III. Sig. Li, pp. 123-4, Section
I
Though many persons who have used the Fourth Folio must have
observed that pp. 123-124 in Love's
Labour's Lost are set in 8-point type instead
of the 12-point used elsewhere throughout the volume, no
one has been sufficiently curious about it to work out the
explanation, or at any rate, thought it worthwhile to
print it.[14] No variant is involved here, for
all copies, including the Methuen facsimile, are in this
respect alike.
Throughout F4 normal columns contain 74 lines of type. The
four columns of pp. 123-124 contain 91, 90, 91 and 90
lines. All other pages of the L gathering, including those
of L6, the leaf conjugate with L1, are printed in the
usual type and with the usual number of lines.
The explanation is not difficult. Printing began with the
inner sheet, L3:4, probably with its inner forme. L2:5 was
printed and perfected next. Then the working off of either
the inner or the outer forme of L1:6 was begun. At this
point the proofreader discovered that a block of text had
been omitted and that some resetting would be required. If
possible the resetting must be confined to L1, since L2r:5v was
already printed off or so far along that any resetting
here would involve the discarding of much valuable paper
as well as presswork. And, as we can see, it proved to be
possible. Had the printing of L2r:5v not been finished
or well along, the resetting could have been, and would
have been, spread out so as to avoid such unsightly pages
as 123-124 are.
For their unsightliness is not caused only by the smaller
type. Additional compression has been accomplished by the
elimination
of all of the usual white
spaces at stage directions, by the printing of two very
short speeches in one line (in seventeen places), and (in
one place) by forcing three lines of verse into two type
lines. A further small gain resulted from the fact that
much of the first column of p. 123 is prose, which allows
more words to the line in the smaller type. Thus no true
measure of the total compression obtained is to be arrived
at by the mere counting of lines and the discovery that
the four reset columns contain 362 lines instead of the
usual 296.
But in another way we can calculate the amount of compression
almost precisely. The text which now fills pp. 123-124
(L.L.L. V.i.13 to ii.254, in
the Globe edition) occupies 425 lines in F3, counting all
white spaces at stage directions. If we assume that this
was originally set up in the same way in F4—that is
with the same spacing—296 lines would have been
accommodated, leaving a balance of 129 lines. Since F3 is
set 66 lines to the column, 129 lines is almost exactly
one page. We can safely assume then that what the
proofreader found missing from the F4 had been one page of
the F3 text. This means that the omission was due to the
compositor, for only he could have been concerned with F3
pages. Nothing about the F3 text of the passage involved
suggests any reason for the omission or any clue as to
which page was omitted. We have no way of knowing
certainly that the whole first forme, presumably the
inner, of L1:6 was not actually wrought off before the
detection of the omission. But it appears probable that
had this been the case L1 would have been cancelled so
that L6 could be salvaged, reducing the loss of paper by
fifty per cent. That no such cancellation was made
suggests that the omission was discovered in the first
forme in the press.