Zone d'identification
Cote
Titre
Date(s)
- c. June 1936 (Production)
Niveau de description
Étendue matérielle et support
2 slips and 1 single sheet, formerly clipped together
Zone du contexte
Nom du producteur
Histoire archivistique
Source immédiate d'acquisition ou de transfert
Zone du contenu et de la structure
Portée et contenu
Transcript
Re apostrophes & forms like ha’s, fare’s etc. Have you noticed what a spate there is of these in Coriolanus I. i.? Things like to th/to’th’ etc?* [Footnote: ‘*’erst th’ourt (=thou ’rt)’.] What will you do with these? Insert the apostrophe where essential & banish the unnecessary? It affects the By’th’ question I raised in the last set of queries.
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Contractions
‘Some louing Friends conuey the Emp. hence’ [a full line] {1} Tit. And. last speech.
I don’t think, on reflection, that you can be consistent in practice here. “Emp.” will look as silly as D.
? Expand titles but not other licenses indulged in for keeping within the line?
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Bait and Bate
Bait (sb. & vb.) is always spelt with ai/ay in F1 except in this one case in 2 Henry VI
Bate (= abate, abatement) is spelt with a in F1 except in M. of V., IV.i. where it is spelt ‘baite’ and corrected in F2 to ‘bate’.
Bate (= beat the wings) is spelt with ai in T. of S. IV. i. and with ay in 1 Henry IV, IV. i and the spelling is not corrected in F2.
The first example of bait spelt with a in O.E.D. is 1635, anr. ex. 1647, and anr. (Somerville’s Chase) 1735.
The first example of bate (=abate) spelt with ai in O.E.D. is 1642, anr. example (Crashaw) 1650.
Bail and Bale
Bail (sb. & vb.) is always spelt with ai or ay in F1 except in this one example in 2 Henry VI.
Bale which occurs only once (Coriolanus I. i) is spelt ‘baile’ in F1 and the spelling survived till Theobald (according to Camb.).
Baleful is always spelt with a as the stressed stem vowel.
The O.E.D. has two examples of bail spelt with aa or a: ‘baalde’ (Studley, Seneca Herc. Oet., 1581) and ‘bale’ (Greene, C.C.).
From this it would appear that although the spellings of these words were generally kept apart there was a tendency to confuse them occasionally. Somewhat similar cases are ‘bain’d’ for ‘baned’ (poisoned) M. of V., IV. i. ‘hail’d’ for ‘haled’, T. of S., V. i. Can you make a general rule to cover this kind of thing? I am sure there is a lot of it such as wring/ring, course/coarse etc. The difficulty is that some words were as often confused in spelling as not (e.g. wrack/rack, right/rite) and oth[ers only] occasionally so (e.g. bale/bail etc.).
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Two slips and a sheet, formerly clipped together. The sheet, which begins ‘Bait and Bate’, is typed.
{1} The square brackets are original.