Pièce 17 - Notes on the classification of spelling variants, by Alice Walker

Transcript

A

1 Spellings sufficiently common in printed works to be considered normal, due either to long-standing wavering between one spelling and another or to the existence of variant pronunciations, e.g.

moove/move
chaunce/chance
droun/drown
shrewd/shrowd
term/tearm
smote/smot
nest/neast
murder/murther
black/blake
host/hoast
etc etc

These, of course, require no comment and logically, therefore, when F1 has loose and Camb. lose an indication such as

loose] F1, Camb.

ought to be sufficient in a collation note such as that to I. Hen. VI, III. i. 146. {1}

2 A number of spellings not so common, perhaps, but none the less sufficiently usual in printed books to require no comment e.g.

solembe (solemn)
misbecomd (misbecom’d)
pashions (passions)
hie (high)

B

[1] {2} Sporadic spellings which are not usual in printed books but which may very well represent a spelling in the MS. the printer had before him

lancht/launcht (lanced)
shooter (suitor)
old (wold)
tell (till)
whipt (wiped)

In such cases would a collation note mentioning, without lemma, the first edition to normalise (but not modernise) the spelling be sufficient, e.g.

wip’t F2+

omitting the modernisation by later editors as in A1. If the reader takes modernisation in later editions for granted in the case of spellings in A1 then, logically, he ought to do so here.

[Digression on the above section B1

What will you do with curious spellings that occur in early texts but not the ‘copy’ text? There was the ‘keihts’ spelling in R. III, I. i. 134 which you recorded as

keihts Q1

and I noticed a spelling of ‘Ewghs’ (or some such) in Q2 of Titus. Logically I suppose that if you are not printing from a quarto in which such a spelling occurs it is because you have a text which can reasonably regarded as closer to Shakespeare’s MS. and, therefore, a spelling such as that in R. III has no Shakespearean significance but is merely of general linguistic interest. If you include it, therefore, in a collation note it must be on the latter ground and, therefore, any linguistically interesting spelling in any early quarto ought to be recorded too! And then of course if you are recording all curious spellings of general linguistic interest it might be argued that you ought to look forward as well as backward and record the first ap-pearance of all new spellings in the later Ff and Rowe!]

B

2. It might happen that a form occurs which admits of two interpretations—(a) as the Elizabethan spelling of a word spelt similarly today or (b) as an Elizabethan spelling of a word which we now write differently. I was thinking of the cost/cast Hamlet difficulty and the Troilus and Cressida sewer/sure {3} when I began this, but it occurs to me that the best example is the one that has been giving me a lot of trouble, the Elizabethan And used indiscriminately for And and An. Where there is no chance of misinterpretation are these best passed over in silence (as you always pass over I/Ay) but where a spelling such as this ad-mits of different interpretations in its context ought not different editorial readings to be recorded and separated by a colon? Ex. (hypothetical)

And F1–Johns., Hart: An Cap.–Camb. {4}

Query—is there any way of showing in such a case where the ambiguity of F1 ended and editorial interpretation began? I don’t know in which edition And and An were first differentiated (? Pope or Theobald?), but supposing it was Theobald could this be set out as

And F1–Pope; Theo.–Johns., Hart: An Cap.–Camb.

C

1 Spellings representing (in many cases) stressed and unstressed forms of the same word which had existed side by side in which either one form was obsolescent by c. 1600 or in which the different forms were in process of acquiring a difference in meaning or usage, e.g.

of/off
the/thee
to/too
then/than

If the less usual forms of these (e.g. the for thee) cause no ambiguity, need they be recorded? If likely to cause the reader some momentary doubt concerning the meaning, could not an explanation be given in a footnote and the reader then be left to infer that they had probably been normalised in the later Ff and certainly normalised in later editions?

2 Spellings which in Elizabethan & Jacobean English covered two words of different meaning which were (much later for the most part) differentiated e.g.

antick (antique: antic)
gate (gait: gate)
waste (waist: waste)
male (mail: male)

You have collation notes on two of these in the part of Henry VI I am sending. Could these not be treated in the same way as B1 and instead of a lemma & full rigmarole would not

antick F3+ sufficiently cover IV. vii. 8 {5}
and waist Ste.’78 + [sufficiently cover] {6} IV. iii. 20

(i.e. in both cases give the first edition spelling which gives a clue to the interpretation). On the whole, however, I feel the general notes could sufficiently explain their meaning (and in both these cases you have a general note as well as a collation note). Could not a general note suffice for contexts where there is no ambiguity and a collation note be added in cases where there has been a real division of editorial opinion concerning the meaning—as in the And/An example of B2.

D

Spellings which suggest the substitution of one of a pair of homophones for another or one phrase for another—rife mainly in bad and suspected Qq

e.g. oft (ought—somewhere in Lear)
dogs so bade (dog’s obeyed) etc.

These, I take it, will certainly be recorded as of real textual significance—but with or without lemma?

E

Pairs of words similar, though not identical in spelling, indistinguishable in meaning and derived, ultimately, from the same root of which one only has survived in modern English, e.g.

nourish/nourice
wreck/wrack
leal/loyal

In such cases would it not be as well to follow the N.E.D. and treat these as different words, separating them by colons and not by brackets?

F

Spellings which indicate an older form of the word which has been remodelled and has (sometimes) affected the pronunciation.

dette/debt
langage/language
fift/fifth etc. etc.

As these are pretty numerous and their older forms give rise to no doubt concerning their meaning, there should be [no] {2} need to record the modernisations of later editors. Analogous I think to the examples in A.

G

Word division which differs in Jacobean and modern English

whoso/who so
my selfe/myself

Omit such? (as in [1] {2} Hen. VI, III. iv. 39)

H

Contracted forms such as I’ll etc. Is there any need to record these except where there is a metrical point at issue—such as that in I Hen. VI. I. ii. 127 where a later Folio has added a word to fill out the line and where later editorial opinion has veered to an expanded form of F1?

I

Grammatical forms. Here I think a distinction has to be made between the relation of Ff to Qq on the one hand and the relation of F1 to the later Ff and Rowe etc. on the other. In the latter case, is there any need to record what are mere modernisations in spelling (such as the regular substitution of ed in the p.p. and pret. of weak verbs for F1 t) which really come under A. And is there any need to record the passion of F2 for tidying up the cases of pronouns (by substituting, for example, whom for who) or mere modern pernicketiness in substituting unrip’dst for unrip’st? The case of such variants between Qq and F1 is more difficult, especially in cases where F1 wasn’t printed from a Quarto and where you can’t be certain that ei-ther the principal Q or F1 was set up from Shakespeare’s MS. In cases where a Quarto has some authority as representing at any rate a report of some kind could a distinction be drawn between genuine grammatical variants which could be heard (such as who/whom) and ortho-graphical variants (such as pact/pac’d). I can’t see any real significance in the latter (from Richard III) as, if the Quarto was a report of some kind, it wasn’t set up from Shakespeare’s MS. (unless Shakespeare reported it himself—this did occur to me as an explanation of its length!) and therefore pact has no Shakespearean interest; but I think that who/whom variants are in a different category. I don’t know whether it is possible to make any real distinc-tions of this kind, but it might be worth trying. When I come to a text with Qq I will see if it will work. In the meantime, sufficient unto the day …

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Typed, with handwritten additions and corrections. In the original the letters printed in bold type are in the margin before the succeeding line and are circled in red pencil. The square brackets are original, except where indicated below.

{1} The reference is in fact to line 199. F. ‘And Henry borne at Windsor, loose all:’.

{2} Omitted by mistake.

{3} V. i. 83. Cf. MCKW A4/2.

{4} In the margin is written, ‘right/rite | high/hie | Ye/yea | I/Ay’.

{5} The line number should be ‘18’.

{6} The words in square brackets are represented by ditto marks in the original.