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Much bibliographical research in the twentieth century has been devoted to identification of the type-setters who transmitted Shakespeare's plays from manuscript to print. Recent qualitative study of the compositors' work has justified the labour expended in compositor identification, since accuracy in transmission has been shown to vary widely from one workman to another.[1] Before Shakespeare's modern editors can further explore these qualitative differences, they must be convinced that identification of the compositors' stints in the plays is sound. Secure compositor identification,
Compositor identification in the Shakespeare First Folio has occupied scholars since 1920 when Thomas Satchell discovered two compositors at work on the Folio Macbeth. Yet Charlton Hinman's Printing and Proof-Reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare of 1963 stands as the major contribution to the study. Hinman revolutionized compositor study when he plotted the recurrence, throughout the Folio, of individually distinctive types to identify the cases of type Jaggard's compositors used.[2] Often Hinman was able to associate individual compositors with specific cases of type: Compositor D usually set type from case z, Compositor B generally worked at case y, and Compositor A at case x. Founded on case evidence as well as spelling evidence, most of Hinman's compositor attributions have resisted convincing challenge for over fifteen years.
Only in quires D-H of the Comedies was Hinman unsuccessful in identifying cases. Quires D-F, he was forced to conclude, were apparently printed concurrently with non-Folio matter, very probably Wilson's Christian Dictionary, according to type-batter evidence visible in both works (Hinman, II, 370-371). Types from wrought-off Folio pages of quires D-F were often distributed, according to Hinman, for use in Wilson's work, which was set from the same cases employed in Folio production. Pages of the Dictionary in turn furnished types to Folio pages. Such irregular distribution practices deprived the analytical bibliographer of intelligible patterns of type recurrence in the Folio and thus prevented case identification. Irregular distribution persisted during work on quires G and H, but here Hinman found no evidence of concurrent printing. Instead, in these two quires, according to Hinman, different compositors frequently distributed parts of the same pages or columns (II, 386, 390). Such distribution yielded patterns of type recurrence—especially in quire G—which were at odds with those Hinman had plotted throughout most of the Folio where only two cases were used. When type-recurrence evidence in quires G and H failed to meet the norms for such evidence Hinman had developed, he relinquished the problem of case identification in G and H to later investigators. However, before he abandoned the problem, he left a wealth of evidence and valuable direction to researchers. Without intensive study of Wilson's Christian Dictionary, not attempted here, no one can now expect to solve all the problems of Folio quires D-H, but Hinman's suggestions regarding distribution practices in quires G and H offer a basis for re-examining his type-recurrence evidence in these quires. Such a re-examination may also illuminate problems in surrounding quires.
While scholars have yet to pursue Hinman's suggestions, bibliographical
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