University of Virginia Library

TABLE 3 Type-Distribution

The first column is the distributed page; column two is the first page on which a type from that page definitely recurs; the third column lists any recurrence of a "possible" type earlier than that in column two; column four lists the page(s) in which a major influx of types from the distributed page is found; column five the pages with a minor concentration (i.e. at least two types). Column six lists the pages whose distribution can be assigned to either Compositor A or B; and column seven the case into which the page was distributed, where this can be determined.

A summary of the distribution of the book revealed by this table shows that the inner forme of B, beginning with B3v was the first to be distributed; the remainder of the inner forme followed promptly. B2v was probably the first page of the outer forme to be distributed (since a type turns up, doubtless as a proof-correction, in C2r), and was followed by the other pages of outer B. It seems likely enough, then, that inner B was machined first, followed by the outer forme; both formes of C seem to have been distributed at roughly the same time. This could mean (though it need not) that another workman was aiding in distribution. The first types from inner and outer D likewise show up simultaneously, at E4v. Then inner E is the first to appear, at F2v; outer E does not surface until G1v, but this gap is undoubtedly accounted for by the distribution now going into separate cases. It does, however, seem that E2r was distributed before the rest of the forme. F4r is the first inner F page to appear, as early as G3v; the outer forme was not ready for distribution until H3r; since both were distributed by Compositor B, it seems clear that a genuine delay was involved. By contrast, both formes of G were ready for distribution at the same time: types from both G1v and G4v appear on I1r, which, together with the rapid reappearance of other pages of G, confirms that type was growing short in this gathering.

At this point printing must have been moving ahead briskly; inner H was ready for distribution when I4v was still being set; the outer forme first appears on K1v, but thanks to the compositors' division of labour, the rest of the forme does not appear until a good deal later. I1r appears on K3v, in advance of any types from the inner forme, the first of which comes on K4r from I2r. Evidence begins to fade away at this point; there is a possible appearance of a type from K3v on L2r (if it is really the same type, it was probably a proofing-change), but the first reliable occurrence is inner forme K1v on L4v; outer K does not appear until M1v (K1r), and most of K does not turn up at all; nor does any reliable type from L. The conclusion is that the printing would appear to have been entirely regular, with the inner forme routinely being machined first. Outer I was perhaps ready for distribution before the inner forme, but they could also have both been available, and the compositor merely have chosen to unlock the outer forme first. In summary, there is no reason to think that The White Devil was printed in any way other than regularly, inner forme before outer, and that the pages were distributed as the compositor(s) came to them, in no particular order.

It is now time to return to columns six and seven of the preceding table. Let us take it that the normal method of operation was that a compositor would ordinarily distribute a page of type into his case, and then set his next page from the same case. Assuming this, it is possible to list in column six the workman in question, from gathering F onwards, and also in column seven to specify the case into which each page was distributed. Some anomalies surface as a result in the form of pages whose types turn up in more than one compositor's stint. These pages are G2r, G4v, and I2r. Readers will recall from Part Two of this article that page I2v was classed as doubtful, assigned by Williams to Compositor B but in this article re-assigned to A, despite the

presence in it of a number of B's preferred spellings. The types from G2r which occur in it are found in lines 4, 5, 11 and 30—well-scattered, in other words, and therefore not leading one to suspect that the distribution of G2r was shared, but rather that A distributed the entire page. The likely explanation is that the "possible" type from G2r found on I1r (a certain B page) is probably a false identification. In the same way, it is more likely that type m 2 from G4v is the type found in line 10 of I1r than that h 2 is the same type as in line 5 of H4r, which would entail the shared distribution of G4v. However, I2r presents a trickier problem. Even without wondering about the unassigned pages from gathering M, there is a conflict between K4v, an A page, and L1r, a B page. In this instance the plea of misidentification will not answer, since the type on K4v, long s 11, is quite reliably indentified, and the cluster of types from the same page on L1r is unmistakable. It will be necessary to return to this case subsequently. However, it is fairly clear that after Compositors A and B had settled into their stints of work, on the whole the expected pattern prevails: that a compositor distributes a page into his case, and sets his next work out of it.

With this evidence to hand, and a number of detailed analyses which I will refrain from reproducing here, it is possible to be pretty definite about the pattern of setting and distribution of type in the text of The White Devil. As has already been observed, gatherings B and C were set before any type was distributed from them. As we have also seen, there was no need for this to imply more than one case or more than one workman. It is difficult to be precise as to how his work progressed in gathering D, partly because by mere chance there happen to be very few identifiable types in outer B (19, including 8 doubtful, against 46, including 12 doubtful, in inner B). During the setting of gathering E, both formes of C were distributed at intervals; indeed there is a sudden increase in types from outer C at E3r and E3v. It has already been remarked in Part Two of this article that there is something slightly irregular about these pages: they share a number of idiosyncratic spellings against most of the rest of the play, and the figures for the compositor-discriminators in Table 1 show some signs of difference from those of the preceding gatherings.

It is evident that at some point in the composition of the play a second case was brought into use, and the likeliest place for this to have happened is when C2v was being distributed. This would account for the number of types from pages in gatherings B and C which are found in both compositors' work later in the play. The pages which seem to form the basis of case y are (besides C2v) D1v, D2r, D3r, D3v, and D4r (though there are some minor anomalies). As to whether Compositor B distributed all these pages, or whether another journeyman created case y and even perhaps set a few pages of E from it, the evidence is just not sufficiently clear to tell. As was made clear in Part Two of this article, there is no evidence of Compositor B's setting anywhere in the book before the last four or five lines of F2v.

On the basis of the evidence already described, it is reasonable to assume that divided setting began with gathering F. In Compositor A's first stint we

find types from C1v, C3v, C4r, C4v, D1r, D2v and D3v. Compositor B's case, by contrast, contained types from C2v, D2r, D3r and D3v. The only page whose distribution was shared, then, was D3v, and only one type from that page (M 1) appears in case x; the remaining types recur in case y. A's next stint begins with F4v and contains types from E1r (a large cluster on G1v), E1v, E2r and E4v, as well as some types from earlier gatherings. When B resumes at G3r, his next four pages contain types from D1v, D2r, D3r and D4r as well as more recent ones from E2v, E3v and E4r. Apart from the fact that Compositor B took over the last few lines of F2v, the division of labour has for these two gatherings been most regular, with A taking the first four pages and B the second. It will be appreciated from this description that (as was said above) the compositors were not each responsible for distributing a forme, but seem to have taken pages from the stone virtually at random.

Gathering H is divided differently, into pairs of pages: A set both rectos and versos of H2 and H4, and B of H1 and H3. As the manuscript must have been cast off and divided anyway, this method of working is no more difficult than the other. B must have distributed F3v before setting H1r, and A likewise distributed F1v and F2r before beginning H2r. B made another distribution, chiefly of F3r (from which five types appear on H3r) but also of F4r, and A in turn distributed F1r, F2v (which leave respectively four and two types on H4r) and F4v before the gathering was finished. So far the work has been a pattern of orderliness and regularity, and so it continues for the first three pages of gathering I, set by B from case y, into which he distributed G1v and G4r. Then Compositor A took over in I2v, which I re-assigned in Part 2 above from B to A. I2v contains numerous types from a distribution of G2r and G2v, but it also contains types from E3v, F4v and G3r, all of which were previously found in case y. The simplest inference would be that for some reason Compositor A was working from case y at this point: there is one type from case x in I2v: B 3 from D2v. But by this time, what with proofing and other possible causes of type-movement (such as accidental pying or stripping accidents), we ought not to take too seriously the anomalous appearance of a type from so much earlier in the book.

The problems increase in I3r, which shares types from case x (C1v, E1r, E2r) and case y (F4r, G2r). This page is undoubtedly of Compositor A's setting, and the likelihood, in view of the fact that G2r types appeared in number in the previous page, is that both were set from the same case. If this is correct, it means that while each compositor still set four pages of the gathering, some printing-shop exigency led A to forsake his usual case; in consequence six of the eight pages in the gathering were set from case y. This being so, it is not unlikely that some signs of pending shortage of sorts led Compositor A to transfer various types from case x to case y to replenish it, thereby causing some mixing of the identified types. This does not seem an unlikely scenario: when it happens in my printing shop, I usually raid the case alongside, to even up the numbers, and I cannot see any reason why Okes's workmen should not have done likewise. In such circumstances it is best to be guided by the more recent types, when trying to decide which case was being

used. For these reasons, I believe that I3r was also set by Compositor A out of case y. For I3v, Compositor A seems to have moved back to his usual case x, since the types in it do not conflict with any case y types. There are very few distinctive types in I4r and I4v, but what there are are not in any way inconsistent with their being set regularly, by B from y and by A from x.

K1r shares with I4v the first types from inner H, H4r, and was set by A from case x. K1v (B-y) has types from H1v, H3v and I1v on it, but only one (from E1r) from an earlier distribution. Although E1r was an x page, we may appeal to the sharing of types already postulated to account for this single anomaly, as we may for the E1v type in the next page but one, K2v, otherwise regularly from case y; there are no problems in K2r and K3r, regular B-y pages. K3v (A-x) however does contain an anomalous type from G4r (y) whose presence I am at a loss to explain. Shared distribution will not account for it, for another type from the same line is found on I1v, the page on which most of the G4r types recur. There are various possible explanations, all of which entail stretching the long arm of coincidence: such as that type l 5, though I believed it to be reliably identified, is actually two types so identically damaged that they cannot be distinguished; or that some minor chance in the shop led to letter l 5 being dropped by compositor B and picked up and distributed into case x by compositor A, or that it was used from case y by the proof-reader in correcting K3v. None of these hypotheses is impossible; none of them is susceptible of proof.

K4r is a normal A-x page, but an apparent problem arises on K4v, on which we find types from both cases: from G3r and G3v (y), and from H2v and H4r (x). Both pages were set by compositor A, and while we have seen how types from case x could have been used to fill up short boxes in case y, it is difficult to see why the reverse procedure should have been required at this point. However, the recurrence from G3v is a doubtful one, and we have already seen that Compositor A was setting from case y at I2v; it is therefore possible that the type from G3r was returned by him to case x as part of the process of making proof-corrections in I2v.

Another problem occurs on L1r, in all respects a normal B-y page, in which types from I2r appear in some number. However, type long s 11 (also from I2r) has just appeared on K4v (an A-x page) and another type from I2r subsequently appears on L2v. This last may be dismissed: the type occurs in the first part of the page, and was therefore set by B. But to account for long s 11, we will have to invoke some kind of coincidence similar to that required for type l 5 in page K3v. And something similar must be appealed to for the presence on K3v (A-x) of a type (n 20) from I1r, which otherwise seems to have been distributed by B and used to set L1v. These three somewhat intractable letters do not constitute an alarming amount of anomaly in view of the total numbers involved, and in any event effectively bring us to the end of the problems associated with the book. L2r is a B-y page; the composition of L2v was shared, and although it is likely that compositor A took over towards the end of the page, it is very difficult to say just where, or which case was in use at what time during this page. Compositor A's stint through the

rest of gathering L uses types mainly from I2v, I3r, I3v and I4v, pages which had not been used before; there are also some types from other case x pages, and one anomalous type from case y (from G2v, on L4r). But G is sufficiently far back that by the end of L some normal minor mixing of types would have occurred. The types that surface in the disputed gathering M are largely case y types, which strengthens the possibility (it cannot be called more) that despite the unusual spelling forms found therein, B might have set the first three pages of the gathering: there is a surprisingly large number of types from early gatherings, but also a few from I1v and I2r, both case y pages.

To conclude, it is reasonably safe to generalize that while the earlier gatherings shared between Compositors A and B were very regularly divided, there seems to have been increasing irregularity in their working from the middle of gathering I onwards. At this point A set two pages from B's usual case, and evidently "borrowed" some types from his own usual case to replenish case y. Later, at L2v, the compositors seem to have shared work on the page, and there are a few typographical anomalies in these later gatherings which elude simple explanation. Nonetheless, none of the difficulties with the evidence are so severe as to make it necessary to abandon the hypothesis that two compositors worked out of two cases for gatherings F-L of The White Devil.