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II
Since indefinite SHs or variable SHs for the same character, combined with the misassignment or misplacement of other SHs, have been taken as one sign that a play text has not yet been made fully ready for performance, we should examine Coriolanus to see how many difficulties they would actually have presented and at what point in the transmission these irregularities are likely to have entered the F text. Although SHs vary, they would not in general have baffled the book-keeper. Those that reflect one or the other of Titus Lartius' names, or variant abbreviations for Coriolanus, Menenius, and Aufidius, present no problem. Most indefinite SHs, such as Both (four in 2.1; one in 2.3; two in 4.5), are clear from context (the two tribunes in 2.1; the two citizens on stage at 2.3.111/1502; First and Second Servingman in 4.5); the Exeunt both at 4.6.148/3076 obviously refers to Menenius and Cominius and may have even specified them in the manuscript, since Compositor B was clearly pressed for space here and could not afford a two-line SD. A couple would need to be decided in rehearsal or, more probably, in making up the `plot' and the individual actor's parts: which two of the three women on stage should speak the words assigned to `2 Ladies', at 2.1.107/1004, and does Tri. at 4.6.120/3042 mean Both Tri. (which appears at 4.6.26/2924) or just one, where either one will do? A both that has proved troublesome to some editors appears in the SD Draw both the Conspirators, and kils Martius, who | falles, Auffidius stands on him (5.6.130/3804), since the entry direction had been for 3 or 4 Conspirators of Auffidius Faction. Brockbank suggests two
Such vagueness about minor characters seems characteristic of Shakespeare's habits during composition. In Hand D's three pages of Sir Thomas More, four speeches are assigned to other (which shrinks to oth and o); the revising playhouse scribe known as Hand C deleted all four instances and substituted characters' names. In Coriolanus such authorial indifference may lie behind the mixture of numbered and unnumbered senatorial speakers in 1.1 (where the first two are `I. Sen.' but two more are unnumbered), 2.2 (the first is `I. Sen.', the other four unspecified), and the jumbling of numbered and unnumbered senators in 3.1, or the wholly unnumbered soldiers in 1.10. Some of the undesignated senators might be the result of scribal or compositorial oversight, but they span both compositors' stints and most probably reflect Shakespeare's thinking in terms of effective crowd scenes (like other in More), where anonymous voices issue from different parts of the group.[63] The four undesignated soldier-speakers in 1.10 may have been intended for a similar effect, although in this case Shakespeare might have left them to be dealt with when the play was cast and the number of available soldiers known, since the SD has Aufidius entering with two or three Souldiors.[64] There are F plays whose underlying copy is thought to have been annotated in consultation with a promptbook that contain speeches for unspecified (except by function) minor characters, like the gardener's two servants and Queen's two ladies in Richard II.[65] Paul Werstine has noted similar
No one has deemed it necessary to normalise the various designations for the opposed classes in different scenes. Classical Rome and seventeenth-century England co-exist comfortably in SDs where the entering Citizens of 1.1 are both Citizens and Plebeians in 2.3, a rabble of Plebeians as well as the People in 3.1, and back to Citizens in 4.6, while their Volscian counterparts in 5.6 are the Commoners. The Patricians are also all the Gentry in 3.1, Nobles in 3.2, and some of them the yong Nobility of Rome in 4.1. The terms may slide between civilizations, but the class status and relationship remain the same and clear, hence there was no need to tamper with them. Immediate function within the scene being composed seems to have governed the terms that came to mind. So in 4.3 the entry direction and SHs are for a Roman and a Volce, despite the fact that each soldier is named in the dialogue. The important point is that one is a traitor to Rome, reporting Rome's troubles to the enemy he now joins, in a scene immediately preceding Coriolanus' arrival in Antium seeking Aufidius.
The frequent SH All, too, has been left largely untouched, although in only a few cases can it be taken literally as requiring everyone on stage to speak at once. Some disambiguation has been (rather intermittently) undertaken, by author or theatrical annotator, for we do find one All Ple. in 3.1 (where on this principle many more differentiated Alls are needed), and All Lords, All People, and All Consp. in 5.6. All is a common SH in promptbook texts, and it seems to have been conventional to leave what it might mean in individual cases to be worked out in the playhouse.[67] All might signify nearly everyone on stage speaking in unison, as when Coriolanus is celebrated by Omnes shouting his new full name in 2.1, or more restrictively, when only the plebeians chant `It shall be so' when the tribunes declare Coriolanus' banishment at 3.3.106/2407. At times the words it labels should be distributed as widely a possible, as in the breakdown of order in Corioles
Some SHs are either demonstrably wrong or missing, or have been thought to be so by some editors, but this fact is less of a bar than it might seem to the manuscript behind Coriolanus having been adequately marked to serve as playbook. Where SHs seem misassigned, some at least of the SHs cruxes facing a modern editor may have been imposed by the compositors and so not have stood in the manuscript copy at all.[69] One ambiguity that requires resolution occurs in the first breakdown of civil order, 3.1.185-87/1894-96, where after the SD They all bustle about Coriolanus the first two lines of what must be `crowd' noises appear with no SH (`Tribunes, Patricians, Citizens: what ho: | Sicinius, Brutus, Coriolanus, Citizens.'); the previous speaker was `2 Sen.', but the words are unlikely to be meant as his. The subsequent line, TLN 1896, reads `All. Peace, peace, peace, stay, hold, peace'. Thomas Clayton offers various explanations, including the possibility that it is not in fact an error because All is implicit in the SD. Or, the cause might be an authorial SH `entered, after composition, in the wrong place'; if the error was introduced later by compositor or scribe, it `could be due to simple omission of one of two intended uses of All'.[70] It is also possible that two similar-looking SHs were in the copy and that only one reached print, perhaps because scribe or compositor read them as identical and consciously or subconsciously rejected the repetition. In this hypothesis, TLN 1894-95 were prefixed All and 1896 assigned to the Aediles, of which there seem to be at least three on stage. If that were the case, the All at 1894 was omitted and Aed. misread as All.[71]
In another category of SH problems, some, though perhaps not all, of what modern editors take to be inaccurately labeled speeches may also have been introduced by scribe or compositor. Confusion between Cominius and Coriolanus in SHs may have been caused by misreading abbreviations (Cor and Com); this would be even more likely if the Shakespearean original contained (or moved quickly to) such severely shortened forms as Co and Co.[72] The greeting of Valeria after the triumphal return to Rome in 2.1 (TLN 1087) is by F assigned Com.; almost all modern editions adopt Theobald's reassignment to Coriolanus on the grounds that the line is clearly his. It is at this point in the text that the SHs for the title character switch, and as Brockbank notes, `it is likely that the transition from Mar. to Cor. made the slip or misreading Com. easier'.[73] If I am right about the F manuscript being scribal, and by a scribe who preferred full- or amply-abbreviated SHs (probably to make them line up evenly on the page), then this misreading was the scribe's; his own SH was likely to have been Coriol., which does appear in F ten times. If he was not consistent with his SH choices, however, and if his r and m were more easily confused than those in Hand D of More (and in most secretary hands they are confusables), then the misreading could be compositorial. The same misreading of a Cor. SH as Com. is probably responsible for what is in F a rebuke of the tribune Brutus by Cominius: `You are like to doe such businesse' (3.1.48/1734).[74]
A cluster of SH errors on bb2v suggests a damaged or for some other reason illegible margin in the lower first column, or `problems associated with the printing of part of quire bb, or both'.[75] Here F assigns Cominius as the speaker of `Stand fast, we have as many friends as enemies' (3.1.230-31/1954) and to Corio. `Come Sir, along with us' (3.1.236/1961). Most editors
Other SHs that have seemed problematic to later editors are less likely to have resulted from scribal or compositorial error. They might have been straightened out in the playhouse, with or without the author's help, and changed for the actors' parts. They might also have been played as they appear in F. Not all editors have emended these SHs; to some, F Coriolanus seems correct — or as likely to be correct as not — as it stands. Emendation in these cases will affect our response, as any such reassignment must, but not in significant ways for the principal characters. One common, though not universal, reassignment in 1.1 certainly alters our sense of the `Company of Mutinous Citizens'. In F the two individualised speakers for the first 55 lines are `I. Cit.' and `2. Cit.'; thereafter the character who argues so articulately with Menenius is `2. Cit.'. Clearly, this distribution suggests not only that this `Company' includes a hot-head who thinks killing Coriolanus will solve their problems, but also the more reasonable Second Citizen who becomes their natural spokesman, a man who can see the complexity of both their situation and Coriolanus's (as can other commoners later, like the three groups of citizens in 2.3, or the soldiers laying cushions in 2.2). Since Capell most editors have reassigned all of F's `2. Cit.' speeches in response to Menenius' persuasions to `I. Cit.', on the grounds that they better fit the personality of `I. Cit.' established in the scene's first 55 lines.[79] If F is in error here, the error
Other arguable editorial SH reassignments are less significant in effect, but more defensible. In the Act 3 exchange in which Menenius tries to convince the tribunes to allow Coriolanus a second chance, Hanmer (on Warburton's suggestion) reassigned one speech from F's Menen. to the tribune Sicinius: `The service of the foote | Being once gangren'd, is not then respected | For what before it was' (3.1.304-06/2045-47). In 1950 H. Eardley-Wilmot defended Hanmer's reassignment on the grounds that the metaphor is out of character for Menenius and was in a moment of inattention assigned to him by Shakespeare or compositor, and recent editions of Coriolanus reflect the persuasiveness of the arguments for Sicinius as speaker.[82] It is only fair to note, however, that most editions from Rowe (1709) to Brooke (1924) retain F, although they usually alter the final punctuation to `?' or `—' in order to make it more plausible for Menenius.[83] This is a case in which the critical arguments for reassignment are strong, but in which the F text could be played as it stands without substantively changing the relationship between Menenius and the tribunes. Another such instance is the exclamation `O the Gods!', SH Corio. in F, in the scene of Coriolanus' farewell to his family and friends (4.1.37/2477). Keightley first reassigned these words to Virgilia, but here there has been less recent agreement than for the reassignment in 3.1; of the eight post- 1950 editions sampled by Clayton, three `read
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