University of Virginia Library

II

With B's general practice of setting speech-prefixes established, we can now
examine a few of his more specific methods of handling the forms of his quarto
copy. Both an immediately preceding stage-direction and line justification might

lead B to depart from the form that he preferred for a given speaker. But of
more importance than these specific influences is the manner in which B de-
veloped such preferred forms, especially since he usually began setting a play
in the middle of a scene, rather than at its beginning. Although the influence of
justification and of stage-directions cannot be ignored in any close analysis of B's
particular habits, it is best to consider first his manner of settling on preferred
forms. Evaluation of particular speech-prefixes needs to take place against the
background of this practice.

The evidence suggests that B sometimes required repeated exposure to a
character before he found a standard form for a speech-prefix. Less frequently
he established a standard form on his first encounter with a character, even
though the speech-prefixes, stage-directions, and dialogue in the immediate con-
text failed to reveal the character's name.

In Love's Labour's Lost, for instance, B's speech-prefixes for Longaville show
how he gradually developed a preferred form in the face of conflicting copy forms
and despite the exigencies of line justification. His Q1 copy was dominated by
'Long.', and on sig. M4, his first page of the play, B reproduced this form the first
four times he set speeches for this character. The fifth instance of the speech-
prefix on this page almost surely exhibits the influence of justification, for there
B lengthened his copy's 'Lon.' to 'Long.' in a verse line which he was forced to
turn over and word-space more liberally than usually (2166–67). Finally, in the
last occurrence of the name on M4 (2170), B shortened Q1's 'Long.' to 'Lon.'
Thereafter, 'Lon.' was his preferred form. Three pages later, while setting M5v,
B again encountered Longaville and shortened 4 of Q1's 5 'Long.' speech-prefixes
to 'Lon.', reproducing only one. On M6 he again substituted 'Lon.' for 'Long.'
the single time the latter appeared in his copy, and on M6v he regularized both
'Longauill.' and 'Long.' to 'Lon.'.

His manner of establishing a standard speech-prefix of three or four letters
followed essentially the same pattern in the other Comedies. In Ado, for example,
several conditions combined to postpone but not to prevent his development of
a preferred speech-prefix for Beatrice. B set two and a half pages of this play, the
opening page in prose (I3), the second column of I5 (also prose), and all of K4
(verse). It was not until he neared the bottom of I3b that he felt sufficiently sure
of Beatrice's identity to settle on 'Bea.' as his standard speech-prefix. Nonetheless,
in his later pages the influence of copy forms and interruption of his work on the
play twice induced him to abandon this form.[13] The speech-prefixes for this char-
acter show that alternation between plays and his copy's longer forms, as well
as the exigencies of justification, could sometimes work together to inhibit B's
general tendency to establish a standard speech-prefix of three or four letters.

This general inclination of B's, affected as it was by various circumstances,
may be observed in several speech-prefixes in the Histories and the Tragedies
which he set from identified quartos. His speech-prefixes for Northumberland
are perhaps typical. When setting d6v he found one 'Nor.' and then one 'Nort.' in
his copy (335, 344); B retained the first, and he expanded the second to 'North.',
perhaps with reference to an earlier stage-direction (320). The next five speech-

prefixes for this character all appeared as the simple 'Nor.' in Q5, which B repro-
duced without fail in e2 and in e1v. In setting the penultimate line of the latter
page, B came upon Q5's 'North.', but by this time his exposure to the dialogue
between the lord, his brother, and his son in I.iii had made the compositor fa-
miliar enough with the character that he regularized this speech-prefix to 'Nor.'.
That form he used in the three remaining instances of the name, all in e1 (two
of them in long lines).

Although B quickly fixed on standard speech-prefixes for this character partly
as a result of his own inclinations and partly with the support of the forms he
early found in his copy, he had more difficulty settling on one for Poins, because
the shifting forms of Q5 frustrated his attempt to develop 'Poin.' as his stan-
dard tag. Q5 exhibited bedazzling variability on B's early acquaintance with this
character. His first encounter with the speech-prefix for Poins, at the bottom of
d6, involved confusing circumstances and probably editorial annotation.[14] Then,
while setting d6v, B came to identify Hal's sidekick and developed a tendency to
use for him a four-letter prefix ending in -n, but Q5's alternation of forms, espe-
cially its almost exclusive use of 'Poy.' and 'Po.' after the first two examples on
the page, diverted B from his inclination to use 'Poin.'. However, his next page
(e3v), occupied wholly by the early part of the great tavern scene) contained a
number of speeches for the same character; here B found Q5 virtually uniform
in printing 'Poines.', and he quickly fixed on 'Poin.' as his own preferred form,
which he used in his remaining pages of the play with only an occasional reten-
tion of Q5's 'Poines.' or 'Poynes.' (often soon after a stage-direction naming the
character). B's experience with Poins and Northumberland illustrates not only
his inclination to settle on a prefix of three or four letters once he had identi-
fied a character, but also the influence which the forms of his copy exerted on
him, sometimes reinforcing this inclination, sometimes thwarting his attempt to
develop a preferred form.

The speech-prefixes in the Tragedies which display this same inclination
most clearly are those for Sampson in the opening page of Romeo and Juliet.
Except for a 'Sa.' in a justified line of Q3 (TLN 53), B's copy had only 'Samp.'
prefixes. In the first two-thirds of column a of ee3, B followed Q3's lead, retain-
ing 'Samp.' in the first six instances, substituting 'Sam.' once to justify a line (28L),
and then reproducing 'Samp.' in the next speech in a shorter line (31). After a
stage-direction introducing 'two other Seruingmen' (Abraham and a mute), and after
another justified 'Sam.' (37L), B began to adopt the shorter 'Sam.' as his standard
speech-prefix: he changed 5 of Q3's next 8 'Samp.' forms to 'Sam.' and altered
1 'Sa.' to 'Sam.' (53L), though he also retained 3 of Q3's 'Samp.' prefixes, one of
them (59L) probably under the influence of justification. In short, not only in the
Comedies and the Histories but also apparently in the Tragedies, B's normal
practice was to settle on a standard speech-prefix of three or four letters as soon
as he was familiar with a character.

Although this practice was often affected by the forms of his copy, sometimes
by the forms of preceding stage-directions or by his need to justify his lines, and
occasionally by alternation between plays or disjunctions in his copy for a single

play, the strength of this predisposition of B's should not be underestimated. It
sometimes led him to abbreviate to a short form on his very first exposure to a
character. In LLL B first encountered Maria in the last line of Q1's sig. G4v and
promptly shortened it to 'Mar.' (TLN 2148, sig. M4 in F). This immediate change
was then reinforced on the following pages by Q1's frequent 'Mar.', but here B
also continued to regularize his copy's periodic 'Mari.' and 'Maria.' to 'Mar.'.
That is, he continued to do so until he had come upon 'Marcad.' when setting
M6: there he reduced to 'Mar.' the first two of Q1's 'Marcad.' forms in short lines
and set the third as 'Marc.' in a long line. Consequently, when in the next page
he again came upon Maria twice, he followed Q1's 'Maria.' both times. This
evidence suggests that Bowers ('Foul Papers', p. 80) is right in his conclusion that
B was careful not to sacrifice details necessary to distinguish one character from
another when abbreviating speech-prefixes. But his handling of Maria's prefixes
also shows the strength of his inclination to shorten them.

The same inclination is exhibited elsewhere in B's pages of LLL. It is seen
in (1) his immediate substitution of 'Qu.' for Q1's 'Quee.' in the very first prefix
on M4, despite the lack of guidance as to the identity of the character from
any source (the dialogue or a stage-direction) other than the speech-prefix itself;
(2) B's immediate adoption of his uniform 'Ber.' for Q1's favored 'Bero.' begin-
ning in the second line of M4 and for its less frequent 'Berow.' (as well as 'Ber.')
from there on; (3) his reduction of Q1's 'Kath.' first to 'Ka.' and then to 'Kat.'; and
(4) his shortening to 'Ped.' of Q1's 'Peda.' (or, later, 'Pedan.') upon his first encoun-
ter with that character and subsequently without exception.

Two other Comedies exhibit B's precipitation in shortening speech-prefixes.
In MND, aside from frequently retaining Q2 prefixes like 'Bot.', 'Her.', 'The.',
and 'Hel.', he immediately reduced 'Dutch.' to 'Dut.' on sig. O3, carefully distin-
guishing her from 'Du.' (Theseus). He followed a similar procedure in MV when
he shortened 'Bass.' to 'Bas.' without any guidance to the name of the character
in the preceding dialogue that he set on O4v, though later he retained some of
Q1's 'Bass.' forms.

B was even quicker to find a standard form for Prince Hal. He altered to
'Prin.' the second of Q5's 'Prince.' speech-prefixes which he came upon when set-
ting d6 (TLN 133), and thereafter he used this four-letter form almost exclusively,
regardless of whether his copy had it or the longer 'Prince.'. In his fifteen pages of
this play, only occasionally did B set 'Prince.' or 'Pri.'—as at 841L, where after a
stage-direction containing 'Prince' he substituted the prefix 'Prince.' for his copy's
'Prin.', or at 2934L, where in a full verse line 'Pri.' replaces Q5's 'Prin.'. In but
one page did B temporarily abandon his preference to set another form succes-
sively, and then apparently under special circumstances (see section III below).

In B's speech-prefixes for other characters the same proclivity to immedi-
ate abbreviation is evident, though it is possible in these cases that either the
dialogue, preceding stage-directions, or his copy's prefixes themselves made B
aware of the name of the character. For instance, when beginning his second
page of Ado (I5b), B immediately shortened Q's 'Bene.' to 'Ben.' (558), even before
encountering Don John's question to Claudio, 'Are you not signior Benedicke?'
(567) and Q's stage-direction 'Enter Benedicke' (590). It is perhaps possible that
B remembered the name of this character from the long stage-direction which

he had set at the end of I3, though Benedick does not have a speech there (91).
However, since discontinuity in his setting of Ado apparently occasioned a lapse
in his memory of Beatrice (who has many speeches on I3), that possibility is re-
mote, and the likelihood is greater that B's first 'Ben.' is another example of his
blind shortening of speech-prefixes if not his preference for those ending in -n
rather than a vowel.[15]

In other instances B's information about the identity of a speaker was more
immediately at hand. When, having previously set only its first page (CC4), he
resumed work on Tit. with the last one (ee2v), B reduced 'Lucius.' to 'Luc.' and
'Marc.' to 'Mar.' in the first two speech-prefixes on this part-page; the tag itself
supplied B with the complete name in the first instance, though Marcus identified
himself only in the second line of his speech. Elsewhere, either the speech-prefixes
themselves or accompanying stage-directions or dialogue provided the names of
characters when B first came upon them: in MV he abbreviated Q1's 'Loren.' to
'Lor.' and 'Portia.' to 'Por.' without further ado (informed by dialogue and the pre-
fix); in MND he shortened Q2's 'Queene.' to 'Qu.' and 'Robin.' to 'Rob.' when first
setting prefixes for these characters (stage-directions giving their names in full);
in 1H4, he substituted 'Fal.' for Q5's 'Fals.' and 'Dow.' for 'Dowg.' immediately
(stage-directions); on his first page of Rom., he shortened Q3's first 'Benu.' to 'Ben.'
and abbreviated its 'Tibalt.' to 'Tyb.' (stage-direction and speech-prefix).

Often, then, B found the full name of a character in a preceding stage-
direction, the immediate dialogue, or his copy's speech-prefix itself when he
undertook to abbreviate the first tag for a given character. Nevertheless, in his
work on four Comedies, one History, and two Tragedies, there is evidence of
varying value that B's inclination to abbreviate speech-prefixes was sometimes
so strong that he would fix on a short form, despite the form of his copy, when
setting his very first for a character.

If it is true that the speech-prefixes of his copy did not always effectively in-
fluence B to reproduce the form he found there while he was becoming familiar
with a given character, it is also true that many of his speech-prefixes in long, or
full-measure, lines were not affected by justification. A glance at the numbers in
the appended table (Note D) suggests that remarkably few of B's prefixes in long
lines find no precedents in short lines and that most of his forms in long lines
exhibit the general practices already described.

B's clearly preferred forms appear not only in short lines, but also in long and
nearly long lines which otherwise display the effects of justification on his normal
practice.[16] For example, on sig. f5 of 1H4, he set the complete 'King.' in a very full
line (2988L) that otherwise exhibits crowding in the shortened 'hart' at the end
of the line and in the lack of B's characteristic spacing after punctuation. Indeed,
there is no spacing after the point which concludes the speech-prefix itself; this

omission is contrary to one of B's most regular practices, that of setting at least
a one-en space between a prefix and the first word of dialogue. Earlier in the
same column B set 'Prin.' in a nearly long line of verse (2968NL) which otherwise
shows crowding to prevent flow-over, especially in the omission of spacing after
punctuation (including, again, the point that ends the speech-prefix itself). Like-
wise, in Tit. both 'Aron.' (2688L) and 'Lucius.' (2695L) are speech-prefixes that
display B's general practices in the face of pressures to justify. Both are in long
verse lines which B could have allowed to flow over but which he wished to keep
to one line in this part-page for purposes of formatting. 'Aron.' reproduces the
full form of Q3 despite B's substitution of '&' for its 'and' as well as the absence
of his usual comma spacing later in the line. 'Lucius.' also reproduces Q3's full
form even though in the speech itself B used the unsightly 'Emp.' to abbreviate
'Emperour', the penultimate word of the line. Thus neither speech-prefix was
affected by the anticipatory justification frequently found in the long lines that
often open verse speeches set by B; rather, each is typical of his normal practices.
These are perhaps the most unambiguous instances of B's adherence to his usual
practices for setting speech-prefixes in the face of the influence of justification,
but they are by no means uncommon.

Nevertheless, a relatively small number of B's speech-prefixes do exhibit the
effects of line justification. Some of these justified prefixes occur in prose. 'Bea.',
in the first page of Ado (32L), is one possibility (see Appendix, Note A). In the
first page of Rom., two instances of 'Gr.' substituted for Q3's 'Gre.' in long lines
betray justification. B's preferred form almost from the beginning was 'Greg.',
but in TLN 42L he set 'Gr.', besides (1) omitting all spacing after internal points
(including that for the prefix), (2) omitting the full-stop at the end of the line, and
(3) abbreviating with the generally eschewed forms 'thẽ', '&', and 'wil'. Another
'Gr.' (56L) appears in a line which also lacks spacing after punctuation (including
the speech-prefix point) and contains the non-preferred 'here'. Additionally, as
already mentioned (above in section II), two 'Sam.' speech-prefixes in this page
occur in lines that display similar evidence of compression.

More frequent than such prose lines are verse lines which contain short-
ened speech-prefixes resulting, presumably, from anticipatory justification. For
instance, in LLL B abandoned his well-established, standard 'Qu.' and 'Dum.'
to set 'Q.' and 'Du.' (2275L, 2743L) in long lines. On f5 of 1H4, he set 'Pri.'
instead of Q5's 'Prince.' in a full-measure line of verse that lacks spacing after
punctuation (including the speech-prefix point) and that contains 'here' (2934L),
while earlier he set 'Blu.' for Q5's 'Blunt.' (which B normally retained) in a line
that is similarly spaced and that contains the ligature [OMITTED], one of the most reli-
able signs of B's compression (2892L). His 'K.' for Q5's 'Kin.' on the next page
of 1H4 (3019L) and his 'Fai.' and 'De.' in MND (376L, 2941NL) also exhibit the
influence of justification, and several other speech-prefixes may possibly do so.
Justification, then, sometimes led B to shorten speech-prefixes, especially in long
or nearly long verse lines.[17]

Even smaller is the number of B's speech-prefixes lengthened for such ty-
pographical reasons. In fact, there are only three in the seven plays studied

here. Although in different formes, all three occur in B's last few pages of 1H4
(f4v–5v), and all three concern Falstaff, who is identified as 'Falst.' instead of Q5's
'Fal.' or 'Fals.'. Two of these expanded speech-prefixes are in long prose lines
that contain long spellings (e.g., 'bee', 'mee') and liberal word-spacing, especially
after commas (2766L, 3077L). The third is in a nearly long line displaying the
same sort of spacing but exactly reproducing Q5's faulty verse lineation (2944NL).
However, there is some uncertainty about the extent to which these three 'Falst.'
forms were the effect of justification alone. In f2, set at about the same time,
B used three other 'Falst.' speech-prefixes in long lines that exhibit crowding
rather than expansion; these three longer forms cannot, therefore, be attributed
to justification and apparently represent a temporary lapse from his preferred
'Fal.'.[18] Consequently, it may have been this short-lived and weak flirtation with
'Falst.' as well as the pressures of justification which thrice led B to lengthen his
usual 'Fal.' in f4v–5v.

Other possible evidence that B set long speech-prefixes to justify his lines is
even less persuasive,[19] and it is not comparable in quality to the relatively sparse
evidence, already cited, that B did sometimes shorten his speech-prefixes to fit
a type line to the Folio measure. But throughout F the proportion of prefixes
so influenced is relatively small. In sum, although exceptions are likely to occur
and must be allowed for, even speech-prefixes in full-measure lines, especially
the longer forms, will by and large exhibit B's general practices of handling these
'appurtenances'.

One other influence on B's speech-prefixes might have come from the forms
of names found in immediately preceding stage-directions. There is some slight
evidence that such influence did sometimes occur. The clearest instance is again
in 1 Henry IV, where on e2v B substituted the prefix 'Prince.' for Q5's 'Prin.' (841),
thus rejecting the form he had already adopted as his own standard. This speech-
prefix immediately follows the stage-direction 'As they are sharing, the Prince and
Poynes set upon them'. Two other examples in the same play are more complex
because the stage-direction does not immediately precede the speech-prefix in
question. These are the two cases of 'Pointz.' at the end of d6 which replace Q5's
'Poines.', once in a normal prefix, once in a catch-word. As explained elsewhere
(Appendix, Note B), the first Folio speech-prefix (214) comes after a Q5 stage-
direction ('Enter Poines') that was apparently deleted editorially, the addition of
'and Pointz' to the opening stage-direction (114) compensating for the later cut.
Since these two are the only 'Pointz.' prefixes that B set in the play, it is difficult
not to believe that the forms ultimately derived from the annotation for the earlier
stage-direction, which for some reason must have impressed itself on B's mind.

Altogether, then, in the seven plays studied here there are only three speech-
prefixes which show B rejecting the forms of his copy in favor of those found in
preceding stage-directions. They suggest that B sometimes made a deliberate

connection between a character's speeches and his entrance as represented in a
stage-direction. In a few other instances such a connection may in part lie behind
B's retention of long speech-prefixes (e.g., 'Prince.', 'Poines.', 'Bassianus.') from his
copy soon after the full name of the character appeared in an entry (1H4, 116L,
736L, 831, 968, 3097; Tit., 15). Yet in these instances other factors were probably
more responsible for B's reproduction of his copy's forms, including not only the
influence of justification, but his general liability to reproduce such long copy
forms under ordinary circumstances.