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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
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:
To sit heere at this present, and behold
That Chayre stand empty: But we all are men
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)
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:
But he would bite none, just as I doe now,
He would Kisse you Twenty with a breath.
I.iv.28-30 (701-703)
A reverse case comes when the Duke of Norfolk is describing the Field of the Cloth of Gold:
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)
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:
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)
A more delicate example of such an exchange comes a little earlier in Wolsey's defense of his actions:
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)
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
(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)
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:
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)
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:
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)
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:
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)
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
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.
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-
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.
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.
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'.
A typical example from Henry VIII comes in I.iv.43-45 (722-724), which reads in the Folio:
In their faire cheekes my Lord, then wee shall have 'em,
Talke us to silence.
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,
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.
To come neere:
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)
Whether mistake, rhetorical pause, or convention is doubtful in the caesural comma in III.ii.407-409 (2319-22):
The King ha's gone beyond me: All my Glories
In that one woman, I have lost for ever.
Might corrupt mindes procure, Knaves as corrupt
To sweare against you: . . .
Though in her Cradle; yet now promises
Upon this Land a thousand thousand Blessings, . . .
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.
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.
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:
Sparing would shew a worse sinne, then ill Doctrine,
Men of his way, should be most liberall,
They are set heere for examples.
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.
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:
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.
Semi-substantives are most commonly found among the punctuation, but spelling can be semi-substantive as witness the frequent confusion between travail and travel.
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.
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
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
Of this so Noble and so faire assembly,
This night to meet heere they could doe no lesse,
I.iv.66-68 (759-761)
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)
Prethee returne, with thy approch: I know,
My comfort comes along: . . .
II.iv.236-238 (1609-11)
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.
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.
It is true that the Folio is our sole authority and that its reading of Norfolk's line,
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