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Some Editorial Principles (with special reference to Henry V) by Alice Walker
  
  
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95

Page 95

Some Editorial Principles (with special reference to Henry V)
by
Alice Walker

In what follows my object is to demonstrate how compositor analysis contributes towards the solution of editorial problems in Shakespeare. I use the Folio text of Henry V for illustration, partly because it is rightly held to be one of the most reliable Folio texts and partly because it was the work of the two Jaggard compositors, A and B, whose habits are of considerable importance to editors. I do not propose to suggest which readings require emendation, except by way of illustration, or even to consider the general problem of the transmission of this text, which is the subject of another article in this volume: my aim is merely to show how answers to a few important questions may be found.

It would be agreed, I think, that the most crucial question today is the amount and kind of corruption we may expect to find in good substantive texts. Clearly one cannot generalise, as it varies from play to play and depends on two things: (1) the character of the copy, and (2) the kind of care taken in its printing. Compositors' errors thus represent only a fraction of the evidence an editor needs to take into account in formulating the principles on which he must work, but I shall concern myself with the habits of compositors because emphasis on the printing of Shakespeare's texts is urgently needed in order to correct some of the false premises of present-day editing, often resting on past fallacies rather than present realities.

Earlier in the present century when the first gigantic strides were made towards recognition of the kind of copy from which early good quarto and Folio texts were printed, the immediate reaction was one of confidence. It seemed as if, given reasonable care over proof-correction (and this was assumed), there could not be much wrong with good substantive texts which familiarity with the secretary hand might not put right, since even casual proof-reading with copy would have provided a safeguard against omissions and interpolations, anticipations and recollections detrimental to sense


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and 'absolute numbers.' The assumption that proof was read with reasonable care was the keystone of conservative editorial theory, but it has recently been badly shaken by what Hinman[1] has so far published about Jaggard's proof-reading of the Folio. If Jaggard's preoccupation, throughout the Folio, was with typographical blemishes and not with fidelity to copy, then the character of the compositors who set the type is as important as the character of the copy itself. In recent years, recognition of the need to know all that can be discovered about compositors, press-work, and proof-reading has, in fact, undermined in some ways the textual theory of the pre-war years.

In the last resort, an editor must be prepared to take responsibility for the readings of his text: for seeing that the emendations he makes are consistent with the kind of transmission he postulates and for seeing too that he does not flightily emend one kind of error in one place and then jib at emending its like in another. There may be cruxes which defy emendation and there will certainly be doubtful readings where it is difficult to know what to do for the best. But there is, in every text, a nucleus of readings which are certainly wrong and it is from these that an editor must develop the principles on which he emends other readings. Disregarding errors in foreign names and foreign words, requiring an apprehension of the matter which Jaggard's compositors plainly did not possess, there are just over 50 such readings in the dialogue of Henry V emended by the Old Cambridge and recent English editors (Dover Wilson, Alexander, Walter, and Sisson). When these are referred to the stints of the two compositors who set this play, it is clear what types of error an editor should be on the watch for and where the greater number of one type of error or another is likely to be. Spelling evidence shows that Compositor A set pp. 69-71a, 75b-87, 90-91, 92b-95 (I.i.-I.ii.135, II.ii.180-IV.iv.43, IV.vii.143-V.i.34, V.ii.12 ff.); Compositor B set up pp. 71b-75a, 88-89, 92a (I.ii.136-II.ii.179, IV.iv.44-IV.vii.142, V.i.34-V.ii.11).[2] The unanimously rejected readings are as follows:

Compositor A's stints

                 
p.71  I.ii.131  (1)  Bloods  for blood F3 
75b  II.iii.16  (2)  Table  babbled Theobald 
II.iii.49  (3)  world  word Q1,3, Rowe 
77  III.Ch.4  (4)  Douer  Hampton Theobald 
III.Ch.6  (5)  fayning  fanning Rowe 
III.i.7  (6)  commune  summon Rowe; conjure Walter 
III.i.17  (7)  Noblish  noblest F2 
III.i.24  (8)  me  men F4 
III.i.32  (9)  straying  straining Rowe 

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79  III.iii.32  (10)  headly  heady F2 
III.iii.35  (11)  Desire  Defile Rowe 
80  III.v.46  (12)  Kings  knights Theobald conj., Pope ii 
81  III.vi.107  (13)  Leuitie  lenity Qq, Rowe 
III.vii.12  (14)  postures  pasterns F2 
83  IV.Ch.16  (15)  nam'd  name Tyrwhitt conj., Steevens 
84  IV.i.94  (16)  Iohn  Thomas Theobald conj., Pope ii 
85  IV.i.241  (17)  Odoration  adoration F2 
IV.i.271  (18)  Hiperio  Hyperion F2 
IV.i.287  (19)  reckning of  reckoning if tyrwhitt conj., Steevens; . . . or anon conj., D.W. 
IV.i.304  (20)  friend  friends Qq, Theobald 
86  IV.iii.11-4  (21)  Line order wrong   Trans. Thirlby conj., Theobald 
IV.iii.48  (22)  Line omitted   Qq, Malone 
91  IV.viii.111  (23)  me  we F2 
V.Ch.10  (24)  Wiues  with wives F2 
92b  V.ii.12  (25)  Ireland  England F2 
V.ii.50  (26)  withall  all Rowe 
93  V.ii.77  (27)  curselarie  cursorary Q3, Pope; cursitory D.W. 
94  V.ii.316  (28)  hath  hath never Rowe 
95  V.ii.356  (29)  pation  paction Theobald 

Compositor B's stints[3]

                                   
71b  I.ii.163  (1)  their  her Johns. conj., Capell; your Qq 
72  I.ii.212  (2)  And  End Qq, Pope 
73  II.Ch.32  (3)  force a play  Corrupt  
II.i.23  (4)  name  mare Qq, Theobald 
II.i.77  (5)  enough to  enough Qq, Pope 
II.i.99  (6)  Coporall  Corporal F2 
74  II.i.113  (7)  that  that's F2 
II.ii.87  (8)  furnish  furnish him F2 
II.ii.107  (9)  an naturall  a natural F2 
75a  II.ii.139  (10)  make  mark Theobald 
ibid.  (11)  thee  the Pope 
II.ii.147  (12)  Thomas  Henry Qq, Theobald 
II.ii.148  (13)  Marsham  Masham Qq, Rowe 
II.ii.159  (14)  Which  Which I F2 
II.ii.176  (15)  you  you have Qq, Knight; you three F2 
88  IV.v.11  (16)  dye in  die in honour (Qq); . . . harness D.W.; . . . arms Walter 
IV.v.15  (17)  a base slaue  by a slave Qq, Pope 
IV.vi.34  (18)  mixtfull  mistful Warburton conj., Theobald 

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89  IV.vii.75  (19)  with  their Pope 
IV.vii.107  (20)  Countrymen  countryman Qq, F2 
IV.vii.112  (21)  Good  God Qq, F3 
92a  V.i.64  (22)  began  begun Capell 
V.i.83  (23)  swore  swear Qq, F3 

A's stints thus contain 29 certain errors in 20 pages and B's 23 in 6 1/2. I shall now analyse the errors, including in the category 'misreadings' all that might have been due to misreading of copy but querying those which might have been due to some other kind of error:

    Compositor A's stints

  • Misreadings: nos. 1?, 2, 5, 6?, 8?, 9?, 11, 13?, 14, 15, 17?, 18?, 20?, 23?, 27, 29
  • Letters added: 3, 10
  • Words, phrases etc. omitted: 22, 24, 28
  • Words interpolated: 26
  • Errors due to copy: 4, 16, 21, 25[4]
  • Repetitions: 19
  • Assimilations: 7
  • Misinterpretation: 12[5]

    Compositor B's stints

  • Misreadings: 1?, 2?, 4, 20?, 21?, 22?, 23?
  • Letters omitted: 6, 7, 10
  • Letters added: 9, 11, 13
  • Words, phrases etc. omitted: 8, 14, 15, 16
  • Words interpolated: 5
  • Errors due to copy: 3?
  • Repetitions: 17
  • Anticipations: 12, 19
  • Inexplicable: 18[6]

It is evident that in A's stints there are certainly 7 instances of misreading (nos. 2, 5, 11, 14, 15, 27, 29[7] ). Among the readings I have queried as possibly due to other causes, no. 1 might have occurred through assimilation to 'sword' ('blood and sword'); no. 6 presents a problem but, as I have no doubt that Walter's 'conjure'[8] will have wide appeal, it should, I judge, be


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numbered at least provisionally among misreadings, bringing the total to 8; nos. 8, 9, 18, 20, may have been due to the accidental omission of a letter (especially in view of the graver omissions, nos. 22, 24, 28); no. 13 may be a turned 'n'; no. 17 might have occurred through assimilation to the following 'o' (cf. no. 7), and no. 23 ('Come, goe me' for 'Come, goe we') certainly looks like an error of this kind. The number of misreadings in A's stints therefore lies between (say) 8 and 16.

The only certain misreading in B's stints is no. 4, though no. 1 may be an error of this kind; no. 2 might have been a misreading (assuming the line began with a minuscule), but it looks more like a typical error of anticipation ('End in one purpose, and . . .'), like nos. 12, 19; and it would seem unrealistic to regard nos. 20-23 as anything but typical perversions, such as abound in B's work in 1 Henry IV, in the absence of any certain misreading in B's stints except (perhaps) no. 1 and (certainly) no. 4. The number of misreadings in B's stints thus lies between (say) 2 and 7. This means that between 10 and 23 out of 52 certain errors were misreadings—less than half, even if we unrealistically accept the higher figure.

These two lists of indubitable errors need to be related to the conclusions reached by Mr. Cairncross elsewhere in this volume, and it is not my purpose to discuss them in detail or in relation to the question of copy except to remark that Compositor A had the lion's share of the setting from manuscript and B from corrected quarto[9]. The point I want to make is the general one that a start from the indubitable errors, analysed on a compositor basis, makes it easier to judge which of the many emendations that have been made, or suggested, is warranted on the evidence; and, as one of the main tasks of an editor today is that of separating the grain from the chaff in three centuries of critical opinion, it is important to have some systematic means of winnowing. I am not suggesting that a survey such as I have made need be applied rigidly. There may be types of error frequently made by a given compositor which are not clearly exemplified in the manifest errors of every text; further, my survey gives only an inkling (A, no. 3) of the certainty of contamination from Q2 and Q3 opened up by Mr. Cairncross's conclusions. But in spite of inevitable limitations, these lists provide four useful pieces of information: (1) that the ductus literarum as the solution to textual difficulties represents half measures at the best even when the copy was difficult manuscript[10]; (2) that misreading may be more appropriately invoked in explanation of errors in A's stints than in B's; (3) that errors in B's stints may be twice as numerous as in A's; and


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(4) that B's errors may include a very high proportion due to the kind of carelessness exemplified in his stints in I Henry IV.[10a]

This nucleus of certain errors touches, of course, only such corruptions as would seem obvious to anyone attentively following the matter. This is clear from the fact that (as the lists reveal) most of the errors of this kind in Henry V had been corrected by the mid-eighteenth century. But, starting from this nucleus, it is easier for an editor to test past opinion as well as his own. Thus, at II.iv.107, the emendation of 'priuy' to 'pining' is warranted on the evidence of difficulty with minims[11]; the evidence of no. 19 warrants the assumption that 'by' at V.Ch.29 was A's interpolation due to repetition; and the evidence of no. 23 suggests that 'for' for 'or' at IV.iv.14 (clearly wanted, since Pistol's threat is 'death or ransom') was an error of assimilation to the preceding 'fortie'. Compositor B's 'Maiesties surueyes' (I.ii.197) is on a par with no. 9 (the addition of a final 's' was, in any case, one of B's most pernicious habits[12]) and 'come' for 'came' at II.i.114 looks like a characteristic error of anticipation. These are among the doubtful readings which some, but not all, of the five editions emend. There are 36 such readings in all: 22 of them in A's stints (6 or 7 attributable to misreading), 14 in B's (of which only 1 is explicable as a misreading) and most of the emendations are in accordance with what the indubitable errors suggest about likely types of error in their stints. There might have been greater uniformity of opinion over these doubtful readings (which are by no means all that are questionable) had the ductus literarum not proved a stumbling block.

A further point worth remark concerning the indubitable errors in this text is that on at least a dozen occasions the Quarto preserved the truth where the better text failed. Most (though not all) of the Folio errors which can be set right by reference to the Quarto are trivial and could have been corrected with certainty in the absence of a collateral text. All the same, it is not reasonable to suppose that chance will have operated so that a good text and a bad will have corrupted the same readings, and because Pope was too partial to the Quarto is no reason for flying to the other extreme by trying to avoid its aid. There is no reason for rejecting two Quarto readings,


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followed by the (Old) Cambridge editors at IV.vi.15—'And cries aloud "Tarry, dear cousin Suffolk"'. The Folio's substitution of 'He' and 'my' for the italicised words is entirely characteristic of Compositor B, making first an error of repetition and then one of anticipation. So too is the substitution of 'black and white' (II.ii.104) for 'black from white', the Quarto reading and a better complement to 'stands off'. The Folio reading is again Compositor B's, who presumably anticipated 'and' at the beginning of the following line ('Treason and murder'). Fear of bad texts is only justified if we can be quite certain that there were no errors in either the copy or the printing of the more authoritative text. Provided that an editor can explain how the corruption came about (and B's certain errors justify our assuming similar errors in the above two readings) it would be dangerous, in view of the superficial character of Jaggard's proof correction, not to accept the better readings.

In an article in the last volume of Studies in Bibliography [12a] I argued the need for eclecticism in the editing of collateral substantive texts with the reservation that eclectic editing today was something very different from that of the eighteenth century. Under the impression that there was grave corruption of readings both in the printer's copy and in its printing, far greater freedom of choice was then exercised than would now be warranted, but this does not mean that there must be no choice at all. Thus, Capell's rejection of the Folio's 'tomb' for the Quarto's 'grave' at I.ii.103 would now seem inadmissible on two counts: first, because it presupposes a memorial error of the kind we can postulate in the Quarto copy but not in the copy for the Folio; and secondly, because the reading was Compositor A's, whose errors in this text give no warrant for assuming he was prone to inexplicable verbal substitutions of this kind. On the other hand, at III.iii.47, where the Folio reads

To rayse so great a Siege: Therefore great King,
there is much to be said for Capell's substitution of the Quarto's 'dread'[13] for the second 'great', since there is grave suspicion that Compositor A made a similar error at IV.i.287 (no. 19). The emendation of the Folio is here the more admissible because the Governor's speech seems very well reported in the Quarto. Consequently, Capell's emendation of the Folio's 'Succours' to 'succour' (Q) two lines earlier also merits serious consideration. So too does Capell's 'contaminate' (Q 'contamuracke', one of its

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oddest misreadings) at IV.v.16 for B's 'contaminated'.[14] The tendency is now to draw on the Quarto only when the Folio is manifestly in error. But we cannot suppose that all compositors' errors resulted in an obvious breakdown in the sense, and although we know that something is missing at IV.v.11 (B, no. 16), the Quarto's 'dread' at III.iii.47 is, in fact, a reading in which greater confidence can be placed than its 'honour' as a stop-gap at IV.v.11, since the Quarto seriously garbled the dialogue of the latter scene.[15] Where there are errors of repetition and anticipation in plays for which we have a single substantive text, there is often nothing to be done about them. Editors have beaten their brains in vain over 'Cleanse the stufft bosome, of that perillous stuffe' (Macbeth, V.iii.44)—a B crux to which a collateral text might have provided a satisfactory solution. Where we have a collateral text, even a bad one, we are indeed fortunate, and a number of Quarto readings in Henry V merit more consideration than they have recently had.

The quandary in which the variant readings at IV.vi.15 ('And cries . . . Suffolk') place an editor was pursued to its logical conclusion by Greg (Principles of Emendation, p. 47):

It is, indeed, difficult to suppose that the undoubted improvement [the Q reading] is due to corruption: at the same time it is difficult to suppose that F can be merely misprinted. Revision would offer a solution.
This, however, affords very slender support for a rather revolutionary theory. I mention this here, not because I think it probable, but in order to draw attention to its textual implications. If the performance on which Q is based was of a version revised from that transmitted by F, editors would be placed in a truly unenviable position. They would namely be presented with the alternatives of either reproducing the unrevised version of F, only removing as best they might obvious errors of the scribe or compositor, or else of endeavouring, by an almost pure process of intuition, to recover such fragments of the author's second thoughts as may lie embedded in the corruption of Q, and weaving them into the texture of the earlier version. There is an all too common type of editor who would revel in such a problem as this, but one who took his task seriously might well be pardoned for giving it up in despair. Nor would it only be the choice of readings that would be affected: we should have in every instance to inquire whether an absurdity of Q could not be emended into something that might pass muster as a revision of F's reading. It is to be hoped that we are spared this nightmare.

The logic of this is applicable to every case where an inferior text has a reading which is manifestly superior to its counterpart in a better text, but the dilemma can probably be resolved in most cases by an examination of what the compositor's errors reveal, since confidence in Jaggard's proof correction is not now so strong as it was in 1928. B's unfortunate habit of


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attempting to memorise more than he could reproduce accurately, resulting in errors of recollection and anticipation, certainly seems to leave an editor freedom of choice at IV.vi.15. The only escape from the 'rather revolutionary' theory above (involving an editor in a choice between Shakespeare's first and second thoughts) is, in fact, a counter-revolution towards eclectic editing (involving a choice between truth and falsehood in collateral texts) or the abandonment of literary values—and what serious risks editors would be taking if they accepted all but the most blatant errors of the more authoritative text is evident from Compositor B's performance in 1 Henry IV. Because the copy for a particular text was more authoritative than that for a collateral it does not follow that it was proof against carelessness in its printing.

The above lists also show how frequently one of the later Folios corrected a Folio error. Such corrections have, of course, no authority and there is no reason why an editor should not reject F2's 'noblest' (A, no. 7) in favour of Malone's 'noble' if he thinks the latter the more Shakespearian reading—just as he is at liberty to reject Malone's 'and their' for Pope's 'while their' at IV.vii.75 (B, no. 19) if he thinks that B's garbling involved more than a single word. The corrections of the later Folios, like the conjectural emendations of later editors, must stand on their merits—and this holds for F2's emendations for the sake of metre, now often slightingly dismissed as 'metrical tinkering.' But accidental omissions that sometimes made a breach in the sense are just as likely, at other times, to have potholed the even road of a blank verse, and there is no reason why the one kind of error should be emended and not the other.[16] If a line is halting and there is an obvious remedy, even though it was conjecturally made by F2, why should an editor reject it? The very fact that F2 took an interest in this kind of error is surely evidence that metre mattered in the early seventeenth century; and if printing-house editors or compositors interested themselves in 'numbers,' they presumably recognised their importance and knew how often omission and interpolation had made them less 'absolute' than they should have been. Mostly, there is no hope of recovering a missing word or phrase, but metrical emendations are entitled to the same kind of consideration as any other kind of emendation made in derivative texts. F2's emendation of 'against' to ''gainst' at IV.ii.25, though lacking the finesse of Dyce's 'Ay, ay' for 'I' at IV.i.302, should not be rejected because it seems so simple and because F2's emendations for metre were sometimes senseless stop-gaps.

What is undoubtedly needed is a conspectus of the certain errors in all good substantive texts. No one who edits Antony and Cleopatra, for instance,


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can afford to neglect the evidence for the number and kind of errors made by Compositor B in Othello; nor can the editor of King Lear safely disregard the evidence of Hamlet on the one hand and of Othello on the other, though it would be rash to infer that the rot that set in during the printing of the Tragedies was noticeably present in the Histories. Ultimately, any assessment of the trustworthiness of Folio texts will need to be related to what Hinman's collation of the Folger First Folios reveals about proof-reading, the order of formes through the press, and the order of their setting. In the meantime, an editor's only resource is to consider one Folio text in relation to another, set by the same compositor (or compositors) about the same time, as a check on his findings.

I mentioned above that it might happen that a type of error commonly found in a compositor's work might not be exemplified in the unanimously rejected readings of a single text. Thus, for instance, there is no case of word transposition in my lists above; but the lists exclude errors in foreign words, and a transposition does, in fact, occur in A's 'bien parlas' (Q 'parte fort bon') at III.iv.1, which editors unanimously correct to 'parles bien'. Further, most editors rightly transpose B's 'defie thee' to 'thee defy' at II.i.70 (following Q). Apart from the merits of the latter reading, it is useful to remember that there are 6 transpositions in B's stints of Richard II, and as quire c of this play (according to Willoughby) immediately preceded Henry V in order of printing, the Folio variants can profitably be considered in relation to the errors and suspect readings of Henry V.

The Folio text of Richard II merits, incidentally, more attention than it has recently had. It was printed from an example of Q3 which had to some extent been brought into line with a prompt book[17]. The Folio omissions are generally explained as 'cuts' in accordance with the acting version (as in the Folio Hamlet and Lear) and the very thorough overhaul of Q3's stage directions certainly suggests reference to prompt copy. The Folio text also exemplifies some mechanical changes in speech prefixes (e.g. the substitution of 'Ser.' for 'Man.') and a few of the variants introduced for the worse suggest a collator's misreadings ('soules' for 'smiles', 'placed' for 'plated', 'Rainston' for 'Ramston', 'Beares' for 'beards'). We have, there fore, in this Folio text some evidence for the kind of alteration a collator might make in preparing Folio copy. The text is also interesting, like 1 Henry IV, as a sustained example of the more stylish kind of Folio reprint[18], shedding light, in particular, on the way in which Compositors A


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and B altered speech prefixes[19] and on their use of italics. To consider the Folio Richard II as a whole would take me too far from my purpose here, since the situation is complicated by edited copy and requires full discussion of a number of variants. I shall therefore use two characteristic pages from quire c, pp. 31-32, set by B and A respectively, as a sidelight on Henry V.

The Folio divergencies from Q3 make it evident that we must postulate (1) alterations in the example of Q3 prior to composition, and (2) errors introduced by the compositors. Since the following features are common to the stints of A and B, it is reasonable to assume they stood in their copy: act and scene divisions; a thorough revision of stage directions; the substitution of 'Rich.' for 'King.' as speech prefix (though this was not made on the first leaf printed, according to Willoughby, two years earlier); some cutting; the occasional restoration of a Q1 reading corrupted in Q2-3; some alterations of Q1-3 readings; some expurgating of oaths; and a number of necessary metrical improvements with also some conjectural bodging, presumably editorial.[20]

B set p. 31 (II.ii.32-II.iii.6). Readings for which he was probably responsible are:

               
II.ii. 51  Rauenspurg  for Rauenspurgh 
52  ?O  Ah 
72  hopes linger  Hope lingers 
77  Line omitted  
89  Herfords[21]   Herefords 
99  Come  Comes 
103  om. two 
108  om. go 

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122  ?Exit   Exeunt Duke, & Queene, manent
Bush. & Greene
 
134  ?haue beene euer  euer haue beene 
148  S.N.Bush.(misplaced)  149 S.N.Bush
II.iii.S.D.  ?Enter the Duke of Hereford, and
Northumberland
 
Enter Hereford: Northumberland  
our  your 
I have queried readings which might have been due to copy. I assume that the three additional entries for Green, York, and the Servant (after II.ii.40, 72, 85) and the Exit at the end of the scene were in his copy, though I am more doubtful as to where responsibility lay for the alteration in the stage direction at II.ii.122[22] and in the heading to II.iii. I credit the copy also with the addition of 'Castle' at II.ii.119, the correction of 'for' to 'to' at II.ii.123[23] and the restoration of Q1's 'here' (om. Q2-3) at II.iii.3.

It is plainly not easy to draw a firm line between editorial alterations in B's copy and his errors. The situation is clearer in A's work where, if we similarly put down to copy three additional stage directions, one correction of a Q1-3 reading and four of corruptions introduced in Q2-3, we have four variants which look like compositor's errors:

       
II.iii.29  we last  for last we 
35  direction  directions 
87  om. no uncle 
90  these  those 
Two variants remain unaccounted for: A's 'kinsman' for 'Coosin' (Q1-3) at II.iii.125, almost certainly a correction from the prompt book,[24] and 'H. Percie' (II.iii.20 S.D.) for Q3's 'Harry Persie', which may similarly have been the collator's alteration, since Compositor A was not given to scamping his task.

This picture of the greater care of Compositor A is in accordance with the evidence of Richard II as a whole and suggests that we may be right in finding twice as many errors in B's work as in A's in Henry V. A single page of a compositor's work will not necessarily reveal all its facets. Thus, on p. 31, B lost one of Q3's two parentheses and added only one, whereas


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A on p. 32 added two; and it was B who indubitably put the metre wrong (II.ii.92-94), whereas A generally showed the less sensitive ear. Nor does p. 31 exemplify B's habit of ravelling the wording, through recollection, anticipation or inexplicable substitutions (like 'just' for 'right', rhyming with 'fight', at I.iii.55). But the range and distribution of Folio variants (mostly errors) can easily be seen from an analysis, on a compositor basis, of Pollard's list on pp. 77-79 of his edition of Q3. Some of the items he included might have been disregarded, while on the other hand some additions need to be made to his record (which omits, for instance, the B errors at II.ii.103, 108, 134 mentioned above); but since his account of Folio errors can easily be referred to, I summarise on the basis of that. The stints of the two compositors were as follows:
  • B pp. 23-31, 38, 42-5 (I.i.-II.iii.6, III.iv.54-IV.i.71, V.ii.7 ff.)
  • A pp. 32-7, 39-41 (II.iii.7-III.iv.53, IV.i.72-V.ii.6)
An analysis on a compositor basis gives the following results:                    
Letters omitted 
Letters added 
Letters substituted 
Words omitted 
Words transposed 
Words substituted  18  43 
--  -- 
29  71 
Pages set  14 
The most interesting category of variants is Pollard's last, which includes almost certainly a few corrections of Q1 errors, prompt book changes (such as are evident in some Q1 and Folio agreements in Hamlet), collator's misreadings, editorial bodges, and a very generous contribution of compositors' errors, mainly from B. There are, for instance, in B's stints 12 cases of garbling due to repetition (8 instances) and anticipation (4 instances) to one error of repetition and one of anticipation in A's.

I have so far exemplified what the analysis of compositors' errors in Henry V suggests about the kinds of error we must expect to find and where the greater concentration of errors is likely to be; and I have shown how the basis of enquiry can be broadened by considering the evidence of immediately antecedent text set by the same compositors. But the basis needs to be as broad as possible and, as I have already suggested, Richard II and 1 Henry IV are important as shedding light on the kind of alteration that a collator, an editor, or a compositor might make. In this way, they are fundamental to the understanding of Folio texts printed from more


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elaborately corrected quartos: 2 Henry IV, Richard III, Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Troilus and Cressida, and—we should now add, in view of Mr. Cairncross's conclusions—Henry V. It is therefore the more surprising that Professor Jenkins in a recent article on the Folio Hamlet [24a] makes no use of their evidence and argues for conclusions about the Folio copy on mere assumptions about what a collator or compositor might do. On his premises, we should have to postulate in the Folio copy for 1 Henry IV, for instance, the speech prefix 'Falst.' (which occurs only once in Q5, where the prefixes are 'Fal.' or 'Fals.') and the spelling 'Bardolph' (which never occurs); we should further have to assume that a scribe and not the compositor was responsible for the free handling of B's stage directions and, therefore, that the Folio text was printed not from Q5 but from a transcript. Professor Jenkins's assumption that compositors reproduced copy word for word and point for point is, of course, at variance with the facts. By accident and design they altered the features of their copy very considerably and, although it seems fairly clear what the designs were, very few were executed consistently.[25]

The fact is that an editor today cannot afford to take the risk of concentrating on one text. He needs to be familiar with the whole canon, so that he can work on comparative lines, for the reason given at the outset of this article: that Jaggard's failure to correct proof with copy is a factor that textual critics of the present century have not systematically reckoned with; it undermines conservative editorial policy, since fidelity to a Folio text may be no virtue but merely the condonement of vicious errors, and it complicates more than need be the problem of transmission. The elimination of compositors' errors requires attack from within, on the lines suggested with reference to the indubitable errors in Henry V, and from without, by relating what one text has to contribute to the elucidation of another. The editor of Troilus and Cressida, for instance, faced with the Folio's 'just' for 'right' (Q) at I.iii.164 should connect it with B's substitution in Richard II, already mentioned, and he should recognise A's 'emulations, factions' (II.iii.69) for 'emulous factions' (Q) as an error of assimilation, like his 'Noblish English' in Henry V. B's habit of carrying in his head more than he could reproduce accurately (leading to paraphrase and memorial substitutions), his meddling with stage directions, and justifying lines by altering the wording are always a possibility to be reckoned with. Above all, ramifications outside the Folio should be followed up, especially the Pavier quartos, which shed a great deal of light on the sophistication of


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texts in Jaggard's printing house.[26] If evidence is not co-ordinated in this way, the danger is that compositors' errors will be interpreted as authoritative corrections (derived from the prompt book) in the Folio Lear, as suggesting far more corrupt copy than need be for the Folio Hamlet, and as Shakespeare's first shots in the Folio Troilus and Cressida (thus suggesting that he revised the manuscript from which the quarto was printed). The number of arbitrary alterations on the first page of the Folio Romeo and Juliet should also act as a warning against taking too seriously all the variants in Hamlet, Lear, Othello, and Troilus and Cressida. Falsification of readings in the printing of Folio texts has done much to ravel the lines of transmission.

When an editor has settled the substantive readings of his text, taking into account what can be deduced about the copy, the compositors who set it, and the proof-reading (if any), he is not nowadays out of the wood. To start with, does he head his play 'Henry the Fift' (preserving the Folio's old ordinal numeral) or does he modernise to 'Henry the Fifth'? What must he do about 'accompt', 'wrack', 'venter', 'murther', 'apparence', 'Dolphin', 'eech', 'lyms', 'creeple', 'banqu'rout', 'strooke', 'vawting', 'cursie'—to give only a selection of the problems that face him? Obviously, if he is not a phonologist he is severely handicapped, since it is one thing for an old spelling editor to preserve all copy-text spellings which are not errors but a very different matter to preserve a selection of old spellings and to justify one's choice. An old spelling editor, for instance, would not hesitate over 'strooke' (p.p.) in the above list. Even if he cannot give a phonological account of the spelling, he will have seen it often enough. But what must the partially modernising editor do about it? He has to interpret the spelling in terms of a pronunciation related, by one means or another, to the O.E. strong verb which, by normal sound development, would have resulted in 'strike', 'stroke' (pret.), 'stricken', and he must canvas the possibilities of analogy (with, for instance, 'stick', 'stuck') or dialectal influence (as suggested by Kökeritz) before he can decide whether 'strooke' indicated a different sound from 'struck', which was in process of superseding it. An old spelling editor is concerned with old spelling; partial modernisation involves discrimination between one spelling and another on a phonological basis. This is a far more tricky business, which must inevitably lead to arbitrary measures, since even experts may often be put to it to decide what sounds some spellings represent; nor will experts always agree.[27] An appreciation of the ways in which Elizabethan speech habits differed


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from our own is, of course, important; but an impression of what the differences amount to can only be given by phonetic transcription and a survey of the influences that have affected the spoken language since the sixteenth century. The arbitrary preservation of a few seemingly significant spellings is of negligible value, since so many Elizabethan spellings identical with ours (e.g. stream, join, George, hostess, realm, throne, adieu, suit, etc.) represented a pronunciation different from that of today. As a reflection of Elizabethan speech habits, even an old spelling edition will give a totally inadequate picture. The linguistic interest of an old spelling Shakespeare will, in fact, be mainly orthographical: if we want to know how actors spoke their lines, we shall find a truer record in the unsophisticated spelling of Henslowe or John of Bordeaux than in the conventional spelling of printed books.

It has often been said that 'Shakespeare' has one spelling oftener than another, as if the spelling of printed books was the author's and the antiquarian zeal for partial modernisation is perhaps prompted by the belief that compositors reproduced the spelling of their copy. But a preponderance of 'murther' and 'shew' spellings in the Folio, for instance, was merely due to the fact that Jaggard A and B preferred these spellings to 'murder' and 'show'—and compositors' preferences tell us nothing about the writer's. Though a start has been made on compositor identification on the basis of differential spellings (a very different matter from the consideration of a compositor's spelling as a whole),[28] nothing is known about conventions in printing-house spelling during the thirty years between the publication of Venus and Adonis and the First Folio: the whole subject awaits analytical


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investigation on a basis of printing house, date, and compositor. All that seems clear is that, in the metamorphosis of manuscript into print, compositors largely followed their own orthographical bent and that the trade showed no inclination to make spelling more phonetic. Most of the changes introduced or established during the sixteenth century tended, in fact, to widen the breach between orthography and pronunciation (e.g. the restoration of 'b' in 'debt', 'l' in 'realm', and 's' in 'isle'), so that we should beware of supposing that, when Jaggard A and B substituted 'murther' for 'murder', as they usually plainly did, they were expressing anything more than a preference for one spelling over another.

The significance of the spelling of printed books in Shakespeare's day remains to be seen. In the meantime, the advantage lies with the traditional practice of bringing spelling into line with current usage, since a gallimaufrey of ancient and modern contributes nothing to the understanding of Shakespeare's meaning or to a critical appreciation of the differences between Elizabethan speech habits and ours. In accidentals, as in substantive readings, we need to be chary of supposing that compositors reproduced copy with the conservatism that has sometimes been assumed.


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Notes

 
[1]

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

[2]

References are to the Cambridge edition, 1891-93.

[3]

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

[4]

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

[5]

Presumably due to a cramped abbreviation.

[6]

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'.

[7]

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.

[8]

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

[9]

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

[10]

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

[10a]

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

[11]

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?

[12]

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

[12a]

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

[13]

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'.

[14]

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

[15]

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

[16]

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

[17]

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.

[18]

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.

[19]

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.

[20]

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.

[21]

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

[22]

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).

[23]

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.

[24]

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).

[24a]

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

[25]

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).

[26]

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).

[27]

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.

[28]

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.

         
A (normally)  B (normally) 
idly  idlely 
pesant  pezant 
raze  race 
shrewd  shrew'd 
and I have similarly excluded words for which one of the two compositors' spelling was variable:      
answere/answer  answer 
bloud/blood  blood 
heire  heyre/heire