University of Virginia Library

I

The First Quarto was set seriatim and, as Peter Blayney has suggested, the miserable quality of the manuscript probably accounts for Nicholas Okes' departure from the "more customary," type-saving method of setting by formes, or casting off (184). The text required the imposition of twenty-one formes of type and consists of ten and a half sheets (188). Although Q does not include act and scene divisions, sheet G contains text that Folio Lear and all modern editions designate as III.iii. through III.vii. Sheet L includes the final act. My discussion of these portions of the texts will apply, then, to sheets G and L in First Quarto and the corresponding parts in Folio Lear.

The twelve extant copies of the First Quarto differ among themselves in

a number of readings. The outer forme of sheet G, for example, contains several press variants which indicate that at some point during its printing the press was stopped and the forme corrected.[7] There is evidence, however, that some "corrections" yield readings different from those that stood in Q's copy. An examination of two press variants in outer G indicates that a Folio reading need not be an authorial revision, but gives evidence of having been a restoration of an original reading. In short, what we find in F ought to have been in Q. A look now at these press variants in Q's sheet G will inform my subsequent analysis of larger passages by calling attention to sources of alteration other than authorial revision, and in so doing, call into question some of the editorial decisions generated by the two-text theory. Furthermore, an examination of these two press variants reveals patterns of misreadings by Q's compositor B and, therefore, provides notable evidence for approaching Q.

An editor will often accept the corrected form of a reading unless there is evidence that the proof-reader failed to consult the manuscript copy or that certain "corrections" are, in fact, incorrect. During one of Lear's speeches on the heath, the uncorrected state of the forme (Qa) reads, "this crulentious storme" (Q: G1r).[8] The second, or "corrected," state (Qb) reads, "this tempestious storme" (Q: G1r). Virtually all modern editions, however, adopt the Folio reading, "this contentious storme" (F: rr3r; Riverside III.iv.6). While Qa's "crulentious" is obviously nonsense, Qb's "tempestious" is also incorrect; but what is of more importance, "crulentious" is a conceivable blunder for the "contentious" that later, and properly, appeared in F.

Blayney has concluded that two compositors worked on the First Quarto: compositor B set the first half of the play prior to the Christmas holidays in 1607 and compositor C, an apprentice, worked with B to complete the play sometime in early January (85). C worked more slowly and with less competence than B, but misspellings, misreadings, and evidence of faulty memorization throughout Q indicate that B's compositorial ability was not much better than C's (185-187).

One reasonable explanation for "crulentious" argues that compositor B, when setting type, read the "on" in "contentious" as "ru." A carelessly written "o" in secretary hand, open at the top, resembles a "u." And an Elizabethan secretary "r," with its many different forms, is often confused with "v" or "u" and, therefore, with "o." Conceivably, then, the manuscript "o" was misread as "r." Similarly, both a secretary "u" and a secretary "n" appear as two minims and are frequently indistinguishable from one another.

Further, the downstroke of a secretary "l" curves not from left to right, but from right to left, and is terminated by a small spur to the left across the middle of the upstroke. Since a secretary "t" also contains a cross bar and was generally looped, "l" and "t" were commonly confused with one another (McKerrow 348).

Anthony G. Petti, in English Literary Hands from Chaucer to Dryden, confirms such a possibility in his table that lists the letters most commonly confused with one another from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries. He shows that the secretary "o," "v" and "r" were frequently mistaken for one another, that the secretary "t" and "l" resemble each other, and that minim confusion often made it impossible to distinguish between "m," "n" and "u" (31).

With the Folio reading ("contentious") restoring the original word in Q's copy, compositor B's initial error in Qa's outer G ("crulentious") is seen to offer a closer reading of the copy than Qb's "correction" of "tempestious." The alteration in Qb needs no explanation other than a proof-reader's attempt to replace nonsense, the result of compositor B's misreading the manuscript when setting Qa. F's "contentious" need not, then, depend on Shakespeare's revision of Qb's "tempestious" to F's "contentious" for the simple reason that the underlying copy for Qa already contained, for one inclined to discover it, the identical word that stood in the copy for F.[9]

In the Oxford edition of Q, Wells and Taylor correctly emend Qa's "crulentious" to F's "contentious" but do not explain their reasons for doing so. Usually, if a variant reading from one text makes reasonable sense, as does Qb's "tempestious," the Oxford editors retain that reading: "We have . . . attempted, as far as possible, to emend Q—where emendation seems desirable—as though F did not exist, seeking in every case the most plausible explanation of the apparent error, and the most economical restoration of sense" (TC 510). But with their treatment of this press variant, the editors provide an example of why it is necessary to consult both texts and to reject a reading from the first one in favor of a reading from the second in order to restore an original reading.