II
The implications of this conclusion are naturally of considerable
interest for the Folio, especially since all but one and one-half of its pages
were typeset by Compositor E. If a copy of Q3, and not Q4, lies behind the
Folio and if F1 nevertheless contains a number of variants that agree either
with the reported text of Q1 (which, especially in its stage-directions,
presumably represents a theatrical tradition of some kind), or with the
apparently "edited" Q4 (which may or may not have consulted Q1 at a
given point), or with both, then the question remains of the origin of the
Folio's changes, which in fact are not unlike those that it introduces in
other quarto plays. The two traditional responses would credit the
prompt-book, against the considered judgment of generations of critics, or
blame the compositors. The former is perhaps debatable at this point and
cannot, in any case, be discussed until the compositorial alterations are
factored out. As for the latter, invoking the
Folio compositors simply will not work as an explanation in Romeo
and Juliet. It might go to explain some of the more imaginative
changes in the first page of the play, set up by B, if the traditional view of
this workman
were followed.
[13] However, it will not
explain similar alterations throughout the remainder of the play, set by the
less competent E, nor the curious evidence of the last part-page, which was
reset by B at a later time. Altogether there are, by conservative estimate,
some seventy such alterations, the majority of them in the stage-directions
and speech-prefixes but many in the dialogue as well, and they are often
found elsewhere than in the attempts to correct Q3's errors and in the
agreements with Q1 and Q4 so far discussed. We have yet much to learn
about Compositor E (and Compositor B), but whether or not we identify
him as the apprentice John Leason who joined Jaggard in 1622, we can all
agree, I suppose, that his work on
Tit. and
Rom.
was subject to unusual scrutiny in the proofreading, that he was incapable
of performing certain elementary compositorial tasks satisfactorily, and that
many of the changes introduced in Folio
Rom.
would appear to be beyond either his powers or his experience.
[14]
Furthermore, whatever his capacities, the mode of operation that he
was forced to adopt effectively thwarted any ability or inclination he may
have had to improve the play while setting it. Hinman has shown that E's
role, at least early in his work on the Tragedies,[15] was that of a substitute for the
regular
compositors (B and generally A), who were engaged in setting other plays
from manuscript. When either workman was called away, E was to step in
at the vacant cases and set up a portion of Tit. or
Rom. in order to keep the printing of the Folio going
forward.
His work on Rom. was, therefore, very intermittent, and
discontinuity was even greater than that normally occasioned by the
alternation back and forth between various parts of the plays caused by
setting by formes. This discontinuity was augmented in the first third of
Rom. by the fact that four of the pages in quire ee (sig.
ee5-6v, tln 493-1016) shared formes
with the last four pages of Tit. and that consequently E was
here
alternating between two plays.
[16] The
same was true to some extent in the one-sheet quire gg. There current
gg2
v was originally a forme-mate of cancelled *gg5,
which contained
part of
Tro., and the cancellation of this play caused a
particularly long delay between E's composition of *gg2
v
(
gg2
v) and of its eventual forme-mate gg1, though
continuity appears to
have held in the setting up of gg1
v:2. Yet even in those
formes not
experiencing this kind of alternation between plays, the delay and
discontinuity that plagued E's work was enough to disorient a more
accomplished and experienced typesetter. In quire ff, for instance, which
contains Acts II, III, and IV of
Rom., E set the formes in
"normal" order (i.e., from the inside, ff3
v:4, out); yet he
had to
contend not only with the normal disorientation in the first half of the quire
caused by setting these portions of the play in reverse order, but also with
the
discontinuities occasioned by delays: between ff6 and ff6
v,
for
example, six formes of
R3 and
H8 set by B and
others went through the press, by Hinman's calculations (II, 220-234), and
it was thus about three days that E was away from the cases and from
Rom. before resuming composition (with ff1
presumably).
[17] These severe
handicaps together with the weaknesses exhibited in his early work make
it difficult to believe that many of the Folio's changes which aim at
improving Q3's text originated with the main compositor of
Rom., the tyro E.
These changes, which must therefore represent annotation of Q3
copy, include but go beyond those listed by Greg (p. 235). One added
stage-direction, noted by Greg, appears in the ninth line of gg1, which E
set up after the protracted delay occasioned by the setting and cancellation
of part of Tro., about a week after he had completed
ff6v
and after he had composed what would have been the two last pages of
Rom. and the first four of Tro.[18] This is the re-entry 'Enter
Mother' (2592) omitted in Q2-3 and also in the intelligently edited
Q4, which presumably failed to consult Q1 (which has it) or to notice
independently that an entrance
was required for the subsequent speaker. Indeed, the complicated and quick
action—which involves entrances and departures of Capulet, Lady
Capulet, and the Nurse, as well as the business of music and servants with
logs and baskets—is enough to elude an editor reading consecutively.
E,
however, began his setting of gg1 in the middle of Q3's sig. K2; for him
to have comprehended the action, we must suppose that he not only read
through the facing page K1
v, where Lady Capulet appears
in the
stage-directions and speech-prefixes in her alternate function as
'
Lady' ('
La.'), but also leafed back to
I4
v and
K1 to get the full sequence of action, where she appears as
'
Mother' ('
Mo.').
[19] This entry is the only change
introduced
in this page of Q3, and to argue that E made it independently and thus
alone amongst the reprints provided for this entrance is to attribute to him
a comprehension of the action of the play matched
only by the actor-reporters of Q1.
Another interesting re-entry cited by Greg is that for Tybalt, which
E sets early in column a of ff3 (1556); it pairs with the 'Exit
Tybalt' that F1 substitutes for Q2-3's unusual 'Away
Tibalt' (1522). E would have begun setting ff3 with tln 1542 on
Q3's
F4, and unless he looked across to F3v and read through
it in order to
gain a sense of the continuity of the action, he would not have had the
opportunity to understand the flow of the staging until at least a day later,
when he returned to set up ff2v, working his way from
Q3's sig. F2
up through its F4. To argue that in fact E did both these things is, as is
often the case, to argue that he took more care with and made better sense
of the play than the editor of Q4, who failed to mend Q3's ambiguously
centered words (either to an exit or a speech[20]) and to provide a re-entry, in spite
of the
fact that Q1 does both.
A third example comes to hand in the two expanded exits at 2465 and
2477 (IV.ii), which show great pains in specifying the departures of
'Juliet and Nurse' and later 'Father and
Mother',
though failing to do so for the 'two or three' servingmen that
also appear in the scene. Both directions occur early in column a of
ff6v; E began setting this page with the last two lines of
Q3's sig. I4,
which also contains the centered entry for all the characters but Juliet
(2423-24), whose entrance is provided in a rather hidden direction
sandwiched between long lines of dialogue (2438). Between the time he set
these entries in sig. ff6 and added the
specifics for the exits in sig. ff6
v, some six formes went
through the
press in the course of about three days' work, before E returned to
Rom. by setting up forme-mate ff1 and then
ff6
v. Hence,
unless we suppose that he deliberately reread the rest of sig. I4 prior to
setting its last two lines and digested them so thoroughly as to introduce the
two sets of characters in the subsequent directions—where even the
intelligently edited Q4 is satisfied with Q3's simple '
Exeunt'
at
2465 (despite the '
Exeunt Nurse and Juliet' of Q1) and with
changing its '
Exit' to '
Exeunt' at 2477 (more
or less
in accord with Q1)—we have to assume that these additions to Q3
represent annotations of a Folio editor.
Similar specification occurs halfway down column a of ff2 in the
Folio's addition of 'Nurse and Peter' to Q3's
'Exit'
(1309), which Q4 again found satisfactory even though Q1 offers a
complete account of the departures—including Romeo's, which, as
Greg
points out, F1 fails to provide for. In this case, of course, E was to begin
setting the preceding page (ff1v) four formes later and
would have had
to read not only the rest of Q3's E4—where he began with the short
penultimate speech toward the bottom (1280)—but
E3v as well and
also would have then had to decide that Q3's 'Exeunt' at
1242
referred to both Mercutio and Benvolio, altering that stage-direction to read
'Exit. Mercutio, Benvolio' (substantially with
Q1)
when he returned to set it two days later. In this as well as the other cases,
E faced considerable discontinuity owing to the mode in which he worked,
and if we are to assign the Folio's alterations to him we must postulate
his habitual reading of earlier pages of Q3 and attribute to him a
comprehension of the play comparable to that of the Q1 reporters and
exceeding that of the Q4 editor, who had the presumed advantages of
working through Q3 consecutively and (perhaps) of consulting Q1.
This hypothesis, or set of hypotheses, is of course untenable,
especially given E's observable failures in other, simpler tasks; and Greg's
citations of these Folio alterations are virtual acknowledgements that none
of the Folio compositors can be credited with such changes, even if seriatim
setting were assumed.[21] Indeed just
about all the stage-directions that he cites are open to one or more of the
improbabilities so far discussed, if we attempt to trace them elsewhere than
to a Folio editor. And this generalization applies to a few that he failed to
notice. These must also represent annotation, although one or two that Greg
cites are probably the result of compositorial justification.
As already suggested, the specification added to Q3's exit at 1309
inevitably
involves comprehension of the total scene and identification of the
characters at 1242; similar elaborations of a Q3 exit and of a Q3 entry
occur elsewhere (2758, 3061, the latter involving the deletion of 3074+1).
The gratuitous change 'Romeo' > '
Servant' at 568 no
doubt
represents a misunderstanding of Shakespeare's staging and an attempt to
clarify it and to provide for the subsequent speaker, but the introduction of
'
their' in the preceding entry (567) shows some detailed
attention to the wording that finds a parallel in F1's '
a
Servingman' (446). Somewhat comparable is the substitution of
'
Peter' for '
Will Kempe' (2680). But the extent
to
which the annotator is responsible for the alterations of the exits in this part
of the play is problematic. The preceding speech-prefix (2679) was also
annotated, and all that marking up may have somehow helped distract E
from the '
Exeunt omnes' (2679+1) that appears in the
direction
line of Q3's K3.
Certainly, the earlier omission of '
manet' (2675) in an exit
that
also affects this sequence of action is to be put down to E's justification.
There is some doubt, too, about part of another stage-direction which Greg
mentions, the deletion of Q3's '
or partysons' at 71: although
it
could be argued that F1's omission represents a book-keeper's decision on
an "indefinite" stage-direction, it might well exhibit anticipatory justification
on the part of Compositor B aimed at centering the entry, in accord with
his custom.
[22] On the other hand, the
"imperative" instruction '
Fight' in the preceding line almost
surely represents an annotator, and it finds parallels in the stage-directions
at 938, 1881, and 1885 (which Greg cites), at 3035 (which he fails to cite),
and at 952 and 954 (which he confuses in a curious way).
[23] The Folio editor even exhibits
concern
with the details of exits. The fairly
straightforward '
Exit Tybalt' < '
Away
Tibalt'
(1522) must be laid to his charge by virtue of its subtlety, its positioning,
and its coordination with Tybalt's later re-entry (see above). There is,
though, also some attention to the somewhat formal question of exit/exeunt,
which is displayed not only in the otherwise annotated departure at 2477,
but at 1643 and 793 as well. This suggests that the added exits at 959, 450,
and 330 are also the work of an editor, either because other annotation of
the Q3 pages containing them makes insertion of them more probable or
because the context requires more attention than we have a right to expect
from E.
If these stage-directions be acknowledged the work of a Folio editor,
rather than Compositor E, then a number of the Folio's speech-prefixes
must represent annotation also. Perhaps the clearest example is the series
of regularizations in the divertimento between Peter and the musicians in
IV.v (2679-2719), where F1 alters to 'Mu.' Q3's variable
'Min.' and 'Fid.' (and their formal variants).
The
last of these (2719) was set from Q3's K4 and alone appears on
gg1v,
which followed gg1 by some five formes (or two and one-half days). That
E achieved this kind of uniformity on his own is incredible; the Folio's
'Mu.' is undoubtedly editorial, being derived from Q3's
'Musi.' on K3 (at 2676), which E would only have looked at
a few days earlier, and the annotations were part of the same process that
included the 'Will Kempe' > 'Peter'
alteration
(2680) if not the deletion of Q3's 'Exeunt omnes' (2679+1).
To
the editor must also
be ascribed the long delayed romanization of the Nurse's speeches, which
E first encountered at the top of B4 in Q3 and from then on uniformly
altered from its italic, even though in setting the same column of ee4 he
followed the italic of Capulet's "letter" as found on Q3's
B3v.[24] No doubt the editor, rather than
E, was
also responsible for altering line 2924 to a speech, although as Greg
remarks Shakespeare's own confusion at 2874 seems to have misled him
into assigning it to Peter; this intelligent but probably wrong editing is
comparable to the earlier mistreatment of similarly ambiguous words as a
stage-direction rather than a speech (at 1522). Certainly the correct
assignment to Juliet of the lines which conclude her soliloquy in II.v
(1325-30) must be ascribed to an editor, and this finds a parallel not only
in Q4's identical change but also at 2087. Here F1, like Q4 (and in accord
with Q1), corrects Q3's 'Ro.' at the top of its sig.
H3v, giving the speech to 'Juilet.' Since
Q3's catchword is
'Ju.' and since the context makes the change relatively
self-evident, the assignment itself is of less significance than the form it
takes (even though crediting E with the change on these bases would seem
unjustified). By and large E is rather faithful in reproducing the form of the
speech-prefixes found in Q3,[25] and
his only 'Juliet.' in a
speech-prefix occurs the second time he sets it (at 359)—under the
influence of Q3's first '
Juliet.' two lines earlier and perhaps
of
the distractions which the annotation of the Nurse's initial speeches might
have caused him. In any case it seems probable that the speech-prefix
'
Juilet.' represents a reproduction of an editorial notation, the
transposition being typical of E's response to marked-up copy at this point
in his career (see below). More or less formal concerns are also exhibited
at 2221—where F1 makes one attempt at regularizing the
"functional"
speech-prefixes by altering Q3's '
Wi.' to '
La.'
in
accord with the other speech-prefixes on the page, though ignoring the
'
Mo.' on the following page (2249)—in Compositor
B's '2.
Wife.' < 'M.
Wife 2.' (81), in the addition
(also
found in Q4) of the fairly obvious prefix for Juliet after her entrance alone
(1645), and in the '
Boy.' < '
Watch boy.'
normalization in the last scene (3036). Particularly interesting is the
regularization to '
App.' of the various Q3 forms
('
Appo.', '
Poti.', '
Po.'), since
all appear
to have been coordinate with the addition of the entry at 2785 and since the
first (2786) is not really called for and depends on someone desiring to
regularize those (2795, 2804, 2806) that occur on the following Q3 page.
Q4 follows these various forms, and it seems unlikely that E altered them
on his own. The Folio editor, therefore, appears to have been concerned
with such matters. He may even be responsible for the mistaken '3.
Cap.' < '1.
Capu.' early in the play (612)
and
the two curious changes at the end in B's Gg1 (3155, 3146), though these
two are rather complex (see discussion below). But apart from these three
changes, there is abundant evidence from the regularization of
'
Mu.' < '
Fid.' ('
Min.') to that
of
'
App.' < '
Appo.'
('
Po.', '
Poti.') of editorial attention to the
speech
assignments of the play.
Since this is so, it may come as no surprise that there is some
evidence of an editor's attention to and annotation of the dialogue itself.
Here we are generally on less secure ground, because the context of the
dialogue is much sooner grasped by a compositor setting by formes than is
that of the action and because the changes themselves are by nature less
easily assigned to a particular agent. However, with E's early work we may
make some headway in trying to distinguish what can be laid at his door
from what must be attributed to annotation. Two of the most helpful
examples (495, 763) occur early in his pages ee5 and ee6; each is separated
by intervening formes from the preceding page (i.e., ee4v
and
ee5v) and each follows its intervening forme-mate,
ee2v and
ee1v, both of which contain the end of Tit.
In both
instances F1 succeeds in mending a subtle Q3 error derived from Q2 in a
witty or sophisticated context. In the case of 'Abraham
Cupid'
<
'Abraham: Cupid' (763), the Q4 editor also succeeds in
correcting Q3, but at 495 he fails to make F1's generally
accepted 'your' < 'you' alteration (Q1 provides neither correction).
Moreover, F1's 'Lord' < 'L.' (951) seems to be superior to Q4's 'Love'
(Q1: 'Lord'), and the Folio's attempt to deal with the Shakespearian
duplication at 1843-45+2, derived from foul papers via Q2, shows attention
to the dialogue superior to that exhibited by Q4, which follows Q2-3.
[26] In each of these cases we would,
I
believe, be loathe to credit Compositor E with the alteration.
This view of E, which partakes no doubt of some prejudice, finds
support in several other instances of change. One is particularly complex
and somewhat inferential. It involves F1's curious lines
What? in a names that which we call a Rose,
By any other word would smell as sweete, (837-838).
These famous lines appear correctly in no early text, in the view of most
editors, Q1 having 'name' for 'word' but also being the only text to provide
the query after the first 'name'. F1's obviously botched line is puzzling,
given Q3's basically satisfactory 'What's in a name that . . .', until it is
seen to represent an interchange of the '?' and the 's' (both types one-en
thick). But, this acknowledged, the question remains how the text came
about. Had E recognized what was wanted in the course of setting the lines,
his text should have come out right. The explanation appears to lie in a
characteristic failure of E's that is exhibited several times in his attempts to
introduce proof-corrections, where he seems to have transposed the changes
called for, sometimes simply by alternating types. Perhaps the most serious
is at
Rom., 348: here E's 'shall scant shell' was marked to
be
corrected to Q3's 'shall scant shew' but E confused the '-all' and '-ell'
letters that follow the
identical ligatures and produced the irredeemable nonsense 'shew scant
shell,' that now stands in examples of "corrected" ee4.
[27] Three other instances exhibit a
similar
proclivity to interchanging types in response to marked-up print:
|
F1 (u)
|
F1 (c)
|
|
Rom. 229 wisewi:sely |
wisewi : sely |
|
Rom. 1218 [qua-|] th aGentleman: |
[qua-|] t ha:Gentlemen, |
|
Lr. 1787 skin. so'tis |
skinso :'tis |
Although other examples of E's botching annotation might be cited,
[28] this particular disposition accounts,
I
suggest, for F1's curious line, which results from E's characteristic
interchange in his attempt to carry out instructions given by the Folio editor
in the form of an annotation in his Q3 copy.
[29]
Other evidence of the editor's annotation of fine points in the dialogue
are perhaps less inferential. Certainly F1's unique correction 'here, of'
< 'hereof' shows sensitivity to subtleties comparable to that found at
763, as does 'counterfaits a' < 'counterfaits. A', though here Q4's
'counterfeits, a' is comparable (2010, 2170). Of interest, too, is the series
of changes in lines 1956-61. Of the five, only 'or' is an outright
spontaneous error, perhaps occasioned by the annotation that must have
surrounded it. The last, 'puttest up', though wrong, was probably motivated
by metrical considerations; Q3 needs correction and F1 does as well here
as Q4 ('powts upon'). In the previous line both editors also take Q2-3's
'mishaved' for an error and alter it, F1 with perhaps a little more
imagination (F1: 'mishaped'; Q4: 'misbehav'd). They discern that Q3's
'turne' is erroneous, but here Q4 restores Q2's 'turnes' while F1 alters to
'turn'd'; this presumably leads to the Folio change
'becomes' > 'became' in the previous line, which shows some concern
with consistency of tenses and can hardly be attributed to E (who would
have already completed the line before coming to Q3's 'turne', unless he
memorized two lines at a time).
The attempt to correct Q3's 'puts up' at 1961 suggests a certain
concern with meter, and elsewhere F1's 'Capulets' (also
adopted by the Q4 editor) might yet stand had not Q1 provided the superior
'Capels are' (1433). Two other examples, a little less subtle,
occur in ff2v, where Q3's grammatically satisfactory
wording is
deliberately altered ('Forbid' > 'Forbidden', 'both houses' > 'both
the Houses') to make regular ten-syllable lines (1520, 1524). The even
more gratuitous changes at 2153 nevertheless exhibit a similar, albeit
misguided, concern with meter ('Shall happly make thee there a joyfull
Bride' > 'Shall happily make thee a joyfull Bride'). Mild concern with
censorship may be traced in the substitutions for 'zounds' and 'sounds', and
this may also account in part for the alteration of the stage-direction
'Slud knocke' (1480, 1534,
1885).
[30] Less easily classified
alterations appear elsewhere. In the compound variant at 3035, F1's ''Tis
in' makes tolerable sense of Q3's 'Tis is', though Q4 succeeds in restoring
Q2's 'This is'; here an editor also added the stage-direction '
Kils
herselfe' and simplified the next speech-prefix to
'
Boy.'
(3036). Another example depends on Q3's paging: the addition 'grave'
(2380) is not terribly imaginative and could have been made with a glance
at the previous line, if that line were not on the previous page of Q3;
Q2-3's text makes tolerable sense ('tomb', or Q4's 'shroud', or some other
grisly word associated with burial being implied), but its defective meter
signals the need for a monosyllable, and the Folio editor, rather than E,
appears to have supplied it. Less imaginative but correct alterations are the
changes 'Sycamour' < 'Syramour', 'jaunt' < 'jaunce', and 'denote'
< 'devote' (123, 1338, 1927). These are all readings
adopted by later editors; it may be noticed that Q4 fails to get the first, Q1
and F1 alone providing it. More questionable, indeed gratuitous, changes
are found in 'o'th Collar' < 'of choller', 'done' < 'dun', and
'Coarse' < 'course' (9, 492, 1782); though all are wrong (and the last,
perhaps, still a mere spelling variation in 1623), they all exhibit some
elementary concern with double meanings and a tendency to pin down one
of them, and all three find parallels in either Q4 or Q1. Other examples of
Folio changes of Q3 dialogue might be brought forward: for instance, the
oxymoron created by 'fire' < 'life' is difficult to attribute to E because
it produces a highly conceited reading and represents a conscious attempt
to improve Q3's quite acceptable passage (2497). But from the evidence just
cited it would seem plain that the Folio's text exhibits a rather surprising
attention to its dialogue, particularly since all but one (tln 9) of these thirty
or so instances occur in
the work of Compositor E.
