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III

Indeed, what is perhaps most interesting about B's handling of speech-prefixes
is his disposition to reproduce certain forms of his copy despite his preferences
for alternative forms. That B's speech-prefixes were liable to be influenced by
those of his copy is the premise behind Bowers' arguments that the variable
designations for the same characters in different scenes of All's Well that Ends
Well (e.g., forms of Rossillon and of Bertram) reflect the variable usage of the
Shakespearian foul-papers which served as printer's copy for this Folio play, and
further that B's use of 'Cassi.' and of 'Cass.'/'Cas.' in different episodes of Julius
Caesar reveals the presence of two different hands in the manuscript behind that
play. The evidence of the seven plays which B set from identified quartos gener-
ally confirms the validity of this general premise, though not necessarily of its
suggested implications for these plays.[20]

Variable designations appear in two Comedies set from known quartos. In
The Merchant of Venice, B's standard form for Shylock was, from the outset, 'Iew.'.
While setting IV.i (the court scene), he continued this practice. Not only did he
use 'Iew.' exclusively where Q1 varied between 'Iewe.' and 'Iew.', but he also set it
five times where Q1 reads 'Shy.'. However, twice B followed Qq's 'Shy.', contrary
to his established preference.[21] In MND Q2's name for Theseus varies between
'The.' and 'Duke.'. B followed his copy's 'The.' all 4 (+4L) times in the first scene.
But in setting the last scene of the play he followed Q2's 'Duke.', though varying
the length of the speech-prefix slightly by setting 'Duke.' (1) and 'Duk.' (1L), as well
as his usual 'Du.'. He also precisely reproduced Q2's 'Pir.' and 'Pyr.'.

As for B's use of longer but not full forms of a given name, one of the more
interesting cases is his 'Beatr.' at the top of K4 (Ado).[22] This derives from Q's
'Beatrice.' and was B's only such departure from his preference for 'Bea.' in Ado,
though elsewhere he displayed his tolerance for Q's 'Beat.'. In MV he likewise re-
tained one 'Anth.' from Q1 despite his well-established preference for the shorter

'Ant.'; he also reproduced half (6+1NL+3L) of Q1's 'Bass.' forms, after having
settled on 'Bas.' as his standard in the face of Q1's uniform 'Bass.'.[23] Furthermore,
he followed copy forms like 'P.Ioh.' and 'Mess.' in 1H4 and 'Samp.' and 'Offi.' in
Rom.; as in the Comedies these copy forms appear in B's work in pages containing
his expressed preference for a shorter prefix.

Had the quartos which served as B's copy for Ado, MV, MND, 1H4, and
Rom. vanished, the inferences would have been accurate that speech-prefixes like
'Shy.', 'The.', 'Beatr.', and 'Anth.' reflected those of his lost copy. Yet in 1H4 there
are 7 (1NL+6L) 'Falst.' prefixes which would seem to contradict the implications
of the evidence concerning longer forms, for they replace Q5's 'Fal.' or its 'Fals.'.
This conflicting evidence is, however, less forceful than it at first appears. As
already argued, 3 (1NL+2L) of these 'Falst.' forms can be put down largely to the
influence of justification (section II above). The other 4 all appear close together
in long lines in sig. f2. These aberrant instances of B's five-letter speech-prefixes
where his copy has shorter ones would normally weaken the value of longer (but
not full) speech-prefixes as indexes to the forms of his copy. But it may well be
that, as Eleanor Prosser has argued, B was deliberately expanding his text in this
page in every way possible and that consequently these four examples of 'Falst.'
are atypical and by no means indicative of his usual practices.[24] Certainly the four
full 'Prince.' prefixes on the same page—in fact, in the same passage—suggest
that here B had temporarily abandoned his normal practice, for whatever reason
(see below).

In assessing the implications of B's longer but not full speech-prefixes in other
Folio plays, it will be necessary to allow for the kind of aberration exhibited in
the four 'Falst.' speech-prefixes clustered together at the beginning of f2. It will
also be necessary to recognize that prefixes which are longer than B's normally
preferred forms, but which are not complete names, might reproduce the forms
of his copy imprecisely. Both 'Beatr.' (Ado) and 'North.' (1H4) were stimulated by
the longer forms of B's copy, but neither duplicates his copy's prefix exactly.

As with B's early retention of Q's 'Beat.' and his unique 'North.', longer pre-
fixes derived from copy are more likely to occur in the pages B set while he was
developing a standard form, whereas those, like 'Beatr.', that were set after he had
established a preference are likely to be less frequent though more unequivocal
evidence of a shift in the forms of his copy. His prefixes for Sampson in Romeo
and Juliet illustrate both parts of this generalization. Had Q3 not survived, the
first six of B's 'Samp.' prefixes in ee3, instead of being recognized as longish forms
derived from copy, might have been explained away as B's flirtation with a four-
letter standard form (as with 'Leon.' in Ado or 'Greg.' in Rom.).[25]

These provisos admitted, by and large the evidence of B's pages studied
here indicates that not only variable designations for a single character, but also
speech-prefixes that are longer than one of his standard abbreviations reflect the
variability of his copy. We are perhaps on somewhat surer grounds in making
such an inference when different names ('Iew.', 'Shy.') occur, than when a name
remains the same but a longer (though not complete) form of it appears in B's
work. Yet variable designations are likely to occur less frequently simply because
a Folio editor might have noted and tinkered with such differences, rather than
fussing with the extra letters of a prefix. In any event, either kind of variable
speech-prefix in B's pages should provide relatively good evidence of the char-
acteristics of his copy.

Finally, the most useful of B's speech-prefixes are not his longer but his full
forms, both because they are more frequent than the two kinds just discussed
and because they are highly reliable witnesses to the speech-prefixes of his copy.
In the four Comedies which B typeset from identified quartos, he set 63 speech-
prefixes containing complete names. All but 3 derive from his copy, the excep-
tions being 'Bottom.' for 'Bot.' in MND and 'Boyet.' for 'Boye.' and 'Boiet.' for 'Boy.'
in LLL. Almost half of B's full forms consist of five or more letters (e.g., 'Pedro.',
'Borachio.', 'Claudio.', 'Leonato.', 'Nerissa.'). The remainder are four-letter speech-
prefixes (e.g., 'Duke.', 'Iohn.', 'Lyon.', 'King.'), which might appear to represent B's
normal inclinations; yet he set such forms only when they occurred in his copy,
and his actual preferences were often clearly for shorter forms of the names (e.g.,
'Du.', 'Kin.').

In 1 Henry IV, the only play in the Histories universally acknowledged to have
been set from an identified quarto, B generally used a full name in a speech-prefix
only where his Q5 copy had such a form. This he did 37 times, reproducing
speech-prefixes like 'Prince.', 'Poi(y)nes.', 'Iohn.', 'Blunt.', and 'King.'. The first two
contrast strikingly with the favored abbreviated forms that dominate his pages,
whereas the other three are in the majority in B's pages, though there is evidence
to suggest he was open to setting other alternatives.[26] Of chief interest are the
full names for Hal and Poins, both because of their frequency and because B
established clear preferences for the shorter 'Prin.' and 'Poin.', though in different
manners (see section II above). The former was almost instinctive, the latter labo-
riously developed, and consequently B's use of either of these full forms instead
of its already established alternative provides strong evidence of his copy's forms
that is analogous in kind to 'Beatr.' and the two later instances of 'Samp.'.

In B's fifteen pages of this play, there are only five examples of his use of a
full form where his copy had an abbreviated speech-prefix, and all involve F's
'Prince.' for Q5's 'Prin.' or 'Pri.'. Of these five, four occur in sequence in f2,
the only page in that quire, or indeed in the play, for which B was required to
switch from his half of a quire in order to substitute for his partner and set up
the forme-mate to his own assigned page (f5v). It will be recalled that the same
page also contains the four aberrant 'Falst.' speech-prefixes mentioned earlier.
Two of the five anomalous 'Prince.' forms (2138L, 2150L) are in long lines and
in one-sentence speeches that flow-over to a second line of two or three words,
and a plausible cause for them may be found in Prosser's conclusion that B was
generally expanding his text on this page owing to underestimates of the matter
during casting-off. Whether these two prefixes somehow induced B to set the
other two full forms that follow them closely (2142, 2155) it is impossible to as-
certain. As for the remaining aberrant 'Prince.' (841L), it was probably occasioned
by the complete name that B set up in the immediately preceding stage-direction
(839), if not by justification as well. Thus there are no more than five instances
of B's speech-prefix 'Prince.' in 1H4 which belie the nature of his copy's speech-
prefixes, and all but two are to some extent special cases. This number of anoma-
lies compares rather favorably with the 37 instances in which B's full form derives
from his copy, though a few of them might conceivably exhibit the influence of
preceding stage-directions (116L, 736L, 968, 3097).

That this particular practice of B's continued through his work on the Trag-
edies is not easy to show because the evidence of the four part-pages of Tit. and
Rom. is limited. Yet even these few pages contain six complete speech-prefixes
that reproduce the forms of quarto copy and none that replaces a shorter form.
For instance, one 'Prince.' at the bottom of the opening page of Rom. (ee3) re-
produces Q3's 'Prince.', while four examples of B's 'Prin.' on the last page (Gg1)
succeed his copy's abbreviated form. Furthermore, B's work in Troilus and Cres-
sida offers some supporting evidence of this practice in the Tragedies. In arguing
that the Folio text was set from an annotated example of the 1609 quarto, Philip
Williams used complete names in six speech-prefixes to show the influence of Q's
forms on F, and two of these six are in B's pages.[27] Moreover, of the ten 'Aiax.'
speech-prefixes in F which he cites (its normal form being 'Aia.'), eight are B's,
and all eight occur in the first of the pages in which he encountered this charac-
ter (¶3). This evidence from Tro. combines with the limited evidence of Tit. and
Rom. and with the more numerous speech-prefixes in 1H4 and the Comedies to
suggest that throughout the Folio B's full forms generally and predictably derive
from his copy. Such evidence may be of use when the identity of B's setting copy
is more problematic than in these seven plays.