University of Virginia Library

Compounded Error

Whereas Table 1 expresses F's success as against its inaction in correcting Q3, it takes no account of actual failures. On nine occasions F compounds an error in Q3 which it apparently undertakes to correct. These are as follows:[17]

                         

	TLN	Q1	Q2	Q3	F1
1.1.71	82	spoke, or thou	spoke, or thou	spoke, or what	spoken, or
		canst worse	canst	thou canst	thou canst
2.1.18	659	whose taste the	whose state the		of his state:
		wise are found	wise are found		then there are
					sound
2.2.3	955	life-harming		half-harming	selfe-harming
2.2.103	1058	there no	there two		there
3.3.17	1601	our heads		your heads	your head
3.3.119	1706	princesse		a Prince	a Prince, is
3.4.24	1834	come	commeth		comes
4.1.41	1964	to see that	I to see the		to see the
5.3.63	2562	held		hald	had

This category may contain readings where the promptbook has been consulted but inadequately represented or even readings where the promptbook differed from Q1, though one would not expect either of these to occur regularly. In other respects the group of nine should indicate lines which escaped collation. If the annotator overlooked a quarto error, which was then noticed by the compositor setting up the line, the compositor could either consult the manuscript himself, or correct on his own initiative. Compound errors could, of course, only occur if the compositor chose the second of these two options, and the presence of such errors in Richard II (and other Folio texts) suggests that re-consultation of the manuscript in such circumstances was rare, or non-existent. Indeed it is possible that the manuscript could not be consulted, because it was not in the printing house.

The small number of compounded errors is itself significant when compared with the number of correct restorations of the Q1 reading. But to compare figures directly would be misleading, if the hypothesis of relatively well-corrected areas of text has any validity: one would need to examine in turn the situation inside and outside those areas.