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Hypothesis

The Folio's printed copy (Q3) for Richard II received at least three kinds of annotation: the systematic provision of act and scene divisions (the latter apparently editorial), the systematic collation of stage directions and speech prefixes, and the sporadic collation of dialogue variants. The fluctuations of accuracy in this third stage are documented in Table 2. Explanations for that pattern of fluctuation are necessarily conjectural. To some extent, no doubt, they reflect the universal rhythm of alternating alertness and inattentiveness.[33] We have already suggested that the annotator may have been more alert to dialogue variants in scenes where the protagonist is present. From the beginning the annotator left some short passages uncorrected, with no obvious motive for his alterations in procedure. But just as the annotator of Love's Labour's Lost stopped his thorough collation shortly after TLN 977, so the annotator of Richard II after 1003-4 must have decided that it was necessary


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to lighten further the amount of attention he was giving the promptbook. The sudden slackening in his thoroughness is indeed quite dramatic (though not so total as in Love's Labour's Lost). The annotator apparently saved time partly by avoiding work on those parts of the play which had already received at least some annotation; that is, around the added and changed directions themselves. A few exceptions crept in between 2364 and 2704, but his basic approach remained the same until the end of the play. Such a procedure is not entirely illogical, and is psychologically plausible. It also fits neatly into the larger pattern of Folio annotation.

We have already pointed out that the layout of manuscript pages would have provided a physical encouragement and basis for separating the annotation of speech prefixes and stage directions from the annotation of dialogue. Such a separation also has an obvious basis in the nature of the two authorities the collator was comparing. His printed copy was a reprint of a good quarto, set from autograph or fair copy, presumably reliable in its verbal detail but deficient in the very theatrical features (stage directions and regularity of speech prefixes) supplied by a promptbook. Hemmings and Condell would have known very well the differences between these two kinds of documents, and even if they were not themselves responsible for collating quarto and manuscript, one would expect them to have discussed with the publishers, at least in general terms, the differences between the material in their possession and the printed texts already available. Finally, such a method of working would have been immediately attractive and intelligible to a printer or publisher: Moxon explains the normal two-step compositorial procedure for setting pages with 'Marginal Notes . . . down the Side or Sides of the Pages'.[34]

Before Richard II, four Folio texts had been set from annotated quarto copy: Much Ado about Nothing, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Merchant of Venice. In each case, the annotation was sparse, chiefly affecting act divisions, stage directions and speech prefixes. But in the case of Richard II it seems to have been


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decided, for whatever reason, at whatever point in time, to attempt a more extensive collation of Q3 against the manuscript. This collation of dialogue variants was, by modern standards, unevenly, even 'superficially' carried out, but it nevertheless represents a clear departure from previous Folio practice. And I Henry IV, the next Folio play to be set from quarto copy, shows similar signs of two different kinds of annotation: again, directions and prefixes have been altered throughout the text (often in trivial ways), and act and scene divisions provided, but alteration of the dialogue is sporadic.[35] I Henry IV and Richard II both, in different ways, offer evidence of a transition in methods of Folio annotation, from the consistent practice in the Comedies to the more extensive annotation first undertaken in earnest in Richard III (up to the end of quire s).[36] After this experiment in extensive annotation, laziness returned: the end of Richard III (t1-2v), Romeo, and Titus are given the absolute minimum of annotation (again concentrating on stage directions, prefixes, and act divisions), and the same was clearly intended at first for Troilus. This reversion to the earlier procedure may have been connected with the introduction of Compositor E, who by all accounts was an inexperienced compositor who may not have been able to cope with heavily-annotated copy; or Compositor E may have been called in because a decision had already been taken to make do with sparsely-annotated copy. In any case, after this lapse the Folio finally reverts to extensively prepared quarto copy for both King Lear and Troilus, the last two plays to have been set from printed copy.[37] In short, the Folio itself, like the individual plays within it, shows a pattern of varying thoroughness in the annotation of quarto copy; within this pattern, Richard II and I Henry IV are pivotal, and both reveal a discrepancy between their treatment of, on the one hand, directions, prefixes,

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and act and scene divisions, and, on the other, their annotation of dialogue.

This apparent pattern in the nature of the copy from which Jaggard's compositors set inevitably raises a question about who prepared that copy. In the case of the 1647 Beaumont and Fletcher Folio, a single publisher (Moseley) provided copy for six different printers; all of the texts seem to have been set from manuscript copy, and the collection and preparation of the copy was clearly the publisher's rather than the printer's responsibility.[38] The 1616 Jonson Folio was both published and printed by William Stansby; Jonson himself was clearly instrumental in supervising the preparation of this volume, and hence was probably personally responsible for the annotation of those plays set from annotated quartos.[39] The Shakespeare First Folio falls somewhere between these two eminent stools. Rather like Stansby, Jaggard—the sole printer—was also co-publisher; but the 1623 Folio, like that of 1647, was a posthumous publication, and the collection of texts to print was at least partly and perhaps wholly the work of Heminges and Condell. Unlike Jonson, Shakespeare was not available to annotate quartos himself; yet like the Jonson Folio, Shakespeare's contains plays undoubtedly set from annotated quarto copy. Who annotated those quartos? Heminges and Condell may have done so; or the publishers may have. In this case, however, the printer was himself one of those publishers—indeed the senior partner in the syndicate: as Greg concludes, 'There can then be little doubt that . . . the moving spirit of the scheme on the publishing side was Isaac Jaggard' (First Folio, p. 6).

Jaggard's shop was clearly in a position to provide the skills of collating and proofreading, and to ensure that the quartos were annotated in the manner most convenient for the compositors. Three more specific arguments suggest that even if the annotator was not 'Jaggard's man', he nevertheless worked in association with the printers. First, it does not seem likely that theatrical professionals would have introduced act divisions as inept as those in The Taming of the Shrew, Henry V, and I Henry VI; the divisions in those plays, at least, seem to originate outside the theatre, and if so a similar origin for other editorial annotations of copy must be suspected. Secondly, it is certainly suspicious that the evidence for consultation of a manuscript in Folio Love's Labour's Lost ceases so abruptly only nine lines from the bottom of a Folio page—nine lines which would have required no other annotation. This might


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be a coincidence, but it suggests that annotation and casting-off of copy sometimes went hand in hand. Finally, a dramatic change in the character of the annotation at the end of Richard III coincides with an irregularity in the sequence of setting. After most of Richard III had been set up from heavily-annotated quarto copy, at the end of quire s work on the play was broken off, and setting of the Tragedies commenced. When eventually the compositors returned to Richard III, extreme variation from quarto copy continued for only half of the first column of t1; the remainder of the play was set from copy that had been only nominally edited, almost wholly in respect to speech prefixes and stage directions. This coincidence seems most plausibly explained in one of two ways, either of which presumes a close connection between the annotator of the quarto and Jaggard's compositors. The temporary abandonment of work on Richard III may have been due, as Hinman conjectured (II, 127), to difficulties in securing the copy for Henry VIII (which completes the Histories section of the volume). If this explanation is correct, then the drastic change in the level of annotation on column a of t1 may have occurred because the annotator had, in the interim, prepared copy for Titus and Romeo (already set or being set, when work on Richard III resumed), and as a result quickly decided to revert to the more economical degree of annotation employed for those two texts. This seems to us unlikely: why should the annotator stop work on Richard III just because copy for Henry VIII was not ready, why should there have been any problem about the copy for Henry VIII, and why when resuming Richard III should he extensively annotate half a column of Folio text before abruptly changing his methods? It seems likelier that the abrupt switch to the Tragedies occurred because the annotator had encountered some difficulty or deficiency in the manuscript he was consulting, halfway down the first page of a new quire, and that completion of Richard III was delayed while an attempt was made to rectify this difficulty. A full justification of this hypothesis would require an extensive investigation of the vexing problem of printer's copy for Folio Richard III; here we must limit ourselves to the statement that such an investigation has convinced us of the validity of this hypothesis.[40] Certainly, it would be most economical to assume that the change in the nature of Jaggard's copy at the end of Richard III bears some relation to the change in the order of Jaggard's setting. This does not prove that the annotator was employed by Jaggard, or worked in his shop, but it does suggest—like the other evidence—that he worked in close association with Jaggard's compositors, and that he may sometimes have cast off pages as he annotated them.


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Two further facts, specific to Richard II, support the same conclusion. First, it seems most likely (as we have suggested) that the apparent influence of Q5 in a 53-line stretch near the end of the play results from the fact that someone in the theatre transcribed that passage from Q5, in order to rectify a gap in the promptbook. If someone in the theatre also presented Jaggard with annotated printed copy, why was Q3 (rather than Q5) used? The most obvious agent to have performed both functions would have been the book-keeper, who would have done both jobs between 1615 and 1622; we would expect the same quarto to be used for both, even if (as is possible) there had been a change of book-keeper.

Secondly, we have already remarked on the fact that Folio Richard II betrays evidence of annotation more extensive than that in the Comedies; I Henry IV has been similarly annotated; Richard III, the next play set from quarto copy, was even more extensively annotated. Matthew Law, who was not a part of the syndicate which published the Folio, held the copyright to all three plays (and to no others printed in the Folio). One does not like to attribute such coincidences to coincidence. In the case of Troilus and Cressida, it has been widely accepted that the difference between Jaggard's abandoned first setting of the play (after Romeo, from quarto copy as minimally annotated as that for Titus and Romeo) and the second (between the Histories and Tragedies, from heavily annotated quarto copy) probably resulted from difficulties of copyright: the heavy annotation was, in other words, a ruse to evade someone else's copyright. (See Greg, First Folio, pp. 447-449.) We find it difficult not to see the same motive at work in the change in the level of annotation which takes place between the Comedies and Richard II.[41] And if the annotators were working closely in conjunction with Jaggard's compositors, then the irregularity in setting which interrupted work on Richard II may be related to that which interrupted work on Richard III. Henry V, 1 and 2 Henry VI, and part of 3 Henry VI (all from manuscript copy) were set before Richard II was completed and 1 Henry IV begun. Could this interruption be due to the fact that the annotator was not far ahead of the compositors whose copy he prepared, and that in order for him to have time to finish the (more extensive than usual) annotation of Richard II and 1 Henry IV, the compositors had to leapfrog him and begin work on Henry V? We cannot confidently answer this question, but it is surely legitimate to ask it.


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All of this evidence suggests that the man (or men) who annotated quarto copy for use by Jaggard's compositors worked closely with Jaggard's compositors. Jaggard's dual position as sole printer and co-publisher would have made this possible. But would the King's Men have turned any of their promptbooks over to Jaggard? Perhaps not. If Heminges and Condell would not let their promptbooks out of the theatre, then (obviously) the annotator must have performed the actual task of marking up a quarto in the theatre itself, rather than the printing house.[42] If the King's Men had no other manuscript of the play on hand, and if Jaggard for copyright reasons needed a source of variant readings, and if the King's Men wouldn't let go of their promptbook, then someone would have had to collate Jaggard's quarto against their promptbook.[43] Whoever that someone was, he must have worked, for a while, in close association with both the King's Men and Jaggard.