University of Virginia Library

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]

This evidence is too scanty for the influence of copy to be dismissed, but there are other differences between the habits of the compositor in the two groups of pages. The simplest test of the integrity of the compositor is to observe the occurrence of the spellings which Miss Walker has identified as characteristic of A in WT and the later plays of the Folio. In the table below I have included some other useful spellings, and counts of the elisions.

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

have set a fair number of elisions from copy in Tmp., Wiv., and WT. Copy influence can not entirely explain the variation between the "'ll" and "'le" elisions although undoubtedly some of them, and some of the other spellings listed in the table, were taken from copy. There is a common preference for 'doe/goe/here' and a strong disinclination to set 'do/go/heere' other than in long lines, but the compositor's use of other variant spellings differs between the groups of pages.

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

histories A is much more pronounced and never, in the plays I have examined, is there a greater number of spaced commas to unspaced commas. Also, before WT, the compositor A was indifferent to whether he set the first word of the speech together with the speech-prefix in a catchword, or the speech-prefix alone, but in the histories his invariable practice was to supply the first word of the dialogue with which the next page started.

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

in these books are so generally consistent from one folio to the other that one can be reasonably confident that the compositors have been correctly identified. Nevertheless, there are some sections distinguished by firm compositorial spelling preferences which cannot be identified, especially after, say, the Folio A, has already been distinguished in that book. When I made my survey of these folios in 1965 I was inclined then to conclude that there was another Jaggard compositor but deferred the conclusion until work on the Folio supplied further evidence.[52] It is most likely that more work on other Jaggard books of the time will confirm that Jaggard used at least five compositors before he took on the apprentice E.

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.