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Anomalous Types

It is remarkable that three compositors often distributing type from the same pages and columns at the same time failed to produce in quire H even one anomalous appearance of a distinctive type. Instead it now becomes possible to explain two anomalous appearances of distinctive types recorded by Hinman. Upon discovering two distinctive types from upper H3a in Compositor B's H6 (p 27 and N22 in Table I, l. 10), Hinman concluded that "B's

labours for H6 can hardly have been simultaneous with D's for H5v and we cannot well suppose that Compositor D began his distributing of H3 at some point near the middle of H3a, leaving the first twenty-five lines or so standing for B to distribute later. How we can best account for the presence of types p27 and N22 in H6 is hard to say, but they evidently got into B's case in some irregular manner" (II, 392). With the discovery that quire H was set by three compositors working from three cases, often simultaneously on different formes, the appearance of these types need no longer be regarded as anomalous. Compositor B's "labours for H6" probably were simultaneous with D's for H5v, just as, somewhat earlier, Compositor B's work on H4v probably coincided with the work of Compositors C and D on H4.