Press Variants in Q2 Hamlet : An Accident on N(outer)
Gabriel Egan · Studies in bibliography · 2015
Press Variants in Q2 HamletAn Accident on N(outer) Gabriel Egan* (bio) Because of stop-press correction on certain formes and the retention of sheets showing the uncorrected state(s), the seven surviving exemplars of Q2 Hamlet (1604–5) are not identical. When John Dover Wilson collated Q2 in the 1930s, only six of these seven exemplars were known (the Polish one was undiscovered), and with this new exemplar and an altogether more careful collation Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor have, for their Arden3 edition, added eight variants to the eighteen variants found by Wilson.1 Thompson and Taylor’s abbreviated labels for the exemplars (followed in this essay) are different from Wilson’s, so for the sake of readers comparing their work the following mapping is given: Dev[onshire] = Huntington Library, so here HN Huth = Yale Elizabethan Club, so here Y2 Folg[er] = Folger Library, so here F B[ritish] M[useum] = British Library, so here L Cap[ell] = Trinity College Library Cambridge, so here C2 Grim[ston] = the earl of Verulam’s exemplar at the Bodleian, so here VER Unknown to Wilson = University of Wroclaw, so here Wro Of the twenty-six variants, ten are clustered on the outer side of the book’s final full sheet, N. The forme N(outer) exists in three states, listed in figure 1 according to which of the seven exemplars contains each combination of variants and with the supposed order of correction (established by Wilson) running down the page. Thus the uncorrected (or earliest-known) state is witnessed in exemplars F, HN, Y2, [End Page 115] and Wro, the first corrected state is uniquely witnessed in exemplar L, and the last (known) corrected state is witnessed in exemplars C2 and VER. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The ten press variants on N(outer). Fredson Bowers’s analysis of the reuse of headlines in skeleton formes showed that it is highly likely that Q2 Hamlet was set by two compositors, each working almost exclusively on his own sheets and providing type to each of two presses.2 Bowers presented his evidence using the post-war convention of assigning an upper-case roman numeral to each headline and listing the pages it topped (figure 2), but the same data are here also presented using the conventions developed by Peter W. M. Blayney and G. Thomas Tanselle (figure 3) that allow the patterns to be seen more clearly. In figure 3, boldface is used when one compositor lent the other a headline, which practice will be discussed in detail shortly. It is clear that four skeleton formes were set up, each containing four headlines (thus sixteen headlines, a-p). The skeletons were for the most part consistently used in two pairs, containing headlines a-h and i-p. The pair containing headlines a-h was used for sheets B, C, D, F and I and the pair containing headlines i-p was used for sheets E, G, H, K and L, while sheets M and N break this pattern. The half-sheet O was imposed and machined with half-sheet A, so that sheet O+A contributed three leaves to the book: the leaf conventionally designated A1 (presumably blank on both sides) is absent in all exemplars, the leaf conventionally designated A2 holds the title-page (with A2v blank) and O1r, O1v, and O2r hold the last three pages of the book (with O2v blank).3 Thus sheet O+A used only three running-titles: V=b for O1r, XIV=j for O1v, and XV=k for O2r. Sheet O+A could not be incorporated into a regular pattern of headline reuse with the other sheets and for clarity it is omitted from further discussion. Within each pair of skeletons, one was for the most part consistently used for the outer and the other for the inner forme in sheets B-N. It is possible for one compositor working with one press to construct and use skeletons in this way, but there is no reason to do so and it would put him to unnecessary trouble...