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Notes
John S. O'Connor, "A Qualitative Analysis of Compositors C and D in the Shakespeare First Folio," Studies in Bibliography, 30 (1977), 57-74.
Throughout this article "case" will refer to "all of the components of a single complex of cases" (C.J.K. Hinman, The Printing and Proof-Reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare [1963], I, 108.)
"Compositors C and D of the Shakespeare First Folio," PBSA, 65 (1971), 41-52; "Compositors E and F of the Shakespeare First Folio," PBSA, 66 (1972), 369-406.
T.H. Howard-Hill, "The Compositors of Shakespeare's Folio Comedies," SB, 26 (1973), 61-106; John S. O'Connor, "Compositors D and F of the Shakespeare First Folio," SB, 28 (1975), 81-117.
Table I retains the line numbering of Hinman's graph, while expanding it where necessary (i.e., l. 1 becomes ll. 1.1 and 1.2), so that the types referred to in the graph may be recovered from Hinman's tables (I, 425-490).
An "indented flow-over" is produced when a compositor carries over a line too long for his measure to the next line and indents it two or three ems from the left margin (O'Connor, p. 89).
Excluded from Hinman's graph in its revised form are recurrences in quire G of distinctive types from the first three formes of quire F, which were distributed during composition of the last half of the quire. Hinman expressed no confidence in the evidence of these recurrences when he wrote of quire F: "Probably because irregular distribution practices were followed, we cannot say which types do and which do not appear anomalously in this quire, or at any rate in the last two formes of it" (II, 383). After examining type-recurrence patterns in quire F, I can only concur with Hinman's judgment, and thus I have limited attention to distribution carried on during composition of quire G.
The ninth distinctive type in page I3v is G24 common to I3vb36 and E3va10, and the tenth is discussed below under "Anomalous Types."
The exceptional column K5b may not be exceptional at all. A paucity of distinctive types in this column forbids conclusive identification of the case used to set it. There are only three distinctive types in column K5b, two from page I2v which provided identifiable types to no other Folio page, and one from I2a37. Since the only other distinctive type from column I2a is common to I2a43 and K5a51 (demonstrably set from case x by Compositor C), we might conclude that Compositor B set K5b from the same case, case x. Yet so often in the Comedies did compositors share distribution of the same columns when they also shared composition of a single page that it is equally possible that Compositor B distributed type from the upper part of column I2a, including I2a37, into case y, while Compositor C distributed lower I2a, including I2a43, into case x. If so, then Compositor B set column K5b from case y, and the association between individual compositors and cases is absolute for quires K-Q.
We are concerned here, of course, only with distinctive types distributed from pages F2-H5v in the order of printing, that is, the material distributed to prepare for composition of quires G and H and forme I3v:4.
The nine types are: W29 C4vb37 L2a59; ss24 E1va18 G5va26; M22 E2a17 G6a15; G24 E3va10 I3vb36; h37 F4vb49 G2a57; w34 F3a20 G2a57; f25 F2vb49 G4b57; ffi21 F3vb46 G5vb43; and y23 F3vb48 G5vb23.
As Hinman acknowledged, his use of the case designators x and y was arbitrary, since the hiatus in intelligible type-recurrence patterns already noted in quires D-F prevents identification of the cases used for quires A-D as the same cases used for quires G-Q (II, 348).
Hinman's footnote (II, 345, n.1) indicates his search for more reliable evidence and his inability to find it: "Forme A2v:5 seems to have no ordinary letterpress in common with either A1v:6 or A3v:4. . . . None, that is, of which we can be absolutely certain— though it may be that the same damaged type is indeed represented both by the defective 'n' in 'vnworthinesse' in A6b5 and by the very similar 'n' in the word 'In' at the beginning of A2vb65."
As Hinman wrote elsewhere, "Of course the testimony of a single already distributed type . . . is by no means conclusive" (II, 28).
Although columns F4b and F5a were not the work of Compositor B, but instead that of Compositor C, these three type recurrences can hardly be used as evidence that Compositor C's case for quires A-F was indeed case y, not case x. It is not likely that three types distributed during composition of quire A would have remained unused in the case from which Compositor C set pages of three quires (B-D), only to re-emerge together in two columns of a fourth quire (F). The concentrated recurrence of the three distinctive types in two quire-F columns suggests, instead, that the three had just lately been supplied to whatever as yet unidentified case Compositor C used for quire F. As Hinman was able to demonstrate, the compositor who set F4 distributed non-Folio material (likely Wilson's Christian Dictionary) just before he set the page, and thus the three distinctive types probably recurred in the Folio at this point because they were distributed into Compositor C's case from wrought-off pages of non-Folio material set from a different case (Hinman, II, 381-382).
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