text, or they afford a blurred evidence, or no evidence at all; examples are the words "year" (5 times set by A, 2 by B), and "devil" (3 by A, 4 by B), which always have the same spelling. On the other hand, a few spellings and uses of accidentals which occur not at all in some plays, or not in sufficient number to provide certain evidence, offer a clear distinction between the work of the compositors in Henry VIII. The habits of the compositors may have changed as time went by during the printing of the Folio,[6] and some new or previously unnoticed variations may be appearing here. The following table presents this evidence:                          

	Compositor A	Compositor B
to th'	17	1
to' th'	0	5
tis	7	0
'tis	7	6
busines	10	0
businesse	9	12
highnes	7	0
highnesse	11	17
honour	24	1
honor	1	25
lose	1	0
loose (lose)	1	4

One more peculiarity may be noticed, that is B's apparent fondness for "too" as a spelling of "to"; he uses it ten times as against twice by A. An interesting feature of these statistics is that A seems to have been a little less consistent than B in his usages,[7] and it may be that many of B's preferential spellings appeared in the manuscript.

A striking confirmation of this evidence is provided by differences in the spellings of speech-headings in the play, and in this matter A is more consistent than B. Again the differences are best presented in the form of statistics:

                         

	Compositor A	Compositor B
Buck.	12	2
Buc.	0	11
Norf(f).	17	3
Nor.	0	25
Card.	22	12
Car.	0	24
Kin.	49	0
King.	3	28
Suff.	10	1
Suf.	0	17
Quee(n).	20	1
Qu.	0	7

One further piece of evidence is afforded by the brief appearance on the stage of Dr Butts, the King's physician, in V.ii. His name occurs 8 times in speech-headings and in the text, and it so happens that these are distributed between x2v, set by B, and x3r, set by A; B spells the name "Buts" (5 times), and A spells it "Butts" (3 times).

The shares of the text which fell to the two compositors in no way correspond to the shares often assigned by critics to the two authors, Shakespeare and Fletcher. The most compelling arguments for dual authorship have been assembled by A. C. Partridge,[8] who has reaffirmed

the division proposed by Spedding, allocating to Shakespeare I.i and ii; II.iii and iv; III.ii.1-203; and V.i. The rest of the play he assigns to Fletcher, offering as his main evidence the occurrence of forms which Fletcher habitually used (notably 'em, for them, and ye) predominantly in this part. He found 59 examples of the use of 'em in the section ascribed to Fletcher, as compared with 5 in that ascribed to Shakespeare, and 72 examples of ye, as compared with only 2 in Shakespeare's part. One 'em crept into this total through an emendation of the Folio text, but allowing for this, the forms are spread across the work of the two compositors to the following extent: 'em appears 12 times in the work of B, 51 times in the work of A; ye appears 24 times in the work of B, 48 times in the work of A. The spread is uneven, partly because A set many more than B of the lines ascribed to Fletcher,[9] partly, as Philip Williams Jr. pointed out,[10] because A, as was his habit, no doubt reproduced his copy more literally than B, who may have normalized a number of these forms.

Another feature of the text of Henry VIII is interesting because it seems to be unrelated either to the division between the work of the compositors, or to the postulated division between authors. The speech-headings for certain characters vary in what appears to be an inconsequential manner. Some minor variations, such as the change from Qu. or Quee(n). in the early scenes to Kath. in IV.ii signify little. In one case the variation is important because it causes confusion between characters; the Lord Chamberlain, who appears earlier in the play as L. Ch. becomes Cham. in V.ii, where, as a result, there is confusion between him and the Lord Chancellor (Chan.), and the Folio gives to Cham. speeches which, as Capell noted, belong to the Lord Chancellor, who is conducting the business of the Council in this scene. The most significant variations, however, are those in the speech-headings used for Wolsey.[11] He figures first as Car(d). in the work of both compositors, but on v1v (II.ii), after the entry, "Enter Wolsey and Campeius with a commission", the heading changes to Wol.. On this page, the work of A, the new heading may have been introduced by transference from the name in the entry. The next page contains no speeches by Wolsey, who returns on v2v, (II.iv), for which B was responsible, first as Car. (II.iv.1, 5), then as Wol. (l. 55ff.); here there is no mention of his name in the

text to suggest such change. The next two pages, the work of A again, have both Card. and Wol(s).. Then follows a longish stretch of text set by B; on v4r, v4v, and v5r, only Car(d). is used, until again at III.ii.252, and for a few later speeches on v5v, the heading Wol. recurs, again for no discernible reason. On all except the first page on which Wol. appears (v1v), the two forms alternate on the same page, and the intrusion of Wol. cannot be explained as a transference from the text, or by a shortage of italic capital C, which abounds throughout the play, in speech-headings for the Chamberlain, the Chancellor, Cromwell, and Cranmer, as well as in stage directions.

This variation in speech-headings cannot then be related to compositors. Since it extends across scenes ascribed both to Fletcher (II.ii; III.i; III.ii.204ff.), and to Shakespeare (II.iv; III.ii.1-203), it cannot be linked with the theory of dual authorship. It is safe to assume that it was in the copy from which the compositors worked and a little may be added to W. W. Greg's conclusion that "The copy for F was clearly a carefully prepared manuscript, in whose hand or hands there is no evidence to show. It could have been used as a prompt-book, but there is no indication that it was."[12] It seems likely that the manuscript was in a single hand. The printed text is very clean, and, except for variations in spelling and usage for which the scribe was not responsible, consistently good. Its general appearance, the very full and elaborately set-out stage directions and entries, and the full division into acts and scenes, indicate fair copy. The mixed speech-headings, unless two writers are postulated who both used the same ones, also seem to point to a single scribe, who failed to regularize, or only partially regularized, what he found in the papers from which he copied, and, perhaps, suggest a single author. There seem to be no changes in spelling or usage of the kind which Philip Williams Jr. observed in the text of I Henry VI,[13] and which might indicate a change in manuscript copy. One small detail lends further support; the name "Gilbert Pecke" occurs twice in the text, at I.i.219, in a scene by Shakespeare, and at II.i.20, in a scene ascribed to Fletcher. This is almost certainly a mistake for or an alteration of Holinshed's "Gilbert Perke"; and since the historian is elsewhere followed closely with respect to names, and the change here is pointless, it is safe to assume that the author (s) wrote "Perke", which the scribe misread as "Pecke". However the form arose, it must have been written in the same way at the two places where it appeared in the manuscript from which the text was set. With regard to the origin of the copy, the variations in speech-headings

which give rise to the confusion noted above between Cham. and Chan. in V.ii, and could cause difficulty in III.i., where Car(d). might represent either of the two cardinals (Wolsey and Campeius) on stage, afford contributory evidence towards the supposition that the copy stemmed from foul papers. Greg's statement on the play may be modified to this extent; that the copy for the Folio Henry VIII was a carefully prepared manuscript, probably in a single hand; there is no indication that it was used as a prompt-book, whereas there is evidence from variations in speech-headings and the confusion these might occasion in the theatre, to suggest that it was based on foul papers.

A study of the habits of the compositors in the text of Henry VIII thus offers not only further examples of their differences in usage and spelling, but also some evidence bearing on the transmission of the text, and on the authorship problem.

Notes