Page 201 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

ia6 T H E COPY FOR
advance on one quarto, and handing it to the compositor
while he proceeded to correct the other'. But if the
prompt-book was actually in the printing-house why
should the F compositor(s) not have used it itself? It
Was the prompt-book text that was to be reproduced in
F; and the prompt-book itself must surely have been
1
clearly legible —as much to compositors as to prompters.
On the other hand, the players, regarding the prompt-
book as a precious possession, might well have preferred
to keep it inside the theatre. One cab imagine a scribe in
the theatre editing a number of pages of a Q i, taking
the Q i to the printing-house, then editing a number of
pages of a Q 2, takmg the Q 2 to the printing-house and
recovering the Q 1, and so on. Or the leaves of the
prompt-book might have been parcelled out between
two scribes working in the theatre, the one editing pages
of a Q 1, the other of a Q 2.
But a further complication must be faced. The
Shakespeare first folio was printed in the shop of
William Jaggard. Since the publication in 1932 of
E. E. Willoughby's book The Printing of the First Folio
of Shakespeare it has been common knowledge that two
compositors were involved—A and B, each with his own
spelling preferences. And other compositors may have
been involved in places. 3 It is believed by many that F
Lear was set up entirely by B? But in an important

* Cf. R. B. McKerrow in The Library, 4th ser. xil
(1931-2), 264—'It is a point that must be insisted on that
no copy but a good, orderly, and legible one could
possibly serve as a prompt-copy.'
* Cf. Alice Walker, Textual Problems of the First Folio
(1953), p. 8: 'It is still doubtful, I think, how many hands
•were engaged in the setting of the Folio between the start
made in 1621 and its completion in 1623.' See also Fredson
Bowers, Textual & Literary Criticism (1959), p. 78.
p
3 See, for example, Miss Walker, op. cit. . xz.