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III. Summary: Compositer E
That the same compositor who set Titus and Romeo and pre-cancellation Troilus also set certain pages of Hamlet, Lear, and Othello cannot seriously be doubted. That he was very inexpert is also demonstrable. But that this man, Compositor E, was incapable of setting manuscript material acceptably and was therefore allowed to set printed copy only—this, of course, is inferential. It cannot be absolutely proved. Hence the way of prudence would be to eschew, as possibly not fully established, the proposition that Folio Hamlet and Othello were, like Folio Lear, set from annotated quartos, and to suggest no more than that Compositor E was not ordinarily employed on manuscript copy. Nevertheless—and without any wish to commit myself overenthusiastically to folly—I feel bound to say that the inference that E could not competently set manuscript material seems to me inescapable. It is eminently consistent with everything that has so far been observed about the printing of the Tragedies, and it explains a whole complex of phenomena, large and small, that are otherwise inexplicable.
The strange but evidently methodical switching back and forth between regular and intercalary formes in the earlier part of the Tragedies is simply incredible unless Compositor E was for some reason obliged to set only certain texts (all of which were in fact set from printed copy) and was not permitted to work on any of the material (all of it in fact set from manuscript copy) upon which A and B were engaged, even though he acted only as a substitute for one or both of them in this part of the book. And the inference is strengthened by evidence that E did not function as a fully qualified substitute at times when his doing so would have had manifest advantages. It is not merely that we should expect a qualified substitute simply to continue, in the absence of the regulars, from the point where they left off. There are many formes throughout the earlier Tragedies that were set wholly by A or by B alone. Compositor E may here be found distributing type for the benefit of the regular compositor who remains at work on the Shakespeare folio, a practice that would have speeded up operations slightly; but maximum speed-up is never attempted: E never serves as a full partner, never sets type. And the same thing happens after A's disappearance. E now works as B's partner on the end of Hamlet, on Lear, and on the beginning of Othello; but joint setting by E and B is interrupted while B alone sets Timon, just as he later set all of Antony and Cymbeline.
Thus the evidence as a whole—and it has a remarkable coherence throughout the Tragedies—seems almost to force the conclusion that
Compositor E's precise status in the Jaggard establishment is not of very great importance; but that he was an apprentice is suggested by many considerations. Whatever his capabilities with respect to manuscript copy, he appears to have been less expert than we can reasonably suppose any full-fledged typesetter of the time would have been, and it is clear that his superiors were perfectly familiar with his limitations and considered it necessary to proof read most, at least, of what he set. He was not supplied with type-cases and working space of his own, and he is occasionally found doing some of the more routine work of the regular Folio compositors. Compositor E may not, of course, have been an indentured apprentice of Jaggard's house; yet there is certainly some warrant for referring to his work for the First Folio as that of a prentice hand.
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