University of Virginia Library

IX

The most intriguing question is the reason for the use of two quartos as copy. Once again, the way to the probable solution is to follow the procedure that the corrector may be assumed to have adopted, and at the same time to identify, as near as can be done in the circumstances, the particular quarto used at each point. From a treatment of the text in this way, it emerges that Q3 was the main copy, and in particular for gatherings A and B, where, with the exceptions noted above, it presents no difficulty. Elsewhere, beginning from signature C, the use of Q2 occurs at intervals. Its use seems to coincide with difficulty of corrections, i.e. heavy correction on at least one side of the Q leaf, where both sides are usable. This means that, in such cases, Q3 was used, as corrected, for e.g. the recto, while Q2 was similarly used for the verso. The obvious advantage of this procedure was, of course, that it dispensed with the need for transcription of a passage as a whole, while allowing either side to be cut up, re-arranged, and supplemented by the necessary material and corrections from the manuscript. And, as we should expect on such a hypothesis, the use of the Q copy was determined in general by the Q page. This is confirmed by the fact that it has no consistent relation to the F page or column, or to the stints undertaken by the F compositors, or to act and scene divisions. The Q page is normally that of Q3, though occasionally that of Q2 is allowed to determine the limit of use.

All this is well illustrated by the first appearance of Q2 as copy—on C1r. The division is sharply marked, with two clear variants—Q3,F "hell" (Q1,2 "hell fire") in the last line, II.iii.42, of B4v; and Q2,F "world" instead of the correct Q1,3 "word" in "The word is pitch and pay:" in the seventh line of C1r. Actual correction of Q to bring it into conformity with F shows that the corrector here found himself in difficulty owing to the combined need for transposition, correction, and addition. The initial result would be so complicated as to give a compositor some trouble, thus—and this is the result of various trials:-

The corrector seems to have decided, of necessity, to make a better copy. Rather than rewrite the passage, he sought another exemplar, which happened

to be one of Q2. Here he discovered—if he was not already aware— that this passage occupied the lower half of B4v, which he was naturally free to cut up and re-arrange so as at the same time to allow for the insertion of any omitted matter. The process turned out to be extremely simple and economical, and provided much better copy, something like this:-

Continuing with the correction of C1, the corrector immediately came to a corrupt passage of five lines, for which he had to substitute twenty, II.iv.1-20. This was followed by six gaps, in rapid succession, including one of 13 and one of 15 lines. He therefore continued with the scissors-and-paste method, using the still intact recto of C1 in Q2, and thus preserving for further use the verso, C1v, of Q3, thus:-

The collation suggests that he continued the use of Q2 until he came to the stage-direction at the foot, and for that, and the one line of text after it, II.iv.75, returned to Q3, where only a part of the verso was now required. The collation is:-                

Q1	Q2	Q3	F
Q2 II.iv.21 foorth	forth	foorth	forth
22 France:	France:	France	France:
25 busied	busied	troubled	busied
26 kingd	Kingd	kingd	King'd
27 fantastically	phantastically	fantastically	phantastically
65 Embassador	Embassador	Ambassador	Embassador
Q3 75 brother	brother	brother of	brother of

One must, of course, make allowances for accidentals, compositors' habits, etc.; but the trend in favour of Q2, and the absence of any clear case of dependence on Q3, are evident enough.

Q3 proved adequate for the next two pages. The Chorus of Act III intervened approximately between the recto and verso of C2, which would

allow, possibly, of the verso being cut up for the interposition of several long omissions; though separate slips could also have been used. In the case of C3, the verso, containing the French of III.iv., was almost certainly unusable, and the corrector was thus free to do as he wished with the recto. On similar lines, Q3 seems to have sufficed for D1 to D3 inclusive, though D3r may either not have been used at all, or may have been cut up on account of heavy transposition, and Q2 used for the lightly corrected verso. The evidence is too slight for a firm decision.

The next instance where Q was difficult on both sides but not unusable on either, is D4. At this point, the Q2 page begins and ends the previous signature one line earlier than Q3, i. e. D4r of Q3 begins at IV.i.62, while D3v of Q2 begins at IV.i.61. This correspondence must have favoured alternate use of the quartos. Collation suggests that the recto was set up from Q2, i. e. D3v: IV.i.61-103:-

         

Q1	Q2	Q3	F
IV.i.65 lewer	lewer	lower	fewer
67 ancient	auncient	ancient	aunchient
71 bable	bable	babble	bable
81 Gour.	Gow.	Gower.	Gow.

Although a case can be made out on general grounds for "fewer", as by Greg (Pr. Em., pp. 18-19), the Q3 "lower", which is supported by "I will speak lower" at line 81, is almost certainly correct, and, on a theory of Q copy for F, it is clear that "fewer" has not the independent authority it was supposed to have, and is, in fact, nothing but a conjectural emendation, by the F corrector or compositor, of the Q2 "lewer".

Besides heavy correction, both sides of the leaf (as in Q3) have substantial gaps, amounting to some 65 lines, the recto some transposition, e. g. lines 113-114 with 101-103, and five lines that are, rightly or wrongly, omitted altogether in F. Here again, use of one quarto for each side of the leaf would give the advantage of the scissors-and-paste method.

On the next page, E1r, the corrector continued with Q3 (IV.i.186-289). He encountered heavy correction, five small gaps, and a little transposition. Near the end, 60 lines had to be inserted, and 20 of these appear in F mislined (226-245), suggesting that they were copied on to a slip, not too intelligently. On the verso, correction is particularly heavy on the second half of the page, and a whole scene of 64 lines, IV.ii., had to be restored in the middle. Again, recourse seems to have been had to Q2 (E1r; E1v in Q3). Such variants as do occur point to Q2 here:-

       

IV.iii.4	Exe. Q1,2,F	Ex. Q3
4	all are Q1,2,F	are all Q3
12	Lord Q1,2,F	Lords Q3
16SD.	the King Q2,F	King Q1,3

Exactly the same procedure was applied to the next signature, E2—Q3 being used for the recto and Q2 for the verso. The use of Q2 was here due, not so much to the state of the verso, which is good, as to the very heavy correction and transposition necessary on the recto (IV.iii.33-72). The verso (IV.iii.73-116) shows the following indications of Q2 copy:-

     

IV.iii.90 backe Q1,3	back: Q2,F
100 famed, Q1,3	famed: Q2,F
113 flye:Q1 flye, Q3	flie: Q2,F

The only significant Q2 exception "within are trim" at line 115, for "are in the trim" (Q1,3,F), must have been restored by the corrector.

The remainder of E presented no difficulty; E3v, another French scene, was probably useless; and the other pages could be corrected easily from Q3.

Both sides of F1 are fairly heavily corrected, and Q2 may have been used for the recto, though it is hard to be quite certain. Q2 next appears on signature F2 (IV.vii.114-161; IV.vii.161—IV.viii.35). Q3 was used for the recto, which still coincides, to within a line, with the previous Q2 verso. The evidence of the speech-prefixes (section IV above), and readings like "from's" Q3; "from his" F ("off from his" Q1,2) confirm. The recto has all the familiar features—heavy correction, gaps, and transposition—that accompany the introduction of Q2. It is not surprising, therefore, that the collation of the verso, itself containing a number of gaps, and requiring (in Q2, where the corresponding side, the recto, takes in 12 more lines) some transposition, shows evidence of the use of Q2, as follows:-

         

IV.viii.1 SD.	Captaine Gower Q3	Gower Q1,2,F
3	towards Q1,3	toward Q2,F
18/23	now? Whats Q1,3	now whats Q2,F
26	in person Q3	om. Q1,2,F
30	in's Q3	in his Q1,2,F

The incorporation of the speech-prefix "Will." from the margin into the text, from Q2, has already been mentioned and illustrated (Plate I).

Here we have again the tendency to complete the page of whichever quarto was in use. The corrector continued to the end of the Q2 recto, which carried him well over into the Q3 recto of F3. The resumption of Q3 at that point is clear from e. g. the reading "but" (om. Q1,2) at IV.viii.50.

The last evidence of Q2 copy occurs on the second half of F4r, and may be confined to that half. The top half of both recto and verso needs only light amendment, the lower half of both a great deal. The Q3 page may therefore have been cut across, so that the verso could be cut-and-pasted

(from Q3; "in the meane time" Q3,F;"meane time"Q1,2, at V.i.31); the lower half of the recto being done on Q2, where it formed the top of F3v; or the whole of the recto could have been corrected on the Q2 copy (IV.viii.106—V.i.13) so that the Chorus to Act V could be inserted between the end of F3r and the beginning of F3v. The return to Q3 was made, as we have seen happen before (sig. C1), on the stage-direction "Enter Pistol." required before the last line of the page (F4r) of Q3.

The outstanding evidence here of Q2 is the spelling "sault" at V.i.8 in Q2 and F, a spelling not found elsewhere in F or the quartos; and this is corroborated by:-

     

IV.viii.109 other. Q1,2 other, F	(an other ? Q3
109 God Q1,2,F	O God Q3
112 proclaimed Q1,2,F	proclaim'd Q3

The resumption of Q3 at line 14 is suggested by the variant:  

Here a Q1,2

Heere he Q3,F

G1r bears the last obvious traces of F use of Q copy, but, as a single side or page, presents no problem. The discontinuance of Q copy must have been due to the difficulty it presented from this point to the end of the play; it would not have proved worth while to try to use it.

To sum up: A system such as that outlined above may, in the description, seem rather complicated, and more trouble than it could have been worth. But, with the two quartos in hand, it works out in fact very easily, and is eminently feasible. Enough Q pages could be corrected with a minimum of labour to make the process economical. Enough leaves could be used on both sides, or proved to be usable on one side, to permit one corrected quarto (Q3) to serve as the main copy. Leaves of which both sides were subject to heavy correction, but still usable either as they stood or after scissors-and-paste treatment, called into play the supplementary Q2, one side of the leaf being used from each of the quartos. This probably happened with the following Q3 pages, where the coincidence of heavy two-side correction with the introduction of Q2 suggests a causal connection:-C1r, D3v (?), D4r, E1v, E2v, F1r (?), F2v, F4r (pages as in Q3). Occasionally, for a short passage, where correction created confusion, a transcript may have been made, as in B1r. The main gaps in Q were probably sometimes supplied by transcription, as is suggested by verse mislineation; elsewhere, of course, they could have been set up direct from the manuscript. As a means of providing copy for two compositors with a known preference for printed copy, this method has its obvious advantages. We do not know exactly how Jaggard's compositors worked on the copy; but in Henry V it is possible to see how both could have been provided, on this

loose-leaf system, with copy so that neither need have interfered with the progress of the other. And it may have been a further incentive, though again we can only conjecture, that by this method the manuscript could have been preserved and returned to the Company intact.