University of Virginia Library

IV

Two of the most significant links between Q and F would be sufficient of themselves to prove the case for F dependence. The first makes it certain, also, that Q3 was the edition used at this point—II.i.39. According to the usual practice, Nim's interjection "Push." (Q) or "Pish." (F) is here given a line to itself in Q1 and Q2. In Q3 and F, however, it is printed in the same line as the last line of the previous speech—the only example of this in F.

The second link shows F dependence on either Q2 or Q3. The texts compare as follows (IV.viii.104):-

• Q1 . . . but fiue and twentie. O God thy arme was here,
• Q2,3 . . . but fiue and twenty. King. O God, thy Arme was heere,
• F But fiue and twentie. O God, thy Arme was heere:

The F indent in the second line is pointless and exceptional. It is merely a survival of the deletion, in the text of Q2 or Q3, of the erroneous speech-prefix King. This is also true of the retention of the unnecessary division of what are really two parts of the same verse line.

To these links may be added a third, of equal significance, the unique instance, at II.i.98, in which both Q3 and F diverge from their normal practice and from that of Q1 and Q2 to use the speech-prefix form Pi. instead of Pis. or Pist. or (rarely) Pistoll. No doubt the Q3 compositor shortened the prefix in order to justify the line; but Q1 and Q2 had already used a fuller form in the same space, and Q3 has other lines, just as long, with the fuller forms.

Again, the influence of Q, and of Q3 in particular, may be reasonably inferred from the following collation, from the only F passage which departs from the normal speech-prefix King.:-

               

IV.vii.80	Q1	Kin.	Q2	King.	Q3	Kin.	F	Kin.
84		Kin.		King.		Kin.		Kin.
101		Kin.		Kin.		King.		King.
112		K.		Kin.		King.		King.
116		Kin.		Ki.		Kin.		Kin.
127		K.		Ki.		Kin.		Kin.
131		Kin.		Ki.		King.		King.
139		Kin.		Kin.		King.		King.

Here F follows the quite fortuitous variations of Q3, but shows no consistent relation to Q1 or Q2.

Another significant phenomenon among the speech-prefixes is that they often change immediately after, and just as far as, Q copy ceased to be available (since the passages were wanting in Q, or too bad to be used as copy), and F had therefore to be set from the manuscript. This implies that, when the compositor switched over from one type of copy to another—from corrected quarto to manuscript—he was liable to switch, on some occasions, to the (different) speech-prefixes of that copy. This is what must have happened, for example, when the normal F prefix Flu. (Q Flew.) becomes Welch. eight times consecutively at III.ii.64-133, a passage wanting in Q; and when the normal Hostess. becomes Woman. at II.iii.33. The coincidence of the changes with the gaps in Q confirms the use of Q copy on both sides (i. e. before and after) these passages.

Some of the most striking examples of corroborative evidence may now be presented in summary form; the Q text, unless otherwise stated, being taken from Q3, though Q2 may equally well have served, in most cases, as the copy. The strokes indicate the accepted line-division.

Common QF mislineation

II.iv.127-132

• Q3 Dol.
  Say that my father render faire reply,
  It is against my will:
  For I desire nothing so much,
  As oddes with England.
  And for that cause, according to his youth,
  I did present him with those Paris balles.
  
  Exe.
  Hee'l make your Paris Louer shake for it,
  
  
• F Dolph.
  Say: if my Father render faire returne,
  It is against my will: for I desire
  Nothing but Oddes with England.
  To that end,/as matching to his Youth and Vanitie,
  I did present him with the Paris-Balls.
  
  Exe.
  Hee'le make your Paris Louer shake for it,
  
  

The coincidence of Q and F in the erroneous line-ending "England" betrays the F dependence on its copy. Further bibliographical traces or links may appear in the common colon after "will", and the common spelling of Louvre.

IV.i.295-8 (see also Plate VI below)

• Q3 Which euery day their withered hands hold vp To heauen, to pardon blood, And I haue built two Chanceries, more will I do:

---

73




• F Who twice a day their wither'd hands hold vp Toward Heauen, to pardon blood: And I haue built/two Chauntries, Where the sad and solemne Priests/sing still For Richards Soule. More will I doe:

Here F ends two lines wrongly, one (296) directly from Q, the other by beginning a line with the F insertion ("Where . . . Soule."), which is itself misdivided.

IV.viii.38-41

• Q3 King.
  Let me see thy gloue.
  Looke you, this is the fellow of it.
  It was I indeede you promised to strike.
  And thou hast giuen me most bitter words.
  
  
• F King.
  Giue me thy Gloue Souldier;
  Looke, heere is the fellow of it:
  'Twas I indeed thou promised'st to strike,
  And thou hast giuen me most bitter termes.
  
  

Here the QF agreement in dividing the first line into two, at the same point, is suggestive, whether the line is prose (as usually printed), or verse, as Shakespeare probably intended. It is perhaps worth adding that F agrees specifically with Q3, since Q1 and Q2 divide after "Looke you".

Italics

The influence of Q on F may also be illustrated by the occasional departure of F from its normal practice as to the use of roman or italics for proper names, where it is influenced by, and follows, Q. For example, the conservative F compositor A, following his copy—at this point, Q3—diverges into using italics for "Dolphin" in the text, at III.v.64:-

           

	Q1	Q2	Q3	F
II.iv.29	Dolphin	Dolphin	Dolphin	Dolphin
111	Dolphin	Dolphin	Dolphin	Dolphin
115	Dolphin	Dolphin	Dolphin	Dolphin
III.v.64	Dolphin	Dolphin	Dolphin	Dolphin
vii.88	om.	om.	om.	Dolphin

A's more unorthodox colleague, B, also, who was inclined to the opposite extreme of treating the word as a name and italicising it, departs from this practice at I.ii.221 and 235, to follow Q in using roman type, while in the remaining nine instances in the scene, he returns to his normal italics. So, at IV.vi.11, 15, 24, B follows Q3, as against Q1 and Q2, in printing "Suffolke", used alone as a proper name, in roman; and all the quartos in printing "Monmouth", seven times, and "Macedon", five times, in italics (IV.vii.); and "Lucifer" and "Belzebub" in roman.

Spelling

The use of -t and 'd (-ed to indicate unvoiced weak past-participial endings was arbitrary between 1590 and 1623, but the tendency to favour 'd was progressive. One would therefore expect and allow for a certain degree of "modernisation" in F as compared with Q. As Dr. Alice Walker pointed out in the case of quartos that were certainly used as copy for F (op. cit., pp. 154-5), one would expect the pattern of modernisation to be a random one, if the two texts, Q and F, were entirely independent of each other. When one finds, therefore, that the pattern of F follows that of Q in its irregularity, one can only conclude that Q influenced F. In Henry V, there is an almost complete coincidence of such irregularity in these variants where they appear in both texts. The following complete list shows that Q and F agree in 13 -t endings (14 counting Q3 only), 7 -d, -ed, or 'd endings (9 counting Q3 only), while 5 are modernised (Q -t, F '-d, -ed). There are only two exceptions; one of them is Fluellen's (Q digd; F digt), and was presumably intended to emphasize his Welsh pronunciation; the other is fac't out, III.vii.80, and, since the words occur at the end of a prose line in F, the form might be due to an attempt to justify the line.

 

Q,F -t accurst alewasht astonisht establisht matcht Q3 pickt rackt steept toucht vnfurnisht vsurpt vanisht washt worshipt

Q,F -d, 'd, -ed chac'd disgrac'd enforc'd Q3,F finished fixed forc'd Q3,F practis'd stretched wink'd

Q -t F 'd, -ed burnt, burned punisht, punish'd stopt, stop'd steept, (in-)steeped talkt, talk'd

Peculiar, and often unique, spellings are also encountered throughout both texts, e.g. I.ii.164, Owse (all other Shakespearean plays ooze); II.iv.132, Louer (=Louvre); IV.iii.105, crasing (=grazing); V.i.8 sault (all other plays salt).

Punctuation

Here F dependence on Q2 or Q3 may be sufficiently illustrated by the following significant examples:-

• 1. Q How now sir Iohn, quoth I? II.iii.17 F How now Sir Iohn (quoth I?) what man?

The retention of the Q question-mark within the F brackets, if not impossible in Elizabethan punctuation, is at least unusual enough to be taken as a clue.

• 2. Q,F great grandfather I.ii.146 (Camb. great-grandfather)
• 3. Q1,3,F Doll Tear-sheete, she by name, and her espowse II.i.75 (Camb. omits first comma.)
• 4. Q3 Now Lords to France: The enterprise whereof II.ii.182 F Now Lords for France: the enterprise whereof
• 5. Q3 And I: if F and I: If III.ii.13-14 (Camb. And I:/ If)

Compositors' spelling

The F text seems to have been distributed as follows between compositors A and B:-[7]

             

A H1r—h2r col. a	(pp. 69-71a)	I Prol.—I.ii.135
B h2r col. b—h4r col. a	(pp. 71b—75a)	I.ii.136—II.ii.179
A h4r col. b—i4r	(pp. 75b—87)	II.ii.180—IV.iv.43
B i4v—i5r	(pp. 88-89)	IV.iv.44—IV.vii.142
A i5v—i6r	(pp. 90-91)	IV.vii.143—V.i.34
B i6v col. a	(p. 92a)	V.i.34—V.ii.11
A i6v col. b—k2r	(pp. 92b—95)	V.ii.12—end

Both compositors normally alter certain spellings of their copy-text to suit their own preferences. But, especially in the case of a printed text, they occasionally adopt the spelling of that copy. Thus, for example, we find compositor A, in his first stint, departing from his known habits to follow the Q spellings in such words as:-          

Normal A spelling	F Henry V	Q Henry V
I.ii.96 clayme	claim	claim
155 bene, beene	bin	bin Q1,3 (bene Q2)
30 belieue	beleeue	beleeue
177 thieues	theeues	theeues

Even allowing for the occasional use of shorter spellings (e. g. bin) which might have been introduced to "justify" a line, there is a marked series of such variations in the work of both compositors —variations characterized by the consistent adoption of the Q spelling.

The whole point may be neatly illustrated from their use of speech-prefixes, and in particular that for Gower. I have not seen it noticed that A consistently uses a longer form of prefix than B. Thus B can be identified immediately on the evidence of such forms as War., Suf., Mes., Con.; while A prefers Warw., Suff., Mess., Const. For Gower, A uses the full name, while B prefers Gow. Each, however, departs from his normal practice once (apart from an exceptional Gour. at V.i.36). All the quartos are inconsistent, and use several forms of the prefix. But in both the F variants, A and B adopt precisely that form which their quarto copy happened to favour at that point, A taking his Gow. from Q2 at IV.1.81, and B his Gower. from Q3 at IV.vii.19, quite contrary to their habitual forms.