I. Collation and Pagination
THE FOURTH FOLIO OF SHAKESPEARE (1685) was printed in three
sections by three different printers, the first of whom
Professor Bowers has recently shown to have been Robert
Roberts.[1] The collation of F4 is i
2
iA4 A-Y6 Z4,
2B-2Z6 *3A-*; 3D6 *3E8,
3A-4B6 4C2. Roberts' section, which, as Bowers
demonstrates, includes the preliminary sheets, contains
the Comedies and ends with Z4; the second section contains
the Histories and Troilus, Coriolanus,
Titus, and Romeo and
ends with *3E8; the third contains the rest of the
Tragedies and the apocryphal plays. In the second section
errors in signatures are uncommonly numerous, and some of
these are not without interest. The most serious of the
errors consist of the misprinting of sigs. 2B1 through 2C3
as B, B2, B3; C, C2, C3. 2D3 is printed D3. 2E3 is not
printed. 2O1 is printed Pp. *3E1 and *3E2 are printed
without the asterisks; but *Eee3 and *Eee4 are correctly
so printed. Being important in the gathering and folding
of sheets, signatures are in most books printed much more
carefully than pagination; we do not often meet with such
gross carelessness as these sheets exhibit. Nor was it
here allowed to pass unnoticed. On the contrary, once
these errors were discovered the printer took drastic
steps to correct at least those most likely to make
trouble. The discovery appears to have occurred while 2O1
was in the press and near the
end of its
run, for in only about fifteen per cent of the
thirty-seven copies which I have examined at the Folger
has a press correction been made. In all the rest of the
thirty-seven the misprinted signature has been corrected
with a pen. No other press corrections were, so far as I
have found, made, but in every copy 2B1 and 2C1 have been
amended by pen, likewise 2C3 (but not 2B3 or 2D3). In many
copies 2C2 has been amended by pen, and in most 2E3,
omitted in the printing, has been written in. A typical
specimen copy may be seen in the Methuen facsimile, where
all the corrections noted above except 2C2 will be found.
The hand—most readily recognizable in the added
2E3—is the same in all copies which I have seen. The
press correction of one, and only one, of these
errors—and that the last significant one
made—together with the pen correction of the
misprinted copies of this sheet, strongly suggests that
the earlier errors were not discovered until this point
was reached and that all the other pen corrections were
ordered forthwith and effected in this unknown printer's
shop. Sections 1 and 3 contain no significant errors in
signing.
The pagination of the volume is A1-H6, 1-96; I1-O1, 99-160;
O2-X5, 163-254; X6-Z3, 253('243')-272; 2B1-*3E8, 1-328,
3A1-4C2, 1-302. In addition to the errors indicated in
this formula which affect the total count of Section 1,
the following simple errors occur in all copies (ten in
number) in which I have examined the pagination: 109 is
printed for 107, 111 for 109, 186 for 190, 187 for 191,
221 for 219, 234 for 246, 243 for 253 bis. In nine of the
ten copies 33 is misprinted 23, and in three 164 is
misprinted 160, and 169-171. This carelessness in the
printing of page numbers is not uncommon either in kind
or, I believe, in degree. Far more unusual is the
excellent pagination in Section 2, where I have found no
errors of any kind. Section 3 falls but little short of
this ideal, having, so far as I have found, only one
simple misprint: 176 for 167. All the errors in Section 1
noted above (as well as that in Section 3) may be seen in
the Methuen facsimile, with the exception of pp. 164 and
169.
