"Booksellers were often publishers, and publishers were often printers" (435).
Publishers tended to specialize in the kinds of materials they published, but printers tended not to, although there were some notable exceptions. Thomas East was known for printing music, and William Jaggard for heraldry, although neither of these printers confined themselves strictly to their respective materials (435 - 436).
"Many authors did not prepare their manuscripts for the press, and, on several occasions, their texts were printed without their knowledge" (438).
The German medical student and sometime proofreader Hieronymus Hornshuch complained that "it is particularly bothersome if someone submits his writings to their press not neatly written" (439). Henry Chettle's explanation that Greene's handwriting in Groatsworth of Wit was difficult to read, and thus Chettle transcribed Greene's manuscript himself (439). Thomas Heywood asks the reader to excuse the compositor at the end of The Exemplary lives and Memorable Acts of Nine the Most Worthy Women for setting type from a manuscript "coppy in a difficult and unacquainted hand" (439). These three testimonials offer evidence that not every manuscript was perfected before being submitted to the printer.
Moxon's description of proof reading was a three stage process, and while he is to some extent describing an ideal printshop, Moxon was himself a printer, and his descriptions of this practice are ikely at least partially based in his experience (443).
Heywood complains in Exemplary Lives of having to include an errata list because the "corrector... could not bee always ready in regard of some necessary employment" (443).
Topsell admits in the introductory epistle to his History of Serpents that numerous errors in his previous book, Four-footed Beasts were present because he and the publisher "were not so thoroughly estated as to maintaine a sufficient scholler to attend only upon the presse" (443).
"That it was usual for authors to correct proofs is indicated by the apologies for their failure to do so" (443).
Proof reading is unquantifiable, but the evidence of printed texts suggests that it was common practice, and according to Moxon the print shop corrector was assisted by a reader who read aloud from the manuscript (444).
Proofreading was undertaken to correct mechanical errors, such as wide white spaces, unlinked white spaces, ink splotches, and misaligned type (444).
Citation
Maguire, Laurie E. "The Craft of Printing (1600)." A Companion to Shakespeare. David Scott Kastan Ed. Malden: Blackwell. 1999. p 434 - 449. Print.
Showing posts with label print house. Show all posts
Showing posts with label print house. Show all posts
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Notes on "Shakespeare and the New Bibliography" - Chapter 6
An editor "must give reasons which shall cohere with all the bibliographical evidence both for the choice of the text upon which he founds his edition, where a choice is offered him, and for any textual changes which he admits into his text" (96). This is true, but if the editor stops at considering bibliographical evidence, they are going to do shallow work.
Greg believed that bibliographical scholars are editors should be two separate persons, the former investigating the facts of textual transmission, and the latter concerning themselves with creating critical editions based on those facts (97). So.... why didn't they stick to this plan? Or did the critical editors of the New Bibliography swallow the bibliographic narrative wholesale? Or did the bibliographers over-reach?
Once a given text is established as having more authority (i.e. being closer to the writer's manuscript) than another, that text should be chosen as the copy-text, and only emended or otherwise altered after careful consideration of Bibliographic evidence (102).
c.f. Percy Simpson's Shakespearean Punctuation (1911).
Elizabethan punctuation was more attentive to the pauses in spoken English than, as modern punctuation is, grammatical constructions in written English (107).
Hand D of Sir Thomas More, which is presumed to be Shakespeare, is only lightly punctuated, and given Moxon's direction that a corrector be 'very sagacious in Pointing' it is impossible to know how much the punctuation of a printed play book is the authors and how much the compositor's (108-109). Of course, an annotating reader might have also marked a text for punctuation before it was passed to a compositor (c.f. Massai).
While printshops tended to normalize spellings in-house, it is likely that a less-experienced compositor would have set his print direct from copy and without attempting to normalize, which creates a greater variation of spelling within a text (as in Q2 Hamlet) (109 - 111).
'While literary judgments are notoriously as shifting as the sand, bibliography provides a foundation of fact -- the rock of fact.' -- John Dover Wilson (qtd on 112).
Variations in the spelling of a characters name may be a sign of multiple compositors rather than authorial revision half-completed or multiple authors (113). You see that a lot in Merry Devil, I wonder what Wilson would say to the phenomenon of characters having the wrong names in the text (as opposed to speech prefix). I feel as if that is less likely to be a compositor error than an authorial one.
The best test for an emendation is that it is consistent with what is known or surmised of the textual history, agrees with the style of the author at the time of the writing, is the only probable reading that is appropriate to the context, and can explain the reason for the corruption (115).
Where it is supposed that a corruption in a printed text has arisen from a misreading of copy, it must be demonstrated that the manuscript words proposed could be mistaken for those printed, and the spelling falls within the range of variation witnessed in good quartos" (119-120). While some quartos may be better than others, I don't think any of them are necessarily bad.
Summary
New Bibliography has "profoundly changed editorial principle and practice. But no bibliographer would think for a moment of claiming that bibliography by itself is enough. To no aspect of Elizabethan literature, language, or life can an editor afford to be indifferent, and the ideal editor is at once bibliographer and critic, historian and antiquary, paleographer, philologist, philosopher, and theologian" (121). Where the New Bibliographers have failed is that, nowhere in that list appears anything approaching being a theatrical practitioner. Shakespeare was a man of the theatre, and while most writers for the stage were not, their customers were, and every producer must cater to the wants of their consumers.
New Bibliographers revolutionized the practice of editing, but for all their achievements, they neglected to look deeply enough into the one practice that was the sine qua non of Elizabethan playwrighting: the professional playhouses of early modern London. The narratives the New Bibliographers created neglect to account for the business of printing and playing, and the one fact that everyone who works in the entertainment industry knows: not all profits are necessarily immediate or monetary in nature.
Citation
Wilson, F.P. Shakespeare and the New Bibliography. Oxford: Oxford UP. 1970. Print.
Greg believed that bibliographical scholars are editors should be two separate persons, the former investigating the facts of textual transmission, and the latter concerning themselves with creating critical editions based on those facts (97). So.... why didn't they stick to this plan? Or did the critical editors of the New Bibliography swallow the bibliographic narrative wholesale? Or did the bibliographers over-reach?
Once a given text is established as having more authority (i.e. being closer to the writer's manuscript) than another, that text should be chosen as the copy-text, and only emended or otherwise altered after careful consideration of Bibliographic evidence (102).
c.f. Percy Simpson's Shakespearean Punctuation (1911).
Elizabethan punctuation was more attentive to the pauses in spoken English than, as modern punctuation is, grammatical constructions in written English (107).
Hand D of Sir Thomas More, which is presumed to be Shakespeare, is only lightly punctuated, and given Moxon's direction that a corrector be 'very sagacious in Pointing' it is impossible to know how much the punctuation of a printed play book is the authors and how much the compositor's (108-109). Of course, an annotating reader might have also marked a text for punctuation before it was passed to a compositor (c.f. Massai).
While printshops tended to normalize spellings in-house, it is likely that a less-experienced compositor would have set his print direct from copy and without attempting to normalize, which creates a greater variation of spelling within a text (as in Q2 Hamlet) (109 - 111).
'While literary judgments are notoriously as shifting as the sand, bibliography provides a foundation of fact -- the rock of fact.' -- John Dover Wilson (qtd on 112).
Variations in the spelling of a characters name may be a sign of multiple compositors rather than authorial revision half-completed or multiple authors (113). You see that a lot in Merry Devil, I wonder what Wilson would say to the phenomenon of characters having the wrong names in the text (as opposed to speech prefix). I feel as if that is less likely to be a compositor error than an authorial one.
The best test for an emendation is that it is consistent with what is known or surmised of the textual history, agrees with the style of the author at the time of the writing, is the only probable reading that is appropriate to the context, and can explain the reason for the corruption (115).
Where it is supposed that a corruption in a printed text has arisen from a misreading of copy, it must be demonstrated that the manuscript words proposed could be mistaken for those printed, and the spelling falls within the range of variation witnessed in good quartos" (119-120). While some quartos may be better than others, I don't think any of them are necessarily bad.
Summary
New Bibliography has "profoundly changed editorial principle and practice. But no bibliographer would think for a moment of claiming that bibliography by itself is enough. To no aspect of Elizabethan literature, language, or life can an editor afford to be indifferent, and the ideal editor is at once bibliographer and critic, historian and antiquary, paleographer, philologist, philosopher, and theologian" (121). Where the New Bibliographers have failed is that, nowhere in that list appears anything approaching being a theatrical practitioner. Shakespeare was a man of the theatre, and while most writers for the stage were not, their customers were, and every producer must cater to the wants of their consumers.
New Bibliographers revolutionized the practice of editing, but for all their achievements, they neglected to look deeply enough into the one practice that was the sine qua non of Elizabethan playwrighting: the professional playhouses of early modern London. The narratives the New Bibliographers created neglect to account for the business of printing and playing, and the one fact that everyone who works in the entertainment industry knows: not all profits are necessarily immediate or monetary in nature.
Citation
Wilson, F.P. Shakespeare and the New Bibliography. Oxford: Oxford UP. 1970. Print.
Notes on "Shakespeare and the New Bibliography" - Chapter 3
By comparison to other fields of interest to the bibliographer, formal bibliography and typography are fairly stable and certain fields of inquiry because they are examinations of mechanical processes of which we know a great deal (34).
cf McKerrow An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students.
cf Percy Simpson's Proofreading in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries (1935).
The level of proof correction in a print house varied according to the nature of the book, the standing of the printer, and the importance and persistence of the author. While Pope Sixtus V could expect that none of his writing would be printed without his first seeing a proof, the press could not afford to wait for most authors. Some would make regular visits to the print shop to correct their works, but they would do so with the knowledge that uncorrected sheets already pressed would be bound in the volume. To this end, some authors seem to have taken residence near the print shops for easy access (45 - 46).
In his 1608 History of Serpents, the author Topsell explains to the readers that there were 'escapes of the presse' in his 1607 History of Four-footed Beasts because the printer (William Jaggard) lacked Latin, Topsell was absence on other employments, and both of them together 'because we were not so thorowly estated, as to maintain a sufficient Scholler to attend only upon the presse' (47). As I proposed before, professional proof readers were not unknown in the period, and just as an author/publisher could chose to hire one, they could also chose not to.
There is no evidence that either Shakespeare or his fellow players (especially Heminge and Condell) did anything to correct Folio proofs; there exist in none of Shakespeare's plays any signs of cancel slips, manuscript corrections, or errata lists. There is only one case of leaves being cancelled to supply an omission to the text (47).
"What correction Shakespeare's plays received as they were passing through the press they received from the printers" (48).
Of four existing proof sheets of Elizabethan plays ("the inner forme of sheet D in one British Museum copy of Chapman's Monsieur D'Olive (1606); the outer forme of sheet B in one of the Huntingdon Library copies of The Contention (1600); and pp. 333 (Othello) and 352 (Anthony and Cleopatra) of the First Folio now in the Folger Library) errors are left uncorrected, and the errors that are corrected are technical, including punctuation and imperfections of type. These corrections could have easily been made without recourse to a manuscript (48). A footnote from Helen Gardner, who edited Wilson's work, notes that "two more proof-sheets for the Folio are now known: ff. Iv: 6(pp 62 and 71 in Romeo and Juliet) and qqI-6v (pp. 281 and 292 in Hamlet and Lear respectively)." (48 footnote 3*).
quoting Hinman: "The proofing [of the First Folio] ... achieved little indeed except in the way of obviating a fair number of superficial faults. There was a good deal of proof-correction. Over 500 changes were made. Very few substantive errors, however, were noticed at all; for the reader paid scant attention to these, and only on rare occasions did he consider it necessary for his purposes to read proof against copy" (49, footnote 1*).
Summary
Printing books is a mechanical process, and even when the errors committed in printing a book are human errors, the nature of those errors are often traceable as disruptions in the mechanical process. As a result, despite the fact that there is a great deal of mystery surrounding the records of the Stationer's Company, the London book trade, and the relationship between playing companies and publishers, the mechanics of books and typography are relatively transparent.
cf McKerrow An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students.
cf Percy Simpson's Proofreading in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries (1935).
The level of proof correction in a print house varied according to the nature of the book, the standing of the printer, and the importance and persistence of the author. While Pope Sixtus V could expect that none of his writing would be printed without his first seeing a proof, the press could not afford to wait for most authors. Some would make regular visits to the print shop to correct their works, but they would do so with the knowledge that uncorrected sheets already pressed would be bound in the volume. To this end, some authors seem to have taken residence near the print shops for easy access (45 - 46).
In his 1608 History of Serpents, the author Topsell explains to the readers that there were 'escapes of the presse' in his 1607 History of Four-footed Beasts because the printer (William Jaggard) lacked Latin, Topsell was absence on other employments, and both of them together 'because we were not so thorowly estated, as to maintain a sufficient Scholler to attend only upon the presse' (47). As I proposed before, professional proof readers were not unknown in the period, and just as an author/publisher could chose to hire one, they could also chose not to.
There is no evidence that either Shakespeare or his fellow players (especially Heminge and Condell) did anything to correct Folio proofs; there exist in none of Shakespeare's plays any signs of cancel slips, manuscript corrections, or errata lists. There is only one case of leaves being cancelled to supply an omission to the text (47).
"What correction Shakespeare's plays received as they were passing through the press they received from the printers" (48).
Of four existing proof sheets of Elizabethan plays ("the inner forme of sheet D in one British Museum copy of Chapman's Monsieur D'Olive (1606); the outer forme of sheet B in one of the Huntingdon Library copies of The Contention (1600); and pp. 333 (Othello) and 352 (Anthony and Cleopatra) of the First Folio now in the Folger Library) errors are left uncorrected, and the errors that are corrected are technical, including punctuation and imperfections of type. These corrections could have easily been made without recourse to a manuscript (48). A footnote from Helen Gardner, who edited Wilson's work, notes that "two more proof-sheets for the Folio are now known: ff. Iv: 6(pp 62 and 71 in Romeo and Juliet) and qqI-6v (pp. 281 and 292 in Hamlet and Lear respectively)." (48 footnote 3*).
quoting Hinman: "The proofing [of the First Folio] ... achieved little indeed except in the way of obviating a fair number of superficial faults. There was a good deal of proof-correction. Over 500 changes were made. Very few substantive errors, however, were noticed at all; for the reader paid scant attention to these, and only on rare occasions did he consider it necessary for his purposes to read proof against copy" (49, footnote 1*).
Summary
Printing books is a mechanical process, and even when the errors committed in printing a book are human errors, the nature of those errors are often traceable as disruptions in the mechanical process. As a result, despite the fact that there is a great deal of mystery surrounding the records of the Stationer's Company, the London book trade, and the relationship between playing companies and publishers, the mechanics of books and typography are relatively transparent.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Notes on "The Craft of Printing and the Publication of Shakespeare's Works - Chapter 3
1474 - Histories of Troy, printed by Johann Valdener, with his apprentice William Caxton; the first book printed in English (63).
Caxton set up a bookshop in Westminster in 1476, and set up a press shortly thereafter in Almonry, west of the Abbey. A Papal Indulgence, with a date filled in of 13 December 1476, is the earliest extant document from this print shop, and the earliest book printed was the early 1477 History of Jason, which is the first book printed in England (63 - 64).
In 1495 Wynkyn de Worde printed the first book to be made of English paper (milled by John Tate at Stevenage in Hertfordshire). Richard Pynson of Normandy introduced roman type to English print shops in 1509, De Worde printed the first Greek characters in England in 1517, and printed the first Hebrew and Arabic type in 1528 (67).
The Company of Stationers pre-dates printing in London; the guild existed as a group of scribes, illuminators, binders, and book sellers, and while overwhelmed by the influx of new books, they appear to have embraced the new technology and peaceably integrated printing into their professional community (67).
The Stationers company received control of printing in England via a royal charter from Queen Mary in 1557. This allowed them to determine the number of presses a printer could have, the maximum number of books printed in an edition (the maximum was 1500 copies), and the number of journeyman and apprentices a master printer could keep. Perhaps more significantly, it established a primitive method of copyright, allowing a printer to record the title of works he had purchased and his intention to publish (70).
The Company of Stationers formed a self-regulating body, mostly of book sellers and printers by their chartering, which kept out foreign influence, which pleased the crown, as it helped prevent the publication of foreign, seditious, or heretical works (70).
Summary
The development of printing in England came after printing had spread to the continent, but printed books easily integrated within the professional framework of scribes, and book binders and sellers. As on the continent, the production of books increased at a geometric rate after the introduction of the press. Royal charter gave official sanction to the Company of Stationers, which served as a self-regulating body to ensure fair trade among its members, and while a book did not have to be registered with the Stationer's Company to be printed, doing so provided legal protection should someone else attempt to print it.
Caxton set up a bookshop in Westminster in 1476, and set up a press shortly thereafter in Almonry, west of the Abbey. A Papal Indulgence, with a date filled in of 13 December 1476, is the earliest extant document from this print shop, and the earliest book printed was the early 1477 History of Jason, which is the first book printed in England (63 - 64).
In 1495 Wynkyn de Worde printed the first book to be made of English paper (milled by John Tate at Stevenage in Hertfordshire). Richard Pynson of Normandy introduced roman type to English print shops in 1509, De Worde printed the first Greek characters in England in 1517, and printed the first Hebrew and Arabic type in 1528 (67).
The Company of Stationers pre-dates printing in London; the guild existed as a group of scribes, illuminators, binders, and book sellers, and while overwhelmed by the influx of new books, they appear to have embraced the new technology and peaceably integrated printing into their professional community (67).
The Stationers company received control of printing in England via a royal charter from Queen Mary in 1557. This allowed them to determine the number of presses a printer could have, the maximum number of books printed in an edition (the maximum was 1500 copies), and the number of journeyman and apprentices a master printer could keep. Perhaps more significantly, it established a primitive method of copyright, allowing a printer to record the title of works he had purchased and his intention to publish (70).
The Company of Stationers formed a self-regulating body, mostly of book sellers and printers by their chartering, which kept out foreign influence, which pleased the crown, as it helped prevent the publication of foreign, seditious, or heretical works (70).
Summary
The development of printing in England came after printing had spread to the continent, but printed books easily integrated within the professional framework of scribes, and book binders and sellers. As on the continent, the production of books increased at a geometric rate after the introduction of the press. Royal charter gave official sanction to the Company of Stationers, which served as a self-regulating body to ensure fair trade among its members, and while a book did not have to be registered with the Stationer's Company to be printed, doing so provided legal protection should someone else attempt to print it.
Notes on "The Craft of Printing and the Publication of Shakespeare's Works - Chapter 2
Early printed books sought to reproduce the books created in scriptoria, and thus early typefaces were designed to resemble the same letters that scribes commonly used. Gutenberg saw no need to supplant the work of the illuminator, and thus he printed his books with spaces for illuminators to adorn printed books exactly as they did with manuscripts (34).
The first styles copied for print were of the family that we call "black letter." There were four formal hands (Textura (the most formal), Fere-humanistica, Rotunda, and Bastarda) and one informal (signature). More informal hands have less curves in their letters, Textura (which was used for the Gutenberg bible) is strictly angular and lacks any curves at all (the letter "o" is produced with six straight lines). Fere-humanistica had rounder, more open letters than Textura, and footless descenders (Textura's descenders had feet) that ended bluntly; this typeface was used for general works in Latin. Rotunda had curved letters within the straight lines of Textura, and tended to be used for works in the vernacular. Bastarda has many curved letters and the "f" and "long-s" descend below the line; it was the least formal of the formal faces, and was used for legal or general works (35).
Roman fonts were developed for classical works because the more modern black letter faces were considered inappropriate, and although modern scholars place the use of this lettering in the Carolingian period (~780 - ~900 AD), Renaissance scribes thought the face originated in ancient Rome. The first book printed in Italy, Cicero's De oratore, was printed in a Roman font in 1465 that is the ancestor of all other Roman faces (35).
The italic face was developed by Francesco Griffo while working in Venetian print house of Aldus Manutius, and was modeled on the cursive hand of the papal chancery. It was intended to be an economical alternative to roman typeface printing, but under the guidance of the designer Francois Guyot, working in Antwerp for the house of Plantin, italic face gained its function as a secondary and subordinate typeface used in conjunction with roman letters (37).
The primacy of roman, or "white-letter" faces, based on the classical model, came to supersede the more medieval black letter faces, with the primacy of white letter being established by around 1500, although vernacular works continued to be printed in black letter for years to come (37).
cf Stanley Morison's "Introduction to The New Hebrew Typography by Hugh J. Schonfield. London: Dennis Archer, 1932. Also other works by Morison, whom Williams calls "the eminent historian of typography" (37).
Canon roman is a large roman font that appears on the heading of "large and important volumes" such as the 1611 King James Bible and First Folio. Pica roman and italic, the smallest size of type available on specimen sheets designed by Francois Guyot in Antwerp in ~1565, but used by him in London in the 1570s, are the typefaces used for most of the original printings of Shakespeare's plays in single editions (39).
The long-s began disappearing from English after 1785 (40). I don't know how useful that is to my thesis, but it's an interesting fact.
One of Gutenberg's key innovations was the alloy formula he used for the creation of type: 75% lead, 12% tin, 12% antimony, 1% copper; this formula heats easily, cools quickly, neither expands nor shrinks during the heating and cooling process, and retains its solid shape over a lengthy service life. While modern formulas reduce the amount of lead and increase the amounts of other ingredients, modern type-casters still essentially follow Gutenberg's formula (46-47).
While specific measurements of sizes of paper varied between print shops in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a few sizes were agreed upon and regarded as roughly equivalent: Imperial (75 x 50 cm, 29" x 19-3/4"), Royal (60 x 44 cm, 24" x 17-1/2"), Demy (one half Imperial: 50 x 35 cm, 19-1/2" x 13-3/4"), and Foolscap (45 x 31.5 cm, 17-1/2" x 12-1/2"). Two other sizes were added in the sixteenth century: Crown (between Demy and Foolscap) and Pot (smaller than Foolscap). In the seventeenth century Medium was added (between Royal and Demy) (52).
Paper was available unfolded as a "broadside" or "broadsheet," which was suitable for public bills, or for books requiring large illustrations; folio, which was a broadside folded once, creating two leaves and four pages; quarto a broadside folded twice creating four leaves and eight sheets; octavo is a broadside folded three times for eight leaves and 16 sheets, and the series continues to sixteens (16mo), thirty-twos (32mo), and sixty fours (64mo). Twelvemo was an intermediary system that yielded books more convenient for handling than some of the folds based on fours; this system continued with eighteens (18mo) and twenty-fours (24mo) (53).
"The critical figured in the entire [printing] process were the compositors, because it was through their minds and fingers that the ideas of the text before them were 'committed to type'" (53).
Compositors were generally faithful to their responsibility to set an author's words faithfully, but they were also responsible for standardizing the author's spelling, form of words, capitalization, and punctuation; in this process they tended to subsume the idiosyncrasies of an author into their own, or into those of their print shop (likely both) (53 - 54).
"The number of pages to be printed at one time depends on the format of the book to be printed. For a folio volume the printer will print two pages at one time on one side of the sheet and then will print two pages on the other side of the sheet (perfect the sheet). The pages that fill either side of the sheet constitute one forme. The pages that will lie on the inside of the sheet when it is folded constitute the inner forme; those on the ourside, the outer forme. The pages of the inner forme of a sheet in folio will be pages two and three; the pages of the outer forme will be pages one and four. All of the pages of a forme are printed simultaneously" (55).
At a normal rate of speed, roughly 250 sheets could be printed per hour (59).
The number of copies printed in an edition was commonly somewhere between 1000 and 1500, and on the low end of this scale, a complete edition of a book containing either 48 folio or 96 quarto pages could be printed in as little as twelve days (two weeks time) (59).
"The amount of care given to the proofreading of early books varied with the importance of the work being printed and the time available" (59).
Compositors typically read over the line in their composing sticks, and may have read the pages on the forme, but for typographical and not literary concerns. More important works would have had a corrector proof read an early printing of a forme and mark errors; it was not customary for the press corrector to refer to the original manuscript, he was merely reading the sheet for sense, and if the sheet made sense as printed, he would let it pass (59).
"Uncorrected sheets already printed, the proof sheet itself, and the corrected sheets were all equally valid in the eye of the printer, and all were bound up indiscriminately in the final copies of a book to be put on sale" (60).
Holinshed's Chronicles of Enland, Scotland, and Ireland was an exception to the standard printing practice; a copy containing hundreds of page of proof sheets is currently held by the Henry E. Huntingdon library (60).
Checking a book for accuracy and fidelity to original copy was possible, but the process was cumbersome, time consuming, and expensive, and therefore was reserved for only the most important works: the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, foreign language works, and other books of suitable import. Proof sheets were not sent out of the print house to be corrected by the author until the eighteenth century (60).
Book binding was an ancient technique, much like paper making, and the advent of printing had more of a quantitative than a qualitative impact on the trade: there were many more books being produced to be bound. Only a few copies of a book would be bound initially, the rest were sold as sheets stitched together, although Bibles, prayer books, and law books were usually sold already bound (60).
The 1549 Book of Common Prayer contains the following notice describing binding options and costs:
Summary
The development of printing evolved from an emulation of the previous technology (manuscript) into a technical discipline in its own right. Even in the early days of printing, Gutenberg realized that the new technology would best serve a mass-market approach, and while a market later emerged for elegance and decoration of printed books, the technology and techniques of the print house were developed for speed and economy. While printers who were not faithful to their copy would not likely be in business for long, technical accuracy was the primary concern of the print house; more literary considerations were appropriate for larger volumes of more important works, but the sort of editorial scrutiny that modern authors have come to expect would have significantly increased the price of early modern books.
Just as publishers of "more important"editions chose to incur (and pass on) the costs added by having an annotating reader serve as copy editor, publishers of other works implicitly chose not to. I am, of course, specifically thinking of Arthur Johnson and his quartos of The Merry Devil of Edmonton.
The first styles copied for print were of the family that we call "black letter." There were four formal hands (Textura (the most formal), Fere-humanistica, Rotunda, and Bastarda) and one informal (signature). More informal hands have less curves in their letters, Textura (which was used for the Gutenberg bible) is strictly angular and lacks any curves at all (the letter "o" is produced with six straight lines). Fere-humanistica had rounder, more open letters than Textura, and footless descenders (Textura's descenders had feet) that ended bluntly; this typeface was used for general works in Latin. Rotunda had curved letters within the straight lines of Textura, and tended to be used for works in the vernacular. Bastarda has many curved letters and the "f" and "long-s" descend below the line; it was the least formal of the formal faces, and was used for legal or general works (35).
Roman fonts were developed for classical works because the more modern black letter faces were considered inappropriate, and although modern scholars place the use of this lettering in the Carolingian period (~780 - ~900 AD), Renaissance scribes thought the face originated in ancient Rome. The first book printed in Italy, Cicero's De oratore, was printed in a Roman font in 1465 that is the ancestor of all other Roman faces (35).
The italic face was developed by Francesco Griffo while working in Venetian print house of Aldus Manutius, and was modeled on the cursive hand of the papal chancery. It was intended to be an economical alternative to roman typeface printing, but under the guidance of the designer Francois Guyot, working in Antwerp for the house of Plantin, italic face gained its function as a secondary and subordinate typeface used in conjunction with roman letters (37).
The primacy of roman, or "white-letter" faces, based on the classical model, came to supersede the more medieval black letter faces, with the primacy of white letter being established by around 1500, although vernacular works continued to be printed in black letter for years to come (37).
cf Stanley Morison's "Introduction to The New Hebrew Typography by Hugh J. Schonfield. London: Dennis Archer, 1932. Also other works by Morison, whom Williams calls "the eminent historian of typography" (37).
Canon roman is a large roman font that appears on the heading of "large and important volumes" such as the 1611 King James Bible and First Folio. Pica roman and italic, the smallest size of type available on specimen sheets designed by Francois Guyot in Antwerp in ~1565, but used by him in London in the 1570s, are the typefaces used for most of the original printings of Shakespeare's plays in single editions (39).
The long-s began disappearing from English after 1785 (40). I don't know how useful that is to my thesis, but it's an interesting fact.
One of Gutenberg's key innovations was the alloy formula he used for the creation of type: 75% lead, 12% tin, 12% antimony, 1% copper; this formula heats easily, cools quickly, neither expands nor shrinks during the heating and cooling process, and retains its solid shape over a lengthy service life. While modern formulas reduce the amount of lead and increase the amounts of other ingredients, modern type-casters still essentially follow Gutenberg's formula (46-47).
While specific measurements of sizes of paper varied between print shops in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a few sizes were agreed upon and regarded as roughly equivalent: Imperial (75 x 50 cm, 29" x 19-3/4"), Royal (60 x 44 cm, 24" x 17-1/2"), Demy (one half Imperial: 50 x 35 cm, 19-1/2" x 13-3/4"), and Foolscap (45 x 31.5 cm, 17-1/2" x 12-1/2"). Two other sizes were added in the sixteenth century: Crown (between Demy and Foolscap) and Pot (smaller than Foolscap). In the seventeenth century Medium was added (between Royal and Demy) (52).
Paper was available unfolded as a "broadside" or "broadsheet," which was suitable for public bills, or for books requiring large illustrations; folio, which was a broadside folded once, creating two leaves and four pages; quarto a broadside folded twice creating four leaves and eight sheets; octavo is a broadside folded three times for eight leaves and 16 sheets, and the series continues to sixteens (16mo), thirty-twos (32mo), and sixty fours (64mo). Twelvemo was an intermediary system that yielded books more convenient for handling than some of the folds based on fours; this system continued with eighteens (18mo) and twenty-fours (24mo) (53).
"The critical figured in the entire [printing] process were the compositors, because it was through their minds and fingers that the ideas of the text before them were 'committed to type'" (53).
Compositors were generally faithful to their responsibility to set an author's words faithfully, but they were also responsible for standardizing the author's spelling, form of words, capitalization, and punctuation; in this process they tended to subsume the idiosyncrasies of an author into their own, or into those of their print shop (likely both) (53 - 54).
"The number of pages to be printed at one time depends on the format of the book to be printed. For a folio volume the printer will print two pages at one time on one side of the sheet and then will print two pages on the other side of the sheet (perfect the sheet). The pages that fill either side of the sheet constitute one forme. The pages that will lie on the inside of the sheet when it is folded constitute the inner forme; those on the ourside, the outer forme. The pages of the inner forme of a sheet in folio will be pages two and three; the pages of the outer forme will be pages one and four. All of the pages of a forme are printed simultaneously" (55).
At a normal rate of speed, roughly 250 sheets could be printed per hour (59).
The number of copies printed in an edition was commonly somewhere between 1000 and 1500, and on the low end of this scale, a complete edition of a book containing either 48 folio or 96 quarto pages could be printed in as little as twelve days (two weeks time) (59).
"The amount of care given to the proofreading of early books varied with the importance of the work being printed and the time available" (59).
Compositors typically read over the line in their composing sticks, and may have read the pages on the forme, but for typographical and not literary concerns. More important works would have had a corrector proof read an early printing of a forme and mark errors; it was not customary for the press corrector to refer to the original manuscript, he was merely reading the sheet for sense, and if the sheet made sense as printed, he would let it pass (59).
"Uncorrected sheets already printed, the proof sheet itself, and the corrected sheets were all equally valid in the eye of the printer, and all were bound up indiscriminately in the final copies of a book to be put on sale" (60).
Holinshed's Chronicles of Enland, Scotland, and Ireland was an exception to the standard printing practice; a copy containing hundreds of page of proof sheets is currently held by the Henry E. Huntingdon library (60).
Checking a book for accuracy and fidelity to original copy was possible, but the process was cumbersome, time consuming, and expensive, and therefore was reserved for only the most important works: the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, foreign language works, and other books of suitable import. Proof sheets were not sent out of the print house to be corrected by the author until the eighteenth century (60).
Book binding was an ancient technique, much like paper making, and the advent of printing had more of a quantitative than a qualitative impact on the trade: there were many more books being produced to be bound. Only a few copies of a book would be bound initially, the rest were sold as sheets stitched together, although Bibles, prayer books, and law books were usually sold already bound (60).
The 1549 Book of Common Prayer contains the following notice describing binding options and costs:
No maner of persone shall sell this present Booke vnpbounde, aboue the price of two shillynges and two pence. And bound in Forell [parchment] for .ii.s xd. [two shillings and ten pence] and not aboue. And the same bound in Shepes Lether for iii.s. iiii. pence [three shillings and four pence] and not aboue. And the same bounde in paste or in boordes, in Calues Lether, not aboue the price of .iiii.s [four shillings] the pece. God saue the Kyng.(qtd in Williams 62).
Summary
The development of printing evolved from an emulation of the previous technology (manuscript) into a technical discipline in its own right. Even in the early days of printing, Gutenberg realized that the new technology would best serve a mass-market approach, and while a market later emerged for elegance and decoration of printed books, the technology and techniques of the print house were developed for speed and economy. While printers who were not faithful to their copy would not likely be in business for long, technical accuracy was the primary concern of the print house; more literary considerations were appropriate for larger volumes of more important works, but the sort of editorial scrutiny that modern authors have come to expect would have significantly increased the price of early modern books.
Just as publishers of "more important"editions chose to incur (and pass on) the costs added by having an annotating reader serve as copy editor, publishers of other works implicitly chose not to. I am, of course, specifically thinking of Arthur Johnson and his quartos of The Merry Devil of Edmonton.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Notes on Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor - Chapter 2
While Henry VIII did much to suppress the printing of plays, and Edward and Mary only tightened their control of the printing industries, Elizabeth was more open to both printed and performed dramatic works. Elizabeth imported Italian scholars to her court, especially refugees of the counter-Reformation, who brought with them their evolving editorial sensibilities, which were coming to treat contemporary texts with the same scholastic rigor as their classical counterparts (69 - 70).
Paratextual materials calling attention to editorial practice were common in Italian playbooks. Editors took care to let readers know they had invested care and attention to correcting the mistakes of previous editions, and of identifying the failings of previous editors and translators to provide the reader with the editorial apparatus for the construction of the new, presumably superior edition (71 - 72).
With the increasing popularity of Italian drama at court, English play books started to advertise their own editorial apparati. John Day, in the second edition of Gorboduc, added an address to the reader that went so far as to claim that Norton and Sackville's original play was effectively raped as it was put into print (73 - 73). That is interesting, as it establishes a precedent as early as 1572 for the existence of the sort of piratical print house practices that led to the printing of bad quartos.
John Wolfe may be another source of continental editorial practices being introduced to the London print house. Wolfe, who specialized in printing Italian books (including Machiaveli's The Mandrake), probably traveled to Europe after serving a seven year apprenticeship to John Day in London, and possibly worked with Giunti. Although there is no documentary evidence that proves this beyond a doubt, Wolfe did adopt Giunti's device when he returned to London (75 - 76).
Wolfe's books generally include extensive paratextual materials that specify that the texts have not been interfered with by any editorial hand where the original authors are both still alive and directly involved in publication. By contrast, similar materials specifically advertise the work of an editor in preparing the texts of well-known, deceased authors (77).
Continental imprints on books made them more desirable to consumers, and Wolfe had a tendency to forge these imprints to help move copy, but the way in which he did belies a knowledge of humanist works, and Wolfe's typographical and editorial rigor was comparable to materials printed on the continent (79). Which tends to beg the question: if London book buyers were interested in continental imprints because of their supposed higher quality, how learned could these consumers have been if they were fooled by fictitious place names? Also worth considering, how justified was the London book purchaser in presuming that native works would not have bee subject to such a heightened level of editorial scrutiny? Still, if Wolfe felt the need to forge a continental imprint to make money, it clearly indicates that Londoners of the time were aware of quality editorial work, and actively sought it out in their purchases.
"The Italian plays published by Wolfe seem to have received as much editorial attention as any other f his literary publications" (79 - 80).
Professional writers, scholars, translators, and other men of letters all became familiar with Wolfe's editorial practice of recruiting scholarly assistants to help conduct his work (80).
Richard Jones, a contemporary of Wolfe's, published similar prefatory materials in some of his editions. Especially worthy of note is the address to the reader in Promos and Cassandra, in which he explains to the reader that the author had not perfected a copy of the manuscript for printing, and begs their indulgence if he has committed any errors (83).
Jones, however, was not so diligent in revealing his apparatus with his earlier works as he was with Promos and Cassandra. It is noteworthy that the printing of Promos and Cassandra coincides with the appearance of Wolfe's editions in London, and that this edition marks a turning point in Jones' career as a printer/editor (84).
When Jones later printed Marlowe's Tamburlaine, he would follow the same conventions he used for Promos and Cassandra, however when he printed Wilson's The Three Lords and the Three Ladies of London he did not do so. Massai posits that Marlowe's work was more reminiscent of the great Italian comedies, and thus inspired a more serious editorial treatment than Wilson's more allegorical play (84).
Jones was sporadic in his editorial work, and whereas Wolfe seemed concerned with recovering authorial intention, Jones was more concerned with distancing printed books from the play houses where they originated (87). In his introduction to Tamburlaine, for example, he mentions that he has excised several comic scenes that were well received on the stage, but that he did not deem appropriate for "so honorable and stately a history" (84 - 85). When Jones would later print A Knack to Know a Knave, he would retain the same conventions of setting speech prefixes (left margin) and stage directions (centered) that he used for Pomos and Cassandra, but neglected to include similar prefatory material (87).
Shakespeare used Pomos and Cassandra as a source for Measure for Measure, and would have thus been aware of print house conventions being employed for printing plays, and perhaps most notably to the literary status that the print house was beginning to accord to plays, or at least this play in particular (87).
Analysis
The London reading public of the late 16th century was developing a taste for the textual scholarship that had been imported by continental editions, scholars, and London printers who had traveled the continent. Driven by market demand, other printers were forced to adopt at least the appearance of this editorial rigor in preparing works for print, but the degree to which they did so depended on their perceived quality of the work. A playbook that was perceived to have been written in the classical mode would be accorded the dignity of a more literary preparation than a playbook that was viewed in a lighter regard (which Merry Devil almost certainly was).
While rigorous, even by modern standards, editorial practices were available, they were not universally applied. Let us again return to Henry Ballard's print shop. Arthur Johnson brings him a copy of Merry Devil, Ballard sees immediately that, although it may start in the same mold as a history or tragedy, it is a fairly light hearted comedy. As I once heard Tom Berger described printed plays, a "comic book," and perhaps a literally cut and pasted manuscript at that. How should he treat this work? While modern editorial practice may have been available in 1608, it was not universally applied because it did not need to be. Tamburlaine is a play that some might study for its fine rhetoric, Merry Devil is not. Nor, for that matter, is Merry Wives. It is becoming increasingly obvious to me that I need to seek out that bad quarto of Merry Wives as a reference point.
This begs another question: if Merry Devil was not worthy of editorial rigor in 1608, is it in 2010? What is the text designed to do? What is the text that serves a production designed to do? What purpose should a new edition serve?
Paratextual materials calling attention to editorial practice were common in Italian playbooks. Editors took care to let readers know they had invested care and attention to correcting the mistakes of previous editions, and of identifying the failings of previous editors and translators to provide the reader with the editorial apparatus for the construction of the new, presumably superior edition (71 - 72).
With the increasing popularity of Italian drama at court, English play books started to advertise their own editorial apparati. John Day, in the second edition of Gorboduc, added an address to the reader that went so far as to claim that Norton and Sackville's original play was effectively raped as it was put into print (73 - 73). That is interesting, as it establishes a precedent as early as 1572 for the existence of the sort of piratical print house practices that led to the printing of bad quartos.
John Wolfe may be another source of continental editorial practices being introduced to the London print house. Wolfe, who specialized in printing Italian books (including Machiaveli's The Mandrake), probably traveled to Europe after serving a seven year apprenticeship to John Day in London, and possibly worked with Giunti. Although there is no documentary evidence that proves this beyond a doubt, Wolfe did adopt Giunti's device when he returned to London (75 - 76).
Wolfe's books generally include extensive paratextual materials that specify that the texts have not been interfered with by any editorial hand where the original authors are both still alive and directly involved in publication. By contrast, similar materials specifically advertise the work of an editor in preparing the texts of well-known, deceased authors (77).
Continental imprints on books made them more desirable to consumers, and Wolfe had a tendency to forge these imprints to help move copy, but the way in which he did belies a knowledge of humanist works, and Wolfe's typographical and editorial rigor was comparable to materials printed on the continent (79). Which tends to beg the question: if London book buyers were interested in continental imprints because of their supposed higher quality, how learned could these consumers have been if they were fooled by fictitious place names? Also worth considering, how justified was the London book purchaser in presuming that native works would not have bee subject to such a heightened level of editorial scrutiny? Still, if Wolfe felt the need to forge a continental imprint to make money, it clearly indicates that Londoners of the time were aware of quality editorial work, and actively sought it out in their purchases.
"The Italian plays published by Wolfe seem to have received as much editorial attention as any other f his literary publications" (79 - 80).
Professional writers, scholars, translators, and other men of letters all became familiar with Wolfe's editorial practice of recruiting scholarly assistants to help conduct his work (80).
Richard Jones, a contemporary of Wolfe's, published similar prefatory materials in some of his editions. Especially worthy of note is the address to the reader in Promos and Cassandra, in which he explains to the reader that the author had not perfected a copy of the manuscript for printing, and begs their indulgence if he has committed any errors (83).
Jones, however, was not so diligent in revealing his apparatus with his earlier works as he was with Promos and Cassandra. It is noteworthy that the printing of Promos and Cassandra coincides with the appearance of Wolfe's editions in London, and that this edition marks a turning point in Jones' career as a printer/editor (84).
When Jones later printed Marlowe's Tamburlaine, he would follow the same conventions he used for Promos and Cassandra, however when he printed Wilson's The Three Lords and the Three Ladies of London he did not do so. Massai posits that Marlowe's work was more reminiscent of the great Italian comedies, and thus inspired a more serious editorial treatment than Wilson's more allegorical play (84).
Jones was sporadic in his editorial work, and whereas Wolfe seemed concerned with recovering authorial intention, Jones was more concerned with distancing printed books from the play houses where they originated (87). In his introduction to Tamburlaine, for example, he mentions that he has excised several comic scenes that were well received on the stage, but that he did not deem appropriate for "so honorable and stately a history" (84 - 85). When Jones would later print A Knack to Know a Knave, he would retain the same conventions of setting speech prefixes (left margin) and stage directions (centered) that he used for Pomos and Cassandra, but neglected to include similar prefatory material (87).
Shakespeare used Pomos and Cassandra as a source for Measure for Measure, and would have thus been aware of print house conventions being employed for printing plays, and perhaps most notably to the literary status that the print house was beginning to accord to plays, or at least this play in particular (87).
Analysis
The London reading public of the late 16th century was developing a taste for the textual scholarship that had been imported by continental editions, scholars, and London printers who had traveled the continent. Driven by market demand, other printers were forced to adopt at least the appearance of this editorial rigor in preparing works for print, but the degree to which they did so depended on their perceived quality of the work. A playbook that was perceived to have been written in the classical mode would be accorded the dignity of a more literary preparation than a playbook that was viewed in a lighter regard (which Merry Devil almost certainly was).
While rigorous, even by modern standards, editorial practices were available, they were not universally applied. Let us again return to Henry Ballard's print shop. Arthur Johnson brings him a copy of Merry Devil, Ballard sees immediately that, although it may start in the same mold as a history or tragedy, it is a fairly light hearted comedy. As I once heard Tom Berger described printed plays, a "comic book," and perhaps a literally cut and pasted manuscript at that. How should he treat this work? While modern editorial practice may have been available in 1608, it was not universally applied because it did not need to be. Tamburlaine is a play that some might study for its fine rhetoric, Merry Devil is not. Nor, for that matter, is Merry Wives. It is becoming increasingly obvious to me that I need to seek out that bad quarto of Merry Wives as a reference point.
This begs another question: if Merry Devil was not worthy of editorial rigor in 1608, is it in 2010? What is the text designed to do? What is the text that serves a production designed to do? What purpose should a new edition serve?
Notes on Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor - Chapter 1
Based on the output and associations of John Rastell, and later his son William, these two men ran what can be described as the first "humanist" press in London (41). Their production of playbooks provides key insight into the almost certain relationship between playing companies and print houses: 1/10 of the books John printed were playbooks, and William doubled the number so that 1/5 books he printed were plays (42). Wynkyn de Worde, who based on Short Title Catalog numbers produced over eight hundred books, printed only three playbooks: Hyckescorner (STC 14039), The World and the Child (STC 25982), and The Interlude of Youth (STC 14111), and as the title of the last of these implies, these are all more properly described as "interludes" than plays (41 - 42). A comparison of the relative output of these printers suggest a deliberate choice on the part of the Rastells, and probably a relationship between the authors and the printers (42). This further suggests that authors wrote their plays conscious of the fact that they probably would be printed (42).
By the time printing had been introduced to London in 1476, the development of the print industry over continental Europe had inspired new scholarly efforts in procuring and preparing the best possible manuscripts of Greek and Latin works for printing. Early Italian humanist scholars had already started collating these manuscripts and employing sophisticated editorial methods, which ultimately led to new translations and editions of the complete works of Plato, the proof that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery, and to the correction of the New Testament. These practices would be introduced to London via Desiderius Erasmus and his friendship with Thomas More (42 - 43).
One of the ways in which Erasmus' editions rose to prominence throughout Europe was his use of fellow humanist scholars as editorial assistants to help him collate and correct manuscript texts (43 - 44).
Erasmus pursued textual accuracy and believed himself capable of recovering "authorial intentions," but also recognized that editorial intervention with a text could never be simply reduced to simple mechanical reproduction, which could not produce "true readings" (49). In this way, Erasmus foreshadows the modern editor if his own, and of Shakespeare's works. Simple mechanical reproduction is not sufficient to create a "true reading" of a text because that true reading requires the interpretation of the text in its narrative, cultural, material, and linguistic forms.
Extant paratextual materials related to the four printings of Utopia reveal that Thomas More studied Erasmus' editorial practices and attempted to emulate them (49).
Erasmus was such a close collaborator of More on Utopia that he seems to have helped coordinate the printing of all four editions, and to have prepared More's manuscript for the press (51).
More imported Erasmus' editorial techniques and focus on textual accuracy from continental Europe, but it is noteworthy that he also brought these techniques to his printers, John and William Rastell (55).
More was exacting and detailed in his instructions to his printers for the preparation of his manuscripts into print. Pynson, one of More's early printers, complains that, after the whole work had already been printed, he had received a newly emended copy from More, and had to re-set the entire book (56).
More sees in the process of perfecting his manuscript copy for print the advantage of editorial review, and finds the process of print gives more control over authorial intentions than manuscript circulation, which leave the work open to annotation by other hands (57).
In The Debellacyon More has printed a four page apology to the reader explaining a textual error that he missed in the perfecting process. He enjoins the reader not to blame the printer, prints the misprinted section, and proceeds to explain that this is due to him recording the wrong tense of the word initially. It is a devotion to textual accuracy that reveals his commitment to the print process (58).
Partially because dramatic works were coming to be valued by humanists as pedagogical tools in schools and universities, the Rastells applied the same diligence in preparing playbooks for the press that they did their other works, including More's (59).
While the early texts prepared by the Rastells, such as Fulgens and Lucrece were good, they were not perfect, and the sole existing copy of this play book displays the work of an annotating reader in correcting irregularities in the text, and even adding a missing syllable to complete an otherwise short stanza (62).
Analysis
Massai establishes a tradition of relationships between printers and authors, including the authors of plays, going back to the early years of the London press. It seems an important distinction that the Rastells treated their playbooks as they did more serious works, but I don't think it's possible to say that all printers would have necessarily followed suite. Also, the quality of the printed book seems to have been in part determined by the oversight of a singular author intent that the work should reflect his intentions (as in the case of ore), and Massai herself notes that the collaborative authorship practices of dramatic writing were not necessarily conducive to this (64). While Massai establishes a tradition, there may be no way of knowing if that tradition was still being followed a century later, or even how it was followed in Johnson's print shop.
By the time printing had been introduced to London in 1476, the development of the print industry over continental Europe had inspired new scholarly efforts in procuring and preparing the best possible manuscripts of Greek and Latin works for printing. Early Italian humanist scholars had already started collating these manuscripts and employing sophisticated editorial methods, which ultimately led to new translations and editions of the complete works of Plato, the proof that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery, and to the correction of the New Testament. These practices would be introduced to London via Desiderius Erasmus and his friendship with Thomas More (42 - 43).
One of the ways in which Erasmus' editions rose to prominence throughout Europe was his use of fellow humanist scholars as editorial assistants to help him collate and correct manuscript texts (43 - 44).
Erasmus pursued textual accuracy and believed himself capable of recovering "authorial intentions," but also recognized that editorial intervention with a text could never be simply reduced to simple mechanical reproduction, which could not produce "true readings" (49). In this way, Erasmus foreshadows the modern editor if his own, and of Shakespeare's works. Simple mechanical reproduction is not sufficient to create a "true reading" of a text because that true reading requires the interpretation of the text in its narrative, cultural, material, and linguistic forms.
Extant paratextual materials related to the four printings of Utopia reveal that Thomas More studied Erasmus' editorial practices and attempted to emulate them (49).
Erasmus was such a close collaborator of More on Utopia that he seems to have helped coordinate the printing of all four editions, and to have prepared More's manuscript for the press (51).
More imported Erasmus' editorial techniques and focus on textual accuracy from continental Europe, but it is noteworthy that he also brought these techniques to his printers, John and William Rastell (55).
More was exacting and detailed in his instructions to his printers for the preparation of his manuscripts into print. Pynson, one of More's early printers, complains that, after the whole work had already been printed, he had received a newly emended copy from More, and had to re-set the entire book (56).
More sees in the process of perfecting his manuscript copy for print the advantage of editorial review, and finds the process of print gives more control over authorial intentions than manuscript circulation, which leave the work open to annotation by other hands (57).
In The Debellacyon More has printed a four page apology to the reader explaining a textual error that he missed in the perfecting process. He enjoins the reader not to blame the printer, prints the misprinted section, and proceeds to explain that this is due to him recording the wrong tense of the word initially. It is a devotion to textual accuracy that reveals his commitment to the print process (58).
Partially because dramatic works were coming to be valued by humanists as pedagogical tools in schools and universities, the Rastells applied the same diligence in preparing playbooks for the press that they did their other works, including More's (59).
While the early texts prepared by the Rastells, such as Fulgens and Lucrece were good, they were not perfect, and the sole existing copy of this play book displays the work of an annotating reader in correcting irregularities in the text, and even adding a missing syllable to complete an otherwise short stanza (62).
Analysis
Massai establishes a tradition of relationships between printers and authors, including the authors of plays, going back to the early years of the London press. It seems an important distinction that the Rastells treated their playbooks as they did more serious works, but I don't think it's possible to say that all printers would have necessarily followed suite. Also, the quality of the printed book seems to have been in part determined by the oversight of a singular author intent that the work should reflect his intentions (as in the case of ore), and Massai herself notes that the collaborative authorship practices of dramatic writing were not necessarily conducive to this (64). While Massai establishes a tradition, there may be no way of knowing if that tradition was still being followed a century later, or even how it was followed in Johnson's print shop.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Notes on Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor - Introduction
One of the authors Dr. Menzer recommended I look into when I started this project was Sonia Massai, and in what now feels like the pre-history days of last semester, I recall reading one of her articles on the matter (i.e. before I was taking obsessive compulsive notes. It's true, you never can read enough, but I definitely want to make a dent into Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor before I go much further. The inside cover claims this to be an exploration of the prehistory of editing, which is right up my alley.
While we might commonly mark Nicholas Rowe's 1709 edition of The Works of Mr. William Shakespeare as the beginning of editing Shakespeare's plays, and of giving a prominent place to the editor, "editorial manipulation" of the texts had been taking place for nearly a century by the time of Rowe's 1709 edition (1 - 2).
Julie Stone Peters has already explored the interplay between the playhouse and the print shop. The commercial possibilities of offering new texts that were, as commonly advertised on title pages of the period, "newly corrected and amended." It is, however, impossible to say what editorial principles guided these editions. While there is a lack of direct evidence to demonstrate how this process was done, there is some evidence, such as the stationer's preface in the second edition of the Comedies and Tragedies of Beaumont and Fletcher (3 - 4).
The process of manuscript annotations to a printed copy for subsequent printing was common enough that the verb "to perfect" came to mean not only "to complete," but also "to make faultless," and was specifically used in this latter context of the preparation of printers copy (5 - 6).
From George Whetstone's dedicatory epistle to Promos and Cassandra we know that texts commonly underwent a stage where they were considered imperfect and in need of correction before being printed. To this Richard Jones, the printer, adds another epistle to the reader explaining that Whetstone didn't supply him with a perfected copy of the work, and begs the indulgence of the reader in forgiving any errors he might have committed in the process. From this, we can see that, should the author have been unavailable, it was preferable that another party should undertake this task of "perfecting" the manuscript (6 - 7).
The final sentence of Heminge and Condell's dedicatory epistle of the First Folio clearly states that they have perfected the copies of the plays (or at least are taking responsibility for that) prior to their printing (7 - 8).
Mosley's collection of the works of Sir John Suckling offers a contrary example, where Mosely states in a preface that he has left The Sad One: A Tragedy un-perfected. Mosely found The Sad One to be incomplete, and decided to print it as he found it rather than supplement Suckling's works with another author unconnected to the original (8 - 9).
"While non-authorial completion or revision of an authoritative, though fragmentary, copy was increasingly regarded as detrimental tampering, non-authorial preparation of dramatic copy for the pres was valued both when it corrected a manuscript draft of a work which the author had failed to perfect and when it corrected imperfections which had found their way into earlier editions then used as printer's copy for later re-issues" (9 - 10).
Whether the original author was able to perfect their manuscript for print, or another agent was required, the perfection of the manuscript for the printer's copy was viewed as an essential part of the printing process (10).
Since the manuscript copies, perfected or otherwise, used to set playbooks for printing do not survive, we must look to the "patterns of textual variations" that occur in plays that were printed more than once, especially when those plays specifically advertise that they are revised or expanded on their title pages (10).
Changes to a text between printings which require some knowledge of that text are the mark of editorial and not print house influence. Print house practices required setters to pay attention to the spelling of words, punctuation, and proper italicization; printers were little concerned with spech prefixes or the use of the proper word within the context of the play (11 - 12).
Similarly, the play house practice of annotating printed texts tended to be towards the end of noting sound cues, cues indicating the use of a prop, a warning to a stage hand, or an indication that the stage would be cleared. They would not have changed/normalized speech prefixes unless doing so was related to a change in the stage action relative to the printed text (13). i.e. early modern prompters annotated scripts in much the same way that modern stage managers do.
The most common written annotations to printed playbooks in the early modern period included the addition or emendation of stage directions, the addition or emendation of speech prefixes, and the correction of nonsensical language in the dialogue. While individual corrections are almost impossible to date precisely, certain letters distinctive in 16th and 17th century secretary hand were no longer in common use by the end of the 18th century (14).
It is noteworthy that manuscript emendations to playbooks by private owners of those books were common, and indicates either a familiarity with the play as performed or with the greater narrative of the text (14 - 21).
Since it is difficult to trace the origins of manuscript emendations to printed playbooks, it is best to think of the individual who make these emendations as "annotating readers." Their emendations tend to demonstrate a familiarity with the text that goes beyond what would commonly be expected of print house practice, but neither their authorial or play house nature can be firmly established (30).
Methods of the New Bibliography devoted discovery the agency of a primary author do not mesh well with the emendations left behind by annotating readers. Since these readers cannot be connected with the authorial hand (or agents of the playhouse or publisher) in any meaningful way, the emendations that annotating readers have left behind will typically be disregarded by modern editors (31).
Modern editors may also discount emendations by annotating readers because they do not fit neatly into the model of removing print house corruptions in the service of illuminating authorial or theatrical intentions (31 - 32).
Many, if not most, stationers chose not to print plays for whatever reason, and it is likely that those who did had some connection with the playing companies. If this is the case, it is more likely than not that they would have had access to authorial manuscript copies of the plays they published (34).
Analysis
Unless I miss my guess, Massai is going to trace the lineage of Nicholas Rowe and those who came after him back to the annotating readers of the early modern era. She admits that she will have little direct evidence to proceed from, but does a fine job of establishing evidence that, some of the purchasers of his printed texts felt the need to correct those texts. The source of their correction is indeterminate; while it may likely be in performance, since we can only very approximately date the annotations, we have no way of knowing if this was a performance given in Shakespeare's lifetime, or if it was at the Globe, Blackfriars, or some private venue. One is also forced to accept the possibility that the source of some of these annotations may have been in the fancy of the annotator, but even if the emendation was routed in performance, we do not have the records necessary to corroborate whether or not the annotator was remembering properly.
Still, the tie between perfected copies being sent to the print house, and the link between stationers and the playhouse is useful. That said, while Arthur Johnson did possess one other King's Men play, he clearly didn't have significant dealings with them, but there exists a connection all the same. Alternatively, the case of the bad quartos is that they derived from pirated manuscripts from an actor in the company, and since the Host character figured prominently into the Merry Wives bad quarto, it has been assumed that this actor was involved in the piracy. If that is true, than we might be seeing something similar happening with Merry Devil since a Host character plays prominently in that play, too.
Maybe Merry Devil is a bad quarto, after all.
While we might commonly mark Nicholas Rowe's 1709 edition of The Works of Mr. William Shakespeare as the beginning of editing Shakespeare's plays, and of giving a prominent place to the editor, "editorial manipulation" of the texts had been taking place for nearly a century by the time of Rowe's 1709 edition (1 - 2).
Julie Stone Peters has already explored the interplay between the playhouse and the print shop. The commercial possibilities of offering new texts that were, as commonly advertised on title pages of the period, "newly corrected and amended." It is, however, impossible to say what editorial principles guided these editions. While there is a lack of direct evidence to demonstrate how this process was done, there is some evidence, such as the stationer's preface in the second edition of the Comedies and Tragedies of Beaumont and Fletcher (3 - 4).
The process of manuscript annotations to a printed copy for subsequent printing was common enough that the verb "to perfect" came to mean not only "to complete," but also "to make faultless," and was specifically used in this latter context of the preparation of printers copy (5 - 6).
From George Whetstone's dedicatory epistle to Promos and Cassandra we know that texts commonly underwent a stage where they were considered imperfect and in need of correction before being printed. To this Richard Jones, the printer, adds another epistle to the reader explaining that Whetstone didn't supply him with a perfected copy of the work, and begs the indulgence of the reader in forgiving any errors he might have committed in the process. From this, we can see that, should the author have been unavailable, it was preferable that another party should undertake this task of "perfecting" the manuscript (6 - 7).
The final sentence of Heminge and Condell's dedicatory epistle of the First Folio clearly states that they have perfected the copies of the plays (or at least are taking responsibility for that) prior to their printing (7 - 8).
Mosley's collection of the works of Sir John Suckling offers a contrary example, where Mosely states in a preface that he has left The Sad One: A Tragedy un-perfected. Mosely found The Sad One to be incomplete, and decided to print it as he found it rather than supplement Suckling's works with another author unconnected to the original (8 - 9).
"While non-authorial completion or revision of an authoritative, though fragmentary, copy was increasingly regarded as detrimental tampering, non-authorial preparation of dramatic copy for the pres was valued both when it corrected a manuscript draft of a work which the author had failed to perfect and when it corrected imperfections which had found their way into earlier editions then used as printer's copy for later re-issues" (9 - 10).
Whether the original author was able to perfect their manuscript for print, or another agent was required, the perfection of the manuscript for the printer's copy was viewed as an essential part of the printing process (10).
Since the manuscript copies, perfected or otherwise, used to set playbooks for printing do not survive, we must look to the "patterns of textual variations" that occur in plays that were printed more than once, especially when those plays specifically advertise that they are revised or expanded on their title pages (10).
Changes to a text between printings which require some knowledge of that text are the mark of editorial and not print house influence. Print house practices required setters to pay attention to the spelling of words, punctuation, and proper italicization; printers were little concerned with spech prefixes or the use of the proper word within the context of the play (11 - 12).
Similarly, the play house practice of annotating printed texts tended to be towards the end of noting sound cues, cues indicating the use of a prop, a warning to a stage hand, or an indication that the stage would be cleared. They would not have changed/normalized speech prefixes unless doing so was related to a change in the stage action relative to the printed text (13). i.e. early modern prompters annotated scripts in much the same way that modern stage managers do.
The most common written annotations to printed playbooks in the early modern period included the addition or emendation of stage directions, the addition or emendation of speech prefixes, and the correction of nonsensical language in the dialogue. While individual corrections are almost impossible to date precisely, certain letters distinctive in 16th and 17th century secretary hand were no longer in common use by the end of the 18th century (14).
It is noteworthy that manuscript emendations to playbooks by private owners of those books were common, and indicates either a familiarity with the play as performed or with the greater narrative of the text (14 - 21).
Since it is difficult to trace the origins of manuscript emendations to printed playbooks, it is best to think of the individual who make these emendations as "annotating readers." Their emendations tend to demonstrate a familiarity with the text that goes beyond what would commonly be expected of print house practice, but neither their authorial or play house nature can be firmly established (30).
Methods of the New Bibliography devoted discovery the agency of a primary author do not mesh well with the emendations left behind by annotating readers. Since these readers cannot be connected with the authorial hand (or agents of the playhouse or publisher) in any meaningful way, the emendations that annotating readers have left behind will typically be disregarded by modern editors (31).
Modern editors may also discount emendations by annotating readers because they do not fit neatly into the model of removing print house corruptions in the service of illuminating authorial or theatrical intentions (31 - 32).
Many, if not most, stationers chose not to print plays for whatever reason, and it is likely that those who did had some connection with the playing companies. If this is the case, it is more likely than not that they would have had access to authorial manuscript copies of the plays they published (34).
Analysis
Unless I miss my guess, Massai is going to trace the lineage of Nicholas Rowe and those who came after him back to the annotating readers of the early modern era. She admits that she will have little direct evidence to proceed from, but does a fine job of establishing evidence that, some of the purchasers of his printed texts felt the need to correct those texts. The source of their correction is indeterminate; while it may likely be in performance, since we can only very approximately date the annotations, we have no way of knowing if this was a performance given in Shakespeare's lifetime, or if it was at the Globe, Blackfriars, or some private venue. One is also forced to accept the possibility that the source of some of these annotations may have been in the fancy of the annotator, but even if the emendation was routed in performance, we do not have the records necessary to corroborate whether or not the annotator was remembering properly.
Still, the tie between perfected copies being sent to the print house, and the link between stationers and the playhouse is useful. That said, while Arthur Johnson did possess one other King's Men play, he clearly didn't have significant dealings with them, but there exists a connection all the same. Alternatively, the case of the bad quartos is that they derived from pirated manuscripts from an actor in the company, and since the Host character figured prominently into the Merry Wives bad quarto, it has been assumed that this actor was involved in the piracy. If that is true, than we might be seeing something similar happening with Merry Devil since a Host character plays prominently in that play, too.
Maybe Merry Devil is a bad quarto, after all.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Making Shakespeare Notes: Chapter Seven
Rules of punctuation and spelling were highly variable in early modern printed texts. In the "Shakespeare" portions of the Thomas Moore manuscript, the author has punctuated, capitalized, and spelled words, sometimes within the same line, seemingly at random (138).
It was common practice for scribes and printers to add punctuation (and perhaps capitalization) according to their own tastes. It is unlikely that punctuation that has come down to us is original, and there are examples where the words may remain the same, but the sense of a line is altered by the punctuation (139).
From the evidence of the Thomas Moore manuscript, it seems as if Shakespeare in some cases wrote lines first, and then parceled them out to characters later. This might account for the confusion of the name of Pistol's wife in Henry V, and of the names of the Nurse's and Romeo's serving men in Romeo and Juliet (141-142).
It may be possible to discern the source of a printed copy by looking at descriptions of entrances. An authorial stage direction is more likely to provide an entrance for the character and scene, such as "enter gentleman on the walls of Rome," whereas a prompter will be more likely to write in terms of practical stage direction/architecture: "enter above." Texts that come from prompters also tends toward specificity in numbers; whereas an author may specify "lords and attendants," a prompter, who like any good stage manager would know who is available when, would be more likely to specify how many lords and attendants can enter at the given moment (144).
Prompters were responsible for editing play texts as required by the Master of Revels, such as removing swearing from the play, and then submitting those changes for official approval (144-145).
"Any Shakespeare text that can be traced to a prompter's book has already been repeatedly mediated by other hands" (145). Meditate on this: If the extant Merry Devil text has come from a copy that was cut for touring, it very likely comes to us from a copy of the touring prompter's book.
Since revenues from touring plays when the London theatres were closed were less than home performances, non-sharer members would not tour, and the plays would be altered to accommodate a smaller cast. Lines might be dropped, or characters might be amalgamated into one. Also, country audiences were not as sophisticated as city audiences, and thus the plays were cut to a shorter running time than they would have enjoyed in the London playhouse (145-146).
Since playwrights incorporated timely events and jokes into their plays, a very popular play, which might run for over a year, would need regular revising in order to keep the material fresh (146).
It is likely that many of the texts do not come to us in the form in which they had enjoyed life in performance at the time they were printed. Foul paper, one off, or otherwise deprecated versions of texts, would not have been discarded due to the cost of paper, but would have been kept in the company's reserves in case something had happened to the book then in use. The company could afford to send these archived copies, no longer necessary for the performance of the play, to the printer for publication where they may have been more reticent to part with a more practically useful text for that purpose (146-147).
Since print is easier to read than manuscript, a printed text, even if it was outdated, might find its way back into use by the company. A printed quarto could be augmented with manuscript emendations to reflect the play as it then existed in the company's repertory. This is what appears to have happened in the case of Romeo and Juliet, as the Folio text tends to closely follow the spelling and punctuation of the good quarto, but presents several changes over that text (147).
The realities of printing house practices also affect the plays that come down to us. Just as even good typists will make typos, even a good compositor will occasionally choose the wrong letter. Since compositors had to work quickly, like their modern touch-typist counter parts, they had to rely on their sense of touch and their knowledge of where certain letters were to lay them out quickly. Letters that felt similar and which were arranged in close proximity in the type case, could easily be confused (150 - 152).
It is also possible that decisions about spelling and punctuation would have been made to reflect the quantities of type available vs. those used heavily in the text. The speech prefix of "Bastard" for "Edmund" in King Lear may be a function of the heavy use of magiscule italic Es in the text, and thus the decision to refer to the character as "Bastard" may be nothing more than the printer's way of preserving E for other uses (Enter, Exit, and Edgar) (153).
Compositors were expected to edit the texts they were given to make them legible to their readers, but in the process of so doing may have altered the sense of the lines by mis-interpreting the playhouse text (154).
It is also possible that disfigured or poorly inked (or over inked) pieces of type have altered the sense of the texts. A damaged f resembles a long s, and this is why Ferdinand exults at having "So rare a wondred Father, and a wise" instead of "So rare a wondred Father, and a wife" (154-155).
SUMMARY:
The plays from early modern London that come down to us are many times removed from the hands of the men who wrote them. While it may be possible to spot some trends behind "the veil of print," the hand of the author is not one of them. Who wrote Shakespeare? is an irrelevant question. Who edited him is much more useful for the purposes of determining how the play may have been performed, and how the texts that we have might best be presented.
It was common practice for scribes and printers to add punctuation (and perhaps capitalization) according to their own tastes. It is unlikely that punctuation that has come down to us is original, and there are examples where the words may remain the same, but the sense of a line is altered by the punctuation (139).
From the evidence of the Thomas Moore manuscript, it seems as if Shakespeare in some cases wrote lines first, and then parceled them out to characters later. This might account for the confusion of the name of Pistol's wife in Henry V, and of the names of the Nurse's and Romeo's serving men in Romeo and Juliet (141-142).
It may be possible to discern the source of a printed copy by looking at descriptions of entrances. An authorial stage direction is more likely to provide an entrance for the character and scene, such as "enter gentleman on the walls of Rome," whereas a prompter will be more likely to write in terms of practical stage direction/architecture: "enter above." Texts that come from prompters also tends toward specificity in numbers; whereas an author may specify "lords and attendants," a prompter, who like any good stage manager would know who is available when, would be more likely to specify how many lords and attendants can enter at the given moment (144).
Prompters were responsible for editing play texts as required by the Master of Revels, such as removing swearing from the play, and then submitting those changes for official approval (144-145).
"Any Shakespeare text that can be traced to a prompter's book has already been repeatedly mediated by other hands" (145). Meditate on this: If the extant Merry Devil text has come from a copy that was cut for touring, it very likely comes to us from a copy of the touring prompter's book.
Since revenues from touring plays when the London theatres were closed were less than home performances, non-sharer members would not tour, and the plays would be altered to accommodate a smaller cast. Lines might be dropped, or characters might be amalgamated into one. Also, country audiences were not as sophisticated as city audiences, and thus the plays were cut to a shorter running time than they would have enjoyed in the London playhouse (145-146).
Since playwrights incorporated timely events and jokes into their plays, a very popular play, which might run for over a year, would need regular revising in order to keep the material fresh (146).
It is likely that many of the texts do not come to us in the form in which they had enjoyed life in performance at the time they were printed. Foul paper, one off, or otherwise deprecated versions of texts, would not have been discarded due to the cost of paper, but would have been kept in the company's reserves in case something had happened to the book then in use. The company could afford to send these archived copies, no longer necessary for the performance of the play, to the printer for publication where they may have been more reticent to part with a more practically useful text for that purpose (146-147).
Since print is easier to read than manuscript, a printed text, even if it was outdated, might find its way back into use by the company. A printed quarto could be augmented with manuscript emendations to reflect the play as it then existed in the company's repertory. This is what appears to have happened in the case of Romeo and Juliet, as the Folio text tends to closely follow the spelling and punctuation of the good quarto, but presents several changes over that text (147).
The realities of printing house practices also affect the plays that come down to us. Just as even good typists will make typos, even a good compositor will occasionally choose the wrong letter. Since compositors had to work quickly, like their modern touch-typist counter parts, they had to rely on their sense of touch and their knowledge of where certain letters were to lay them out quickly. Letters that felt similar and which were arranged in close proximity in the type case, could easily be confused (150 - 152).
 | |
| Photo of type case layout from Tiffany Stern's Making Shakespeare. The website she has credited is no longer in service. |
Compositors were expected to edit the texts they were given to make them legible to their readers, but in the process of so doing may have altered the sense of the lines by mis-interpreting the playhouse text (154).
It is also possible that disfigured or poorly inked (or over inked) pieces of type have altered the sense of the texts. A damaged f resembles a long s, and this is why Ferdinand exults at having "So rare a wondred Father, and a wise" instead of "So rare a wondred Father, and a wife" (154-155).
SUMMARY:
The plays from early modern London that come down to us are many times removed from the hands of the men who wrote them. While it may be possible to spot some trends behind "the veil of print," the hand of the author is not one of them. Who wrote Shakespeare? is an irrelevant question. Who edited him is much more useful for the purposes of determining how the play may have been performed, and how the texts that we have might best be presented.
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