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Notes
Q3, printed in 1630 by Augustine Mathews for Richard Hawkins, is a reprint of Q2, but a few minor alterations are made in the text.
For a discussion of the principles of handling texts in an ancestral series, see W. W. Greg, "The Rationale of Copy-Text," Studies in Bibliography, III (1950-51), 29. At least two recent critics' views of the text of The Maid's Tragedy have been clouded by their failure to recognize the relationship between the two quartos. In 1942 D. G. Stillman in "A Critical Textual Study of Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy" (unpub. University of Michigan diss.) held that Q2 was set from a "fair copy made early in the career of the play" (p. 249). Stillman's conclusions are accepted by Kirschbaum (Shakespeare and the Stationers [1955], pp. 242-243 and 365, n. 84).
See C. William Miller, "A London Ornament Stock: 1598-1683," Studies in Bibliography, VII (1955), 132.
Fredson Bowers, "An Examination of the Method of Proof Correction in Lear," The Library, 5th ser., II (1947), 26.
See Fredson Bowers, "Elizabethan Proofing," Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies (1948), pp. 573 ff.
For a fuller discussion of this matter, see William H. Bond, "Casting Off Copy by Elizabethan Printers: A Theory," PBSA, 42 (1948), 281-291; Charlton Hinman, "Cast-off Copy for the First Folio of Shakespeare," SQ, VI (1955), 259-273; Charlton Hinman, "The Prentice Hand in the Tragedies of the Shakespeare First Folio," Studies in Bibliography, IX (1957), 3-20; and George Walton Williams, "Setting by Formes in Quarto Printing," Studies in Bibliography, XI (1958), 39-53.
Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises: Or, the Doctrine of Handy Works. Applied to the Art of Printing, Typothetae Reprint (1896), II, 250-257.
Let us say, for example, that the press is hard on the heels of a compositor who is beginning to set a new sheet. If the inner forme of this sheet contains four solid pages of matter and the outer contains three and a blank, it would obviously be to the compositor's advantage to "gain on" the press by setting the outer forme before the inner. The compositor of the second section of The Maid's Tragedy Q1 seems to have done just this. A similar example is found in The Menechmi Q1 (1595), a play printed by Creede. Here the normal order of composition was inner forme-outer forme. After setting E(o), however, the workman composed a half-sheet (F) before E(i), apparently in an effort to readjust his time-balance with the press. See George Walton Williams, op. cit., pp. 46-49.
The STC lists twelve books printed by Okes in 1618 and sixteen in 1619. I have been able to examine five of the 1618 books (STC 543, 6020, 6248, 18278, and 23136) and four of the 1619 books (STC 544, 17871, 17873, and 17902). None of these books makes any extensive use of either small-capital font.
If the manuscript were written in a regular hand, even prose could be cast off with such accuracy that estimated and actual page-beginnings differed by only one line of type or less. See William H. Bond, "A Printer's Manuscript of 1508," Studies in Bibliography, VIII (1956), 156.
Most likely the pages of C(o) distributed were either C1, which contained nine large I's, or C2v and C3, which contained a total of eight. C4v contained 13 of the large sort.
It should be mentioned that the pattern of m's in the speech prefixes also argues for a distribution before the setting of D3v:
| 1 | 2v | 3 | 4v | 1v | 2 | 3v | 4 | |
| M | 1/0 | 3/0 | 2/0 | 2/0 | 4/10 | 0/6 | 7/0 | 2/0 |
The small s appearing on D1 was probably the result of foul case rather than deliberate substitution.
When the composition of sheet E began, there were 46 roman A's locked up in D(i) and 29 in D(o), a total of 75. Fifteen more A's were used in setting E1v and E2, thus raising the total standing to 90. The distribution of D(o) reduced this number to 61, but the setting of E3v, E4 E1, E2v, and E3 to the point where the substitution began, required 55 more pieces. There were, then 116 pieces of roman type standing when the substitution of the italic was made.
Assuming that F(i) was standing when the composition of G began and that G was set by formes, inner first, the following count of I's standing is obtained: F(i) 45, G1v 17, G2 17 — a total of 79. If, as the pattern of substitution in D would indicate, 69 was near the limit of the supply of large I's, it is reasonable to suppose that small I's would begin to appear on G2.
The "m" of "me" (G1v, l. 31) is found on E1v, l. 18 and F3v, l. 10; the "i" of "knowing" (G2v, l. 18) is found on E4v, l. 28; the "y" of "Nay" (G3, l. 12) is found on D1, l. 23; the "o" of "to" (G3v, l. 32) is found on E3v, l. 4 and F3v, l. 29; and the "l" of "leprous" (G1, l. 9) is found on D1, l. 5.
Carlton Hinman, "Principles Governing the Use of Variant Spellings as Evidence of Alternate Setting by Two Compositors," The Library, 4th ser., XXI (1940), 78-94.
Philip Williams, Jr., "The Compositor of the 'Pied Bull' Lear," Papers of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, I (1948-49), 61-68.
John Russell Brown, "The Printing of John Webster's Plays (II)," Studies in Bibliography, VIII (1956), 113-127.
Bowers ("Elizabethan Proofing," p. 573, n. 6) points out that "possibly certain books which began with only one skeleton and later shifted to two may result from a printer's discovery that more proofing was necessary than he expected . . . ."
I include here only errors in spelling, conventional punctuation, spacing, and those readings so obviously wrong that the proofreader should have noticed them without consulting manuscript.
The question of whether or not any of these mistakes stood in the manuscript is beside the point here, because it is quite unlikely that the proofreader would have considered a dramatic manuscript as representing the standard to which the printed book must be made to conform in such details as punctuation, capitalization, and so on. Many cases have been reported which indicate that the MS was consulted during proofreading only when the corrector would make no sense whatever out of the compositor's version.
Strictly speaking, we can tell little about the proofreading of G(i), H(o), I(i), and L(i) since they contain no obvious errors of the kind found in the other formes: they may be entirely uncorrected, in which case we reason that the compositor made an excellent job of them, or they may be corrected, in which case we reason that the corrector, either because he had more time or because chance was in his favor, caught all of the mistakes. In the case of sheet G it is possible that proof was taken by the two-skeleton method since both formes were available for nearly simultaneous imposition. I can see no reason, however, why it would be decided to exercise more care with these formes than any others, and therefore I am inclined to believe that they received about the same degree of attention as the others.
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