The Textual Problem of "Troilus and Cressida"

The Textual Problem of "Troilus and Cressida"Author(s): Alice WalkerSource: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Oct., 1950), pp. 459-464Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3718952 .

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THE TEXTUAL PROBLEM OF 'TROILUS AND CRESSIDA'

It is generally recognized that the Folio text of Troilus and Cressida was printed from a corrected copy of the Quarto printed in 1609 by Eld for Bonian and Walley.' The evidence for use of the Quarto rests on the many errors and orthographical and typographical features common to the two texts.2 Common spellings and common errors might, of course, have originated in a common MS. source, though that faulty punctuation originated in this way is unlikely in view of the normally light pointing of contemporary MSS. But the typographical evidence is quite conclusive. In two instances (at the beginning of ii. iii and at II. iii. 38)3 the Folio inadvertently reproduced in stage directions the Quarto's roman type for personal names which, in Folio stage directions, are normally in italics. Other instances of the typographical influence of the Quarto are at I. i. 84 (where 'Pan. Not I' is not printed as a separate line), I. ii. 120 ('Autumne' in italics), I. ii. 285 (the whole line in italics) and iv. v. 143 (where 'O yes' is printed in parenthesis).

The Folio text, as is well known, differs from the Quarto in a number of respects. In the first place, it includes a Prologue and about forty-five lines or part lines not in the Quarto.4 The distribution of these lines is interesting: in all but six out of the nineteen contexts in which they occur, they are at the end of speeches. The impression they convey is that they were not 'cuts' (the longest of them amounts to no more than half a dozen lines) but the omissions of a copyist and/or compositor and that their restoration may be due to someone primarily interested in cues.

In the second place, the Folio text shows that a very considerable effort had been made to correct the Quarto's many errors in speech prefixes and to supplement its totally inadequate stage directions. Thus at I. iii. 304, where the Quarto erroneously continues the speech to Ulysses, the Folio gives it to Agamemnon. It successfully disentangles the Quarto's muddle at ii. i. 35-9, improves matters at ii. iii. 215-18, restores a missing line and puts right the speech prefixes at IV. v. 94-5 and at v. ii. 67-8, provides the missing speech prefix at v. ii. 84 and corrects that at v. iii. 14. A similar effort was made with the Quarto stage directions. The Folio makes about thirty-five necessary additions for entrances, exits and noises off. At the same time, a fair number of errors have been left. The trouble at ii. iii. 215-18 is not entirely smoothed out, the Quarto error of Cal. for Cres. (v. ii. 13) escaped notice, and it is doubtful whether the speech prefixes at v. ii. 80-1 (where the Folio follows the Quarto) are correct. A number of necessary entries were also overlooked: Ajax is wanted at II. iii., Aeneas at iv. ii. 43, Troilus at iv. v. 64, Troilus and Menelaus at v. i. 63 and Thersites at v. ii. 4. Further, an entrance for Pandarus, which the Folio provides at iv. ii. 73, is not wanted nor is the Exit after Cressida's speech at iv. iv. 100.

Thirdly, the Folio contains a fairly steady succession of verbal variants from the Quarto of which some are improvements on the Quarto readings, others indifferent,

1 The only known edition prior to the Folio. 4 These occur at I. iii. 70-4, I. iii. 354-6, n. iii. 2 See P. Alexander, Troilus and Cressida, 1609, 52-6, ii. iii. 70-1, ii. iii. 85, III. i. 107, IIn. iii.

4 Library, vol. ix (1929), pp. 267-86. 161-3, iv. iv. 76, iv. iv. 143-7, iv. v. 94, iv. v. 97 +. 3 References throughout are to the (old) iv. v. 132, iv. v. 165-70, iv. v. 206, v. ii. 67, v. iii.

Cambridge Shakespeare. 20-2, v. iii. 58, v. iii. 112 +, v. x. 21-2.



460 The Textual Problem of 'Troilus and Cressida'

and others alterations for the worse. Among the better Folio readings are the

following: Quarto Folio

i. iii. 36 ancient patient II. i. 118 first fift II. ii. 14-15 surely / Surely surety, / Surety II. ii. 79 pale stale II. iii. 188 liked titled III. i. 6 notable noble iv. i. 18 Lul'd But iv. v. 133 day drop iv. v. 292 my Lord she lou'd v. i. 51-2 his be the his Brother, the

At the other end of the scale are a number of Folio readings that are inferior and at times destructive of the sense:

Quarto Folio I. ii. 250 a woman another woman I. iii. 27 broad lowd I. iii. 137 stands liues i. iii. 267 feeds seekes I. iii. 293 hoste mould i. iii. 368 share weare ii. ii. 58 attributiue inclineable II. iii. 95 composure counsell that ii. iii. 102 flexure flight v. v. 24 strawy straying v. vii. 11 spartan sparrow

It is quite clear from the additional lines found in the Folio text that its copy of the Quarto must have been supplemented by reference to an authoritative MS. The additional lines have a Shakespearean ring, even though they are at times obscure. It therefore follows that some at any rate of the corrections of speech prefixes, additional stage directions and variants from the Quarto may have been introduced from the same source. At the same time, the number of errors in the Quarto that

escaped correction points to a collation of the texts that was anything but thorough, and bad alterations such as 'flexure' to 'flight' and 'spartan' to 'sparrow'1 point to some interference with the text by a dangerous hand. We must therefore regard with legitimate suspicion quite a number of Folio readings which improve on the sense or metre of the Quarto but may be mere guesses.2

The first impression conveyed by the number and general character of the Quarto and Folio variants is that the Quarto may be a 'bad' quarto of the Richard III type, but there is nothing to corroborate this impression save the Folio's rejection of many of the items in Thersites' plague catalogue in v. i. 16-21. This certainly might

1 What seems to be wanted is 'double horned commencement' (ii. iii. 127); 'streame of this Spartan', referring to Menelaus as the bull and commercement' would sustain the metaphor cuckold. The Folio 'improver' seems not to have better. Similarly 'shrupd' at iv. v. 193 in the recognized where the error lay. The Quarto reading Quarto may be a nonce verb from 'shrape', (followed by the Folio) is 'double hen'd'. a snare, trap or (?) cockpit enclosure; see N.E.D.

2 E.g. the Folio's substitution of the 'carriage shrape andscrape;'hem'd', the Folio's substitution, of this action' for the Quarto's 'streame of his seems the weaker word.



ALICE WALKER 461

represent the interpolation of an actor who let his fancy run on.1 But the Quarto text is in quality superior to the Folio and has none of the vulgarization typical of texts which had passed through a stage of oral transmission. Further, its major errors2 are the errors of copyists3 rather than of actors. The lines omitted do not constitute any substantial reduction in the length of the play and it would be unreasonable to suppose that actors who had memorized (apparently successfully) the long, argumentative speeches so characteristic of the play would have tripped up over their cues. The lines omitted are far more likely to have been lost by a copyist or compositor.4

That the Quarto's errors are to be attributed to a transcriber is certainly the conclusion to be drawn from its errors and confusions in speech prefixes. These are best explained as originating in the common habit of copying the dialogue first and adding the speakers' names later. They cannot be author's5 or actors' muddles, nor are they likely to have originated in such numbers in the printing house. This holds for simple errors, such as the omission of speech prefixes for Agamemnon at I. iii. 304 and Cressida at v. ii. 84, and for more complicated tangles, due to omission ac- companied by faulty alignment, such as we find at ii. iii. 215-18:6

Ulyss. Aiax. A would haue ten shares. Ajax. I will kneade him, Ile make him supple. Nest. He's not yet through warme.

Nest. Force him with....

Here, by omitting the speech prefix for Ulysses and by inserting that for Ajax a line too high and that for Nestor a line too low, a copyist originated the garbled dialogue we find in the Quarto:

Aiax. A would haue ten shares. I will kneade him, Ile make him supple he's not yet through warme ?

Nest. Force him with....

The tangle at II. i. 36-9 can similarly be explained as due to the omission of speech prefixes for Ajax and Thersites. On the other hand, excess of zeal may be suspected at III. i. 80 (where Helen intrudes) and at v. ii. 80 (where Diomedes intrudes).

A curious feature of the Quarto text which suggests that the MS. behind the text may have been intended for a reader or (more likely) used by a reader is its use of italics. Like most quartos it italicizes proper names in the dialogue, but it italicizes as well quite a number of fairly common words of learned origin: maxim (I. ii. 284), chaos (I. iii. 125), indexes (I. iii. 343), modicums (II. i. 66), pia mater (II. i. 69), moral philosophy (II. ii. 167), quondam (iv. v. 179), major (v. i. 42) and also, very curiously,

1 I make nothing of this omission which seems through a written medium, but recognition that to have been deliberate since the Folio substitutes copyists' errors might intrude at this stage does 'and the like'. The other Folio omissions are un- not make it any easier to accept the Troilus and important: a few words are omitted at I. ii. 266 Cressida quarto as 'bad'. ('there he vnarmes him') and at iii. i. 81 ('Ile lay 4 Accidental loss is evident in two cases where my life'), but these may be accidental. The Folio there was an omission of a line of dialogue ac- compositor seems twice to have turned the Quarto companied by the preservation of the wrong leaf prematurely and hence omitted II. i. 28-9 speech prefix (iv. v. 94-5 and v. ii. 67-8). ('when thou art forth in the incursions... '), at the 5 Not at any rate in the process of composition. foot ofC4r, and iv. v. 29 ('Andpartedthus...'),at An author making a fair copy might, of course, the foot of Iir. have done as other copyists did.

2 But, as in the case of all Folio plays for which 6 I have broken up the dialogue as printed in the a corrected quarto served as 'copy', we can only Quarto and given the Quarto speech prefixes roughly assess how good or bad either was. in italics and the correct ones in roman.

3 'Bad' quartos naturally reached the printer




'Autumne' (I. ii. 120), 'Clatpoles' (ii. i. 113), 'Compters' (II. ii. 28) and 'Whetstone' (v. ii. 74).1 Italics are also used for a maxim at I. ii. 285 and for three parentheses (I. ii. 90, I. iii. 117 and I. iii. 328-9). These italics would be pointless in a MS. intended for theatrical use. They may, of course, be the compositor's, though the selection of words and phrases of this kind is unusual,2 but it seems more likely that the MS. used for the Quarto had been marked by a reader who underlined words and phrases which interested him and thus led the compositor to suppose that italics were required. That the Quarto could not have been based on a MS. prepared for use in the theatre is, of course, evident from the absence of just those things which in the theatre would matter most: reliable cues, speakers' names and stage directions.

The weight of the evidence thus lies in favour of the Quarto's representing a 'good' quarto, based on a MS. that may have been a private transcript.3 At the same time the Folio editors either had access to an authoritative MS. or had a copy of the Quarto which had already been supplemented from such a MS. Possibly this was Shakespeare's foul papers. The duplications of 'they call him Troilus' (Iv. . 96 + and IV. v. 108) and of Troilus' three valedictory lines to Pandarus (v. iii. 112 + and v. x. 32-4) look as if first and second thoughts had found their way into the Folio text. But the Folio text is not, as has been seen, a reliable check on the Quarto. The collation of the MS. with the Quarto was careless and at some time a would-be improver introduced a number of readings into the Folio which cannot be correct.

A point of interest that has, I think, escaped notice is that the 'copy' for the first three pages of the Folio text differed from that which was available when work on the play was resumed. As has long been recognized, it was intended that Troilus and Cressida should follow Romeo and Juliet among the Tragedies. The five concluding pages of Romeo and Juliet and the first three of Troilus and Cressida were in type and the press could (and did) therefore make a start on the last page of Romeo and Juliet and the first three of Troilus and Cressida which occupied the inner sheet of the 2 gg quire. This sheet had in fact been perfected when for some reason further work on Troilus and Cressida was deferred and was not resumed until after Timon of Athens had been inserted in the space left for it after Romeo and Juliet. At this stage, when the colophon and preliminaries (including the Catalogue) were ready, the printing of Troilus and Cressida was resumed and the play was inserted, with separate signatures, without pagination, and with a non-committal running title,4 between the Histories and the Tragedies. The two pages (the second and third) already printed as 2gg4 were inserted as a half sheet and the type for the first page was

1 Chaos and index are not elsewhere italicized in the quartos or Folio; maxim, modicum and moral philosophy occur in Shakespeare only in this play; the other words are sometimes italicized and sometimes not. The italics for autumn, clotpoles, counters and whetstone are, of course, without parallel.

2 An ignorant or unthinking compositor might perhaps have assumed that' hang'd like Clatpoles' and 'will you with Compters summe' contained personal references, but this seems scarcely credible and still leaves a number of italicized words and phrases unaccounted for.

3 Possibly an unauthorized transcript. I see no difficulty in supposing that there were copies of plays which 'made' their 'scape' (as Bonian and Walley put it) from the playhouse. There are no reasons for supposing that the players had any better means of keeping their papers in safe

custody than the average Elizabethan had of safeguarding leases and other legal documents so frequently lost or stolen. Probably the greatest safeguard against 'scapes' was the labour of transcription. On the evidence of orthography and punctuation, Professor Alexander (loc. cit.) argued that the Quarto represented Shakespeare's own transcript, but the evidence is not convincing. Speculation about Shakespeare's spelling has out- run any systematic investigation of the orthography of the period and most of the spellings believed to be characteristic of Shakespeare can be readily paralleled in contemporary MSS. So far as misreading is concerned, a copyist could be as easily misled as a compositor.

4 The original running title 'The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida' appears, of course, on the leaf originally printed as 2gg4 and these two pages bear the original pagination.



ALICE WALKER 463

reset (from the page first printed as 2 gg3v) and printed on the verso of another half sheet of which the recto was occupied by the Prologue.

There can be no doubt, I think, that, had the original intention of printing the

play immediately after Roreo and Juliet been adhered to, we should have had in the Folio text a mere reprint of the Quarto, for the variants in the first three pages, though numerous, include nothing of significance. The following are the most

important and, as is evident, they amount to very little:

Q must heating the burne of you What I a Friday

Second and third pages I. ii. 35 S.D.

140 184 185 195

F (First setting) must needes heating the to burne on of you What care I on Friday

Q om. a more man iudgements a braue

F (Second setting) must needes heating of the to burne on of you What care I on Friday

F Enter Pandarus more a man iudgement braue

The only change of interest is the Folio's indication of Pandarus' entry at I. ii. 35, and this is drawn attention to in the dialogue. Most of the variants cited above were probably introduced unconsciously and those not cited are either printers' errors, or routine corrections of printers' errors, or are rearrangements (plainly erroneous) in the Folio of short prose speeches as two lines of verse.

The next three pages tell a very different textual story. In addition to the kind of variant exemplified above, we find the following:

Q an eye such like a woman a man Then And call them shames broad the influence of euill Planets of melts with stands sillie right eyes bid great feeds couple hoste A proue men sir on.

F money so forth another woman one That And thinke them shame lowd the ill Aspects of Planets euill to meetes in liues aukward iust eares on om. seekes compasse mould One pawne youth first This 'tis

The Folio also adds a speech by Agamemnon (I. iii. 70-4), an entry at I. ii. 231

First page I. i. 15

25 26 70 75-6 75

I. ii. 231 246 250

286 I. iii. 19

27 92

102 110 128 137 149 164 219 228 238 267 276 293 294 301 302 305 315




('Enter common Souldiers'), instructions for a 'Senet' at the beginning of I. iii and a 'Tucket' at I. iii. 212, Aeneas' entry at I. iii. 214, a speech prefix for Agamemnon at I. iii. 304 and the direction 'Exeunt. Manet Vlysses, and Nestor' at i. iii. 309. It omits, probably accidentally, 'there he vnarmes him' at I. ii. 266.

These three pages give a fair picture of the Folio as compared with the Quarto text for all but the first three pages of the play. It therefore looks very much as if either the MS. collated with the Quarto lacked its first leaves or as if better copy became available in the interval between the first start on the play and resumption of work. If the former supposition is correct, then we must suppose that, by chance, work on the play was suspended just at the point where collation of the Quarto with a MS. had proved possible.1 This would, indeed, be an odd coincidence and, further, would not explain the appearance of the Prologue. It seems therefore more rea- sonable to assume that better copy (including the Prologue) became available between the printing of the first three pages and renewal of work on the play.

It has generally been assumed that the hitch over the printing of Troilus and Cressida arose from difficulties over copyright. Was it, rather, over the 'copy'? Though it would be satisfactory to have something more than supposition to account for Jaggard's procedure, I cannot see that we can put it down to a change in the 'copy'. If what had come to light was a Quarto already corrected for use in the theatre, then there was no reason why printing should not have gone straight ahead according to the original plan, provided Jaggard was prepared to scrap the whole of the sheet already printed and to rearrange his type to accommodate the Prologue. But if what had come to light was a MS. and collation of this with the Quarto remained to be done,2 then necessarily a halt had to be called. From this point on, the printing of the Tragedies proceeded without further hitch, but it must have taken some months, and the collation of a MS. with the Quarto cannot have taken more than a few days. If therefore the trouble was merely over the 'copy', the printing could have been proceeded with in time to insert Troilus and Cressida in the position originally intended for it. Instead, Timon of Athens took its place and the colophon was printed, and the Catalogue, before Troilus and Cressida was completed. It can hardly have been forgotten, as the gap left after Romeo and Juliet must have acted as a reminder that the play was on the stocks. The change in the character of the 'copy' for the Folio would therefore seem a consequence rather than the cause of the hitch over the printing, and copyright difficulties may be the real explanation.

An interesting fact that emerges from a comparison of the first three Folio pages and the rest of the play is that there is no trace in the former of the hand of the would-be improver. It looks therefore as if the poorer Folio readings from the fourth page on originated not in the printing house but in a second hand's alterations in the copy of the Quarto collated with Shakespeare's MS. A compositor would presumably accept any alteration he found in his 'copy' without inquiring into its origin. But three pages of text perhaps left little scope for enterprise and maybe, like Ajax, the culprit was not 'through warm'.

ALICE WALKER WELCOMBE, BIDEFORD

1 Presumably a compositor set up the fourth 2 I suspect this was the case on the evidence of and fifth pages of Troilus and Cressida while the the duplicated lines which cannot have been inner sheet of 2gg was being printed so that the wanted in the theatre. press could proceed with the middle sheet of the quire. This type would presumably have been distributed like that for 2 gg3.



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The Textual Problem of "Troilus and Cressida"