University of Virginia Library

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

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:

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:

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) 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:

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]

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:

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:

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, 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

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: 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:

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 (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:

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 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:

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 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.