University of Virginia Library

Part Two: The Compositors

1. Punctuation.

Attempts have been made to show that Webster deliberately punctuated his manuscript in order to supply directions to the actors.[10] This notion, pretty unlikely anyway (the prompt-book and parts would have been made up by the book-keeper or his scribe, neither of them particularly likely to cherish Webster's foul-papers punctuation), is proved false by a detailed examination of the Quarto's punctuation. Altogether, not counting punctuation in the headline, the catchword, or that following a speech-prefix, there are used in the text of The White Devil 1476 periods (including 205 black-letter periods),

2043 commas, 245 semicolons, 237 colons (including italic), 92 exclamation marks (including italic) and 291 question marks (including italic). This is light punctuation for a play of over 3000 lines; it works out to fewer than three punctuation marks per two lines. Even so, as experience of contemporary dramatic manuscripts tells us, it is probably a good deal more than was in the holograph. However, more detailed investigation turns up a most surprising fact. Between B1r and E4v, the total quantity of punctuation is 1496 items for the 1182 lines, 1.27 punctuation marks per line. From F1r to the end of the play, there are 2879 punctuation marks in 1923 lines, or 1.5 per line. This is a statistically significant change.

More important, the character of the punctuation changes, as the following short tabulation of the number of specific punctuation marks per page will illustrate. The first three columns list respectively the minimum number of each punctuation mark occurring on each page, the maximum, and the average for each page of the text of the play. Columns 4-6 give the same breakdown of figures for the 32 pages B1r-E4v; the numbers in brackets in column 4 indicate the total number of pages in this part of the book entirely lacking the punctuation mark in question. Columns 7-9 break down the figures for F1r-M2v. These figures do not distinguish between italic and roman ; : ! ? or between roman and black-letter periods, since there is nothing to suggest that the compositors were doing anything other than picking up the first sort that came to hand, from cases where the punctuation sorts had besome somewhat disorderly.

             

minimum	maximum	average	B1r-E4v min.	max.	average	F1r-M2v min.	max.	average
. 7	28	17.5	7	24	14.44	11	28	19.33
, 8	56	24.32	9	56	27.34	8	39	22.46
; 0	14	2.92	0 (14)	4	0.78	0 (3)	14	4.23
: 0	8	2.82	0 (4)	5	1.78	0 (4)	8	3.46
! 0	5	1.095	0 (24)	3	0.31	0 (12)	5	1.58
? 0	17	3.46	0 (9)	10	2.09	0 (5)	17	4.31

The semi-colon is used only 25 times up to E4v, and 14 pages lack it altogether; from F1r on it is used 5.4 times as often: 220 occurrences altogether, and only three pages are without one. There is significant variation in frequency of use of other marks: the exclamation mark is used 5.1 times as often; the question mark 2.1 times, the colon 1.9, and the period 1.34 times as often (this last being more significant than it seems, in view of the numbers involved). However, the use of the comma drops by nearly a fifth, to 0.82 times as frequently. Both compositors A and B use this "new" punctuation for the remainder of the play without much statistically significant difference. Table 2 assigns 22 pages to Compositor B and 25 to Compositor A (some of them doubtful); L2v is not included in the count since it was almost certainly shared between the two compositors, and gathering M cannot be reliably assigned to either. In B's pages, the semi-colon is used altogether 106 times, or 4.8 times per page; in A's, it is used 97 times, or 3.9 times per page. The

other punctuation marks follow a similar pattern: B uses 61 colons, 2.77 per page; A 82, 3.24 per page. B uses 43 exclamation marks, an average of 1.95; A uses 36, an average of 1.44 per page. The question-mark is used 110 times by B, or 5.0 per page; A's figures are 112, 4.48 per page. These averages are not identical (nor in view of the variety of the copy could they be expected to be), but they inhabit a different statistical world from the averages in column 6 of the table above. Various hypotheses may be advanced to account for these observations, but none is as persuasive as the likeliest and simplest: that two new compositors took over at the beginning of gathering F from the workman who had set B-E.

2. Terminal punctuation of speeches.

There are 43 speeches in the Quarto of The White Devil which end with no punctuation at all, (or where the terminal punctuation is in the associated stage-direction only). Although it is possible to argue that absence of punctuation within a speech is merely a sign of rhetorical rather than grammatical punctuation, it is hard to think that there should be nothing at all at the end of a speech. There are also 75 speeches in Q1 of The White Devil which end with a comma, a colon, or a semi-colon. Some of these may, perhaps, employ the mark in order to indicate that the speaker is interrupted, but by no means all. A few times a speech lacking punctuation is followed by a stage-direction which ends in a stop, but this is only occasionally the case, in B4v, C1v, and I1r for instance.

25 of the unpunctuated sentences and 50 of those terminating with a irregular punctuation occur up to E4v; the figures for the remainder of the play are 17 unpunctuated, and 25 with another mark: clearly, a much lower proportion than in the earlier part of the play. Of these 42 irregular sentences in F1r-M2v, we find, in the pages assigned to A, 6 which end with nothing and 15 with a comma or other irregular punctuation; in those assigned to B, 10 with nothing and 7 irregular, leaving 4 in unassigned pages. This would rather suggest that B was more prone to omit the punctuation mark altogether than A, who in turn was more likely to use a comma to end a speech than B. B-E4v has an average of 0.81 unpunctuated and 1.56 irregularly punctuated speeches per page; Compositor A's figures from F1r on are 0.24 and 0.6. The proportion of unpunctuated to irregularly punctuated sentences in Compositor A's pages is 1:2.5; that in B-E4v is 1:1.92.

Collectively, these studies of punctuation go far to establishing that the compositor of B-E4v was a different workman from the two compositors Williams identified as A and B. I think it fair to conclude that Webster's MS. must have had very defective or irregular punctuation, with which each compositor did his best, with variable success.

3. Compositor-analysis by spacing.

Presence or absence of spacing in conjunction with punctuation has become a new tool in compositor-identification in the last few years. It has been recognized that, especially in a Quarto, the number of words revealing idiosyncratic

spellings on any given page may be far too few to permit a reliable identification, especially of compositors whose habits are quite close. It seemed that the investigation of a wholly mechanical parameter, such as whether the compositor used a space after a comma, or before a colon, would be a much more reliable way of amassing the kind of objective evidence in quantities that would be statistically significant. However, the malleus bibliographici of our time, Professor D. F. McKenzie, has recently contrived to cast grave doubt on the validity of such an assumption.[11] With evil and puckish delight, McKenzie sets up a case where it looks utterly clear that analysis of spaced commas will determine the compositors, only to demonstrate from irrefutable external evidence in the Cambridge University Press's archives that the spacing evidence tells us nothing whatever about who set what, and that a compositor would space commas on one page, and not space them on another, with a fine abandon. He insists that the burden of proof is upon those who would wish to claim that practices in a commercial London printing house a hundred years earlier were different from those of the Cambridge compositors. Where, then, does this leave the bibliographer with no such external evidence?

In a word, in a situation of healthy scepticism and caution. What I have assumed in this article is that if discriminators agree (for instance if we find on one page that a compositor spells -ie and also usually spaces before a colon in verse, where on another page the usual spelling is -y, and the colon does not have a space before it) then the likelihood increases that these are the practices of two distinct workmen. The more discriminators that coincide, the stronger the supposition, but one must be clear that such suppositions are never more than that, and that virtually any pattern of apparently habitual composition practice can be susceptible to some alternative explanation. Nor am I in a postion to argue that Okes's men were different in their habits from those at the Cambridge University Press a century later. It seems to me that it is not unlikely that they were, but the evidence to prove it does not exist. I must reiterate that I speak only of spacing in association with punctuation. It is not yet within the scope of bibliographical knowledge to ascertain the number and kind of spaces a compositor used routinely between words to space them and to justify his lines. Nor do I believe that such information will ever become available. With these reasonable cautions in mind, let us see what an examination of spacing with punctuation in The White Devil can yield.

The results are found in Table 2 below, but may be summarized here. The first column lists the number of cases in which the compositor put, or failed to put, a space following a comma. Obviously, commas at ends of lines and those used as terminal punctuation are omitted from the count. Sometimes there is a space before as well as after, or a space before, not after. Taken as a whole, the text of The White Devil contains 899 commas which

are spaced (327 of them up to E4v, 572 thereafter) and 265 which are not spaced (165 up to E4v, 100 thereafter). The general statistic, then, is that the compositors were 3.4 times more likely to put a space after a comma than not (1.98 times up to E4v; 5.72 times afterwards). In B's 22 pages there are only 8 unspaced commas, compared to 257 spaced: he was 32.1 times more likely to space a comma than not, and he averaged 12 commas a page. In the 25 pages more or less firmly assigned to A, there are 256 spaced, and 85 unspaced commas; he was 3.0 times more likely to space a comma than not. This is a significantly lower proportion of unspaced commas than in the B-E4v section of the play.

The possibility that Compositor B could have worked in gatherings B-E is eliminated by the second class of spacing evidence, tabulated in column two of Table 2. In this I list the number of punctuation marks (the ! ? : and ;) which have a space before and after them, compared with those that only have a space after. Up to E4v, a mere 24 marks have spaces before and after; 107 have the space after, a proportion of 1:4.46. In Compositor B's pages from F3r on, the numbers are 267 spaced before and after, against 39 spaced after, a proportion of 6.8:1; in the pages assigned to Compositor A the numbers are 31 before and after, against 275 spaced after,[12] a proportion of 1:8.87, or rather more than the opposite of Compositor B. The discrepancy between the proportion for B-E4v and A's stint after F1r is statistically significant, though obviously not of the same order of difference as that between A and B.

In conclusion, and with due regard for Professor McKenzie's caveat, it seems clear to me that Compositor B almost invariably set a space before as well as after the four marks under discussion, and that by a substantial proportion he preferred to put a space after a comma; Compositor A very seldom put a space before any of the four marks, and was much more variable not only in his treatment of commas, but in the number of them he used on a page. Curiously, it seemed not to make a great deal of difference to these practices whether the compositor was setting "verse" or "prose", though in certain individual lines of course it is possible to detect use or absence of spaces as aids to justification. But it hardly affects the overall pattern, so in Table 2 I have been content to indicate if there is prose on the page in question rather than go into elaborate detail about it.

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

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

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:

                         

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:

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.

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

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

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.)

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 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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154




• 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.

                                                                 

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

                                                                                                       

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

∧ 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.