On the First Folio Text of Henry VIII
by
R. A. Foakes
AS ALICE WALKER RECENTLY EMPHASIZED[1], THE study of the ways of compositors in spelling and other usages in
Shakespearian texts may help to shed light on their "metamorphosis into print", and a
knowledge of the compositors' habits at each stage of their work in the First Folio is useful
as filling out a picture from which generalisations may at some time be drawn. The following
remarks on the Folio text of Henry VIII may then have some general
interest. As far as this play is concerned, they support the conclusion of W. W. Greg[2] that the text derived from a
"carefully edited" fair copy, and they suggest further that it was in a single hand.
Discussion of the play has been complicated by the question of authorship, a bogy which arose
in the nineteenth century,[3] and has
troubled editors and critics ever since. These have usually divided the play between Fletcher
and Shakespeare, and a distinction between the work of the two compositors who set the Folio
text also has a direct bearing upon this.
The well-known main differences in the spelling used by Jaggard A and Jaggard B, the
compositors who between them set most of the Folio in type,[4] reveal a clear division of labour in the text of Henry VIII. The shares of the compositors are as follows:
- Compositor A (16 pages): t4r-v2r; v3r, v3v; x3r, x3v
- Compositor B (13 pages): t3r, t3v; v2v; v4r-x2v
The evidence of the spellings is best presented in tabular form:
|
Compositor A |
Compositor B |
goe |
11 |
0 |
go |
1 |
6 |
doe |
43 |
0 |
do |
4 |
25 |
here |
6 |
0 |
heere |
16 |
14 |
young |
6 |
0 |
yong |
0 |
3 |
Some words which have been observed to reveal spelling differences in other plays
[5] do not occur frequently enough in
this text, or they afford a blurred evidence, or no evidence at all; examples are the words
"year" (5 times set by A, 2 by B), and "devil" (3 by A, 4 by B), which always have the same
spelling. On the other hand, a few spellings and uses of accidentals which occur not at all in
some plays, or not in sufficient number to provide certain evidence, offer a clear distinction
between the work of the compositors in
Henry VIII. The habits of the
compositors may have changed as time went by during the printing of the Folio,
[6] and some new or previously unnoticed
variations may be appearing here. The following table presents this evidence:
|
Compositor A |
Compositor B |
to th' |
17 |
1 |
to' th' |
0 |
5 |
tis |
7 |
0 |
'tis |
7 |
6 |
busines |
10 |
0 |
businesse |
9 |
12 |
highnes |
7 |
0 |
highnesse |
11 |
17 |
honour |
24 |
1 |
honor |
1 |
25 |
lose |
1 |
0 |
loose (lose) |
1 |
4 |
One more peculiarity may be noticed, that is B's apparent fondness for "too"
as a spelling of "to"; he uses it ten times as against twice by A. An interesting feature of
these statistics is that A seems to have been a little less consistent than B in his
usages,
[7] and it may be that many
of B's preferential spellings appeared in the manuscript.
A striking confirmation of this evidence is provided by differences in the spellings of
speech-headings in the play, and in this matter A is more consistent than B. Again the
differences are best presented in the form of statistics:
|
Compositor A |
Compositor B |
Buck. |
12 |
2 |
Buc. |
0 |
11 |
Norf(f). |
17 |
3 |
Nor. |
0 |
25 |
Card. |
22 |
12 |
Car. |
0 |
24 |
Kin. |
49 |
0 |
King. |
3 |
28 |
Suff. |
10 |
1 |
Suf. |
0 |
17 |
Quee(n). |
20 |
1 |
Qu. |
0 |
7 |
One further piece of evidence is afforded by the brief appearance on the stage of Dr
Butts, the King's physician, in V.ii. His name occurs 8 times in speech-headings and in the
text, and it so happens that these are distributed between x2
v, set by
B, and x3
r, set by A; B spells the name "Buts" (5 times), and A spells
it "Butts" (3 times).
The shares of the text which fell to the two compositors in no way correspond to the shares
often assigned by critics to the two authors, Shakespeare and Fletcher. The most compelling
arguments for dual authorship have been assembled by A. C. Partridge,[8] who has reaffirmed
the division
proposed by Spedding, allocating to Shakespeare I.i and ii; II.iii and iv; III.ii.1-203; and
V.i. The rest of the play he assigns to Fletcher, offering as his main evidence the occurrence
of forms which Fletcher habitually used (notably
'em, for
them, and
ye) predominantly in this part. He found
59 examples of the use of
'em in the section ascribed to Fletcher, as
compared with 5 in that ascribed to Shakespeare, and 72 examples of
ye,
as compared with only 2 in Shakespeare's part. One
'em crept into this
total through an emendation of the Folio text, but allowing for this, the forms are spread
across the work of the two compositors to the following extent:
'em
appears 12 times in the work of B, 51 times in the work of A;
ye
appears 24 times in the work of B, 48 times in the work of A. The spread is uneven, partly
because A set many more than B of the lines ascribed to Fletcher,
[9] partly, as Philip Williams Jr. pointed out,
[10] because A, as was his habit, no
doubt reproduced his copy more literally than B, who may have normalized a number of these
forms.
Another feature of the text of Henry VIII is interesting because it
seems to be unrelated either to the division between the work of the compositors, or to the
postulated division between authors. The speech-headings for certain characters vary in what
appears to be an inconsequential manner. Some minor variations, such as the change from Qu. or Quee(n). in the early scenes to Kath. in IV.ii signify little. In one case the variation is important
because it causes confusion between characters; the Lord Chamberlain, who appears earlier in
the play as L. Ch. becomes Cham. in V.ii, where,
as a result, there is confusion between him and the Lord Chancellor (Chan.), and the Folio gives to Cham. speeches which, as Capell
noted, belong to the Lord Chancellor, who is conducting the business of the Council in this
scene. The most significant variations, however, are those in the speech-headings used for
Wolsey.[11] He figures first as Car(d). in the work of both compositors, but on v1v
(II.ii), after the entry, "Enter Wolsey and Campeius with a commission", the heading changes
to Wol.. On this page, the work of A, the new heading may have been
introduced by transference from the name in the entry. The next page contains no speeches by
Wolsey, who returns on v2v, (II.iv), for which B was responsible, first
as Car. (II.iv.1, 5), then as Wol. (l. 55ff.);
here there is no mention of his name in the
text to suggest such change. The
next two pages, the work of A again, have both
Card. and
Wol(s).. Then follows a longish stretch of text set by B; on v4
r, v4
v, and v5
r, only
Car(d). is used, until again at III.ii.252, and for a few later speeches
on v5
v, the heading
Wol. recurs, again for no
discernible reason. On all except the first page on which
Wol. appears
(v1
v), the two forms alternate on the same page, and the intrusion of
Wol. cannot be explained as a transference from the text, or by a
shortage of italic capital
C, which abounds throughout the play, in
speech-headings for the Chamberlain, the Chancellor, Cromwell, and Cranmer, as well as in
stage directions.
This variation in speech-headings cannot then be related to compositors. Since it extends
across scenes ascribed both to Fletcher (II.ii; III.i; III.ii.204ff.), and to Shakespeare
(II.iv; III.ii.1-203), it cannot be linked with the theory of dual authorship. It is safe to
assume that it was in the copy from which the compositors worked and a little may be added to
W. W. Greg's conclusion that "The copy for F was clearly a carefully prepared manuscript, in
whose hand or hands there is no evidence to show. It could have been used as a prompt-book,
but there is no indication that it was."[12] It seems likely that the manuscript was in a single hand. The printed text is
very clean, and, except for variations in spelling and usage for which the scribe was not
responsible, consistently good. Its general appearance, the very full and elaborately set-out
stage directions and entries, and the full division into acts and scenes, indicate fair copy.
The mixed speech-headings, unless two writers are postulated who both used the same ones, also
seem to point to a single scribe, who failed to regularize, or only partially regularized,
what he found in the papers from which he copied, and, perhaps, suggest a single author. There
seem to be no changes in spelling or usage of the kind which Philip Williams Jr. observed in
the text of I Henry VI,[13] and which might indicate a change in manuscript copy. One small detail lends
further support; the name "Gilbert Pecke" occurs twice in the text, at I.i.219, in a scene by
Shakespeare, and at II.i.20, in a scene ascribed to Fletcher. This is almost certainly a
mistake for or an alteration of Holinshed's "Gilbert Perke"; and since the historian is
elsewhere followed closely with respect to names, and the change here is pointless, it is safe
to assume that the author (s) wrote "Perke", which the scribe misread as "Pecke". However the
form arose, it must have been written in the same way at the two places where it appeared in
the manuscript from which the text was set. With regard to the origin of the copy, the
variations in speech-headings
which give rise to the confusion noted above
between
Cham. and
Chan. in V.ii, and could cause
difficulty in III.i., where
Car(d). might represent either of the two
cardinals (Wolsey and Campeius) on stage, afford contributory evidence towards the supposition
that the copy stemmed from foul papers. Greg's statement on the play may be modified to this
extent; that the copy for the Folio
Henry VIII was a carefully prepared
manuscript, probably in a single hand; there is no indication that it was used as a
prompt-book, whereas there is evidence from variations in speech-headings and the confusion
these might occasion in the theatre, to suggest that it was based on foul papers.
A study of the habits of the compositors in the text of Henry VIII
thus offers not only further examples of their differences in usage and spelling, but also
some evidence bearing on the transmission of the text, and on the authorship problem.
Notes