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See especially "Variant Readings in the First Folio of Shakespeare," SQ, IV (1953), 279-288.

References are to the Cambridge edition, 1891-93.

My list does not include his more trivial errors (foul case, turned letters, and an occasionally garbled spelling)

It is generally assumed, I think rightly, that these confusions in place and personal names were due to Shakespeare's forgetfulness.

Presumably due to a cramped abbreviation.

Possibly B registered what he saw not by the eye but by the ear, voicing the sound: 'x' for 'z' might therefore be an error of foul case; if he had intended to set up 'mist-full' he would have used the ligature 'st'.

It looks as if Compositor A did not recognise the word, possibly spelt 'paccion' in his copy. The letter cannot have been omitted accidentally, since for 'ct' he would have used the ligature.

The leisurely ritual associated with conjuring makes the sense seem less apt to this stirring passage than Rowe's martial 'summon'.

Mr. Cairncross's evidence seems to me very strong indeed.

How difficult the manuscript was is evident from the many mistakes in transliterating foreign words.

See A. Walker, "The Folio Text of 1 Henry IV," Studies in Bibliography, VI (1954), 45-59.

Since the error occurs in a passage where Q3 could easily have been corrected to serve as copy for F, we must suppose the mistake was the collator's. I see no obstacle to supposing that a collator, with a perfectly satisfactory reading in his printed text, none the less sometimes altered it for the worse. How else can we explain F's 'Fenne' for 'sunne' (Q) in T. & C., V.ii.171, 'Sword' for 'foord' (Q) in Lear, III.iv.52, or 'soules' for 'smiles' (Q) in Rich. II, I.iv.28? How many editors, using the Old Cambridge text as copy for their own, have struck out a better reading (e.g. 'pious bawds') and substituted something inferior? Why should collators have been less fallible?

Cf. his 'welcomes newes', 'Lords Staffords' in 1 Hen. IV, I.i.66, V.iii.13.

"Collateral Substantive Texts (With Special Reference to Hamlet)," SB, VII (1955), 51-67.

Over this and a number of Q readings I find myself in agreement with H. T. Price on the text of Henry V (1920). I also suspect, like Price, that there is a similar error of repetition in F at IV.i.156-7, though I think it likely that Q's 'crave' was a misreading of an abbreviated 'command'.

There are 4 instances of B's addition of 'd' in 1 Hen. IV (I.iii.159, 236; II.iii.30; V.i.72).

All the same, Q's 'honour' is a great deal better than Walter's 'arms', as two syllables are wanted.

The strange heresy that Shakespeare could not write metrically presumably rests on the assumption that proof was read with copy.

See Richard E. Hasker, "The Copy for the First Folio Richard II," Studies in Bibliography, V (1953), 53-72; but I doubt whether the example of this quarto had been corrected for use in the theatre (as he argues) in view of the considerable number of Q1-3 errors which the copy for F contained.

These are, in fact, the only two F reprints executed throughout in a style comparable to that of plays set from manuscript and corrected quartos. The four reprinted comedies are more mechanical work, and the two tragedies (plus the 3 pages of T. & C. set to follow R. & J.) are both mechanical and careless apart from some window-dressing on their first pages: contrast, for instance, the first page of R. & J. with the second, or the first page of T. & C. (first setting) with the second—all B's work, exemplifying how variable his style of reproduction might be.

B liked a short speech prefix and tended to shorten; A inclined to longer speech prefixes and often expanded: compare, for instance, what they did with Q5's speech prefixes for Falstaff in 1 Hen. IV; B immediately shortened Q5's 'Fals.' to 'Fal.' and stuck to this as his norm, A immediately lengthened Q5's 'Fal.' to 'Falst.' and stuck to that as his norm. The length of speech prefixes is often, in fact, a means of discriminating between their stints. The need to justify a line would naturally lead to departure from the norm and might establish a new pattern: thus A in 1 Hen. IV, p. 57, first expanded Q5's 'Pri.' to 'Prince.', shortened the latter to 'Prin.' in a full line, and did not revert to 'Prince.' for some time.

Reminiscent of the metrical bodging in the F Rich. III. For some of this the compositors may have been responsible, but I isolate it since it is common to both.

Probably a deliberate alteration: Q3's spelling wavered between 'Herford' and 'Hereford' and for a time B had regularised in favour of the former.

At first sight, this looks like one of the characteristic alterations found in B's stints of 1 Hen. IV, but in Rich. II there is an instance of this kind of curtailment in A's work (IV.i.320), so that the collator may have been responsible (cf. Hamlet, II.ii.39 for a similar curtailment of B's).

A characteristic error of repetition in Q1. A consideration of proof-corrections (clearly made with reference to copy) in the five known variant formes makes it evident that the substitution of one word for another (especially through repetition) was liable to occur in Q1: only 1 out of 17 errors corrected was due to misreading.

The Q1 reading (though preferred by editors) looks like an error of repetition (cf.II.iii.123), like Q1's 'grief' for 'joy' at III.iv.11 (cf. III.iv.9).

"The Relation between the Second Quarto and the Folio Text of Hamlet," Studies in Bibliography, VII (1955), 69-83.

Thus, although the F compositors normally reproduced the parentheses of their copy, Hamlet shows that the practice was not invariable; losses, however, occur elsewhere—6 in F Rich. II (1 by A, 5 by B) and 11 in F T. & C. (2 by A, 9 by B).

The deliberate absurdity of the 'mobled' queen in Hamlet is, for instance, the kind of reading one finds 'inobled' in the 1619 quartos (cf. the substitution of 'thundering' for Lear's 'pother' in Q2).

Thus Kökeritz (p. 176) seems inclined to think that Shakespeare's rhymes of 'chaste', 'haste', 'taste', and 'waste' with 'blast', 'fast', 'last', etc. were eye rhymes, though citing Bulloker and later evidence for a pronunciation going back to M.E. ă in the former group of words. Since some compositors (e.g. Roberts's) almost invariably used the short spellings ('chast' etc.) and others (e.g. Simmes's) had as firm a preference for the long spellings, the partially modernising editor has to decide whether to follow Shakespeare's compositors' spellings or act on Kökeritz's conclusion that Shakespeare used the obsolescent pronunciation (from M.E. ă) in rhymes and some puns.

It should always be remembered that what serves for compositor identification may be inadequate for copy identification, which requires the fullest possible information about a compositor's habits. Thus, Jaggard's, Roberts's, Danter's, and Simmes's compositors share certain habits which need to be taken into account in connection with copy but are useless for compositor identification (e.g. the preference of Simmes's two compositors for 'haste', 'chaste', etc.) Further, my own lists of words which serve for compositor identification in the Folio Histories and Tragedies are certainly incomplete. More will certainly be added and I have, in any case, deliberately excluded words of infrequent occurrence; e.g.