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II
In January of 1601, the publisher Thomas Bushell entered in the Stationers' Register for his copy of "A booke called the plaie of Dcor ffaustus."[7] The first known edition of Faustus is a black-letter quarto, known as A1, printed by Valentine Simmes for Bushell in 1604. The A1 quarto collates
The A1 quarto was set in type by two compositors, first distinguished by Welsh who labeled them X and Y. Welsh's Compositor X abbreviates speech headings and punctuates them with a period, uses an upper-case "E" in Exit directions, prefers -ea- spellings in words like year, dear, and chear, prefers bloud over blood, and uses -ll spellings in words like will, shall, and hell. Welsh's Compositor Y frequently uses unabbreviated and unstopped speech headings or abbreviated speech headings punctuated with a colon. In contrast to X, Y uses a lower-case "e" in exit directions, prefers -ee- spellings in words like yeer, deer, and cheer, prefers blood over bloud, and uses single -l spellings in words like wil, shal, and hel. Although Y's habits may reflect simple spelling preferences, they should also be seen to represent
Welsh surveyed all of the dramatic quartos Simmes printed from 1603 to 1605 and concluded that "we have no relevant knowledge of either Compositor X or Compositor Y outside of the Faustus quarto itself" ("Printing," p. 126). However, the habits of Welsh's Compositor Y resemble those that W. Craig Ferguson had previously noticed in Q1 of 2 Henry IV, printed by Simmes in 1600: unabbreviated speech headings and exits with lower-case "e". Moreover, the compositor of 2 Henry IV, designated Compositor A by Ferguson, resembles Compositor Y of Faustus in that he does not distinguish names by setting them in a contrasting type font.[11] Ferguson's essay has been supplemented by a series of articles by Alan Craven which, taken together, claim that Compositor A set the type for quite a bit of Renaissance drama as we know it: all or part of Q1 Richard II (1597), Richard III (1597), Q2 Richard II (1598), A Warning for Fair Women (1599), An Humorous Day's Mirth (1599), Much Ado about Nothing (1600), The Shoemakers' Holiday (1600), Q2 The First Part of the Contention (1600), Q1 2 Henry IV (1600), Q1 Hamlet (1603), Q3 I Henry IV (1604), and Q1 and Q3 The Malcontent (both 1604).[12]
Ferguson and Craven attach a great deal of importance to the unusual (although by no means unique) compositorial habit of setting unabbreviated and unstopped speech headings; any dramatic quarto printed by Simmes between 1597 and 1604 in which such speech headings appear is automatically assigned to Compositor A. The assumption that only one of Simmes's compositors would ever have set an unabbreviated speech heading without adding a mark of punctuation is so strong that little significance is attached to some of the manifest differences between the texts attributed to Compositor A. Q1 Hamlet, for instance, is assigned to A despite the fact that "proper names (characters and places) in the dialogue are often set in contrasting italic type, a practice never used in 2 Henry IV and Much Ado" (Craven, 1973; p. 40). And even though one of A's hallmarks, setting lower-case exits, is nowhere to be found in Q3 of I Henry IV, Craven asserts that this evidence should not "raise doubts" about the identity of the compositor (1979; p. 188).
As the dramatic texts for which Compositor A was assigned responsibility began to multiply like Falstaff's men in buckram, A1 Faustus was added to the list by Craven, who asserts (in a brief footnote) that Welsh's Compositor Y
Although the characteristics of Compositor Y in Faustus do resemble, to a certain extent, those of Compositor A in Q1 2 Henry IV (1600), we ought to bear in mind Peter Blayney's caveat that "similar habits found a year or so apart in the same printing house do not prove identity."[13] Of the dramatic quartos that Simmes printed in 1604, the same year as A1 Faustus, Craven has assigned three to Compositor A. These three texts do contain the unabbreviated and unstopped speech headings necessary for attribution to A, but the other distinguishing characteristics of Compositor Y appear not at all (see table 1).
Text | unabbrv. | Names | Single -l | |
Unstopped | Lower- | not set in | Spellings | |
Speech | case | contrasting | ||
Headings | exits | font | ||
A1 Faustus | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Q1 Malcontent | Yes | No | No | No |
Q3 Malcontent | Yes | No | No | No |
Q3 I Henry IV | Yes | No | No | No |
I suspect (although I cannot prove) that, over a period of eight years, Simmes may have employed more than one compositor who did not abbreviate and did not punctuate his speech headings when he set a play quarto, and that "Compositor A" as he is currently constructed was probably a number of different workmen. In any case, I can find little evidence to support Craven's identification as it pertains to Faustus, for it seems clear that Welsh's Compositor Y is not Compositor A. Moreover, the habits of X and Y in
Although Compositors X and Y have not been found at work on any other Simmes book, they can be readily distinguished within the text of A1 Faustus where their individual habits form clear and regular patterns. The alternating groups of speech heading punctuation on sheet C may serve as an example (see table 2). This sort of patterned alternation might in itself be sufficient evidence from which to deduce that compositor shifts have taken place at C2r:25, C3r:28, C3v:31, and C4v:16. When the punctuation data are combined with the spelling evidence, the compositors' stints can be charted throughout the quarto with some accuracy (see table 3).[15]
As Bowers observes, "this practice is so consistent and so odd as to call for explanation" (Complete Works, II.147). Welsh found evidence of type-shortages indicating that the compositors were setting seriatim, rather than by formes, and Bowers notes that this conclusion is supported by the nature of the stints which are not confined to formes. Welsh assumes that the two compositors worked chiefly in turn rather than simultaneously, each setting a scene of the text ("Printing," pp. 114-115). D. F. McKenzie claims that such a procedure for shared setting would have been normal in a seventeenth-century print shop: "normally, even when two or more compositors worked on a book, they did not work together setting sheet and sheet about. What usually happened was that one took over where the other left off."[16] So strong is McKenzie's insistence upon "a fairly accurate definition of 'normality'" that there can be little doubt that this was the way that compositors usually worked. However, the irregularity of the stints in Faustus is so unusual that we may be justified in inquiring as to the possibly abnormal circumstances in which they were produced.[17]
Welsh concludes that only one type-case was in use because both compositors suffered shortages of black-letter W, and he imagines that two type-cases could not both contain an inadequate supply of this letter ("Printing," pp. 115-119). But Bowers points out that such W shortages were a congenital
Bowers's attractive and sensible conjecture has important ramifications for our understanding of the nature of the underlying copy that have not been previously realized. Compositors' stints are necessarily limited, and sometimes defined, by separable sections of the printer's copy.[19] If the compositors were setting simultaneously from separate cases, the copy itself would have to have been physically separated and divided between them. In order for each compositor to be given a successive scene from the manuscript copy, we would have to suppose that every fresh scene began on a new manuscript page. And Bowers himself elsewhere surmises that the only type of manuscript in which this might be true would be "the foul papers of a collaboration" ("The Text of Marlowe's Faustus," p. 199). The issue of whether or not the compositors were working simultaneously on the A1 quarto can now be seen to have considerable implications. Simultaneous setting might point to the use of foul paper copy.
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