Page 202 - King Lear: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

KINO LEAR, 1608 AND 1623 127

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article published in 1953 Dr Philip Williams argues
that A was implicated also. The evidence seems to me
impressive. Spelling-tests divide Troi/us between A and
B with great precision. In i?'s passages the entrance
stage-directions are centred in the column with almost
complete accuracy, but A does not usually trouble
to centre them accurately. Williams points to pages
of F Lear where the entrances are (with just a few
exceptions) well centred; and on these pages there is
a preponderance of spellings usually favoured by B. He
points to other pages where imperfectly centred entrances
are characteristic, and where at the same time a higher
proportion of A's favourite spellings is found. That
more than one compositor was involved seems certain.
Now in Q 1—and Q 2—the name of Lear's eldest
daughter is always 'Gonorill', and if abbreviation
reaches the fourth letter that letter is always *o\ In F
the name is invariably 'Gonerill', and in abbreviation
'
the fourth letter if present is always e \ Williams argues
that 'it is difficult to believe that two (or more) compo-
sitors should have consistently made this spelling change;
it is impossible to believe that a corrector of Q 1 should
have marked this change throughout the play, even in the
speech-headings. It therefore seems safe to conclude
that in the copy from which F was set, the name was
f
consistently spelled Gonerill. And so he thinks of F as
having been printed from manuscript copy.
Q 2 was, like F, produced in Jaggard's shop. Williams
emphasizes that Q 2 was set up, from Q I, by B; and he
says—'The 1619 quarto of Lear therefore supplies the
evidence for what Folio Compositor B would do when
he set directly from Q 1 of Lear. What he did has little
if any resemblance to what he did in those parts oiLear
set by him four years later.'

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In Shakespeare Quarterly, IV (October 1953).
N.S.K.L.-II