University of Virginia Library

1. Reappearing types. As Hinman has shown in detail, it is possible to identify individual pieces of type which are distinctively broken, bent, or otherwise marked and to trace their reappearances in quire after quire.[8] There are, to be sure, differences in the reliability of the identifications. Some types are battered in so readily discernible a way that they can be recognized with no difficulty. Others, however, are so deformed that the characteristic which makes them distinctive can be obscured by variations in inking, in the surface of the paper, or in the force of the impression. Still others are virtually worthless as evidence because either through accident or through some weakness inherent in the design of the letter two or more types will have been damaged in such a way as to make them practically indistinguishable; the ascenders of d's and the descenders of p's, for instance, were very often bent or broken in almost exactly the same way. Sometimes a letter which can be recognized in one copy of the Folio cannot be recognized in another, and sometimes a pattern of recurrences will indicate that a type must have been used on a certain page on which it cannot be found.[9] Furthermore, a compositor was rarely obliged to use

again immediately any type which was returned to his case; he may not have needed it, or it may have become temporarily unavailable by being put accidentally in an out-of-the-way place or simply by sifting down into the box. Thus some types, as it were, go underground for several, sometimes many, quires. On the whole, however, types were reused regularly; and, when recognized, they provide very solid bibliographical evidence, although the reliability of this evidence decreases, as will be seen, the smaller the number of types giving testimony.

To find in Quire Y a type which had earlier appeared in Quire X is generally to find that the part of Quire X containing the type had been distributed in the ordinary way. But this conclusion is not always correct, for some types moved into new positions not as a result of distribution but as a consequence of an accident or irregularity, having been pulled during inking, separated from other types when the skeleton was stripped from the wrought-off forme or the center rule removed, or dropped during distribution.[10] If one finds ten types from X3a in Y4b, it is clear that X3a was distributed before the Y-column was set and that Y4b was composed at the case[11] into which X3a type was distributed, if the column rather than the part-column was the unit of distribution. If, however, one finds one type from X3a in Y4b, these matters are by no means so clear; the one X3a type may be aberrant, having made its way into the case from which Y4b was set through accident rather than regular distribution, or it may be quite genuine, being merely the only recognizable type from X3a that happens to appear in Y4b. Thus when recognizable types are few, it is necessary to use the evidence they provide with caution, and, if possible, to confirm it by evaluating its consistency with other evidence. Nevertheless, in spite of minor ambiguities, distribution is usually not hard to prove, and it then follows that "whenever a number of types are distributed into a certain case these types will necessarily next be used in material set from that case."[12] Evidence of case in conjunction with spelling evidence, as Hinman has shown, is of major importance in establishing the limits of a compositor's work in a particular forme,

the identity of the workman, and the relationship borne by composition to presswork at any particular time.[13]

Whether type drawn from one case was distributed into the same case by the man who set it is a matter of some consequence. What little information there is about this aspect of Elizabethan printing practice indicates that sometimes, perhaps generally, compositors may be said to have "owned" their types, so that if Compositor A set X3a from a certain case, the reappearance of X3a type on Y4b will indicate that Compositor A set that column as well from the same case.[14] In William Wilson's section of the Folio, however, this practice was not followed with any consistency; hence, the concept of case as a category of bibliographical evidence is severely restricted. It is not, however, invalidated. If one observes that X3a type reappears in Y4b, Y4va, and Y4vb, it is evident that the three Y-columns were set from the same case regardless of which compositor set or distributed X3a. But it does become necessary when there is a likelihood of one workman distributing another's type to distinguish between the testimony of types which reappear immediately and those which do not — which are, so to speak, latent — the former being much more trustworthy as evidence than the latter. Suppose that a type found in Y4b was last seen in W2a, a column known to have been distributed during the composition of Quire X into Compositor B's case. The implication would be that the Y4b type in question was not used in Quire X and that its appearance on Y4b is evidence for the setting of that column by Compositor B. It is always possible, however, that the type actually was used in Quire X but was unobserved there, and if it happened to be used in an X-column that was distributed into Compositor A's case, its appearance on Y4b means that that column was set by A, not B. The special treatment accorded latent types (discussed more fully below) is thus a protective measure adopted to guard against one's inability always to see or to recognize the types being used as evidence. The chief value of latent types lies in the confirmation they can lend to the implications of other evidence.

2. Reappearing rules, display types, heads, and other typographical matter not a part of the skeleton forme. In the Shakespeare Folio it was

found that center rules were associated "with the type-page proper and with the types used to set it. In fact they were treated very much as if they were themselves only types belonging to a special 'sort' . . . ."[15] In Wilson's section of the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio, it seems that center rules were, in general, handled not as types but as components of the skeleton-forme, which, of course, they actually are not. This difference perhaps arises from the fact that in Jaggard's shop the page was usually the unit of distribution and in Wilson's the column, but the point is that in Wilson's work the center rules cannot be used to prove the identity of the compositor, nor can other miscellaneous typographical matter not a part of the skeleton forme. Initials, act and scene heads kept standing, short rules inserted horizontally to set off heads, ornaments, and display types seem to have been returned after use to a central location from which any workman could draw them subsequently. Thus the reappearance in Y4b of, for instance, a short rule previously observed on X3a, Compositor A's work, does not mean that Compositor A set Y4b; it means only that X3a was off the press at the time Y4b was set.

3. Type shortages. Because double-column folio formes contained a relatively large amount of type and because the repetition of proper names or abbreviations of them demanded the same letter again and again, type shortages sometimes occurred, particularly in the italics used for speech-prefixes and stage-directions. These shortages caused the compositors to substitute letter of a different sort, usually roman for the customary italic, so that a speech-prefix for the character Zenocia in The Custome of the Countrey, for example, sometimes appears as Zen. rather than as Zen. Deliberate substitutions of this kind can be distinguished from errors arising from such causes as foul case by the frequency and consistency of the occurrence of the wrong-font letter. It seems reasonable to suppose that, in general, the compositor would use up his supply of regular type before he would begin to substitute and would continue to substitute until his supply of regular type was renewed by the distribution of a wrought-off forme containing type of the required sort. On this supposition inferences can be made about the priority of composition of certain columns or pages within a compositor's stint. But workmen apparently did not always wait until their regular supply was completely exhausted before they began to substitute, and perhaps they occasionally raided other cases or broke new supplies out of storage rather than obtaining types from distribution.

Moreover, it appears sometimes that during distribution the boxes containing a depleted sort were deliberately fouled, a crude but efficacious answer to the shortage and one which creates the impression of deliberate substitution which did not take place. As a rule, the testimony of type shortages is reasonably reliable when the shortage first comes into being, but it tends to degenerate in worth beyond a quire or two.