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All evidence was obtained from examination of two copies of the Folio, the one belonging to the library of the University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee (of unknown provenience, but purchased from Heffer, Cambridge, in 1952) and the one belonging to Dr. Cyrus Hoy (formerly the Fairfax of Cameron copy).[3] The kind of evidence used, the terminology adopted for it, the means contrived to display it, and the interpretations put on it have been influenced, as the reader will recognize, by Dr. Charlton Hinman's Printing and Proof-Reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare (1963), although there are some divergences from Hinman's methods chiefly because of technical differences between the Shakespeare and the Beaumont and Fletcher Folios. Yet the general similarities between these books and the kinds of evidence available from both are so strong that it has been possible to refer the reader often to Hinman's study, where he will find many matters relevant to this investigation discussed admirably and at length.

It seemed convenient to work through the section quire-by-quire and page-by-page, considering in turn evidence relating to presswork, to the identity of compositors and the scope of their work, and to the method of composition they employed. The evidence used and the nature of the inference from it are governed by the relationship between the three distinct stages in the cyclical journey of pieces of type from the type cases into the formes (composition), through the press (presswork), and from the wrought-off formes into the cases again (distribution).

Presswork

Because information about presswork, specifically the order of the formes through the press, is relatively easy to obtain and is based on evidence that is the least controvertible, the analysis of each quire

began with proof of the order of the formes, which was made on these grounds:

1. Evidence from the components of the skeleton-forme, such as running-titles and rules, and from center rules, taking into account the testimony of priority given by disfigurations, dislocations, and other peculiarities.[4] It was assumed, in the absence of indications to the contrary, that two skeleton-formes would have been used alternately.
2. Evidence from type matter reappearing within the quire. When a piece of type, a scene head, an ornament, or a rule not a part of the skeleton-forme appears twice within the same quire, it is apparent that one of the formes of the quire was printed and distributed (at least in part) before composition of the entire quire was completed. It was assumed, lacking contrary evidence, that two formes containing the same piece of type matter would not have been machined concurrently, for had they been, a delay in presswork would have resulted.
3. Evidence from embossing. The priority of the formes printing and perfecting a single sheet can be determined from the embossing of the inked paper by the type of the perfecting forme,[4a] but because embossing resulted largely from the pressure exerted by the pressman's pull, there are nearly always differences in the degree of embossing in different examples of the same sheet. Because one of the copies of the Folio used for this study is not generally accessible, the evidence from embossing is not reported. It may be understood, however, that the implications of this kind of evidence as it appeared in the copies examined never contradicted the conclusions drawn from other evidence.

The Order of Composition and Distribution

It is reasonable to assume that a temporal relationship held between composition, presswork, and distribution — that, in general, the first forme set was the first forme machined and the first distributed. As soon as this is said, however, qualification must be made. If the press

was temporarily out of commission, printing other material, or otherwise unavailable for work on the Folio, two or even more formes might be machined later in any convenient order. Yet when operation proceeded smoothly, "the order in which the various formes were printed was ordinarily the the same as that in which they were set."[5] Thus, to prove the order of printing is usually to prove the order of the composition of the formes. Such a firm relationship did not, however, exist between presswork and distribution, for if two wrought-off formes were available for distribution nothing seems to have compelled the compositor to distribute first the one that was machined first.[6] Once more, though, there was a tendency to distribute material in the order of its machining; and, regardless of its implications for priority, evidence of distribution indicates at least that composition and machining had taken place. Such evidence is, therefore, not irrelevant to problems of composition, although it has to be used circumspectly.

Composition (in which term I include all the compositor's duties) seems, in fact, to have been governed by presswork. When the press stood idle, the printer could not profit; hence, when local conditions permitted it, an effort evidently was made so to regulate the speed of composition that the press would be supplied with a steady flow of material to be printed off. The rate of printing was chiefly a function of the size of the edition, and the rate of composition was chiefly a function of the nature and amount of the text to be set up for each forme. The speed of printing was a constant, but the speed of composition could be varied by several means, a favorite among them being the employment of more than one compositor to set type for a single forme or some other kind of collaboration to accomplish the same purpose, such as the composition by one workman of a complete forme while his companion set another forme or the employment of one workman in distributing and performing other chores while his companion set type. Flexibility was desirable, of course, and these basic techniques may have been modified in many different ways in order to adjust for the effect that particular circumstances had upon the progress of a specific printing job. However, because a folio forme contained a considerable amount of material and because a folio forme could be machined in about the same time as one containing much less (say a quarto forme) if the same number of copies of both were to be made, it seems generally true that two compositors were required to work simultaneously in folio printing.[7] When two compositors collaborated

in setting a forme or some other subdivision of a quire, they would divide the work to be done according to a more-or-less rational scheme consistent, one supposes, with either the bibliographical structure of the book or the physical characteristics of the copy. The actual division could, of course, be affected by many things — the availability of workmen, their speed in composing relative to each other and relative to the speed of the press, their competence, and so on — and the rationality of the scheme adopted may have been more apparent at the time than it seems now. Nevertheless, the manner of dividing the copy is a factor that must be taken into account when there are indications that more than one compositor was at work.

Proof of the order in which the pages of a particular quire were set can usually be made on the following evidence:

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.

The Identity of Compositors

The identity of compositors can be proved on the basis of their habitual and occasional preferences or lack of preferences in spelling, typography, punctuation, abbreviation, and so on, although the detection of these preferences can be complicated by several factors, among them the alteration of spelling to "justify" a full line of type, the adoption of non-preferential spellings for visual rhyme, and, most enigmatic of all, the influence of copy spellings on the compositor's normal habits. A high degree of consistency in spelling evidence seems, unfortunately, to be rare, and it is conceivable that two compositors in the same shop could have preferences so nearly alike that their work is for practical purposes indistinguishable. Yet very considerable aid and comfort in the solution of problems of identity is available from evidence of case and order, applied on the reasonable assumption that two compositors could not set simultanously from the same case. If one finds, for example, that Quire X was set from one case, it follows that it was set by one compositor, unless it can be shown by variation in spelling that he was relieved at the same case by another workman during the course of composition. If one finds that Quire X was machined in the order 2v:3-2:3v-1v:4-1:4v and that X1-2v were set from one case and X3-4v from another, it usually follows that two compositors were setting simultaneously, barring once again the chance that either man was relieved at his case. Even with the help thus provided, conflicts in spelling evidence occasionally create uncertainties; but by and large one finds that evidence of case and order accords with spelling evidence in such a way that the identity of the compositor is reasonably clear.[16]