Some Bibliographical Irregularities in the
Shakespeare Fourth Folio
by
Giles E.
Dawson
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.
II. Reprinted Sheets
Sixteen and a half sheets of the middle section occur in two
printings. Most copies, including that reproduced in the
Methuen facsimile, contain the original printing, the
reprinted sheets having
been found in
only six copies—four in the Folger Library, two in
the New York Public Library. The table below shows the
distribution of the reprinted sheets in the six copies.
Discovery of the reprinted sheets (which for the sake of
brevity I will hereafter call F5, since they constitute a
fifth folio printing) would presumably have been deferred
even longer were it not for an obvious clue. For some
obscure reason the side rules and the foot rules were in
the printing of the F5 sheets omitted.[4] Each
normal page is
boxed with rules, side, head, and foot, with an additional
horizontal rule beneath the headline and a vertical rule
between the two columns of text. The reprinted leaves
uniformly lack the side rules and the horizontal foot
rule,
[5] though all others are as in the
original F4 printing.
The absence of the rules is the conspicuous difference between
the two states of the sheets—the flag which gives
notice of their presence. A further comparison shows that
one state is a reprint of the other. Except for the rules
they do not differ notably in general appearance, but upon
close inspection innumerable small differences become
apparent throughout. Collation reveals just such variants
as we might except.[6] There can be no doubt as
to which kind of sheets are the reprinted ones—the
rules tell us that much. Collation of the original F4
sheets with the corresponding sheets of F3 (1663-4) and F5
give the expected results: F4 was printed from F3, F5 from
F4. In F5 obvious F4 misprints are in the main corrected.
Its text shows a marked tendency towards modernization of
spelling and towards a regular use of the apostrophe in
possessives. New misprints are about as numerous as
corrections. None of the alterations point to the hand of
anyone but the compositor.
The explanation for the reprinting is not far to seek. The
distribution of F5 sheets in the six copies
affected—with fifteen in Folger 28 and only one in
NYPL Lenox—suggests that the printer of this middle
section of F4 either carelessly or fraudulently
under-printed these sheets. When the gathering of all
sheets into volumes was nearly finished and the stacks
were all getting low, a few stacks were exhausted or it
was seen that they soon would be, leaving a stock of
something more than two hundred different good
sheets—how many of each I will explore presently. At
what time in relation to the original printing the
discovery of the shortages and the subsequent reprinting
are likely to have taken place can be determined
only conjecturally. Several avenues
of approach to this problem must be investigated.
First, what significance can be attached to the omission of
side and foot rules? The complete boxing in of type pages
with rules was first commonly practised toward the end of
the sixteenth century and became increasingly popular in
the early decades of the seventeenth, until, by 1630, it
was almost universal—though never quite so—in
books printed in England. Soon after 1640 we begin to find
unruled pages with increasing frequency. Charles Edmonds'
Commentaries of Julius
Cœsar, 1655, though a folio with double
columns is entirely without rules. Burton's Anatomy, 1676, a folio printed
in double columns, is ruled exactly as are the pages of
F5—horizontal above and beneath the headlines,
vertical between columns. The Works of
the Learned Sir Thomas Brown, Kt., 1686, a
folio in single columns, is printed with double head-rules
only, except in the index, the pages of which are ruled
exactly as those of F5 are. In fact I have found folios so
ruled in every decade from 1600 to 1720. Clearly then the
rules of the F5 pages cannot be regarded as direct
evidence as to the date of printing. It does seem safe to
say, however, that they do indicate either a date substantially later than the
original printing in 1685 or a
different printing house. For if Herringman had discovered
the short count of seventeen or more sheets soon after
their delivery to him he would presumably have demanded
that the printer of the central section make the
deficiency good, and it is scarcely conceivable that the
same printer would then have produced reprints so
strikingly different from the originals in appearance as
these are. We may well ask why any printer at any probable
time would have done so, and this is a question to which I
can furnish no very satisfactory answer. That the printer
did not have enough rules is out of the question. It must
have been simply a mistake of some sort. Perhaps the
workman actually responsible for the make-up of the
formes, not fully aware of the nature of the job in hand,
only followed the custom of the house for folio printing
in two columns prevailing at that period. Had the printing
been done in the shop that had produced the original F4
sheets, and with no considerable lapse of time, such an
error would not be likely.
Evidence derived from watermarks leads to much the same
conclusion. Virtually all of the
normal sheets of the volume—not only in the middle
section but in all three—show some variety of a
group of watermarks bearing the name DVAVLEGARD beneath a
large shield surrounded by a sort of ruffled or fluted
collar. I have found here only one completely different
and unrelated mark—a small, plain, crowned shield
bearing a simple fleur-de-lis and the initials RO, beneath
which is the name N. Porte or O. N. Porte.
[7] No watermark which I have seen in F4
occurs in any F5 sheet. There, instead, are five different
marks—three forming a related family, the other two
another family.
[8] Since I have not
succeeded in finding any of these elsewhere they yield no
direct evidence as to the date at which the F5 sheets were
printed. But they again argue
either for a date later than 1685
or for another printer.
Finally there is the evidence of spelling and the regular use
of the apostrophe in possessives. The spelling shows a
good deal of what might be called modernization: will for wil,
Doll. for Dol., Country
for Countrey, warlike for warlick, Lion for Lyon, and the like. The last
decades of the seventeenth century and the early years of
the eighteenth were a period of marked standardization of
spelling—probably not to be matched in any like
period before or since. This tendency did not begin in
1685; indeed it had no beginning, but was in my opinion
accelerating more or less steadily in the second half of
the century. Such changes as I have listed, with the
possible exception of the use of apostrophes, would be
expected, or at least would not be surprising, at any date
after 1650. In fact the same sorts of modernization abound
in F4, the actual count of spelling changes (from the F3
text) per
page being there higher than
in F5. As we should expect, the F4 compositor, while
conforming in general to the standardizing trend of the
day was not consistent and left many relics of the F3
spelling. The F5 compositor or compositors carried on in
the same direction. Much the same may be said too of the
increased use of the apostrophe in possessives: the F4
compositor introduced a few of these; the F5 compositor
was more consistent and carried this modernization
further.
It can hardly be said then that we have any clear direct
evidence of a substantially later date for F5 than for F4.
The most that we can say is that the absence of side and
foot rules, the completely different watermarks, and a
strong tendency towards modernization of spelling, taken
all together, make it appear highly probable that F5 was
printed either in a different shop or at a date a good
deal later than the printing of F4. But the employment of
another printer would in itself be strong evidence of the
passage of time between the two printings. The two come to
much the same thing.
And if I reconstruct the probable history of the sheets of the
volume correctly it seems unlikely on the face of it that
the need for reprinting would have been observed at once.
The volume was issued with a variety of
imprints—three in all:
- (1) LONDON, | Printed
for H. Herringman, E.
Brewfter, and R.
Bentley, at the Anchor
in the | New Exchange, the
Crane in St. Pauls Church-Yard, and in | Russel-Street Covent-Garden. 1685.
- (2) LONDON, | Printed
for H. Herringman, E. Brewfter,
R. Chiswell, and R.
Bentley, at the Anchor
| in the New Exchange; and
at the Crane, and Rose and Crown in St. Pauls |
Church-Yard, and in Russell-Street Covent-Garden. 1685.
- (3) LONDON, | Printed
for H. Herringman, and are
to be fold by Joseph Knight
| and Francis Saunders, at
the Anchor in the Lower
Walk | of the New Exchange.
1685.
Henry Herringman owned in 1685 at least a half
interest in the copyrights of most of Shakespeare's plays,
and the fact that his name, and only his, appears in all
the imprints, always in the first position, makes it
appear that he was the principal if not the sole
capitalist in the publication.
[9] The other
booksellers named were probably small investors, each
receiving a stipulated number of
copies.
It is significant that all the copies containing F5 sheets
possess, or probably did possess, title-pages with the
first and commonest of the three imprints.
[10] This fact does not in itself, of
course, prove that the shortages were not soon discovered,
for it is natural to assume that the stipulated numbers of
sheets to go to the booksellers named in the imprints
would be counted out for them at once upon publication.
Herringman, primarily a wholesale dealer, would retain the
greater part of the stock, and except for a number of
sheets gathered into volumes for immediate sale I suspect
that the rest would have gone into his warehouse in
bundles of ungathered sheets. Nothing is known about the
date at which the edition was exhausted, but we may safely
assume that a work as big and as dear as this remained in
print for fifteen or twenty years; had it been otherwise,
presumably, another edition would have been called for
before 1709, the year in which Tonson brought out Rowe's
edition. By 1700, fifteen years after publication, the
smaller investors would long since have disposed of their
stocks, the principal publisher would have got his money
back, and sales, each one of which would be cash in his
pocket, would have slowed to a trickle. Herringman's
successor,
[11] whoever he was, would
have in his warehouse 229 bundles or stacks of ungathered
sheets, from which, as need arose, a dozen or so copies
would be made up. It seems to me a reasonable if untested
hypothesis that at some such time the shortage of some
sheets was discovered. Sheet 2O3:4 may well have been the
first exhausted. A count then revealed that others were
near exhaustion, and a calculation of
costs and of the probability of future sales showed that
it would be profitable to go to the expense of reprinting
the seventeen or more sheets required to make the
remaining stock good.
The only questions yet to be considered are how many copies of
the good sheets of F4 remained and how many different
sheets were underprinted. No precise answers can of course
be given, but some calculations can be made on the basis
of the table above.
While not attempting a census of extant copies, I have myself
examined fifty-seven and have received reliable reports on
nine others.[12] Six of these, or
approximately ten per cent, contain one or more F5 sheets
(if we count Folger 13, which, though its single leaf is
not indigenous, represents a copy with a whole sheet).
Sixty-six is a large enough number to be considered
representative, and I therefore assume that something like
ten per cent of all copies now or at any time existing
would contain one or more of the F5 sheets. This means
that the most deficient of the sheets of the middle
section of F4—probably 2O3:4—was approximately
ten per cent short. If this is substantially correct,
then, supposing that the publisher's contract with each of
the three printers called for two thousand copies, printer
number two delivered only 1800 copies of 2O3:4. Even if
the impression was only half this size there remained when
2O3:4 was exhausted one hundred copies of each of the good
sheets. There could have been no question then of the
profitableness of reprinting the short sheets, assuming
that sales were still at an even moderately good
level.
At least seventeen different sheets required reprinting. Were
there probably more? The table gives us every reason for
believing that there were and that others still exist and
will be found.[13] Had Folger 28 perished
or gone to another collection not seen by me I
should have missed three of the
seventeen sheets. Folger 33 contains another apparently
unique example. The mathematical probability that others
would be found if sixty-five further copies were examined
is so high as to amount almost to certainty. Since two out
of the six copies shown in the table contain four
apparently unique examples I am inclined to believe that
the number of sheets reprinted in 1700 (or whenever it
was) must have been somewhere in the neighborhood of
twenty-five.
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.
Notes