University of Virginia Library

The Facsimile Reprint

The simpler kind is the facsimile reprint, as represented by the Malone Reprints. The aim of the editors of these texts was summed up by A. W. Pollard at the inception of the society, and this aim has recently been endorsed by Professor F. P. Wilson, the present General Editor; it is to do

Pollard was concerned with specifically 'textual' authorities, and, by producing 'type-facsimiles of the editions chosen for reproduction', without changing errors, irregularities and arrangement except within very clearly defined limits, the society produced texts which could answer almost all the demands which a textual student might make. The bibliographer, of course, would not be satisfied; he would wish to see the original print and paper, and to judge the original workmanship. Occasionally a textual critic was also a bibliographer—it was McKerrow, a founder-member of the Malone Society, who wrote the classic and indispensable Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1927)—but as 'textual authorities', back in 1907, the society's reprints satisfied, and 'constant and continuous reference' to the originals was no longer necessary.

This kind of old-spelling edition must be judged today by the same yard-stick. Yet the answer will not be the same, for this particular measure has changed: the textual student now asks questions which, in 1907, concerned only the bibliographer, and he has won for himself the new and barbarous name of 'biblio-textual student'; increasingly he needs textual and bibliographical authorities. When he considers a crux he must consider not only the sense, spelling, punctuation and other details that can be reproduced in type-facsimile; he must also be on the look-out for the slightest irregularity in the original printing. So he may be able to argue that the type has been tampered with during some stage of proof-correction, and thereby discern the cause of an error and, perhaps, its most plausible correction. An example of this is found in The Honest Whore, Part 2 (1630) where the first edition reads:

For this, Professor Bowers' edition of Dekker reads: Professor Bowers has noted that the An examination of the original edition adds to our understanding of this passage: there, 'old Iacomo sonne to the Florentine Iacomo, a dog, that to' is set as one line of prose but with a few abnormally long spaces between words; it would seem that the compositor set 'old Iacomo' twice in error, and then a corrector, sensing a redundancy, removed the wrong 'old'. Now an editor of a Malone Society Reprint must always normalize the spacing of his text and may allow a 'space . . . after a point even if there is none in the original';[3] so from such a reprint a student could not easily learn that there may be an omission from the line as originally set, and certainly he would not be in a position to say that the irregularity was of such dimensions as might be accounted for by the removal of the one word 'old'. Nor would he be able to compare the setting of this line with the setting of the book as a whole, to judge whether this is indeed a sign of type-correction or a trivial example of poor printing. An examination of press-variants among copies of an original edition can provide many examples of how irregularities, not only in spacing but also in the disposition of the type within a word, can sometimes betray the handiwork of a press-corrector; an editor, or a textual student, should be able to recognise such signs elsewhere and be prepared to use them in reconstructing the authority of any particular line, word or comma of his text. For such work an edition like the Malone Society Reprints is not an adequate 'textual authority'; either the original edition or a photographic reproduction of it is required.

As more press-variants are discovered between different copies of the first and authoritative editions of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, the textual student is tied more firmly to the necessity of consulting those originals. Even the examination of the variants which other students have discovered requires at least some form of photographic reproduction; sometimes the order of two states can only be determined by observing displaced or damaged type, or some irregularity in lay-out. An example of this is found in the outer forme of sheet H of John Webster's The White Devil (1612): here the differences between two states are very considerable, involving the addition or deletion of a whole line, an entry and an exit, and the substitution of one perfectly acceptable word for another; yet the argument for the order of printing, and hence for the authority of the two sets of readings, rests on the exact arrangement of type for H2v and 3—the precise disposition of the lines of type on both pages, and an irregularity in the indentation of the first line of one of the speeches.[4] Both spacing and indentation are normalized in a Malone Society Reprint,[5] and so such an edition would be an insufficient authority for a student working on the variants of this text. For work on plays with press-variants, the most convenient, and generally available, textual authority would be a

photographic reproduction of a composite copy made up of the preferred states of each variant forme;[6] this would be more convenient than a copy of the original edition—even if one could be found which contained all the chosen readings—because such a photograph could be taken for comparison, without risking the loss or damage of an irreplaceable object, to wherever a new original was found. A counsel of perfection would be to add, to such a composite, photographic copy, photographs of alternative states of each variant forme; many plays of the period—perhaps the majority of them—have press-variants on only a few formes, so the duplication would not often be very great.

Another important advance in textual studies has been the development of techniques for distinguishing the type set by individual compositors in Elizabethan printing-shops. By undertaking spelling-tests, and by tracing the recurrences of identifiable pieces of type, Dr. Alice Walker,[7] Dr. Hinman[8] and other scholars have been able to evaluate more precisely than before the authority of a text set by any known compositor, and the varying authority of one set by two or more of them. This means that a student will now wish to apply any and every test for distinguishing the identity and number of compositors employed on the text he is studying. For applying spelling-tests, the Malone Society Reprints are barely satisfactory—their shortcoming in this respect is that, in prose-lines or full lines of verse, their normalized spacing makes it more difficult to judge whether words have been shortened as an aid to justification. But there are other tests for which such old-spelling editions are no use at all; such are the analysis of variations in indentation or in centering of stage-directions, details which are always normalized in the Malone Reprints.[9] A student will be very unwilling to be deprived of these tests, for they are among the easiest to apply. He will be unwilling, too, to be prevented from judging the 'look' of a whole page as set in the original, for sometimes one of two compositors will give a looser, sharper or more regular appearance to a page of print than his fellow, and such a distinction can be discerned by a trained eye in a moment and, sometimes, greatly facilitate the

establishment of further, more accurate distinctions. For compositor identification and for a study of compositors' habits and practices, a textual student will wish to work with the original text, or with a good photographic reproduction of it.

Progress has also been made in the bibliographical problem of reconstructing the press-work of early books, and, again, the textual student has learned these techniques. From a study of the press-work of a book, he can sometimes find help towards identifying the work of two or more compositors, discovering the method of proof-correction used, or adding to his understanding of the authority of a complex text; occasionally it can help him to argue that a text was set hurriedly or leisuredly, and this in turn can influence his assessment of the accuracy of its compositors and hence of the authority of the whole work.[10] These investigations depend almost wholly on evidence which is not, and could not be, reproduced in any facsimile reprint: identification of skeleton-formes, for instance, involves the precise size and position of headlines, or minute variations in the length or width of rules, or imperfections in types and ornaments; proof that a printer used two cases of type, as James Roberts did for Hamlet (1604/5),[11] may depend on minute variations in the forms of type such as only a photograph could reproduce.

More recently, new knowledge has been gained about composing methods and it is now known that, both for folios and quartos, an early printer might cast-off his copy and set by formes, not by consecutive pages.[12] This is of considerable importance to students who wish to analyse compositors' habits and to make editorial judgements: inaccurate casting-off might cause a compositor to change his habitual spellings in order to lengthen or shorten a passage of prose at the foot of a page, or it might cause him to modify the lining of the verse as found in his copy. All textual students will wish to know precisely when and where they should expect such interference and here again a facsimile reprint is of no use to them. Such investigations involve a knowledge of press-work, the identification of odd pieces of type and the analysis of occasional intrusions of italic type, and for all this a

student will require as his authority nothing less than a copy of the original edition or a photographic reproduction of it.[13]

The influence of inaccurate casting-off on the lining of verse plays is one aspect of a problem which confronts most students working on Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. It is widely known that the availability of text-space influenced the line-arrangement and the exact position of stage-directions in early plays, but the extent of this kind of textual interference may be properly appreciated only by working continuously with original editions or photographic reproductions of them. The Malone Society has high standards in this respect, asking its editors to

But this degree of accuracy is insufficient to enable a student to cope with some of the particular problems of lining that may confront him. The closest possible reproduction of the original lay-out is especially necessary when he is dealing with a lengthy play, like John Webster's White Devil, in the setting of which two compositors attempted to save space on almost every page: in this play both compositors habitually misplaced directions and frequently ran two lines or one-and-a-half lines together in order to save space.[14a] To gauge the extent of this sort of interference, a student has to work to closer limits than editions like the Malone Society Reprints can provide.

If the facsimile reprint were the only alternative to a copy of an original edition, it would be good sense to try to improve the standards of reproduction of such reprints. But there is an alternative in the photostat or some other mode of photographic reproduction. Professor R. C. Bald suggested some years ago that

But it is not on the grounds of price alone that the type-facsimile is now less desirable than formerly. With every year textual students become more and more bibliographers as well, and for 'biblio-textual' authorities no reproductions short of photographic ones can serve; only by providing either photographs or else books printed from photographic plates such as collotype or fine-screen offset could the Malone Society continue to 'make constant and continuous reference to [the] originals themselves unnecessary'.

Of course even photographs have their limitations. But it would be unwise to be deterred from issuing them by the ill-informed practices of J. S. Farmer in preparing his Tudor Facsimile Texts, or by a knowledge of the kind of errors which can be introduced by the retouching of some kinds of photographic plates. The needs of the textual student would best be served by issuing some reliable form of photographic reproduction, which had been overseen by a responsible scholar, as Sir Walter Greg oversaw the excellent series of Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles which are now being published by the Oxford University Press. Such an overseer could select the cleanest available copy of the first edition and, where press-variants had been discovered, prepare a composite copy which would give the preferred states of all variant formes, whether 'corrected' or 'uncorrected'. In addition, it would be good to adapt the Malone Society's current procedure and print the overseer's report on press-variants (if possible, with reproductions of the rejected variant formes) together with his lists of misprints and doubtful readings (which would be informed by a scrutiny of all available copies). Finally there could be a brief introduction, again on the model of the Malone Society Reprints.[16]

The various photographic processes have differing advantages and disadvantages: prints made from microfilms are, for instance, very inexpensive, but books printed from photographic plates are easier to handle and might prove more susceptible to editorial supervision. Considerable experiment would be required before the best way of providing a large number of high-grade photographic facsimiles is discovered, and this may not prove to be the cheapest method of reproduction. If its cost cannot be kept low enough, some form of subvention or special subscription would be required: those who gave their support to such a venture would know that they were providing the

fullest possible 'textual authorities' which could not be superseded as, inevitably, any old-spelling edition must be in the eyes of the fully-trained textual student.[17]

It might be contended that many Elizabethan and Jacobean plays do not present problems complex enough to justify the provision of photographic facsimiles. But as textual students learn more about the working of compositors in the early printing-houses, so 'unimportant' plays come into prominence in their studies; thus, for example, The Two Maids of Moreclack has become necessary for a study of the Pied Bull quarto of King Lear because it was partly set by the compositor who, a year earlier, had set King Lear.[18] When one is working on a complex dramatic text, it can be a great help to observe one of the compositors of that text working on another play, no matter how trivial the textual problems of that second play may be. The ideal for a textual student is the complete corpus of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama in photographic reproductions, overseen and commented upon by responsible scholars. And with advances in cheap photographic processes there is little reason why concerted effort should not provide this in the course of fifty years or so. The sooner the student's needs are recognised and the mechanical possibility acknowledged, the sooner the ideal can be realized.