 | |  |
Notes
Complete Works, edited George Lyman Kittredge (1936); The Tragedy of Hamlet: A Critical Edition of Q2, ed. Hardin Craig and Thomas Marc Parrott (1938); Twenty-Three Plays and the Sonnets, ed. G. B. Harrison (1948); The Living Shakespeare, ed. Oscar James Campbell (1949); Complete Works, ed. Peter Alexander (1951); Complete Works, ed. Charles Jasper Sisson (1954). Wilson's New Cambridge text appeared in 1934. The Old Cambridge readings are quoted from vol. 7 of the 1892 edition, ed. W. A. Wright.
By critics the box score is as follows: Craig-Parrott, who have the greatest admiration for the integrity of the Q2 text, will accept only 5 readings as Q1 contaminations. Alexander 9, Sisson 10, Wilson 10, Kittredge 19, Harrison 20, and Campbell 20. These compare with Old Cambridge 21. In this list I.iii.65 has been omitted as ambiguous. Also, Wilson's notion that I.ii.129 sallied is a contaminated misspelling for sullied has not been counted as an item of contamination since the issue is actually between sallied (or sullied) and solid. For a new view of this celebrated crux, see my "Hamlet's Sallied or Solid Flesh: A Bibliographical Case-History," forthcoming in Shakespeare Survey, vol. 9.
"The Textual Problem of Hamlet: A Reconsideration," RES, new ser., II (1951), 328-338. See also her subsequent book, Textual Problems of the First Folio (1953).
See Philip Williams in Shakespeare Quarterly, IV (1953), 482; and Harold Jenkins, "The Relation between the Second Quarto and the Folio Text of Hamlet," Studies in Bibliography, VII (1955), 69-83.
Moreover, if by bad luck the manuscript behind the copy for F was sophisticated at a point of Q1-Q2 contamination, we should have only a choice of non-Shakespearian readings if the 'editor' of the F copy followed the manuscript.
It is food for thought that, the way things actually stand with Hamlet, the old-fashioned, eclectic editor has probably offered a somewhat better text of Act I than that which has been the product of narrower scientific method for the reason that the theory on which the 'scientific' editorial method was based has proved to be largely erroneous.
Bowers, "The Printing of Hamlet, Q2," Studies in Bibliography, VII (1955), 41-50. See also under Additions and Corrections in the present volume.
J. R. Brown, "The Compositors of Hamlet Q2 and The Merchant of Venice," Studies in Bibliography, VII (1955), 17-40. It will be noticed that this evidence quite upsets Dover Wilson's conjectures that Q2 was set throughout by a single workman who was inexperienced and incompetent. Instead, Q2 was composed by the two regular workmen in Roberts' shop, who had been setting type for him quite efficiently for some time.
The reason why X assisted with two pages from sheet L are somewhat obscure, as is the reason for the behavior of the running-titles with sheets M and N if this is indeed the order of the sheets printed at this point. However, these difficulties have nothing to do with the central fact for our purposes here, which is that sheet F was begun by Y in fairly close conjunction with the start of sheet B by X.
The same publisher Nicholas Ling was responsible for both editions. However, we have no evidence whether he supplied Roberts with a copy of Q1 at the time he handed him the manuscript, as we might reasonably suppose, or whether Roberts independently secured a copy to see if it would assist him in the printing. Under the circumstances, the first is perhaps the more plausible.
I take this sentence to mean that—because of the uncertainty about the amount of consultation—the authority of Q2 could be considered by an editor to be no greater if he hypothecates occasional consultation than it would be if the printer's copy were taken to be an annotated Q1.
RES, op. cit., p. 330. The importance in the similar anomalous spellings from the fourth and fifth scenes lies in the fact that Greg, who believed (following Wilson) that Q1 was merely consulted by Q2, also placed the consultation only near the beginning. Dr. Walker then continues with arguments against the similarities having been introduced independently from the use of 'parts' in the copy for Q1; and emphasizes that they are too close to have been fortuitously produced in two different printing houses from two dissimilar manuscripts.
Line references to Hamlet throughout this paper are to those marginally printed in the Shakespeare Association Quarto Facsimile of Q2. These correspond almost exactly to the standard Globe numbering. Quotations, with modernized s, are from this edition of Q2 and the Huntington Library facsimile of Q1.
The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, ed. Richard Hosley (Yale University Press, 1954), p. 162. This hypothesis is elaborated in the same author's "The Copy for the Second Quarto of Romeo and Juliet (1599)," in SQ for autumn, 1955.
P. L. Cantrell & G. W. Williams, "Roberts' Compositors in Titus Andronicus Q2," in this present volume, an article correcting and amplifying the earlier investigation of J. R. Brown. The pages in Titus Q2 assigned to compositor X are as follows: A3, A3v, B3v, B4, B4v, C4v, D2v, D3, D4v, E2, E3, E4v, F2v, H1, H3v, H4, H4v, I2v, I3, I3v, K3v, K4. The evidence for some of these pages is better than for others; but if a few should subsequently prove to be Y's work, instead, I doubt whether the statistics will be materially altered.
It will be recalled, of course, that evidence must bear differently on the two problems. Demonstration that Q2 follows Q1 spellings does not prove the copy was an annotated quarto, whereas demonstration that manuscript spellings influenced the compositor to set uncharacteristic forms in places where Q1 agreed with his habitual practice and the printed word would have been his copy will prove that the annotated-quarto theory cannot be maintained.
It is possible that the form horrowes exhibits only the standard a:o confusion, although I should not wish to deny the possibility that a mixed memory of Q1 here contaminated the Q2 word. On the other hand, if we are to hypothecate an annotated quarto, we must suppose that the annotator altered r to w but neglected to correct the vowel. This may be harder to envisage. Similarly, bettles at Q2 I.iv.71 seems unlikely to be an annotator's incomplete alteration of Q1 beckles, though here (as perhaps with horrowes), it seems more probable that a mixed memory of the word in the manuscript and in Q1 (with the sound influence from Q1 of the short e) has produced the Q2 form.
Yet for some words his copy had no influence whatever on his conventional spelling. I believe I am correct in stating that in the three plays X scarcely varies from the spelling heere, for example, regardless of his copy-spelling.
Philip Williams, "Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida: The Relationship of Quarto and Folio," Studies in Bibliography, III (1951), 139-140; "Two Problems in the Folio Text of King Lear," SQ, IV (1953), 455-459. See also A. S. Cairncross, "Quarto Copy for Folio Henry V," in the present volume of Studies.
| | |