University of Virginia Library

Kable, The Pavier Quartos and the First Folio of Shakespeare, Shakespeare Studies Monograph Series, No. 2 (1970), pp. 14-17; previously published as "The Influence of Justification on Spelling in Jaggard's Compositor B," SB, 20 (1967), 235-239. Kable's views on the composition of the Paviers have recently been attacked by J. F. Andrews, "The Pavier Quartos of 1619: Evidence for Two Compositors," Diss. Vanderbilt 1971, and by Peter W. M. Blayney, "'Compositor B' and the Pavier Quartos: Problems of Identification and Their Implications," The Library, 5th Ser., 27 (September 1972), 179-206, but Andrews and Blayney do not agree with one another any more than they do with Kable about the printing of the Paviers. Since this issue is not crucial to the present discussion, the few times I refer to B's work in the Paviers I follow Kable's general findings, though taking account of corrections to his statistics. For more on this matter, see my "Spellings of Jaggard's Compositor B in Certain Plays in the First Folio of Shakespeare," Diss. Virginia 1972, p. 12, n. 1, p. 15 and n. 2, pp. 126-128.

Cf. Kable, pp. 8, 16; W. W. Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio (1955), p. 177; Greg, A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration (1939), I, 119. The question is raised by Kable's use of Q2 (1600) as Q3 copy on p. 16 of his monograph; he follows Greg's Q1 assignment on p. 8. The line in Q1 ends with a turn-under.

An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1928; 1964), p. 11; see also p. 245.

The term "justified spellings" is used throughout to designate those spellings that presumably result more from B's need to justify his line by varying from his normal spelling habits, than from his inclination to choose gratuitously a certain spelling (see Kable's use of the term, p. 17). Although strictly speaking each line of type is justified (i.e., each is filled with pieces of type that make it a cohesive unit), it is now not uncommon to use the term "justification" in connection with lines where the letter itself extends to the end of the measure and, in addition, to use it when discussing lines that have been deliberately so typeset with spellings and spaces that they fill the type line. (See, for example, Kable's use, or Charlton Hinman's reference to lines that had to be "justified," that is, "to be either compressed or expanded . . . so as to fill out the length of the type line exactly" in The Printing and Proof-Reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare [1963], I, 186.) Lines that are thus deliberately justified may be said to contain at least some "justified spellings," or spellings affected by the compositor's conscious effort to fit a certain combination of letters into a type line, whereas lines that are not thus deliberately justified—either because they are "short" or because they fortuitously filled the type line when set—may be said to contain "unjustified" spellings.

I wish to thank Professor Hinman for permitting the publication of this statement. An aspect of this problem involving quartos especially is reviewed by John Feather, "Some Notes on the Setting of Quarto Plays," The Library, 5th Ser., 27 (1972), 237-244.

There are about thirty-one pages in F1 definitely set by B from Q1 Ado, Q1 LLL, Q1 MV, Q2 MND, Q5 IH4, Q3 Tit., and Q3 Rom. For the exact pages, see Reid, pp. 366-379. Throughout, the symbols L?, L, R, and SD designate, respectively, the number of spellings in nearly long lines ending within three or fewer ens of the measure, fully long lines, rhymes, and stage-directions.

See Kable's practice throughout his monograph or Hinman's practice as revealed in his treatment of sig. e4v (II, 84). Cf. the carefully stated view of T. H. Howard-Hill, "Spelling and the Bibliographer," The Library, 5th Ser., 18 (March 1963), 9-10, and also Alan E. Craven, "Justification of Prose and Jaggard Compositor B," ELN, 3 (1965-66), 15-17.

For details on B's normal spelling habits, see Reid, esp. chs. 2 and 4.

Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing, ed. Davis and Carter (1958), p. 103; subsequent quotations are from this edition.

McKerrow, p. 11; Howard-Hill, p. 8. Perhaps the conflict between these two views is more apparent than real; McKerrow tends to speak of justification mostly in terms of shortening the line to fit the measure, and for this end altering spelling may have been the principal means. Howard-Hill's latest observations on spacing, in "The Compositor's of Shakespeare's Folio Comedies," SB, 26 (1973), 66-71, were seen after the present discussion had been written.

Such a procedure would be pragmatic and expeditious: extra letters could simply be omitted or, if already set in the line, easily extracted and redistributed without disturbing the relatively uniform spacing between words, whereas it would be less troublesome to insert spaces almost anywhere in the line than to search for spelling that could be lengthened and then pick out the needed letters.

Cf. the following—throughout, I use the TLN of The First Folio of Shakespeare: The Norton Facsimile, ed. Hinman (1968): Ado, 7, 34, 64, 76, 82, 83, 84, 559, 610, 612; LLL, 2159, 2181, 2444, 2481, 2509, 2661, 2676, 2680; MND, 351, 2034, 2042; MV, 2064; IH4, 749, 766, 844, 854, 859, 860, 861, 926, 929, 978, 1054, 2162, 2773, 2774, 2926, 2939, 3085; Rom., 59.

The term is Moxon's for inordinately large spaces in a printed line.

Cf., for particular examples of this difficulty, Ado, 609 (discussed below) and MND, 365 (cited in Table I).

For an example, see MND, 365, referred to in n. 14.

The compositor is free to set one verse line as one or two type lines, unless the need to "justify" his page to fit it to his cast-off copy forces one alternative upon him (see Hinman, II, 507). The line at MV, 8, cited below, provides a good example of compositorial choices, and also one of the infrequent instances of possible lengthening as well as shortening of lines in verse.

The term is Moxon's, p. 235.

An exception to this generalization might be a case where a compositor had to "justify" a whole page.

This assumes that Andrews' assignment of the page in Q2 to Compositor "F"—not to be confused with the F of T. H. Howard-Hill, "Compositors," pp. 84-88, hitherto identified with A—is incorrect or at least unproven. Were it proved correct, the point made here would not be affected. In quoting this and other lines, I have not attempted to reproduce the spacing and have modernized the u, v, i, and long s.

See Kable, p. 67. Blayney (p. 190 and nn. 25 and 26) questions the accuracy of Kable's figures on 'and', finding more & spellings than Kable records, but whatever the precise figures for the Paviers, B uses & only in long lines in F1.

This stage-direction may have been annotated, but if so, the annotation did not affect the words in the immediate vicinity of the case cited. See also, IH4, 3135. B's spellings in stage-directions are, as a class, valid evidence; see Reid, pp. 172-178.

McKerrow, p. 11; Moxon, p. 207. These views have already been discussed above, pp. 92, 98.

By simplicity I mean that it is hard to find other conditions or factors that might occasion the phenomena and therefore contaminate their value as evidence. For instance, no influence from the spellings of neighboring words with similar orthographical characteristics could have led to B's choice of & over and.

The validity of such evidence in compounds is shown in Reid, pp. 181-184.

The Folio and the Paviers were set from the same font of type, and of course the Folio measure was shorter. The statistics cited combine (legitimately) those for 'kind' sb. and adj.

That is, the texts of works, such as the Folio Ham., Oth., and 2H4, whose copy is still unknown or debated.