3 - Textual Studies

Summary

While some scholars hold that the production of articles on the habits of the compositors of Shakespeare’s plays is of questionable value, other scholars continue to produce such articles; the past year seems to have been generously supplied with provocative studies of the busy typesetters of Folio and Quartos. Jaggard’s Compositor B of the First Folio has received the closest scrutiny.

In articles on the texts of All's Well that Ends Well and of Julius Caesar, Fredson Bowers addresses the fidelity of B in the formal detail of copying speech prefixes. Though this quality of B’s work is not the primary concern of these studies, it is of interest that Bowers depends on that fidelity for the conclusions of both of them: ‘Compositor B. . . , would not be likely to go against copy [for a prefix] except perhaps in mechanical matters of abbreviation... [or] in the establishment of a favorite short form of the same prefix’ (p. 68).