University of Virginia Library

The Problem of Semi-Substantive Variants: An Example from the Shakespeare-Fletcher Henry VIII by Fredson Bowers

Our penchant these days for popularized modern texts of the Elizabethan drama without apparatus has in some part concealed a worrisome problem felt most keenly by the original-text, or old-spelling, editor. This problem concerns not only the degree but also the kind of editorial interference with the 'accidentals' of the original, particularly with the punctuation, that is required if a critical reading edition and not a simple diplomatic transcript is to be formulated. This latter is no longer fashionable save for early dramatic manuscripts, but the old-spelling reading edition is comparatively alive and well. The attention needed to clean up the usual carelessly printed dramatic text is not confined to the accidentals, of course. The more important editorial function remains the emendation of the substantives, or words, the basic building blocks in the transfer of meaning. Nevertheless, although similar problems posed by ambiguity or error in textual accidentals are constantly encountered in the editing of early dramatic texts, they have been subject to less critical attention than questions of corrupt wording on which any reader may form a personal opinion, whether impressionistically or logically derived. Indeed, by this time for Shakespeare—except perhaps in the sometimes erratic new Oxford edition—the number of editorial disagreements among the substantives is not very large for most single-text plays. In contrast, the usually hidden editorial disagreements about meaningful accidentals are more frequent though less recognized; hence, paradoxically, what I call semi-substantives are now of


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more editorial moment than words as we slowly progress toward a general consensus about Shakespearean texts.[1]

The editor of an old-spelling Elizabethan play needs to come to terms at the start with the problem of faulty or inadequate punctuation, this being his chief concern among the accidentals. His is a delicate operation. In Renaissance texts dramatic punctuation can vary widely between play and play, printing shop and shop, compositor and compositor, and certainly date and date. Some early texts are unevenly over-punctuated, generally by the imposition of artificial rules; others may be too lightly pointed for normal recognition of the syntax and its meaning without close study. Most plays are mixed.

The editor of a modernized text confronts only the problem of enforcing his concept of present-day syntactical punctuation on the sometimes alien rhetorical system of the original. The imposed style will change according to the era of the new edition and the flair of the editor, and in that sense 'modernized' is at best a comparative term. Before the turn of the century, and for some years after, a heavy and conventional system was the norm, marked by scrupulous setting-off by commas of any word, phrase, or clause that seemed to the slightest degree parenthetical or appositive. And it was a curse of the time to sprinkle quite uncharacteristic exclamation marks liberally throughout the text, so much so, in fact, that one character could scarcely say good morning to another without making it an exclamation.[2] Those days are fortunately gone although their memory may linger still when a marked-up text is insufficiently purged. Indeed, there is no guarantee that whatever system a modernizing editor adopts will not in its turn lose its contemporaneous feel and eventually join the ranks of the old-fashioned. That is not a problem I am addressing at the moment, however. (One need only remark that a modernizing editor is advised to use a light punctuation system that best maintains the flow of the verse, as likely to be the longer lasting.[3]) Moreover, an attempt to mix purely syntactical alterations with remnants of the old rhetorical system may be confusing to a reader accustomed to a strictly modern texture. A modernizing editor is expected to modernize albeit with discretion in those numerous cases when the older syntax resists the imposition of contemporary standards and some compromise is needed.

The problem facing an old-spelling, or original-text, editor differs materially. The reader of such a text is necessarily in some part sophisticated in the ways of Elizabethan spelling, grammar, syntax, and punctuation and therefore can follow with comparative ease the intent of non-syntactical pointing when it is itself not only faithful to its period but also relatively consistent in its terms. When we consider, for example, the relative weight of the semicolon and colon, the following passage from Shakespeare and Fletcher's Henry VIII [4] causes no problem:

My good Lord Archbishop, I'm very sorry
To sit heere at this present, and behold
That Chayre stand empty: But we all are men

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In our natures fraile, and capable
Of our flesh, few are Angels; out of which frailty [3060]
And want of wisedome, you that best should teach us,
Have misdemean'd your selfe, and not a little:
Toward the King first, then his Lawes, in filling
The whole Realme, by your teaching and your chaplaines
(For so we are inform'd) with new opinions, [3065]
Divers and dangerous; which are Heresies;
And not reform'd, may prove pernicious.
V.ii.42-53 (TLN 3056-67)
An accustomed reader is not misled by the lack of punctuation after 'men' (TLN 3058) or by the comma after 'flesh' (TLN 3060), which syntactically should be a period or rhetorically a semicolon or colon. The semicolons after 'dangerous' and 'Heresies' (3066) only increase the emphasis. To modern readers expecting the syntax to indicate the meaning, the heavy colon after 'little' (3062) partly obscures the fact that 'Toward the King' (3063) is not the start of a new clause (unless one were to imagine a massive ellipsis) but instead a prepositional phrase modifying the verb 'have misdemean'd'. However, although the punctuation may perhaps reflect a compositorial misunderstanding, actually the colon is effective rhetorically before the specification of the misdemeanor and would not be misleading to the sense except for the most literal minded.[5] Thus in an old-spelling text the punctuation in this passage should remain undisturbed.

Nevertheless, occasional problems arise when conventions of punctuation sometimes met with in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries clash with the rhetorical flow of meaning and thus tend to cancel out the effectiveness for modern comprehension of less structural pointing. One such is the tendency among compositors to place a comma almost automatically at the end of a verse-line. Ordinarily only slight harm (if any) may be done by this convention even though it may obscure the syntactical relationship of run-on lines.[6] More annoyingly, a convention that the caesural pause in a pentameter may be marked by a comma serves to thwart the syntactical (or even rhetorical) basis for a reader's comprehension until the convention is recognized in a text and accepted for what it is.[7] Yet such conventions of punctuation—especially if their occasion is exacerbated by inconsistency of usage—can so distort the meaning as to require emendation even in an unmodernized text. For example, in the Folio Henry VIII when Lord Sands is revving up his wit at Wolsey's banquet, he answers Anne Bullen's light-hearted query whether his father was mad by replying:

O, very mad, exceeding mad, in love too;
But he would bite none, just as I doe now,
He would Kisse you Twenty with a breath.
I.iv.28-30 (701-703)
Here the end-of-the-line comma after 'now' does have an effect on the transfer of meaning. Does Sands mean that like his father he is biting no one now, or that his father would give twenty kisses (or, possibly, kiss twenty women)

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in an instant, just as Sands is now doing—presumably accompanying his words by kissing Anne Bullen, something an actor would need to know. Modern editors like the Globe choose the latter intention (which I think is correct) and distinguish by starting a dependent clause with 'just as I doe now,' prefixing 'just' with a semicolon or some other heavy mark and so retaining the comma after 'now'. This is unexceptionable, but an old-spelling editor is bound to emend as much as possible in terms of the original, not in terms of modernization. For such an editor the simpler way of straightening out this Folio ambiguity in meaning and action is to retain the characteristic light comma after 'none' but to remove the conventional line-ending comma, thus creating a run-on line: 'just as I doe now | He would Kisse you'. An alternative but perhaps less desirable emendation would be to exchange the Folio semicolon and comma, thus reading, 'in love too, | But he would bite none; just as I doe now, | He would Kisse you'. An exchange like this is often necessary, but the simple removal of the line-ending comma may be more appropriate here for an unmodernized text.

A reverse case comes when the Duke of Norfolk is describing the Field of the Cloth of Gold:

Each following day
Became the next dayes master, till the last
Made former Wonders, it's. To day the French,
All Clinquant all in Gold, like Heathen Gods
Shone downe the English; . . .
I.i.16-20 (60-64)
Literally interpreted according to the punctuation, the parenthetical description of the French is confined to 'All Clinquant all in Gold'. But if so, the relation of the heathen gods shining down the English is obscure. 'Clinquant' means glittering and can signify a thin plate-lace of gold or silver. Thus 'Clinquant' and 'Gold' may seem closely associated, but in fact the closest association of 'Gold' is with the heathen gods, by way of Psalms cxv.4, "Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men's hands."[8] The full parenthesis, then, comprises 'All Clinquant all in Gold like Heathen Gods', with a sub-parenthesis in apposition to 'Clinquant' that defines 'Clinquant' by a comparison with gold heathen idols. The syntactical sense is The French (who glittered like gold heathen gods) outshone the English. The Globe adopts this reading but with typically heavy nineteenth-century punctuation, 'All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods,' in which the comma after 'gold' partially obscures the close connection between the gods and gold. On the principle of using when possible the forms of the original punctuation, an unmodernized text should transfer the caesural comma after 'Gold' to the end of the line after 'Gods'. An ultra-conservative old-spelling editor might follow the lack of punctuation after 'Clinquant' on the rhetorical argument that no pause should be present, but this is valid only if 'all in Gold like Heathen Gods' is not a parenthesis after 'Clinquant'; thus the insertion of an editorial comma is not only useful as providing a slight pause but also syntactically pertinent as a mild guide to the reader.[9]


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A relatively common misreading of the syntax caused by the confusion of caesural and line-ending comma comes in King Henry's expostulation that Wolsey's special tax will destroy the fabric of the country, creating a true semi-substantive error:

We must not rend our Subjects from our Lawes,
And sticke them in our Will. Sixt part of each?
A trembling Contribution; why we take
From every Tree, lop, barke, and part o'th' Timber:
And though we leave it with a roote thus hackt,
The Ayre will drinke the Sap.
I.ii.93-98 (429-433)
The key phrase is 'with a roote thus hackt', which in turn depends upon preceding 'though'. If this 'though' had been 'since', the sense would have seemed perfectly clear; but 'though' quite changes the situation. It is no longer that the air will drink the sap because the root has been left in a hacked condition. No mention is made of the root in the description of the stripping of the tree, but only of the small branches (lop), bark, and part of the main wood. It is evident, therefore, that what is meant is this: although we leave the root intact for future growth, the rest has been so mutilated that the air will enter the sap and destroy the tree. This being so, the punctuation is clearly wrong by associating the hacking with the root. Instead, the line-ending comma must be moved back to the caesura so that we may read correctly: 'And though we leave it with a roote, thus hackt | The Ayre will drinke the Sap', which connects the hacking not with the root but with the rest of the tree. Most editors do insert a comma after 'roote', but by retaining the comma after 'hackt' they muddy the sense by failing to make it clear immediately that the hacking is not a parenthetical phrase to 'roote'. Instead, an old-spelling editor recognizes that he should try to repair errors in the same terms, in this case not by adding a missing comma only, but instead by transposing the punctuation signs in order to correct a misplacement.

A more delicate example of such an exchange comes a little earlier in Wolsey's defense of his actions:

What we oft doe best,
By sicke Interpreters (once weake ones) is
Not ours, or not allow'd; what worst, as oft
Hitting a grosser quality, is cride up
For our best Act: . . .
I.ii.81-85 (416-420)
Although the New Arden editor leaves the Folio punctuation intact, remarking only that editors who insert a comma after 'oft' have no authority for their action, the actual sense is contrary to the Folio. The Folio punctuation associates 'as oft' with 'Hitting a grosser quality'; but surely the 'worst' is grosser than the 'best' in any case, and the 'oft' should be linked in the first quoted line with 'best'. The sense is, thus, that as human beings we do worst as often as we do best, yet the worst although it hits 'a grosser quality' is praised by the world as our best action. When Capell recognized this meaning,

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he added a comma after 'as oft', but as so often with heavy parenthetical markings some ambiguity is left whether the parenthesis is to be associated with the preceding or the succeeding matter. Altering the text in its own terms by moving the comma after 'worst' to follow 'oft' is the best answer.[10]

These simple illustrations of compositorial misunderstanding of whatever was the manuscript pointing, if any, definitely affect the sense by the misrepresentation of the syntactical signs that even in Elizabethan days would properly have been used to indicate the verbal meaning that would follow the correct structural relationship of words, phrases, clauses; that is, specifically, the grammatical modification of elements essential to the transfer of the intended sense. To the extent that they do corrupt meaning by producing false modification, they go at least a step beyond the ordinary run-of-the-mine faulty or inept punctuation that presents difficulties in the accidentals of seventeenth-century dramatic texts.

It is customary to distinguish these accidentals of texture from essential meaning conveyed by the words themselves, that is, the substantives. But any editor will recognize that words derive meaning not only from their roots but also from their relationship to other words. When this relationship is obscured or even positively distorted, the essential meaning of the words, either in themselves or joined in phrases and clauses, may be as effectively altered as though different words had been used that an editor must emend.[11] In short, faulty punctuation can affect meaning in a substantive manner on the same level as the verbal signs. With some hesitation I use the term 'semi-substantives' to apply to these important punctuational signs[12] which merit as much editorial consideration as warranted by the selection from among faulty or variant textual verbals.

Editors (and readers) familiar with erratic early punctuation may have no particular difficulty in deciding whether Lord Sands was biting or kissing like his father, or whether it was the heathen gods or else the French who outshone the English, although the ambiguity is sufficient to warrant straightening out by emendation. In a literal sense an argument can be pressed that such passages are semi-substantive in their effect on meaning. This effect is not unimportant, but insofar as there may usually be general agreement among editors as to the way to solve the problems such passages offer, they do not ordinarily qualify as cruxes, which I take roughly to identify significant editorial disagreement as to the readings that should be adopted to repair substantive damage. For purely practical purposes, in this paper, then, I should like to emphasize the sense in which the term semi-substantives can be narrowly applied to accidentals (chiefly but not exclusively punctuation) that create cruxes whereby editors of the original documents are led to disagree about the sense produced by the copy-text, and so whether emendation of the accidentals is necessary (or whether re-interpretation of the original is possible), and if emendation is necessary what is the best procedure to straighten out the difficulty and resolve the crux.[13]

I offer as samples of significant semi-substance cruxes several weightier problems from Henry VIII in addition to the hacked root. The first is one


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of my favorites since among modern editors only Alexander and the New Cambridge follow Rowe in emending what I take to be an obvious error in the sense that is caused by the Folio's faulty punctuation. Queen Katherine is upbraiding Wolsey and Campeius who have been trying to secure her consent to the divorce by putting her cause into the hands of the King himself:
Would you have me
(If you have any Justice, any Pitty,
If ye be any thing but Churchmens habits)
Put my sicke cause into his hands, that hates me?
Alas, ha's banish'd me his Bed already,
His Love, too long ago. I am old my lords, . . .
III.i.115-120 (1746-51)
Here we have what in Rowe's (and my) opinion is a misplaced comma after 'Love' caused by compositorial misunderstanding, a comma that should be transposed to follow 'too'. 'Bed' and 'Love' are not properly balanced without their contrasting adverbs 'already' and 'long ago'. More important, 'Love' is not properly added to 'Bed' as the climactic item unless emphasized by 'too' in the sense of also, an adverb modifying the verb 'banish'd'. Katherine is not regretting merely the length of time she has lived without Henry's love, as would be the sense of 'too long ago', in which 'too' modifies 'long'. Instead, 'too' applies to the preceding words, so that 'Bed' and 'Love' are the compound objects of 'banish'd' (OED banish 2b). The meaning Katherine intends is that she lost Henry's love long before she was banished his bed by the proceedings for divorce, a correct estimate of the order of events after Henry fell in love with Anne Bullen. Read 'His Love too, long ago.'

A slenderer example of semi-substantive pointing may be mentioned. A recently raised crux comes early in Henry VIII when Abergavenny is expostulating that Wolsey's own letter laid a heavy charge on a number of individuals to contribute to the expenses of the Field of the Cloth of Gold:

He makes up the File
Of all the Gentry; for the most part such
To whom as great a Charge, as little Honor
He meant to lay upon: and his owne Letter
The honourable Boord of Councell, out [130]
Must fetch him in, [whom] he Papers.
I.i.75-80 (126-131)
Since Dr. Johnson, the standard emendation of the punctuation as it affects the sense has been to place a comma after 'Letter' (129) and to move the Folio comma (or emending parenthesis) after 'Councell' (130) so that it follows 'out', thus reading, 'his owne Letter, | The Honourable Boord of Councell out, | Must fetch him in, he Papers.' But Rossiter and Foakes (see New Arden, p. 13 note) while accepting a comma after 'Letter' retain the Folio comma after 'Councell', and argue (if I follow them correctly) that 'The Honourable Boord of Councell' is in apposition to the 'Letter' and thus is to be equated sarcastically with it (including a pun on 'Boord' as mockery). Foakes's paraphrase is, "his own letter, usurping the office of the honourable board of council

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(and mocking it), once sent out, compels the recipient to enter (or, brings in the person whose name he puts on paper)."

As I see it, the question revolves on whether 'out' is an adverb, the sense being his letter being sent out, fetches in the recipient, or whether it is a preposition, the letter being Wolsey's own, without the knowledge or consent of the council, required the recipient to agree. This latter has been the common reading, which necessitates the transposition of the Folio comma from 'Councell' to 'out'. In either case it is acknowledged that the general sense requires Wolsey's letter to have substituted for the authority of the council, but the clarity of the usual emendation is superior since it baldly states that the letter was without the approval of the council, whereas only an inference is present, if the Folio punctuation is retained, that the letter and the council were one—that Wolsey usurped the authority of the council. Such a delicacy would be difficult to put across on the stage[14] and seems to represent an over-ingenious way of defending the faulty Folio punctuation.

In another case, however, the Folio punctuation and syntax can be defended against emending editors. Describing Wolsey's death to Katherine, her man Griffith begins:

This Cardinall,
Though from an humble Stocke, undoubtedly
Was fashion'd to much Honor. From his Cradle
He was a Scholler, and a ripe, and good one:
IV.ii.48-51 (2606-9)
Led by the Globe (after Theobald) various modern editors have revised the Folio sentence structure to read that Wolsey 'was fashion'd to much Honor from his Cradle', which can mean only that Wolsey was brought up, or reared, with the goal that he would receive a high place in the kingdom. This emendation stems presumably from the belief that the manifestations of Wolsey's scholarship would have been difficult to discern at so early a stage as his cradle. However, Holinshed provides what would be a different gloss on 'fashion'd': "The Cardinall . . . was a man undoubtedly borne to honor," the mention of Wolsey's scholarship coming later in a separate list of his accomplishments. In the New Shakespeare, Maxwell believes that the Folio is wrong, but he remarks that a later passage in Holinshed—"being but a child, verie apt to be learned"—might offer some support for the original. Transposed punctuation is not unusual in the Folio (or elsewhere in Elizabethan dramatic prints). Compositor B, who set this page, could take a high hand with the details of the text, and on the evidence he was perfectly capable of altering the beginning of the sentence to an earlier point according as he interpreted the meaning.[15] Nevertheless, Fletcher's typical hyperbole is here not so gross that it may not stand as in the Folio, and an editor should need evidence more relevant than is present to justify a change to 'much Honor from his Cradle'. The repetition of 'undoubtedly' in Fletcher's 'undoubtedly fashion'd' from Holinshed's 'undoubtedly borne' indicates that 'fashion'd' should have the same meaning as 'borne', an association encouraged by Job xxxi.15, "Did not one fashion us in the wombe?" (OED, vb. 1). It is true that

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OED vb. 3 to give a specified shape to; to model according to, . . . to shape into something would permit the sense of training, being brought up to, required by the emendation. But the 'undoubtedly borne' is heavy evidence and in Holinshed there is no suggestion that Wolsey was other than self-trained, as in "being but a child, verie apt to be learned". It follows that the source discourages emendation. The adverbial phrase 'From his Cradle' does not necessarily modify such a verb as 'fashion'd' (bred) but instead points, as in the Folio, to the next clause, 'He was a Scholler', which represents a more appropriate semantic and syntactical relationship (created). As printed in the Folio the text repeats Holinshed with quite sufficient sense.

A more important example involves the establishment and application of an Elizabethan idiom. Suffolk and Norfolk, having just been dismissed the royal presence on the entrance of Wolsey with Campeius, exchange bitter words at Wolsey's influence over the King:

Norff.
This Priest has no pride in him?[16]

Suff.
Not to speake of:
I would not be so sicke though for his place:
But this cannot continue.

Norff.
If it doe,
Ile venture one; have at him.

Suff.
I another.
II.ii.81-84 (1126-31)

The question is the phrase 'have at him', and especially its relation to 'I another'. No problem exists that 'Ile venture one' could mean I am ready to risk myself, and that that is the sense in which Compositor I took it, as evidenced by his semicolon.[17] 'Have at him' is also a common ejaculation, as repeated in Henry VIII in 'Have at you' (III.ii.309[2205]) as well as 'have at ye' (V.iii.148[3180]). The more recent editors have conservatively followed the Folio pointing in this line with its semicolon after 'one'. But a difficulty arises in Suffolk's answer, 'I another', an agreement that in the Folio seems to refer 'another' directly back to preceding 'one'; if correct it would need to mean I shall be another to venture, but this is to strain the syntax. The difficulty can be surmounted if, more naturally, 'another' refers back to a preceding noun, an interpretation first broached in the 1821 Variorum and adopted later by Dyce. This would require Shakespeare to have invented, or utilized, a compound noun 'have-at-him'. Norfolk would then be saying, roughly, I'll venture one go at him (some overt action in opposition to Wolsey), to which Suffolk would then respond, If you do, I'll venture another such go. This interpretation may be strengthened by the relation of such a noun 'have-at-him' to the gambler's phrase for a desperate risk, 'have-at-all', the more especially since OED illustrates this gaming phrase as a noun, and provides a quotation from Thomas Randolph's Muses Looking Glass (1634), 'But you will starve yourself, that when y'are rotten, | One have at all of mine may set it flying.' In Henry VIII if, as I suggest, 'another' does indeed refer back to a noun 'have-at-him' instead of to 'one', then we have a very different

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sense dependent upon the presence or absence of the Folio semicolon after 'one', this constituting a true semi-substantive crux.[18]

I draw certain conclusions from this study. Editors of modernized texts—influenced to follow tradition by the custom of marking up some previous text with their own alterations—have paid too little attention to the necessity to paraphrase every line of an Elizabethan dramatist (and particularly, Shakespeare). Paraphrasing requires scrupulous analysis of the sense as a means of observing its logic and true meaning. The servant of paraphrase and of meaning is accurate syntactical analysis, with especial reference to what elements in a sentence are the modifiers and what the modified. For example, paraphrase based on analysis of modification would reveal whether 'all in Gold' modifies 'Clinquant' or 'like Heathen Gods'; whether it was the hacking of the root or the mutilation of the rest of the tree, the root being left untouched, that allowed the air to dry up the sap; whether men do worst as often as best or whether their worst often hits a grosser quality than their best; whether Wolsey was fashioned to much honor, or fashioned to much honor from his cradle; whether Suffolk's 'I another' refers somehow to 'one' in the sense of for one, or whether 'I another' refers back to a compound noun 'have-at-him' preceded by the adjective 'one'. Some of the semi-substantives I have mentioned involved absolute meaning; others created delicate but nevertheless significant shades of meaning. Editors truly need to raise the level of their consciousness when dealing with Elizabethan dramatic punctuation whether they are producing unmodernized or modernized texts. There has been too much neglect of semi-substantive meaning in comparison to the care devoted to emending the words of a text.

Notes

 
[1]

The problem of emending semi-substantive readings is essentially the same whether in old-spelling or in modernized texts. The means of emendation may differ according to the editorial punctuation system adopted, but the transmission of meaning by emendation of the accidentals will produce the same result. However, the tendency in modernized editions not to record semi-substantive emendations (except as in Foakes's New Arden), despite their importance, stifles the reader's awareness of their presence. And this relaxation in modernized editions of the old-spelling rule that all variants should be recorded sometimes hides from the modernizing editor himself the fact that a very real problem exists, the more especially since most modernizing editors (as of Shakespeare) mark up a copy of some preceding edition for their printer's copy and hence are considerably influenced by traditional editorial accidentals, particularly of punctuation concealing problems in the original.

[2]

Sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century dramatic texts are often printed from type-cases that did not contain exclamation marks, or with so few such sorts that they could not be employed with any frequency. Hence it was customary for the obvious emphatic to be accompanied by perfectly ordinary punctuation. (For example, the common exclamation 'Ha' could be followed by a comma, a semicolon, colon, period, or a question mark.) Compositors intent on indicating an exclamation often used a question mark, thus posing a special problem for modernizing (and to a lesser degree old-spelling) editors in cases when the context was about as suitable for a partial query as for an exclamation. For a brief consideration of some of the problems, see Bowers, "Readability and Regularization in Old-


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Spelling Texts of Shakespeare," Huntington Library Quarterly, 50 (1987), 213-215. Indeed, in some manuscripts, as in Ralph Crane's Barnavelt, the exact inscription whether a question or exclamation mark may be in legitimate doubt.

[3]

In modernized texts the neglected distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses may usually be worth imposing. The habit of early writers and their printers of forming long speeches by piling up a number of independent clauses, one after another, separated either by semicolons or colons—sometimes confusingly intermixed with stray commas—may often be worth preserving, as exemplified in R. A. Foakes's New Arden edition of Henry VIII. Forming new sentences by capitalization from such a series of clauses can produce a rather choppy effect, even when in the original a colon, say, is followed by a capitol. What is and what is not a run-on line is often in question, given the convention of line-ending commas; not all unpunctuated line-endings need be run-on, but a lack of punctuation in the original may often be given the benefit of the doubt without contrary evidence. For an old-spelling editor the conservative alteration of the dramatic punctuation should be attempted always in terms of the original system of the print with due regard for the compositor setting the lines in question. The urge to insure maximum readability in old-spelling texts by what is actually a form of modernization is one to be resisted: many old-spelling editors tinker too freely with early punctuation that is admittedly irregular but nevertheless characteristic and not necessarily in danger of being misunderstood by a reader accustomed to the system.

[4]

All quotations transcribe the Folio except for indented part-lines, the correction of mislining, and the modernization of i-j and v-u as well as of the old long ſ. Emended passages will be found in my edition of the play in vol. 7 (1989) of the Cambridge University Press Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon.

[5]

Such a good modernized edition as that of Foakes's New Arden achieves an acceptable compromise between the Folio punctuation and the requirements of a modernized-text reader. In this passage the New Arden alters the colon after 'little' to a semicolon; drops the comma after 'present'; reduces the capital of 'But' to lower case; substitutes a semicolon for a comma after 'flesh'; removes the comma after 'opinions'; and substitutes a comma for the semicolon after 'Heresies'.

[6]

A typical example from Henry VIII comes in I.iv.43-45 (722-724), which reads in the Folio:

The red wine first must rise
In their faire cheekes my Lord, then wee shall have 'em,
Talke us to silence.
Here it is clear that the meaning is obstructed by the formality of an end-of-the-line comma after "em' in what is obviously a run-on line. In reverse, at I.ii.203-206 (556-559) when the Surveyor is quoting Buckingham's threats against the King, the compositor seems to have switched the proper line-ending comma to the caesura,
After the Duke his Father, with the knife
He stretch'd him, and with one hand on his dagger,
Another spread on's breast, mounting his eyes,
He did discharge a horrible Oath,
thus distorting the sense, which is clarified in the New Arden's use of quotation marks when the Surveyor is repeating the Duke's words: 'After "the duke his father", with the "knife", | He stretch'd him'. Since this indication of quoting is a modernization, though useful, all an old-spelling editor need do is to move the comma after 'Father' to follow 'knife'. Such exchanges of position within a line or sometimes even between the ending of one line and the caesura or ending of the next are a commonplace that leads one to speculate that the compositor had settled on the punctuation but inadvertently switched positions when he was carrying too much text in his head. A more delicate transposition between line-endings probably comes in III.i.175-178 (1812-16):

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Qu.
Do what ye will my Lords: and pray forgive me;
If I have us'd my selfe unmannerly,
You know I am a Woman, lacking wit
To make a seemely answer to such persons.

Most editors (the New Arden among the exceptions) emend to place a heavier mark, like a semicolon, after 'unmannerly' and a lighter mark after 'me'. Honest men may differ here, but by a hair it may seem very slightly better as in the Folio to associate the dependent clause 'If . . . unmannerly' as the stated reason for forgiveness. Nevertheless, the case is obscure and emendation of F is certainly not required. Earlier in this same scene Katherine furnishes another small but interesting possibility for a meaning different from F, one that also would affect the actress' delivery of her lines. A Gentleman has just announced the arrival of Wolsey and Campeius, to which Katherine responds, in the Folio:
Pray their Graces
To come neere:
And then, in soliloquy:
what can be their busines
With me, a poore weake woman, falne from favour? [1640]
I doe not like their comming; now I thinke on't,
They should be good men, their affaires as righteous:
But all Hoods, make not Monkes.
III.i.18-23 (1638-43)
In the F1-4 reading Katherine expresses first puzzlement, which turns to dislike; but then, after reflection, she charitably alters her feeling since the Cardinals by their office ought to be good men, and their business with her (or their actions in their priestly capacity) as well-intended as their goodness. She thus ends by reconciling herself to the visitation, albeit in a spirit of caution that these priests may not be so pure in intention as would be expected from a devout and sheltered monastic. In a transposition (adopted recently by Oxford) Capell in TLN 1641 switched the semicolon and comma so that the line read 'I doe not like their comming, now I thinke on't;'. This changes the modification of 'now I thinke on't' to apply to her dislike of their arrival: Katherine is at first puzzled by the news of the Cardinals' visitation, but on thinking it over she decides she does not like it. The reason follows, that 'all Hoods, make not Monkes.' In her delivery it is obvious that an actress will differ according as she reads the Folio or the Capell emendation of the line. One may suggest that though the Capell version is the simpler and more straightforward, the motivation or line of reasoning is less revelatory of character and that the Folio is more consistent with Katherine's established character showing a combination of charity with 'burnt child'. Yet either syntactical modification created by the line's placement of the strong semicolon stop makes sense. Nonetheless, whatever one thinks of the virtues of Capell's sense, it is not so superior in its coherence as to lead to an overturning of whatever authority the Folio has in its pointing. The Folio line would seem to be the better acting one and it better fits Katherine's capitulation at the end of the scene. A conservative editor should think twice before being seduced by the surface plausibility of the Capell semi-substantive emendation.

[7]

Whether mistake, rhetorical pause, or convention is doubtful in the caesural comma in III.ii.407-409 (2319-22):

There was the waight that pull'd me downe. O Cromwell,
The King ha's gone beyond me: All my Glories
In that one woman, I have lost for ever.
An old-spelling reader might perhaps be ready, after a hesitation, to see that 'In that one woman' is not the object of 'Glories' but of 'lost for ever', but it would be well to emend. The caesural convention is more glaring in V.i.131-133 (2932-34):

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at what ease
Might corrupt mindes procure, Knaves as corrupt
To sweare against you: . . .
Compositorial misunderstanding or too strong rhetorical punctuation interferes with intelligibility for a moment in V.iv.17-19 (3387-89):
This Royall Infant, Heaven still move about her;
Though in her Cradle; yet now promises
Upon this Land a thousand thousand Blessings, . . .
A modernizing editor must thoroughly repunctuate to make 'Heaven . . . her' parenthetical; but for an old-spelling editor it should be enough to substitute a comma for the caesural semicolon after 'Cradle'. Alternatively, a colon could take the place of the semicolon after 'her' with no other change in punctuation. As with Wolsey in his cradle (see below, IV.ii.50 [2608]; both passages by Fletcher), the ambiguous syntax needs straightening out.

[8]

This information I draw from the notes to the New Arden edition, but curiously this text is unusual in preserving the ambiguous punctuation of the Folio.

[9]

One final gnaw at this bone. Although the description of gold heathen gods as clinquant is well enough, the real association of clinquant is with the lace the French wore. Thus the intention of the passage as developed from its imagery is best realized by the emended punctuation 'All Clinquant, all in Gold like Heathen Gods,' which clarifies the parenthesis between subject (the French) and direct object (the English), and thus the French outshone the English.

[10]

Another example of a subtle but necessary exchange comes at I.iii.59-62 (647-651) adopted by editors from Theobald. Wolsey's bounty is being praised, to which Lord Sands responds:

He may my Lord, ha's wherewithall in him;
Sparing would shew a worse sinne, then ill Doctrine,
Men of his way, should be most liberall,
They are set heere for examples.
Superficially this might stand, but Theobald saw truly that the sense requires sparing in him, and thus an editor must move the semicolon after 'him' to follow 'wherewithall', leaving 'him' without punctuation to show a run-on line. (Incidentally, one may notice the caesural comma after 'way', which here is innocuous.) The above was in a setting by Compositor I, but at I.i.68-72 (118-122) Compositor B makes an even grosser error of understanding and of mistaken punctuation:
but I can see his Pride
Peepe through each part of him: whence ha's he that,
If not from Hell? The Divell is a Niggard, [120]
Or he ha's given all before, and he begins
A new Hell in himselfe.
Once again it was Theobald who saw that the query after 'Hell' (120) and the start of a new sentence with 'The Divell' resulted from a misunderstanding and that the sense requires the exchange 'whence ha's he that? | If not from Hell, the Divell is a Niggard'.

[11]

For example, I.iv.103-108 (812-817) ends with the enamoured King and his party leaving for a private room to continue their revels:

Lead in your Ladies ev'ry one: Sweet Partner,
I must not yet forsake you: Let's be merry,
Good my Lord Cardinall: I have a halfe a dozen healths,
To drinke to these faire Ladies, and a measure
To lead 'em once againe, and then let's dreame
Who's best in favour. Let the Musicke knock it.

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The King first addresses his party, then Anne Bullen, then Wolsey; then comes the coy hint addressed to Anne or to the company—less likely to Wolsey—followed by a general command for the music. If the Folio punctuation is followed (as it is by the fourteen modern editions since the Globe that I have collated), the address to Wolsey begins with 'Let's be merry'. But Theobald, now ignored, perceived truly that what Henry has to say to the Cardinal starts, instead, with 'I have a halfe a dozen healths, | To drinke', prefixed as usual in such address by 'good', which singles out for attention the person spoken to. Henry's 'Let's be merry' should properly be spoken either to Anne Bullen after his promise not to forsake her in the revelry, or else, perhaps a shade more likely, as a cheering interjection to the company at large after his private speech to Anne. It is worth noting that even such a formula as 'My good Lord' is more likely than not to begin an address, or at least a new sentence, as in I.iv.56-57 (744-745), 'Good Lord Chamberlaine, | Go, give 'em welcome'; but when the inversion 'Good my Lord' or its equivalent appears, it almost invariably heads a new sentence or clause, as in 'O good my Lord, no Latin', III.i.42 (1664): 'good your Graces | Let me have time and Councell for my Cause', III.i.78-79 (1703-4); 'Good my Lord, | You are full of Heavenly stuffe', III.ii.136-137 (2004-5); 'Stay good my Lords, | I have a little yet to say', V.ii.131-132 (3160-61). The various syntactical parallels (broken only by V.iii.28 [3287], 'I shall be with you presently, good M. Puppy') suggest strongly the manner in which the actor playing Henry must manage the different addresses in this closing speech. Modern editors have allowed a conservative respect for the Folio punctuation (which in this play is far from trustworthy) to dull their sense of theatrical requirements. Read, 'Let's be merry; | Good my Lord Cardinall, I have a halfe a dozen healths, | To drinke'. In an old-spelling edition no urgent need exists to remove the line-ending comma after 'healths'.

[12]

Semi-substantives are most commonly found among the punctuation, but spelling can be semi-substantive as witness the frequent confusion between travail and travel.

[13]

In the broad sense semi-substantives certainly should identify accidentals that alter authorial intention in a meaningful manner comparable to faulty substantives, regardless of any editorial consensus. However, the most interesting editorially are those accidentals which constitute cruxes in meaning in that editors are in general not united either in declaring the original faulty for sense or in the most suitable means for repairing assumed corruption. Editorial disagreement, thus, is not necessary to turn accidentals into semi-substantives; merely, the most eligible accidentals for semi-substantive status are those that constitute cruxes. I argue only on practical grounds and on a case-by-case basis for touchstones, although with certain important considerations. A crux may be incipient in that it is potentially present although not currently admitted, as was true for the King's exit speech at I.iv considered above in footnote 11. Historicity cannot be ignored, however. For many years there appeared to be no question that Hamlet's flesh was solid and not sullied, but the reading is now debated with sullied gaining ground. Of course, not every variant may conceal future dispute, the lunatic fringe aside: it is unlikely that in I.ii.77 (258) Hamlet should address Gertrude as cold mother (Q2) instead of good mother (F1). Moreover, earlier editorial differences about a crucial reading may become so resolved by unanimity that thereafter a crux can scarcely be said to exist—at least at the present time, for the example of the close of I.iv may give us pause. On practical grounds, therefore, I suggest we may identify the most important critical sense of semi-substantives narrowly—and for purposes of discussion here—as differences of current or at least recent editorial opinion about the actual variable sense produced by accidentals, in their significance for variant meaning paralleling substantive cruxes.

[14]

If one tests the crux by the commonsense question what the words would signify to an ordinary audience hearing them from the stage, the answer is certainly that 'out' would mean 'without'. The exact circumstances discussed in the New Arden note would not be ascertainable or at all important; that is, whether the council was or was not sitting at the time (Johnson), or whether all mention of the council had been omitted from the letter (Steevens). It is the phrase 'his owne Letter' that shapes the audience's response, it being clear that it was this letter (written without the authority of the council) that brought in the recipient. Holinshed writes that "the peers, receiving letters to prepare themselves to attend the king in their journie . . . seemed to grudge, that such a costlie journie should be


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taken in hand to their importunate charges and expenses, without consent of the whole boord of the councell." This source passage may be trusted to explicate 'out' as without. Read 'his owne Letter, | The Honourable Boord of Councell out, | Must fetch'.

[15]

See footnote 10 and the crux at I.i.69-70 (119-120) for Compositor B starting a new sentence in the wrong place. Some transpositions are so lacking in sense as to lead me to speculate that sometimes the transposition resulted from memorial failure by the compositor. That is, as in Moxon's advice, he would have read over several lines and decided on the punctuation, but when he turned to his cases and began setting from memory, he inadvertently transposed the selected punctuation. As a typical though minor example from Henry VIII we find in F

That having heard by fame
Of this so Noble and so faire assembly,
This night to meet heere they could doe no lesse,
I.iv.66-68 (759-761)
where 'assembly | This' should be the run-on line and the end-of-the-line comma should come after 'heere' instead. A more important example closer to the cradle crux, although set by Compositor I, comes when Campeius is presenting his Papal commission to Henry, a document that appoints Wolsey as the second judge in the Queen's trial. The Folio mistakenly reads:
To your Highnesse hand
I tender my Commission; by whose vertue,
The Court of Rome commanding. You my Lord
Cardinall of Yorke, are joyn'd with me their Servant,
In the unpartiall judging of this Businesse.
II.ii.103-106 (1150-54)
Here 'The Court of Rome commanding' is a parenthesis modifying 'vertue', part of an inverted phrase before the subject of the sentence 'You my Lord'. Read 'commanding, you my Lord | Cardinall of Yorke, are joyn'd', with retention of the caesural comma. More typical is Henry's aside in the Blackfriars court scene, also set by Compositor I:
My learn'd and welbeloved Servant Cranmer,
Prethee returne, with thy approch: I know,
My comfort comes along: . . .
II.iv.236-238 (1609-11)
Transposition to read 'Prethee returne: with thy approch, I know' straightens out the compositorial error caused by memorial failure, although mistaken sense cannot be ruled out.

[16]

One may note the ambiguity of the question mark, which poses a problem for modernizing editors more than for old-spelling. Some take the question mark to be the Folio equivalent of an exclamation, as often, and like Alexander, Kittredge, and the New Penguin print 'him!' Others, like the New Arden, follow the Globe in retaining the query. Since in my opinion only in extreme cases of possible confusion of the sense should an old-spelling editor insert uncharacteristic exclamation points in texts normally wanting them, such an editor may well retain the question mark here. Although it is likely that Norfolk's is an exclamation, it is also possible that, with ellipsis, he is inquiring Has this priest no pride in him? which might be supported by Suffolk's response, although not necessarily so. Even if an old-spelling editor chooses to interpret the line as an exclamation, the conventional question mark conveys the sense well enough in an unmodernized text. Of course, a modernizing editor must make a choice.

[17]

To venture one may be closely associated but perhaps not idiomatically identical with to make one: see, for example, 'Ile make one in a dance', LLL, V.i.160 (1884) or 'I see a sword out, my finger itches to make one', MWW, II.iii.48 (1108-9), where 'make one' means to join a group.

[18]

It is true that the Folio is our sole authority and that its reading of Norfolk's line,


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alone, makes sense. It is also true that Compositor I, who set the line, often introduces strong stops like a semicolon or even a period in inappropriate places (vide 'So if that quarrell. Fortune, do divorce', II.iii.14 [1217]) so that the Folio semicolon may be an error as required by a nominal have-at-him. But general suspicion of Compositor I's punctuation, no matter how well deserved, is no demonstration of error. Nor perhaps is the interesting fact that the F2 compositor failed to understand the idiom of 'Ile venture one' and by removing the semicolon and substituting 'heave' for 'have' he indicated that he thought 'one' was an adjective. In the end, the reading is likely subject only to opinion. I opt for 'have at him' as a noun and the emended deletion of the intrusive semicolon, in part moved by a question whether, in actuality, venture one is a true parallel here to make one. If it is not, except for the possible interpretation that 'Ile venture one' means I for one will venture (and I doubt it) the phrase is idiomatically suspect. It seems probable, therefore, that Randolph's nominal 'one have at all of mine' is the true parallel, in which case the possibility of 'have at him' as a noun, also, is the stronger and emendation in Henry VIII is advisable.