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X
The general conclusion seems justified that F was set up from corrected Q copy within certain limits. Further, both Q2 and Q3 were used—there is no sign of exclusive dependence on Q1—Q3 serving as the main copy, and Q2 being drawn on wherever that gave the advantage of using independently a separate side of a Q leaf. Since the use of the quartos as copy coincides with the Q pages, but with no other known factor in relation to the copy, this may be taken as a printing-house device to ease the task of correction and speed the delivery of the copy, if necessary, to the compositors. It would also serve, alternatively, for speed in making a complete duplicate of the play for later use, if the manuscript were urgently required or demanded by the players, or if there was likely to be a long delay in setting up.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine any other explanation of the facts here presented. One cannot imagine such a copy originating, for example, in the theatre. It certainly would have been impossible as promptcopy; nor is it likely that, even if Heminge and Condell set themselves, or their scribe, to make a transcript, it would have been done in this way, or on two exemplars. The use of Q is much too widespread to admit of a "patching" theory, such as has been offered for Richard III; a manuscript that required patching to that extent would obviously have been so dealt with long before, and one hesitates to think what it would look like after the "patching." Again, if there was to be transcription, it is difficult to see the point of the intermediate use of the quartos; it would have been better to do the transcript direct from the manuscript. In short, except as a printer's device, there seems to be no accounting for all the phenomena of the F text.
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