theoryofliteratu00inwell

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Theory of Literature
vised "foul papers" of the author or authors and sometimes a
prompt copy which contained playhouse revisions and markings.
Besides, there was a special class of bad "quartos" which were
apparently printed either from memorial reconstruction or from
actors' fragmentary parts or possibly from a primitive shorthand
version. In recent decades, very much attention has been paid to
these problems, and the Quartos of Shakespeare have been re-
classified after the discoveries of Pollard and Greg. 16 Pollard
demonstrated, on the basis of purely "bibliotic" knowledge, such
as watermarks and type fonts, that certain Quartos of Shake-
speare's plays were purposely antedated though actually printed
in 1 619 as preparation for a collected edition which did not
materialize.
A close study of Elizabethan handwriting, partly based on
the assumption that two pages in the preserved MS of a play
Sir Thomas More are in the handwriting of Shakespeare himself,
17 has had important implications for textual criticism, mak-
ing it now possible to classify the likely misreadings of the Eliza-
bethan compositor, while a study of printing house practices has
shown what errors are likely or possible. But the wide margin
which is still left for the individual editor in emending shows
that no really "objective" method of textual criticism has been
discovered. Certainly, many of the emendations introduced by
Dover Wilson into his Cambridge edition seem as wild and un-
necessary guesswork as some produced by eighteenth-century
editors. But it is interesting that Theobald's brilliant guess,
which, in Mrs. Quickly's account of FalstafPs death, changed
the nonsensical "table of green fields" into "a babbled of green
fields" is supported by the study of Elizabethan handwriting
and spelling, i.e., "a babld" could have easily been mistaken for
"a table."
The convincing arguments that the Quartos (with the exception
of a few bad ones) were most probably either printed from
the author's MS or from a promptbook have restored authority
to the earlier editions and have somewhat reduced the veneration
in which the Folio had been held since the days of Dr.
Johnson. The English textual scholars who, rather mislead-
ingly, call themselves "bibliographers" (McKerrow, Greg, Pol-
lard, Dover Wilson, etc.) have tried to ascertain, in each case,