University of Virginia Library

The Folio Text of 1 Henry IV
by
Alice Walker

In what follows I hope to show what the editorial implications are of the Folio 1 Henry IV when its variant readings are considered in relation to its compositors. The authoritative text for the play is the earliest surviving quarto, printed by Short in 1598 and described traditionally as Q1, but known to be a reprint of an earlier edition of which only the four leaves of sheet C survive. Q1 was therefore a derivative print but has substantive status except for the eight surviving pages of its lost predecessor. Fortunately these eight pages give good ground for supposing that Q1 was, in substance, an unusually careful reprint. Each of Q1's successors was printed from its immediate predecessor and the Folio text was printed from Q5 (1613). The example of Q5 used for the Folio had been edited to serve as printer's copy in so far as act and scene divisions had been introduced and some profanity (though by no means all) had been removed. But although the Folio corrects twenty-six of Q5's known errors in the dialogue it is evident from its legacy of about two hundred errors from Q2-5 that no such systematic effort had been made to correct the Q5 readings as was made in preparing quarto copy for the Folio texts of Richard III, Troilus and Cressida, Lear, and Othello.[1]

It is in connection with these four Folio texts that the Folio variants in 1 Henry IV are important. The quartos which served as Folio copy for these four plays had been purged of most of their errors by collation with authoritative playhouse manuscripts and these four Folio texts should preserve more authoritative readings than the quartos. But between the corrected quartos and the Folio an editor has to allow for the Folio compositors' errors. Some of these are self-evident and their removal is a simple

matter. What an editor does not know, and cannot determine so satisfactorily from these texts as from a derivative text, is how many of the variants were authoritative corrections and how many of them compositors' errors. The following analysis of the variants in the Folio 1 Henry IV sheds some light on the question.[2]

The Folio text of 1 Henry IV runs from p. 46 to p. 73 (d5v—f6r) of the Histories. What should have been numbered p. 47 is numbered p. 49 and the pagination proceeded from this point without rectification. There are twenty-five and a half pages of text, of which, by my interpretation of the evidence of their characteristic spellings, compositor A set eleven pages and compositor B fourteen and a half. Their stints were as follows:

         

B d5v-e3v	(pp. 46-56)	I. i.	--II. iv. 143
A e4r-f1v	(pp. 57-64)	II. iv. 143	--III. iii. 111
B f2r	(p. 65)	III. iii. 112	--IV. i. 19
A f2v-f3v	(pp. 66-8)	IV. i. 20	--IV. iv. 26
B f4r-f6r	(pp. 69-73)	IV. iv. 27	--end

I shall first examine the verbal variants in the dialogue and then the variants in stage directions. By referring these to the compositor responsible for them it is easier to see what kind of alteration may have been made in the example of Q5 used as copy and what kind of alteration the compositors may have made on their own account. It will be evident from the above assignments that here, as elsewhere in the Folio, the stints of the compositors were governed by mechanical reasons and bear no relation to any literary considerations or divisions in the text. Hence the division is textually arbitrary and can serve as pure evidence. What is common to the work of the compositors may therefore have been in their copy, but marked discrepancies between the number and character of the variants in their work are more likely to represent personal idiosyncrasies.

There are about one hundred and seventy dialogue readings in which the Folio differs verbally from Q5. Twenty-six of these variants are almost certainly correct since they restore Q1 readings corrupted in Q2-5. Nine of these readings occur in the pages set by A; seventeen in the pages set by B. They are as follows. I give the Folio reading in the first column, italicising the word or words restored and ignoring Folio italics.

List (a)

                                                       

Compositor A
II.	iv.	242	tyr'd thy selfe	tried Q5
II.	iv.	252	ranne and roar'd	roare Q2-5
III.	i.	263	you are as slow	om. as Q5
III.	ii.	8	thy passages of Life	the Q2-5
III.	ii.	148	To engrosse vp	my Q3-5
IV.	i.	82	We shall o're-turne it	or turne Q4-5
IV.	ii.	11	If I be not asham'd	om. not Q3-5
IV.	iii.	70	Attended him on Bridges	Attend Q4-5
IV.	iv.	16	And what with	om. with Q3-5
Compositor B
I.	ii.	10	so superfluous, to demaund	om. so Q2-5
I.	iii.	64	himselfe haue beene	haue beene himselfe Q4-5
I.	iii.	190	Ile reade you Matter	your Q5
II.	ii.	45	when a iest is so forward	om. a Q2-5
II.	ii.	73	happy man be his dole, say I	om. I Q5
II.	ii.	104	Falstaffe sweates to death	swears Q3-5
II.	iii.	26	An Infidell	and infidell Q2-5
II.	iii.	44	I by thee haue watcht	om. haue Q4-5
II.	iv.	10	no proud Iack	not Q4-5
II.	iv.	47	all the Books in England	om. the Q4-5
III.	iii.	197	to ride yet	yet to ride Q5
V.	i.	5	And by his hollow whistling	the Q3, om. Q4-5
V.	i.	40	boldly did out-dare	outdate Q2-5
V.	i.	90	More actiue, valiant	more valiant Q3-5
V.	i.	100	in a Single Fight	om. a Q2-5
V.	iv.	72	all the budding Honors	thy Q5
V.	iv.	107	so fat a Deere	faire Q2-5

I have not included in this list the Folio's correction of trivial errors in Q5 which any reprint would normally have put right[3] and I shall remark later on the possibility that certain of the substantive variants listed above may be editorial.

In addition to the above, there are eight Folio variants which are generally accepted as necessary corrections of readings common to Q1-5. These are as follows.

List (b)

                   

Compositor A
III.	i.	100	Cantle	scantle
IV.	i.	55	is	tis
IV.	iii.	28	ours	our
Compositor B
I.	i.	39	Herefordshire	Herdforshire Q1-3; Herdfordshire Q4-5
II.	iii.	3	in respect	in the respect
II.	iv.	31	President	present
V.	iv.	34	so defend	and defend
V.	iv.	68	Nor	Now

The above Folio readings are accepted by the Cambridge editors, Dover Wilson, and Alexander. Over another five, opinion is divided, and I have therefore included them in later lists, indicating by initials in the appropriate place the editors who have preferred the Folio reading. We have in this (b) category something like the distribution of variants between A and B that occurred in list (a).

With a few possible exceptions, the remaining Folio variants must be regarded as errors in view of the Folio text's derivative status; and there can be no doubt that, on an impartial view, this is indeed what they are. These variants differ strikingly in their distribution from the readings included in lists (a) and (b), since there are only eighteen in A's eleven pages but one hundred and thirteen in B's fourteen and a half.

In the first place, there are only two literal errors in the pages set by A (one only if the substitution of 'pounds' for 'pound' is regarded as a normalisation), but there are twenty-four in the pages set by B. I again give the Folio readings in the first column.

List (c)

                   

Compositor A
III.	i.	9	Cheekes looke	cheeke lookes
III.	iii.	73	foure and twentie pounds	xxiiii.pound
Compositor B
I.	i.	64	Strain'd	Staind
I.	i.	66	welcomes newes	welcom newes
I.	ii.	77	smiles	smiles Q1-4; similes Q5
I.	ii.	103	Watch	match
I.	iii.	46	tearme	termes
I.	iii.	108	base (C., A.)	bare

List (c)—(Continued)

                                         

Compositor B
I.	iii.	159	staru'd	starue
I.	iii.	162	wore	weare
I.	iii.	236	Waspe-tongu'd	waspe-stung Q1
				waspe-tongue Q2-5
II.	ii.	10	Theefe company	theeues companie
II.	ii.	21	I	ile
II.	ii.	79	Iesu	Iesus
II.	ii.	97	no moe valour	no more valour
II.	iii.	30	skim'd Milk	skim milke
II.	iii.	63	agone	ago
II.	iii.	109	farre wilt I	far wil I Q1-4
				farewill I Q5
II.	iv.	137	Ye fatch paunch	Ye fat paunch
V.	i.	72	articulated	articulate
V.	i.	83	our Armies	your armies
V.	ii.	30	what newe-?	what newes?
V.	iii.	13	Lords Staffords death	Lords Staffords death
V.	iii.	40	likes starke	lies starke
V.	iv.	6	you retirement	your retirement
V.	iv.	39	they head	they head

I have not included in this list changes which might be regarded as legitimate spelling variants (like B's three substitutions of 'whether' for 'whither')[4] or literal errors I know to have been corrected by the proofreader.

Most of the above are errors of a trivial kind. Unfortunately, it was not only letters that B added, omitted and altered in reproducing his copy. Two words are omitted in A's pages (one only if 'Hart' at III.i.248 had been deleted as an oath); there are thirty omissions in the pages set by B (thirty-one if the loss of a biblical allusion at I.ii.86-7 was accidental). I again give the Folio reading in the first column, indicating the point at which the word or words were omitted by an asterisk; the second column records the Q1-5 words omitted.

List (d)

           

Compositor A
II.	iv.	249	yea, and can shew it you * in the House	here
III.	i.	248	* You sweare like a Comfit-makers Wife	Hart
Compositor B
I.	ii.	40	As is the hony *	of Hibla
I.	ii.	55	were it * heere apparant	not

List (d)—(Continued)

                                                             

Compositor B
I.	ii.	118	Else he had * damn'd	bin
I.	ii.	125	to morrow * in Eastcheape	night
I.	ii.	175	* But I doubt	Yea
I.	iii.	23	in your Highnesse * demanded	name
I.	iii.	53	He should, or * should not	he
I.	iii.	77	Why yet * doth deny his Prisoners	he
II.	ii.	28	Giue * my Horse	mee
II.	ii.	58	Ned * and I	Poines
II.	ii.	60	how many be * of them?	there Q1
				they Q2-5
II.	ii.	66	* Wee'l leaue that	Well
II.	iii.	85	* if thou wilt not	and
			tel me * true	all things
II.	iv.	7	can call them *	all
			by their * names	Christian Q5
II.	iv.	75	dost thou * heare	not
II.	iv.	112	and mend them * too	and foote them
II.	iv.	119	a Cup of Sacke with * in't (uncorr.)	lime in it
			a Cup of Sack with lime * (corr).
III.	iii.	129	Thou art * vniust man	an
III.	iii.	187	of * two and twentie	the age of
IV.	i.	13	What Letters hast * there?	thou
V.	i.	71	in * yonger enterprize	your
V.	i.	130	* But how if Honour pricke me off	yea
V.	iii.	37	and they * for the Townes end	are
V.	iii.	42	Whose deaths are * vnreueng'd	yet
			* Prethy	I
V.	iv.	87	Fare*well great heart	thee
V.	iv.	128	along * me	with
V.	v.	14	Beare Worcester to * death	the

With this proneness to omit words went a tendency to interpolate them. There are six interpolations in A's pages. There are twenty-eight in B's (ignoring the interpolated word at IV.i.17, possibly supplied by the expurgator to compensate for the loss of 'Zounds' earlier in the line). I quote the Folio and italicise interpolations.

List (e)

             

Compositor A
II.	iv.	465	with 2 most most monstrous Watch
III.	iii.	69	giuen them away to Bakers Wiues, and they (C.)
III.	iii.	85	and if hee were heere
IV.	ii.	9	meete me at the Townes end
IV.	ii.	55	we must away all to Night
IV.	iii.	113	And't may be, so wee shall

List (e)—(Continued)

                                                         

Compositor B
I.	i.	28	is a tweluemonth old
I.	i.	42	And a thousand of his people butchered
I.	i.	104	At Windsor, and so informe the Lords
I.	ii.	4	in the afternoone (after noone Q1-5)
I.	ii.	40	As is the hony
I.	ii.	161	But how shal we
I.	iii.	185	To answer all the Debt he owes vnto you (to Q1-4, om. Q5)
I.	iii.	211	Good Cousin giue me audience for a-while, And list to me
I.	iii.	256	Good Vncle tell your tale, for I haue done
I.	iii.	277	Vpon my life, it will do wond'rous well
II.	i.	6	the poore Iade is wrung in the withers
II.	i.	10	since Robin the Ostler dyed
II.	i.	15	a King in Christendome (a King christen Q1-5)
II.	i.	76	or rather, not to pray to her
II.	i.	85	I thinke rather
II.	i.	86	to the Fernseed
II.	ii.	22	as good a deede as to drinke
II.	ii.	27	a plague light vpon you all
II.	iii.	14	as good a plot as (a good plot, as Q1-5)
II.	iv.	15	then they cry hem
II.	iv.	50	Anon, anon sir
II.	iv.	57	O Lord sir
III.	iii.	146	as thou art a Prince
III.	iii.	171	and cherish thy Guests
V.	i.	25	With quiet houres: For I do protest (C., D.W.)
V.	ii.	94	Whose worthy temper I intend to staine
V.	iv.	84	But that the Earth, and the cold hand of death (earthy and Q1; earth and Q2-5)
V.	iv.	162	If I do grow great again, Ile grow lesse

It is unlikely that all these interpolations were accidental and it would be tempting to suppose that an editor, rather than the compositor, was responsible for some of this conjectural bodging, reminiscent of the patching up of metrically faulty lines in the Folio Richard III. The obstacles are that the tendency to interpolate is just as strong in prose as in verse and that there is no evidence of a metrical improver's hand in the pages set by A. Sometimes the Q5 line was halting, but at V.ii.94 the remedy was not far to seek since the two missing syllables were at the end of the preceding line. The interpolation of 'wond'rous' in I.iii.277 is particularly suspicious since the fancied need for these two syllables cannot have occurred until after the compositor had split the Folio line:

is what was wanted.

It is consequently not surprising that most of the verbal substitutions

occur in B's pages. There are seven in A's (one a normalisation). There are twenty-three in B's, not counting a tendency, far more marked than in A's work, to substitute 'ye' for 'you' and to introduce elisions more freely. I again give the Folio reading in the first column.

List (f)

                                                                 

Compositor A
III.	i.	32	tombles	topples
III.	i.	131	Candlestick	cansticke
III.	i.	172	doe crosse	come crosse
III.	ii.	156	intemperature (D.W., A.)	intemperance
III.	iii.	24	thy Life	my life
IV.	i.	85	Dreame	tearme Q1-4; deame Q5
IV.	ii.	31	them that haue (C.)	them as haue
Compositor B
I.	ii.	168	I,but	Yea but
I.	iii.	26	As was	As is Q1-4; As he Q5
I.	iii.	27	Who either through enuy	Either enuie therefore, or
I.	iii.	28	Was guilty	Is guiltie
I.	iii.	60	That	This
I.	iii.	66	Made me to answer	I answered
I.	iii.	128	Although it be with	Albeit I make a
I.	iii.	133	In his behalfe	Yea on his part
I.	iii.	135	downfall	down-trod
II.	i.	9	this	that
II.	i.	13	is	be Q1-4; to be Q5
II.	i.	76	vnto	to
II.	i.	89	purpose	purchase
II.	i.	93	the Gelding	my gelding
II.	ii.	10	that	the
II.	iii.	19	if I	and I
II.	iii.	96	thou speak'st	you speake
II.	iii.	103	thee	you
II.	iv.	10	telling me	and tel me
III.	iii.	115	nothing	thing
III.	iii.	151	if	and
V.	iii.	11	to yeeld, thou haughty	to yeeld thou proud Q5
				a yeelder thou proud Q1-4
V.	iv.	149	take't on	take it vpon

The distribution of these Folio variants is noticeably more patchy than that of any group hitherto considered. At first sight it looks as if an editorial hand had been at work on I.iii, but if there was editorial tinkering in this scene it seems to have been singularly pointless. 'I answered indirectly (as I said)', the quarto line at I.iii.66, is regular and has the briskness appropriate to Hotspur; 'Made me to answer indirectly (as I said.)' has nothing to recommend it. An alternative explanation of

this kind of paraphrase (found also at I.iii.27, 128, 133) is loose memorisation; and a habit of following the matter with the mind rather than with the eye may explain why it is that we find one transposition in A's pages but eight in B's and three of them, perhaps significantly, in I.iii.

List (g)

                     

Compositor A
II.	iv.	270	good Titles of Fellowship	titles of good fellowship
Compositor B
I.	ii.	91	now I am	now am I
I.	iii.	112	let him not	let not him
I.	iii.	145	was he not	was not he
I.	iii.	233	haue poyson'd him	haue him poisoned
V.	i.	137	Is it insensible	tis insensible
V.	ii.	3	Then we are	Then are we
V.	ii.	93	heere I draw	here draw I
V.	v.	2	did we not	did not we

If we pause to consider what the variants so far amount to, what we have is as follows:

                     

	A (11 pp.)	B (14½ pp.)
List (a)	9	17	Errors of Q5 corrected
(b)	3	5	Errors of Q1-5 corrected
(c)	2	24	Literal errors
(d)	2	30	Words omitted
(e)	6	28	Words interpolated
(f)	7	23	Words altered
(g)	1	8	Transpositions
	--	--
	30	135
	--	--

It is evident from the above table that if, for the sake of argument, we were to suppose that all the Folio variants were introduced by the compositors we should then be forced to conclude that compositor A succeeded in restoring the correct reading on certainly nine and probably twelve occasions while introducing only eighteen errors and, much as one must respect A's normal accuracy, it seems doubtful whether he would have indulged in speculation so freely or have proved so shrewd a guesser. From A's work in the rest of the Histories it would appear that he was by habit conservative; and it is very likely that, when the veneer of compositors' spellings and of other normalisations is stripped from the Folio, the features of the copy will be much clearer in A's work than in B's. It was, for instance, compositor A who reproduced the quartos' typographical anomaly ('Rich. Ha.') in Richard III, I.iii.234 and compositor A who provided one of the strongest links between Q3 and the Folio by reproducing the 'as as' error at III.i.123. When working in haste his mistakes might be numerous, but I doubt if at any time he consciously took liberties with the wording of his copy. It is especially unlikely that compositor A would have supplied, on his own initiative, the speech prefixes for Peto and the Prince (missing from Q1-5) at II.iv.517, 522 or that he would have substituted the Prince for Gadshill and Gadshill for Russell at II.iv.166, 167, 169, 173. I judge therefore that, although the Folio compositors were probably responsible for some of the corrections in lists (a) and (b),[5] they are unlikely to have been responsible for them all.

The corrections are too few and too haphazard to provide any clear indication as to when, by whom, or on what authority they were made. The considerable number of Q5 errors that escaped correction, as well as the Folio's failure to elucidate cruxes common to all known quartos, precludes our postulating even a desultory attempt at collation with a playhouse manuscript, and the Folio stage directions provide no warrant for supposing that the quarto had been used as prompt-copy. Nor, apparently, had the quarto been annotated by someone with a professional interest in flourishes, hautboys, cornets, and so on, like some of the quartos used for Folio reprints. At the same time, that the quarto came from the theatre is probably the inference to be drawn from the Folio's speech-prefix alterations in II.iv, and casual correction by someone familiar with the play would explain a few of the Folio readings in list (a) that seem too acute to be satisfactorily explained as conjectural: A's restoration of 'engrosse vp' at III.ii.148, for instance, or B's restoration of 'fat' at V.iv.107. Nor, in the present state of our knowledge, can we safely exclude the possibility that the copy was looked over when it reached Jaggard and conjecturally emended whenever a manifest breakdown in the sense or metre was noticed. That the preterite was wanted at II.iv.252 and IV.iii.70 is plain from the context and what was missing at IV.iv.16 is clear from IV.iv.14. Corrections like these might have been made editorially.

Consequently it follows that some of the readings in lists (c) to (g) were conjectural emendations in the example of Q5, just as it is possible that some of the corrections in lists (a) and (b) were due to the compositors' accidental losses, interpolations, and transpositions. But, whatever we lay to the account of a playhouse scribbler or an editorial hand,

we cannot bridge the gulf between the number of errors in A's work and in B's without supposing that an 'improver' happened to have lost interest in the dialogue of Q5 whenever compositor A chanced to become responsible for the Folio text; and the unlikelihood that A's portions of the copy were cleaner than B's is the greater since we should have to assume that the same thing happened in the case of Q3 copy for Richard III. The telltale list of literal errors in B's pages is, I think, suggestive of habitual carelessness and the suspicion that compositor B was unusually prone to take liberties with his copy is confirmed by an examination of the stage directions.

Q1 was not, on the whole, badly equipped as regards stage directions, though it certainly lacked the finish that would be necessary in a promptbook. Its major omissions are not remedied in the Folio, though trivial alterations are numerous. In the items included in my first list below there is enough common ground in the work of the two compositors to make it probable that at least some of the changes found in the Folio had been made editorially in their copy.

List (h)

                                   

Compositor A
II.	iv.	317	Places Falstaff's entry (after 315, Q1-5) after 316
II.	iv.	487	Supplies Exit for Falstaff
III.	ii.	162	Places Blunt's entry (after 162, Q1-5) after 161
III.	iii.	51	Places Hostess' entry (after 52, Q3-5) after 50
IV.	i.	136	Substitutes 'Exeunt Omnes' for 'Exeunt'
IV.	iii.	113	Supplies Exeunt at end of scene
Compositor B
I.	iii.	130	Restores Worcester's entry (Q1-4; om. Q5)
II.	i.	94	Supplies Exeunt at end of scene
II.	iv.	82	Places Poins' entry (after 83, Q1-5) after 82
III.	iii.	205	Substitutes 'Exeunt omnes' for 'Exeunt'
V.	ii.	28	Places Hotspur's entry (after 25, Q1-5) after 27
V.	iii.	29	Supplies Exeunt for Hotspur and Douglas
V.	iii.	59	Supplies Exit at end of scene
V.	iv.	25	Supplies entry for Douglas
V.	iv.	110	Restores Exit for Prince (Q1-3; om. Q4-5)
V.	v.	15	Supplies Exit for Worcester and Vernon

With two exceptions,[6] all the other Folio variants in stage directions are in the pages of compositor B and they tell the same story as the dialogue variants.

List (i)

                                                         

Compositor A
IV.	ii.	73	Q	Exit (om. F)
IV.	iv.		Q	Enter Archbishop (Enter the Arch-Bishop F)
Compositor B
I.	ii.		Q	Enter prince of Wales, and Sir Iohn Falstaffe (Enter Henry Prince of Wales, Sir Iohn Falstaffe, and Pointz F)
I.	ii.	103	Q	Enter Poines (om. F)
I.	ii.	210	Q	Exit (om. F)
I.	iii.		Q	. . . with others (and others F)
I.	iii.	21	Q	Exit Wor. (om. F)
I.	iii.	302	Q	Exeunt (exit F)
II.	ii.		Q	Enter Prince, Poines, and Peto, &c. (om. &c. F)
II.	ii.	75	Q	Enter the trauailers (om. the F)
II.	ii.	94	Q	Enter the theeues againe (om. the F)
II.	ii.	99	Q	As they are sharing the Prince & Poins set vpon them, they all runne away, and Falstalffe after a blow or two runs away too, leauing the bootie behind them (om. italicised words F)
IV.	i.		Q	Enter Hotspur . . . (om. Q1; Enter Harrie Hotspurre . . . F)
IV.	i.	12	Q	Enter one with letters (Enter a Messenger F)
V.	i.	120	Q	manent Prince, Falst. (Manet Prince and Falstaffe F)
V.	ii.	90	Q	Enter another (Enter another Messenger F)
V.	ii.	101	Q	Here they embrace . . . (om. Here F)
V.	iii.		Q	the king enters (the King entereth F) to the battel (vnto the battell F)
V.	iii.	13	Q	They fight, Douglas kils Blunt, then enter (enters Q4-5) Hotspur (Fight, Blunt is slaine, then enters Hotspur F)
V.	iii.	30	Q	Alarme, Enter . . . (Alarum, and enter . . . F)
V.	iii.	52	Q	The Prince drawes it out, and finds it to be (om. to be Q5) a bottle of Sacke (The Prince drawes out a Bottle of Sacke F)
V.	iii.	53	Q	He throwes the bottle at him. Exit. (Exit. Throwes it at him F)
V.	iv.	38	Q	Enter Prince of Wales (om. of Wales F)
V.	iv.	74	Q	They fight (Fight F)
V.	iv.	77	Q	he fighteth (fights Q5) with Falstalffe, he fals down (he fights with Falstaffe, who fals down F)
V.	iv.	101	Q	He spieth Falstalffe on the ground (om. F)
V.	iv.	128	Q	He takes vp Hotspur on his backe (Takes Hotspurre on his backe F)

The first and second variants in the above list were very probably due (as Greg suggested) to editorial tinkering, but it is reasonable to infer that most of the rest of the alterations were compositor B's since the pages of compositor A contain nothing comparable. Apart from the two alterations above, compositor A reproduced verbatim the stage directions of Q5. If there was some inspection of Folio copy after it reached Jaggard, it follows that some of the alterations in B's pages may have been editorial, but we cannot, I think, explain all his alterations in this way,

especially as many of them are so pointless and show the same tendency to omit, add, and alter words as the variants in the dialogue set by B. We have here undoubtedly a combination of carelessness and highhandedness which may matter little in stage directions but is very serious when the validity of a dialogue reading is in question, particularly in text for which the Folio's authority is the higher.

A conscientious proof-reader ought, of course, to have spotted compositor B's errors and it would be folly to generalise about Jaggard's proof-reading from the few variant formes exemplified in facsimiles. The proof-reader was sufficiently on the spot to see that something was wrong at II.iv.119 (list d), the copy was almost certainly consulted, and the correction that was made was perhaps the best that could be done in the circumstances.[7] On the same page (e3v), if facsimiles are to be trusted, 'Cop' was corrected to 'Cup' and 'Cowords' to 'Cowards'[8]; but 'fatch' for 'fat' and an anomalous 'the' for 'thee' a few lines lower escaped notice or correction. Though it may be found that in aggregate the Folio proof-corrections were numerous, it is evident that, at times at least, the reader's main preoccupation was with disorders of the most trivial kind and that fidelity to copy did not enter into consideration. We have, for instance, in the Staunton and Oxford facsimiles the uncorrected and corrected versions of p. 71 (f5r), set by B (V.ii.79-V.iv.29). The following errors were corrected:

     

V.	ii.	100	earte	to	earth
		101	sucond		second
			sdch		such

The following dialogue variants from Q5 appear on this page in its uncorrected and corrected state:                  

V.	ii.	93	Q	and here draw I	F	And heere I draw
		94		Whose temper		Whose worthy temper
V.	iii.	11		thou proud		thou haughty
		13		Lord Staffords		Lords Staffords
		37		and they are for		and they for
		40		lies starke		likes starke
		42		are yet vnreuengd		are vnreueng'd
				I preethe		Prethy
V.	iv.	6		your retirement		you retirement

I can see only one principle behind this kind of proof-reading and it is not a reassuring one for an editor: it is that a combination of letters should make a word, but that a combination of words ('Many a Nobleman likes starke and stiffe', 'Least you retirement do amaze your friends') need not necessarily make sense.

It is therefore evident that we may find, when surviving copies of the First Folio have been collated, that an editor has been left to do much of the work that should have been done by Jaggard's proof-reader and the many obvious errors on Folio pages which are known to survive in their corrected state would make it seem over-optimistic to hope for anything better. The only reasonable interpretation of the hundred and thirteen errors in B's pages of the Folio 1 Henry IV, as against eighteen only in A's, is that they were for the most part due to the compositor's negligence; and even if we assumed that they included a liberal contribution of conjectural improvements, made in the copy and unaccountably concentrated in the parts that it fell to B's lot to reproduce, editorially the position is no better. If there was conjectural interference with the copy for one play there may have been tinkering with the copy for all, and the conjectural alterations of an erratic improver are as much a blemish on an edited text as the careless errors of a compositor. The latter is a serious proposition, but we have at least the advantage of being able to determine, from the character of his spelling and from the number of manifest errors in his work, when we should be particularly on guard; but if we are dealing with an irresponsible editor, who tinkered unsystematically and on no ascertainable principles, then the situation is desperate indeed.

The question is whether we must expect to find errors of this kind, and in comparable numbers, in other Folio texts. Since the average number of variants in the dialogue of 1 Henry IV set by B is close on eight to a page, we are faced with the possibility that there may be at least two hundred errors in the Folio Lear and Othello for which compositor B was solely responsible. Must we assume that these two texts are pitted with holes and corrupted by interpolations and perversions of the wording? I think we must and that it is, in any case, plain that all is not as it should have been in these two texts. There is a lacuna in the Folio Othello (a line, phrase, or word omitted to the detriment of the metre or the sense) on between fifty and sixty occasions and this is what we should expect to find from the evidence of 1 Henry IV. The omissions may be even more numerous in the Folio Lear, since some allowance must be made for accidental omissions in the prompt-book.

We must naturally expect to find some variation in a compositor's work between one play and another and even between one page and another. Haste doubtless led to excessive carelessness and prose must have

been more troublesome than verse, owing to the narrowness of the Folio column. There are fewer errors in the Folio Richard II than in 1 Henry IV; nor is the discrepancy between the relative accuracy of the two compositors so striking in Richard II, though it is clear enough.

Unless the context gives a clear indication of what is wanted, conservatism is inevitable in the case of Folio plays set from manuscript. However grave the suspicion of error, it is often wiser to accept what we have than to emend and run the risk of substituting one corruption for another. But in the case of plays printed from corrected quartos we are in a far more fortunate position. Though the quarto as a whole may have less authority than its Folio counterpart, by far the majority of the readings in the quartos of Richard III, Troilus and Cressida, Lear and Othello are not under suspicion. We are therefore not using these quartos to advantage if we reject what they have to offer both as a check on the readings of the Folio and as a means of correcting its errors. The errors can only be weeded out by bringing to bear on the readings all the relevant literary and linguistic considerations, but it is a help to know (even if it is only roughly) how many errors and what kind of errors a compositor may have introduced.

Notes