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Compositor A in the Comedies and Histories
I have already mentioned the possibility that the A of the early comedies and the A of WT and the histories were not the same compositor. Anomalies in the summary of A's habits on p. 85 suggest that this question deserves some consideration. It will be noticed that the compositor of WT prefers 'indeed', 'mistresse', "x'th'" and 'x'le' whereas in A's pages of Tmp., TGV, Wiv., MM and MV the corresponding preferences are 'indeede', 'mistris', "x'th/xth'" and 'x'll'.[46]
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From this it is clear that the compositor A of R2, which
was partly set before WT and finished after it, and the A of
WT are one and the same. Although I have not represented
the
histories which preceded the setting of quire d of R2 in the
table, apart from the elision counts, A's spellings there are consistent with
the spellings in the table. Nothing I have observed suggests that A changed
his habits in the histories. This confirms Miss Walker's description of A's
habits. Comparison of the spellings of this part of the Folio with the
summary for the five plays in which A shared before WT
shows
many contrasting features. It is possible to discount the elisions in
Tmp. where the compositor, fresh to work of this kind, was
possibly more greatly influenced by copy than he usually was. Compositor
B also seems to
![Click to Enlarge Page 86](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:699715/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
This matter is relevant because of the five plays printed before WT in which compositor A had a hand, four (Tmp., TGV, Wiv., MM) are texts which were probably printed (and WT also) from copy prepared by Crane. If for the moment it is conceded that the copy was Crane's, and if the compositor A of the early comedies and histories is taken to be a single compositor, it is still impossible to explain the different counts by reference to Crane's spellings.[47] Both Crane and the histories A prefer 'deuill', yet that spelling does not occur from Tmp. to MM; instead there are 12 'diuell's. Crane preferred 'howre' and the A of the histories tolerated 'hower'[48] yet no such spelling occurs in the early comedies. The histories A would tolerate 'mistresse' from copy; 'mistris' is Crane's spelling and A uses it 22 times in the early comedies, yet in WT, the copy for which was presumably in the same hand, 7 'mistresse' spellings occur and only two of the spellings which are assumed to have been in copy. The single 'indeed' is possibly a copy spelling for that was Crane's invariable spelling, yet there are 17 'indeede' spellings in the early comedies. In WT 'indeed' occurs ten times, but these are not likely to have been taken from copy as 'indeed' is also the preferred spelling of A's pages in the histories. 'Yong' is the spelling of Crane and the A of the comedies but in WT the compositor sets 'young', the characteristic spelling of A of the histories. Miss Walker's compositor A, in short, prefers 'deare', 'deuill', 'suddaine' and 'young' whereas the compositor of the early comedies prefers 'deere', 'diuell', 'sodaine' and 'yong'.
There is other evidence. The spacing is not altogether clear since spaced commas inside short lines are not favoured in either group of pages. However, the table of spacing[49] shows that whereas the comedies compositor would quite often space a fair number of internal commas, occasionally more than were left without spaces, the practice of the
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The evidence is such that it is not possible to believe that a single compositor is found in A's pages of the comedies and histories without serious doubt being cast on the principles on which compositor identifications from spelling are made. There could be little objection to this if the procedures of spelling analysis had been called into question elsewhere in the Folio, or in other books. A compositor might change his preference from one form of a spelling to another over a period of time, or perhaps admit so many copy-spellings against his usual practice that in a particular text it might be difficult to discern his presence, but one does not expect (and indeed, I have not found) a compositor to change a number of established practices at once. There is no practical alternative to the belief that when compositorial practices change between groups of texts, a change of compositor is indicated. This is the basis of compositor determination in the Folio, and if application of the principle has proved adequate to distinguish B from D, for example, it should be possible to distinguish between the compositors of the early comedies and the histories on the same ground. There is some further support for the maintenance of this principle in that none of the other compositors' habits changed significantly during the course of the Folio's printing though, since they set from the same kinds of copy as A had before him, they would have been just as exposed as he was to copy spellings contrary to their own. I can see little alternative but to conclude that there was another compositor in the early comedies; henceforth I shall refer to him as F.[50]
In other folios printed by Jaggard about this time, the principal compositors of the Folio can be identified in discrete sections of the books by their usual spellings.[51] However, there are patterns of spellings, particularly in Favyn, with which compositors A, B, C, and D of the Folio cannot easily be readily identified. Compositorial patterns
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Postscript: In the tables, please include the following additions and corrections (my errors).
- p. 90 Compositor B: Preferred Form, do, Err., should be 13:4; Total should be 351:129.
- p. 90 Compositor C: Preferred Form, Term. sp., TGV, should be 59:3; Term. sp., Wiv., should be 2:16; Term. sp., Total should be 474:70.
- p. 93 Compositor C, sig. C2, Term. sp., should be 10:2; sig. C3v, Term sp., should be 8:1; last line, Term. sp., should be 59:3.
- p. 94 Compositor F, sig. D3v, Term. sp., should be 1; last line, Term. sp., should be 1; Compositor C, sig. D2v, Term. sp., should be 1j; last line, Term sp., should be 2:16.
- p. 95 Compositor B, sig. H4v, do, should be 3:1; last line, do, should be 13:4.
- p. 102 Compositor B, sig. X4, Term. sp., should be 1j; last line, Term. sp., should be 1:1.
- p. 103 Sig. Z4, Term. sp., should be 1j; last line, Term. sp., should be 7:6.
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