Compositor A in the Comedies and Histories
I have already mentioned the possibility that the A of the early
comedies and the A of WT and the histories were not the
same
compositor. Anomalies in the summary of A's habits on p. 85 suggest that
this question deserves some consideration. It will be noticed that the
compositor of WT prefers 'indeed', 'mistresse', "x'th'" and
'x'le' whereas in A's pages of Tmp., TGV,
Wiv., MM and MV the
corresponding
preferences are 'indeede', 'mistris', "x'th/xth'" and 'x'll'.[46]
This evidence is too scanty for the influence of copy to be dismissed, but
there are other differences between the habits of the compositor in the two
groups of pages. The simplest test of the integrity of the compositor is to
observe the occurrence of the spellings which Miss Walker has identified
as characteristic of A in
WT and the later plays of the Folio.
In
the table below I have included some other useful spellings, and counts of
the elisions.
From this it is clear that the compositor A of R2, which
was partly set before WT and finished after it, and the A of
WT are one and the same. Although I have not represented
the
histories which preceded the setting of quire d of R2 in the
table, apart from the elision counts, A's spellings there are consistent with
the spellings in the table. Nothing I have observed suggests that A changed
his habits in the histories. This confirms Miss Walker's description of A's
habits. Comparison of the spellings of this part of the Folio with the
summary for the five plays in which A shared before WT
shows
many contrasting features. It is possible to discount the elisions in
Tmp. where the compositor, fresh to work of this kind, was
possibly more greatly influenced by copy than he usually was. Compositor
B also seems to
have set a fair number of elisions from copy in
Tmp.,
Wiv., and
WT. Copy influence can not entirely
explain the variation between the "'ll" and "'le" elisions although
undoubtedly some of them, and some of the other spellings listed in the
table, were taken from copy. There is a common preference for
'doe/goe/here' and a strong disinclination to set 'do/go/heere' other than in
long lines, but the compositor's use of other variant spellings differs
between the groups of pages.
This matter is relevant because of the five plays printed before
WT in which compositor A had a hand, four
(Tmp.,
TGV, Wiv., MM) are texts
which were
probably printed (and WT also) from copy prepared by
Crane.
If for the moment it is conceded that the copy was Crane's, and if the
compositor A of the early comedies and histories is taken to be a single
compositor, it is still impossible to explain the different counts by reference
to Crane's spellings.[47] Both Crane
and the histories A prefer 'deuill', yet that spelling does not occur from
Tmp. to MM; instead there are 12 'diuell's.
Crane
preferred 'howre' and the A of the histories tolerated 'hower'[48] yet no such spelling occurs in the
early
comedies. The histories A would tolerate 'mistresse' from copy; 'mistris'
is Crane's spelling and A uses it 22 times in the early comedies, yet in
WT, the copy for
which was presumably in the same hand, 7 'mistresse' spellings occur and
only two of the spellings which are assumed to have been in copy. The
single 'indeed' is possibly a copy spelling for that was Crane's invariable
spelling, yet there are 17 'indeede' spellings in the early comedies. In
WT 'indeed' occurs ten times, but these are not likely to have
been taken from copy as 'indeed' is also the preferred spelling of A's pages
in the histories. 'Yong' is the spelling of Crane and the A of the comedies
but in WT the compositor sets 'young', the characteristic
spelling of A of the histories. Miss Walker's compositor A, in short,
prefers 'deare', 'deuill', 'suddaine' and 'young' whereas the compositor of
the early comedies prefers 'deere', 'diuell', 'sodaine' and 'yong'.
There is other evidence. The spacing is not altogether clear since
spaced commas inside short lines are not favoured in either group of pages.
However, the table of spacing[49]
shows that whereas the comedies compositor would quite often space a fair
number of internal commas, occasionally more than were left without
spaces, the practice of the
histories A is much more pronounced and never, in the plays I have
examined, is there a greater number of spaced commas to unspaced
commas. Also, before
WT, the compositor A was indifferent
to whether he set the first word of the speech together with the
speech-prefix in a catchword, or the speech-prefix alone, but in the histories
his invariable practice was to supply the first word of the dialogue with
which the next page started.
The evidence is such that it is not possible to believe that a single
compositor is found in A's pages of the comedies and histories without
serious doubt being cast on the principles on which compositor
identifications from spelling are made. There could be little objection to this
if the procedures of spelling analysis had been called into question
elsewhere in the Folio, or in other books. A compositor might change his
preference from one form of a spelling to another over a period of time, or
perhaps admit so many copy-spellings against his usual practice that in a
particular text it might be difficult to discern his presence, but one does not
expect (and indeed, I have not found) a compositor to change a number of
established practices at once. There is no practical alternative to the belief
that when compositorial practices change between groups of texts, a change
of compositor is indicated. This is the basis of compositor determination in
the Folio, and if application
of the principle has proved adequate to distinguish B from D, for example,
it should be possible to distinguish between the compositors of the early
comedies and the histories on the same ground. There is some further
support for the maintenance of this principle in that none of the other
compositors' habits changed significantly during the course of the Folio's
printing though, since they set from the same kinds of copy as A had before
him, they would have been just as exposed as he was to copy spellings
contrary to their own. I can see little alternative but to conclude that there
was another compositor in the early comedies; henceforth I shall refer to
him as F.[50]
In other folios printed by Jaggard about this time, the principal
compositors of the Folio can be identified in discrete sections of the books
by their usual spellings.[51] However,
there are patterns of spellings, particularly in Favyn, with which
compositors A, B, C, and D of the Folio cannot easily be readily identified.
Compositorial patterns
in these books are so generally consistent from one folio to the other that
one can be reasonably confident that the compositors have been correctly
identified. Nevertheless, there are some sections distinguished by firm
compositorial spelling preferences which cannot be identified, especially
after, say, the Folio A, has already been distinguished in that book. When
I made my survey of these folios in 1965 I was inclined then to conclude
that there was another Jaggard compositor but deferred the conclusion until
work on the Folio supplied further evidence.
[52] It is most likely that more work
on other
Jaggard books of the time will confirm that Jaggard used at least five
compositors before he took on the apprentice E.
Postscript: In the tables, please include the following
additions and corrections (my errors).
- p. 90 Compositor B: Preferred Form, do, Err., should
be 13:4; Total should be 351:129.
- p. 90 Compositor C: Preferred Form, Term. sp., TGV,
should be 59:3; Term. sp., Wiv., should
be
2:16; Term. sp., Total should be 474:70.
- p. 93 Compositor C, sig. C2, Term. sp., should be
10:2; sig. C3v, Term sp., should be 8:1;
last
line, Term. sp., should be 59:3.
- p. 94 Compositor F, sig. D3v, Term. sp.,
should
be 1; last line, Term. sp., should be 1;
Compositor C, sig. D2v, Term. sp., should
be 1j; last
line, Term sp., should be 2:16.
- p. 95 Compositor B, sig. H4v, do, should
be 3:1;
last line, do, should be 13:4.
- p. 102 Compositor B, sig. X4, Term. sp., should be
1j; last line, Term. sp., should be
1:1.
- p. 103 Sig. Z4, Term. sp., should be 1j; last
line, Term. sp., should be 7:6.
