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- VENUS AND ADONIS
51
we find ‘neighs’ (262) and ‘neighes’ (307); a single line (311) gives us ‘spurnes’, ‘scorns’, and ‘feeles’. It is difficult to explain by philological law why the $e$ before the final $s$ is omitted in ‘locks’ (228), ‘falls’ (594), ‘breeds’ (742), ‘lends’ (790), ‘begins’ (835), or ‘sings’ (836); and is yet inserted in ‘sweares’ (80), ‘heares’ (702), ‘leapes’ (1026), ‘lookes’ (1063), or ‘bowes’ (1171). A like uncertainty broods over the past tense of verbs. The customary -ed is represented by as many as seven varying forms, -ed, d, d, de, de, t, t, which are employed at the compositor’s will without logical justification. Such discrepant forms as ‘prisond’, ‘drownd’, ‘cald’, ‘rayld’, ‘prouok’t’, ‘wreak’t’, ‘hem’d’, ‘unwitnessed’, ‘asham’d’, ‘smoothred’, ‘perplexed’, ‘imprisond’, ‘opend’, ‘trencht’, ‘dre[n]cht’, and ‘stopt’, are taken from a succession of fourteen stanzas (ll. 979-1062) which were chosen at random. A few lines below we find the forms ‘liu’d’ (1080), ‘dide’ (1080), ‘liu’de’ (1085), and ‘lurkt’ (1086) within a seven-line limit.¹
It is incredible that a practised penman would have suffered so many inconsistencies to remain in the proof if the opportunity of removing them had been given him. On the whole it seems improbable, either that Shakespeare’s responsibility for the text went beyond the mere act of handing his manuscript to Field, or that Field’s corrector of the press possessed average efficiency.
In Field’s new edition of 1594 the type of that of 1593 was reset throughout from a printed copy. The signatures are repeated (B-G in fours and Hi) and the number of leaves are again seven-and-twenty. The signature F[i] is however omitted. The typographical changes only affect the spelling of words and are due to the compositors’ vagaries. No other
¹ Cf. A. Wuerzner, Die Orthographie der ersten Quarto-Ausgabe von Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis und Laurea, Vienna, 1887, 8vo.
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