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THE ANALYSIS OF VARIOUS LARGE BODIES OF hitherto unexploited bibliographical evidence in the Shakespeare First Folio is producing many surprising results. It is showing, for one thing, that much of the textual work of the past—much, indeed, that is now being done—proceeds from false premises. But on the positive side this analysis is making possible the reconstruction of the printing-house history of the volume in a fullness and with a precision that would have seemed impossible only a few years ago. In all of its major outlines, moreover, and also in many of its details, this reconstruction can be made with an almost absolute certainty. The evidence upon which it is based is for the most part physical and unequivocal, and leads to conclusions of which the validity is not subject to debate. Points are of course reached where probability must replace fact and speculation must replace demonstration; but inference can now be exercised within, and governed by, a very comprehensive structure of demonstrable truth.
From the standpoint of Shakespearian textual study, perhaps the most important general fact recently discovered about the First Folio is that it was throughout set into type, not by successive pages, but by formes. Copy was therefore always "cast off" (often long in advance of actual setting and printing); and casting off commonly entailed various space-adjustment practices, some of which affected the text itself. The formes for a given quire were usually set by two compositors working simultaneously, one on each page of the forme in hand; for only thus could typesetting stay abreast of presswork, keeping the single press that printed the book more or less continuously supplied with Folio material. A preliminary report of these facts, together with certain
That Titus and Romeo were not set by the regular Folio compositors, A and B, has been known for some time (see Note 8 below); but the most important facts about the third compositor of the Tragedies have not, I believe, been pointed out; nor has it been recognized that Compositor E, as I have designated him, is in part responsible for the Folio texts of Hamlet, Lear, and Othello.[2] His work in these major tragedies has in fact been confused with that of Compositor B—to B's considerable prejudice in our eyes, and to our own further confusion in trying to determine B's characteristics both here and elsewhere in the book.
The salient facts about Compositor E—both what he did and how well or ill he did it—have so immediate a bearing upon various editions of particular plays now being prepared, and also upon certain more general textual studies now in progress, that it seems worthwhile to offer this preliminary statement at once.[3] The full story, with all of its supporting evidence, must be reserved for the comprehensive account of the printing and proof reading of the First Folio upon which I am now engaged.[4] What will be said in the present article about the
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