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4. Compositor-analysis by spellings.
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4. Compositor-analysis by spellings.

Compositor-analysis has traditionally been done by searching a number of words for evidence of habitual spellings. The net of potential words has grown larger over the years, but at the same time the method has grown more sophisticated. It has been recognized that the most telling kinds of habitual spelling are often not whole words but the treatment of suffixes and


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verbal endings such as -d, -ed, -'d or -t to form the preterite. Even so, it must be admitted that less new evidence was yielded by this investigation than by those previously described.

I searched the following in Q1 of The White Devil, in this instance using the Malone copy for reference, and the results are tabulated below:

  • Group 1. Endings -ie/ -y; -'d/ (unvoiced) -ed /-d /-t; -our / -or; -'s / -s in possessives; -l / -ll (and also, separately, the words all / al); -es / -ess / -esse.
  • Group 2. The common doublet spellings: do /doe; go / goe; here / heere / [other forms of the word]; Ile or ile / I'll or I'le; were / weare; heart / hart; been / bin / byn / bene; blood / bloud; nere and ere / ne're and e're; mischeefe / mischiefe; whore / whoore; cossin / cousin; lie / lye; truely / truly; pitty / pity; poyson / poison; ith / i'th; tis / 'tis.
  • Group 3. Single or double terminal e: be/bee; me/mee; he/hee; she/shee; we/wee.
  • Group 4. Words which begin in -in or -en.
  • Group 5. In addition I searched and recorded the spelling of 294 other words whose spelling appeared to be idiosyncratic.

Of the endings in Group 1, the most useful was the first. There is throughout the play a general tendency to form the preterite in 'd in verse, but the other terminations turn up irregularly and in insufficient numbers to help. Endings in -or are rather less frequent than endings in -our (1:1.3 up to the end of gathering E, 1:2.3 thereafter); both forms may be found however on the same page, and in view of the relatively small size of the sample (about 65 items) and the effect on the figures of the influence of "prose" setting, it does not prove possible to make much use of these endings as discriminators. The contrast between four -our forms on I1r and four -or forms on I4v may suggest a tendency on B's part to prefer -our, and A to prefer -or, but I would not put it more strongly than that. Possessives are formed with or without an apostrophe indiscriminately (though E3v is unusual, with no fewer than seven possessives without the apostrophe; by contrast, I4v uses apostrophes six times —most pages have far fewer possessives). Terminal -ll is greatly preferred to -l, and most of the times the latter does occur, it is in prose or a tightly-justified line; the form "al" does not occur. The -esse termination is preferred; -ess does not occur, and -es is rare.

Philip Williams, in his article, lit upon the two spellings from Group 2 that prove to be most helpful to compositor-determination in this play. The use or omission of the apostrophe in 'Ile' / 'I'le' is the most valuable discriminator, and the use or omission of the apostrophe in 'ne're' etc. follows sufficiently closely on its use or omission in 'I'le', for it to be tabulated in the same column (see below, Table 2). Rather unusually, both forms occur on pages C2r, D3r, E4v, I4v and K3v; elsewhere the pages conform to one or the other form. The compositors' practices in spelling 'do' or 'doe' are helpful, and are also tabulated below. There are only two occurrences of 'goe', both on I4r; 'heere' occurs relatively seldom also: on D1r, G3r(p), I1v (but so does 'here'), K1v(p), K3r(p), L1r, twice on L1v(p), and L2v; 'heare' is found


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on C1v and L1r, 'heer' on I4v and 'heer's' on K2r. Elsewhere the spelling is 'here'. Few of the other listed variants occur frequently enough to be of any serious help. 'Weare' (=were), for instance, occurs occasionally (five times on B3r) up to D3v, but not thereafter. 'Heart' is the usual form, but 'hart' shares a page with it on B4v and H1v. The various unusual ways of spelling 'been' may reflect oddity in the copy more than anything else, with the exception of 'bin', which compositor B seems to have quite favoured: apart from two occurrences in prose on B2v, it is found on H1v, I1r, I1v, K2r and M1v (twice); it also occurs in Compositor A's page K4v, but there it is a rhyme-word. 'Bloud' is the usual form; 'blood' is found on E3r, L2r, and no fewer than four times on M1v! These words, together with those of Group 5, occur so seldom that while they may help to confirm the assignation of a page to a compositor, of themselves they cannot determine one.

Group 3 proved both helpful and frustrating, and the actual count of words spelled each way is listed in Table 2. It is clear that these discriminators can be misleading. For instance, while I have listed page F4r as revealing "B" preferences (on the grounds that there are four -ee endings against only one -e ending), at the same time I have shown page I3r as indicative of A's habits: even though it has five -ee endings, it also has eight -e endings. Clearly, Compositor A could set a few -ee endings per page if he felt like it. The range is from the extraordinarily definite page I4r, with 22 -ee, and no -e endings, to page G1v, with none of either!

In his edition (p. lxiii), John Russell Brown gives the impression that Group 4 is a significant discriminator, that A preferred -en and B preferred -in. However, I found very few -en forms, and very, very few words spelled both ways: there is 'entreat' on C3r and 'intreat' on C2v and G3r, 'endanger' on C4r and 'indanger' on D4r; 'enough' is the usual form, but 'inough' occurs on C3r (which rather counters the effect of the 'entreat' on the same page). It seems that this can scarcely be used as a test.

Of the Group 5 spellings, 136 had to be dismissed, as being invariant (for instance 'answere' is the only form of the word used in the play), or variable only where the results are uninformative ('claime' for instance is spelled thus in the play except on L1r, where 'clame' occurs—but in a prose passage), or where the word occurs only twice or thrice in the play.[13] There are for instance some particularly odd spellings in the italic description of the dumbshows on D4v—E1r, whch occur nowhere else. A few words, entertainingly, are spelled in different ways on the same page: 'bawdes' / 'baudes' on G1v; 'carracter' / 'character' on E3v; 'Citty' / 'Cittie' on H3r; 'dreampt' / 'drempt' on K3v, 'Physitions' / 'Physitians' on I4v. Such events are neither unusual nor surprising in dramatic texts of the period. Very few words recurred sufficiently in clearly different forms to be revealed as characteristic of either Compositor A or B: 11, to be precise, which I now list:


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Compositor A   Compositor B  
already[#]   allready 
battels  battailes 
commander(ers)  commaund 
coine[#]   coyne 
conuei'd  conuayd 
dogs  dogges[*]  
dost  do'st[**]  
fy  fie[***]  
gaule  gall 
money[#]   monie or mony (both on K2r
oath, oathes  othe(s) 
yeare[#]   yere[****]  
These are slim pickings, which scarcely help at all in identifying uncertain pages. A number of words require some comment. In alphabetical order, they are:

'cousin' (n.) and 'cossin' both appear; the verb is usually spelled 'cosen', but 'cosin'd' and 'coosning' both appear.

'devil' is usually spelled 'deuill' (mainly by B, but by A as well); the plural is 'deuils'. Apart from one 'deuils' on E4r, the forms found prior to gathering F are 'Deuell', on E3r and E3v and 'diuell' on C1r, D4r (and K1v (B)). 'Deuelish' occurs on K2v (B), but neither 'devil' nor 'divel' are found (except the latter, on the title-page!).

'die' is slightly preferred by B and 'dye' slightly preferred by A, but they use both forms.

One of the oddest spellings in the play is 'Eu' on C1r and 'Eugh' on H4r for 'yew'. One can guess that the compositors were influenced by their copy.

'nostrils' appears as 'nostrels' on C3v, 'nosthrils' on G1v (A) and G3v (B); 'nosthrills' on G4v (and 'nosthrill' on E3v).

The exclamation 'o' with a circumflex (which occurs 18 times in the play) looks at first like a possible authorial form, since it is found throughout the play, and in both A's and B's pages. Confirmation seems at hand when it turns up in A Monumental Column, C1r, line 6. That is, until one notices that the printer of this work was also Nicholas Okes. It may, therefore, be a "house" practice, if a rather intermittent one.

Both compositors use the form 'to th', but 'to'th' (a common form in The Devils Law-Case) occurs twice, in A pages.

'True' is the usual spelling, but 'trew' is found on B1v, B2v, B4v, E3v (twice), E4r and I4r (B). This is a rare case of a spelling preferred by B being found early in the play.


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There are ample instances of compositorial inconsistency (that is, using more than one spelling for a word). For instance, both A and B spell 'breast' and 'brest', 'hower' and 'howre' (but never 'hour' or 'houre'); B spells 'flowers' and also 'flowres'; A spells both 'forty' and 'fourty'. 'Murder' and its derivatives are spelled with a d, except on I4v, where A allows himself a 'murther'; 'neere' and 'ore' are spelled thus by both compositors, but B also uses 'neare', and A usually prefers 'o're'. 'Polliticke' is the usual form in the play; B also uses 'politicke' (G4r) and 'pollitique' (G3v, in prose); A supplies one 'pollitick', but the line is tight (I4v). Generally, it must be concluded that wordspellings support, but do not materially aid, the distinction between Compositors A and B.

Two important hopes for definitive results from investigations of composition practices were frustrated. The first, and shorter, is the odd case of gathering M, which contains some very confusing contradictions in the evidence, as may be seen from Table 2. Specifically, while M1r—2r show clearly Compositor B's preferences for spacing, both of commas and other punctuation marks (columns 1 and 2), and for the spellings 'Ile' and 'doe', these pages show equally clearly Compositor A's preference for -y endings, while the evidence of -e/-ee terminations is ambiguous. In addition, gathering M contains some unique spellings: for instance 'ayre' which elsewhere in the play is 'aire'; 'behould' ('behold'); 'betraid' ('betray'); 'could' ('cold'); 'cought' ('caught') 'noe' (twice, as against 'no'—73 occurrences); 'Sirha' ('sirra' / 'sirrah'); and both 'woeman' and 'woemen' (twice), against 'woman' 22 times elsewhere, and the four occurrences of 'blood' on M1v already noted. These idiosyncratic spellings occur on M1r, M1v and M2r but not on M2v. In light of the conflicting evidence elsewhere in the gathering it is tempting indeed to think that another compositor might have taken over the final half gathering and preliminaries. The alternative, that both A and B worked on gathering M in a quite indiscriminate way, is difficult both to demonstrate and to imagine working in practice, especially in view of these unusual spellings. But I hardly think that they prove beyond question the presence of a Compositor C either.

The second question deals with the composition of gatherings B—E. The issues to be decided now are, first, whether any of the spelling evidence confirms or refutes the hypothesis already established that neither compositor A or B worked in these gatherings; and secondly whether there is anything to suggest that there was more than one compositor working in gatherings B—E. Evidence for the former is equivocal and scanty. Few of A's commonest word-spellings appear, and though the discriminators listed in Table 2 show a good deal of similarity between most of the pages in gatherings B—E and Compositor A's later in the book, there are anomalies and incomplete parallels in this evidence. The occasional signs of B's preferences surface so irregularly and randomly that we can safely rule out his participation.[14] One


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line of investigation is to note spellings in B—E against which both A and B agree. There are some: 'eather' on B1v, against 'either'; 'fayre' against 'faire'; 'fier' on B3v and E3v, elsewhere 'fire'; 'only' on B1v, D3v, E3v (and 'onlie' on B3r) against 'onely' elsewhere; 'ritch' on E3v, 'rich' elsewhere; 'voyage' on B2v, B4r (prose) and E1r, against 'voiage' on L3v. It is not a rich harvest; the spellings of the earlier gatherings tend to have more unusual forms than those of the later, but this could be as readily accounted for by the compositor's increasing assurance with the MS. hand, and consequent decreasing tendency to reproduce copy-spellings, as by a change of workman.

In short, the study of spellings does not materially influence the conclusion reached above, that A and B did not work on the book prior to gathering F. It is true that this requires us to posit, in Compositors N and A, workmen whose practices were in many respects closely similar, and only susceptible of discrimination on the basis of statistical analysis rather than by gross variation in spelling preferences. However, this scenario is by no means an unlikely one in a shop like Nicholas Okes's, where much employment was made, as Blayney has shown, of casual journeymen. Also to be reckoned with is the likelihood that an apprentice will learn habits from his master that he will retain as a journeyman. In short, the differences between A and N are subtle but sufficiently clear, when all the evidence is weighed, to assert with some confidence that they were two separate workmen.

The speech-prefixes help to confirm this determination. The most suggestive is that for Francisco, the Duke of Florence, whose prefix in B—E is usually 'Fran.' (46 times), but occasionally 'Fra.' (9 times). Compositor A prefers 'Fra.' (38 times, to 8 'Fran.'), while Compositor B's preferences are opposite: he uses 'Fran.' 23 times, to 5 of 'Fra.' This alone would go a long way towards confirming that A and N are different workmen.[15] Flamineo's prefix is 'Fla.', except in gatherings C—E, where it is 'Flam.'; in the same way, Brachiano is usually 'Bra.', except in C—E, where he is (mostly) 'Brac.', though eleven 'Bra.' forms occur. In other words, it seems as if Compositor N agreed with both A and B in preferring 'Bra.' and 'Flam.' in gathering B only. Why he should have used 'Brac.' twelve times, and then preferred 'Bra.' in the proportion 55:12 is hard to guess, but it is worth noticing that 'Brac.' occurs only twice after gathering F begins. As for 'Fla.', it is possible that in casting off for gathering C, Compositor N might have realized that 'Fla.' for Flamineo and 'Fra.' was a potent source of error (Francisco does not appear in gathering B), and decided to distinguish the characters by prefixing Flamineo 'Flam.' If so, he was right: a mistaken prefix for Francisco occurs at least six times, and perhaps once for Flamineo. But why he should have altered the established prefix 'Fla.' instead of adding the letter to Francisco's prefix, I cannot venture to guess. No other prefix occurs regularly enough in variant form to be evidential: Vittoria is 'Vit.' except for three 'Vitto.' prefixes on B4r; Camillo is 'Cam.' until his untimely death


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except for six 'Camil.' prefixes, which share B4r with four 'Cam.'s. To resume, the most significant speech-prefix is Francisco's, which confirms the distinction between A and N.

When we come to try to use occasional spellings in an attempt to determine if there was more than one workman in the B—E section, the evidence is even less promising, as the following list of variant spellings shows. (These variant spellings apply only to the first four gatherings; many of the words, let alone variant spellings of them, do not occur in later gatherings.)

illustration
It would perhaps be just possible to suggest, on the basis of this listing, that one compositor (N) set B1r-v, B3v—C1r, D3v, E1r—E3v, while another (O) set B2v—3r, C1v—D3r, D4r, E4r-v. There is no evidence for B2r, D1v, D4v. However, this "evidence" is so sparse that it cannot be regarded as more than suggestive (though the cluster of unusual spellings on E3v is worthy of remark). Besides, the principal discriminators listed in Table 2 fail to support any such assignment. Throughout the B—E section of the book the preferred spellings are 'do', 'go' and 'here', and words which could end in -e or -ee, or -ie or -y, tend to be found in the forms subsequently favoured by Compositor A, or at least in forms which do not give any support to the hypothesis that more

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than one workman was employed in the first four gatherings of The White Devil.

If we return to the matter of ending sentences without punctuation, or with a mark other than a period, we do find a suggestion of evidence that is not inconsistent with the hypothetical distinction between "N" and "O". In the pages suggested for compositor N, there are 10 speeches ending without any punctuation, and 35 with irregular pointing (28 with comma, 7 other marks); in those suggested for O, the figures are 16 without punctuation, and 13 with irregular (9 with commas, 4 other marks). (4 irregular sentences occur in unassigned pages.) That is, the "N" pages show some preference for irregular punctuation rather than none at all, a preference that is reversed in the "O" pages.

However, in my opinion, it is best to dismiss all this speculation as the chasing of moonbeams, for the evidence is really no more substantial. The only responsible conclusion at this juncture is that we have no entirely compelling reason to see the hand of more than one workman before gathering F, a workman now adequately discriminated from the compositors who began to set in gathering F. The possibility that yet another workman may have been briefly involved during gathering E is discussed in Part III. As to the question of whether the compositor of B—E could also have set M and A, the answer cannot be firm either, but the likelihood is that he did not. There are spellings (already noted) which occur only in M, and few spellings or practices which resemble those of B—E.

I conclude this section by tabulating the various discriminators discussed above. The table reveals that the usual opinion (that compositors normally were responsible for setting an entire page) must be qualified for The White Devil. Note especially the peculiarities in F2v, H4v, I4v and L2v, all of which show some signs of shared setting, signs amounting to strong evidence in F2v and L2v at least. I wish to make it perfectly clear that the use of the letters "A" and "B" in all columns save the last does NOT mean that I am attributing the page to either compositor: on the contrary, as should by now be clear, I believe that gatherings B—E were set by another workman, Compositor N. The purpose of the letters is to show whether the discriminator in question corresponds with the practice of either A or B as described in detail above. The final column lists the compositor I believe set the page in question, on the basis of a comparison of all the discriminators. The very inadequacy of the evidence for either A or B in gatherings B—E is the chief reason why I believe them to have been set by a different workman altogether.

    TABLE 2 Compositor Determinants

  • Column 1 lists whether or not a comma is followed by a space; the figure to the left of the virgula indicates the number of commas that are spaced; that to the right indicates how many are unspaced.
  • Column 2 indicates the kind of spacing associated with punctuation marks other than commas or periods: the number to the left of the virgula indicates punctuation marks which have spaces before and after them; the number to the right of the virgula indicates those that have spaces after them only.

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  • Column 3 indicates if the two kinds of spacing evidence together is characteristic of either Compositor A or Compositor B; a ? following the letter indicates a limited agreement; when a blank is left, this means that the discriminators are ambiguous.
  • Column 4 tabulates optional -ie or -y endings (for example, 'away' is not tabulated because the form 'awaie' does not occur). In this column an entry such as 0/4|2/4 means that there are no -ie forms in verse, but four in prose on the page, while there are two -y forms in verse and four in prose.
  • Column 5 attempts to indicate if the pages reveal either A's or B's habits, on the basis of Column 4's evidence, in the same manner as Column 3.
  • Column 6 simply indicates whether the page as a whole shows signs of Compositor B's preference for 'Ile' and 'nere' or of Compositor A's preference for 'I'le' and 'ne're'.
  • Column 7 tabulates 'do' and 'doe' in the same way. (In fact, 'doe' is not found before F2v.)
  • Column 8 indicates the number of -ee and of -e endings found, and indicates which compositor's preference the page corresponds to.
  • Column 9 represents a total assessment of the evidence, by assignation of pages to compositors N, A, and B, on the basis of evidence in this table, and elsewhere in this article.
  • In columns 6-9, the presence of a letter indicates strong preference; and a ? indicates equivocal evidence; in all columns an = sign means that the discriminators are equal; a — means the discriminator does not appear on the page in question. Footnote references (marked *, #, ^) refer to notes at the end of the table.

                                                                 
B1r   5/1  1/2  0|3  2/2 
B1v   15/2  1/2  0|3  2/1 
B2r   14/3^   3/6^   1/3|3/6  4/4 
B2v   8/0  1/2  2|2/2  3/5  A? 
B3r   11/3^  1/0  0/4|2/4  B?  2/7 
B3v   19/4^  0/2  0/1|1/12  A?  2/9 
B4r   12/7^  1/1  2/1|2/1  1/3 
B4v   18/0  3/4  7|1  3/6 
C1r   6/7  0/1  0|7  0/2 
C1v   6/6  1/4  0|4  1/3 
C2r   3/10  0/6  1|2  3/7 
C2v   10/2  0/1  1|5  3/3 
C3r   6/6  1/4  0|5  1/1 
C3v   8/8  0/3  1|1  1/3 
C4r   11/8  0/4  0|1  3/9 
C4v   4/4  0/4  0|11  3/7 
D1r   6/8 ^   0/5  0|8  2/5 
D1v   13/9  1/6  0|4  2/2 
D2r   15/2  0/6  0|4  ?#.  0/5 
D2v   15/9 ^   0/3  0|4/2  1/3 
D3r   6/7 ^   1/2  0|3  2/0 
D3v   5/7  0/2  0|3  3/5 
D4r   8/3  0/3  0|3  1/3 
D4v   27/14 ^   0/0  0|2  5/3  ? N 
E1r   19/5 ^   0/2  0/1|3  1/4 
E1v   12/4  0/6  0|0/1  A?  2/4  A? 
E2r   12/12 ^   0/1  0|1/4  1/2 
E2v   8/3  3/2  0|3  3/2 
E3r   4/3  0/3  0|5  5/0 
E3v   6/6  3/8  3|6  A?  4/1 
E4r   6/1  3/4  1*|6  10/0 
E4v   9/1  0/8  0|12  0/2 

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F1r   7/3  0/4  1|7  B?  2/6 
F1v   4/5  0/5  0|6  4/5  A? 
F2r   9/2  0/6  1|2  1/3  A?  A? 
F2v   20/2 ^   3/10  0/1|1/3  A?  B?  5/1  A?# 
F3r   10/0  10/0  1/2|1/1  11/2 
F3v   14/2  10/3  3/8|0/2  4/2  B? 
F4r   6/0  7/1  4/1|2/0  4/1 
F4v   5/3  1/14  0|11  0/4  A? 
G1r   9/9  1/9*  2|3  2/1  A/B 
G1v   6/0  2/3*  0|3  0/0 
G2r   3/6  1/7*  0|10  0/6 
G2v   5/7  0/13*  0|5  A?  0/5 
G3r   13/0  9/2  5|0  5/0 
G3v   14/0  20/2  3/3|2  13/1 
G4r   14/0  10/2  10|2  5/0 
G4v   12/0  24/3  1|2  8/0 
H1r   13/0  14/1  3|1  B?  8/1 
H1v   9/1  7/1  7/1|1  3/1  B? 
H2r   18/5  4/13  A#  0|3/2  0/1 
H2v   12/2  1/9  A#  1|3  A?  0/1 
H3r   4/2  6/3  B?  4|0  6/2 
H3v   14/0  14/2  4|4  10/1 
H4r   11/2  0/12  A#  2|3  2/2  A? 
H4v   11/3  1/9  A ^   0|5/3  6/1  A?# 
I1r   18/1  7/1  8|5  6/2 
I1v   5/0  14/2  2/1|3  5/0 
I2r   12/0  14/3  B#  1/7|2/3  7/0 
I2v   16/3  2/12  1|2/8  3/2  A# 
I3r   8/4  1/8  A#  0|7/2  A?  5/8  A?  A. 
I3v   8/0  2/11  A ^   0|7/4  5/4 
I4r   14/0  17/0  2/1|1/1  22/0 
I4v   8/0  3/14  0|3  2/2  A?# 
K1r   10/1  6/10  A?#  0|4/2  1/2 
K1v   15/0  8/3  4|1/3  B?  9/1 
K2r   16/0  19/2  3/1|2  B?  8/2 
K2v   5/0  7/1  2|1  B?  B?  1/2 
K3r   7/0  14/0  9|2  12/0 
K3v   6/2  0/20*  1|5  4/6  A? 
K4r   14/2  0/9*  1|5  1/5 
K4v   22/7  0/11  0|3/7  3/6 
L1r   15/0  13/2  6|2  6/0 
L1v   13/1  6/3  B?  4/1|4/1  10/1 
L2r   14/1  17/2  B#  7|2  11/0 
L2v   13/0  9/6  ?#  3|8  1/1  B/A 
L3r   6/2  1/15*  1|15  5/6 
L3v   8/6  0/11*  0|9  0/4 
L4r   13/6  4/3  ?#  0|7/1  2/5 
L4v   12/3  2/17  2|4/3  A?  4/3 
M1r   9/1  12/3  0|5  5/3  B?  B?# 
M1v   11/0  12/2  0|2  3/3  B?# 
M2r   16/1  7/0  1|6  2/1  B?# 
M2v   15/5  2/5  A#  0|2  2/2  A# 


156

Page 156

    ∧ Some prose.

  • # D2r: two 'I'll', but three 'nere'.
  • F2v: a number of B's preferred forms show up in the last half dozen lines on this page.
  • H2r: first half of the page is prose.
  • H2v: looks like an A page, despite the large number of spaced commas.
  • H4r: looks like an A page, despite the large number of spaced commas.
  • H4v: looks like an A page, but has 5 'hee' forms in lines 25-34.
  • I2r: mostly prose.
  • I2v: looks like an A page, despite the large number of spaced commas, and a number of B spellings: 'doe' (prose) 'mee' (prose) 'bee' (prose) (but also 'do' in prose and 'she' in verse), 'Gipsie' (verse). In fact almost the entire page is in prose, and the B forms mainly in the prose sections. Williams and Brown assigned this page to B, I think erroneously.
  • I3r: about half prose.
  • I4v: an odd-looking page, as if A did most of it, but B set a few lines.
  • K1r: about half prose; most of the B forms are in the prose sections.
  • K4v: mainly prose.
  • L2r: not counting marginalia.
  • L2v: the most difficult page in the book, the figures for L2v are confused by the large number of 19-em lines in the lower half, which produce some very odd spacing in lines 27, 33, and 37 etc. The upper half of the page has most of the signs of a B page, but I think it highly probable that A took over at about line 25.
  • L4r: most of the before-and-after spaces are in prose.
  • M1r-M2r: these three pages look quite like B's work, but they have virtually no -ie endings, and terminal -e is much more common than -ee.
  • M2v: text at least is A; prose explicit may be B.
  • * G1r: including three with no space before or after.
  • G1v: including one with no space before or after.
  • G2r: including one with no space before or after.
  • G2v: including one with no space before or after.
  • K3v: including seven with no space before or after.
  • K4r: including two with no space before or after.
  • L3r: including two with no space before or after.
  • L3v: including one with no space before or after.
  • L4v: including one with no space before or after.