Hand D: "letts vs"

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Tom Reedy

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Sep 3, 2008, 3:16:04 PM9/3/08
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Moved into its own thread.

Here's an interesting tidbit.

Line 264 of the Hand D addition reads: "fayth a saies trewe letts -vs-
do as we may be doon by" with the "vs" struck out by C or a later
hand.

Downs writes: "'us' followed by 'let's' seems likely of a scribe
alternating between text and copy. An original 'let us' or 'let's'
could have led to a necessary correction that, according to Greg
(1911, 78n), no one made until the modern period" (5).

Greg doesn't say it's a correction; he says "vs crossed out in modern
ink: Dyce omits," implying that Dyce struck out the "vs."

However, it doesn't make any difference who struck out the "vs,"
because it's not a mistake, and it's certainly not a scribal error.

I did a search on LION for "letts us" and all possible variants, and
it turns out that the construction is accepted EM usage. Here are some
examples I found in Elizabethan and early Jacobean drama:

Munday, Sir Thomas More (first act): There spake an Angell, come, lets
vs along then. (Greg says the terminal “s” in “lets” is also struck
out by a possibly modern hand.)

Heywood, Second Part of the Iron Age: Come lets vs breake into the
battailes...
----, Rape of Lucrece: We ha beene mad Lords long, now lets us be
merry Lords, Horatius
----, ----: Sextus goe, And lets us see your army march along

Marlowe, Massacre at Paris: Come my Lord lets vs goe.

Tomkis, LINGVA: Come lets vs away, and leaue it...

Shirley, The Ball: But lets us all together...

And last but certainly not least:

Shakespeare: Love's Labour's Lost, Q1: Lets vs once loose our othes to
finde our selues.

So we can scratch off that example of "scribal error."

TR

KCL

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Sep 4, 2008, 12:02:27 PM9/4/08
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I think you're right, TR.

KCL
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Jerry

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Sep 4, 2008, 7:33:15 PM9/4/08
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I'm practicing.

I agree with Tom that 'letts vs' does not belong in a category of
scribal error, or even of manuscript alteration, since the
strikeout is later. I must have included this instance from a mistaken
impression that 'correction' was contemporary, even though I reported
it myself as later.

However, mistakes cannot be mine. In this case I blame it on
Schucking, umlaut or not, whose case for Heywood did not include the
'lets us' usage. If the mistake were mine, I would lay it to my
attempt to cover all evidence. In the article I distribute, I have cut
some alterations for brevity, something I won't otherwise be accused
of. I should have cut this one.

My article was misappropriated by Shakespeare Yearbook. I stand by any
differences between that article and the one that was properly
treated, but I ask in fairness that anyone interested in the debate
refrain from reference to the printed article. Early versions are
private. My privacy was violated by an unscrupulous editor.

Tom Reedy refers to my article as 'withdrawn' from Shakespeare
Yearbook, but I never submitted to that journal. I merely asked (in
misplaced good faith) a professor who had written to me to read the
paper. The matter has nothing to do with the quality of the journal.
It has everything to do with intellectual property, a topic that we
all suppose to have been hashed out long ago.

Jerry Downs

Tom Reedy

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Sep 4, 2008, 11:39:49 PM9/4/08
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On Sep 4, 6:33 pm, Jerry <geralddo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm practicing.

The good thing about Arden being on Google Groups is that you can go
back and delete your "practice" posts. Click on the "More options" at
the top right of your post to learn how.

The only word processing program that will not break lines is word
pad.

TR

Tom Reedy

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Sep 4, 2008, 11:59:57 PM9/4/08
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On Sep 4, 6:33 pm, Jerry <geralddo...@gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

In your article you quote Van Dam's explanation of how the problems in
lines 235-37 occurred (page numbers in square brackets):

<><><><><><><>
[4]
[begin Van Dam:]
An interlineation . . . is meant either to add something new, or to
correct a mistake . . . . Here the latter is the case, for the
insertion helps to put the blank verse in order, and, besides, there
appears to be something that fully explains the omission. After having
written l. 237 the scribe . . . reads that the word last written by
him, *obedienc*, is followed by *what rebell captaine*, so he copies
these words. In reading over what he has written he perceives that he
has omitted nearly a whole line, and that the word *obedienc* occurs
in two successive lines; he inserts the words omitted, but by mistake
he places them between ll. 235 and 236 instead of between 236 and
237 . . . . An intelligent redaction . . . looks thus:

. . . To kneele to be forgyven
Is safer warrs, then euer you can make 235
Whose discipline is ry’t. Why, e’n your hurly
Cannot proceed but by obedi-enc. 237
In, in to your obedi-enc! What rebell, 237a
As mutynies ar incident, by ‘s name
Can still the rout? Who will obay a traytor?
[end Van Dam]

This correction arguably improves the text, though the plausibility of
‘in, in to your obedience’ as an omission is somewhat diminished by
the inference of its misplaced reinsertion and by the deletion (at
237a) of the extrametrical ‘Captain’. Here the lines revert to iambic
pentameter and More’s rationale for *obedience* logically precedes his
order to obey. Despite possible objections, Van Dam establishes the
possibility of
[5]
transcription, and it must be stressed that the strength of his case
depends on the presence of the word obedience both at the end of the
addition and in the body of the text.

<><><><><>

I take it you essentially agree with him (without completely accepting
his emendation), because it seems like an awful lot of copy just to
establish that he introduced the idea that Hand D was a transcription.
Or am I assuming too much?

TR

Jerry

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Sep 5, 2008, 2:57:55 AM9/5/08
to Forest of Arden, jerry...@aol.com
Tom, I am not used to using g-mail, or groups, or Chrome.
And I assume that you have read the whole paper. Copy is cheap, no?
In first versions of the article (mid-nineties) Van Dam got much more
space than here. He was the most able and brilliant of 20th-century
scholars and his contributions will someday be vindicated, I hope.

I do agree with Van Dam, but my analysis comes later. Cutting the
quote and my comment too much would leave the perceptive reader
hanging. Further, as simple as eyeskip seems, any restatement of
its features will help the reader. Most Shakespeare scholars have a
very shaky idea of it.

For example, a reader will grasp that misplacing the restoration is
not
as likely as proper correction, so I was obliged to note that.
However,
readers will not know that misplacing a restored line is actually easy
to do, for some reason. One (scribe, compositor, editor, reader) takes
for granted that the error is as easily undone as 'undo' -- but it
isn't.

Blayney cites an instance in F Lear where Theobald observes a line
transposition. Blayney explains, "The transposed lines both begin
with 'To', and it would have been extremely easy for for the
compositor
to omit one of them by eyeskip." But on restoration, "What he forgot
was that line B belonged between . . ." (Lear, 215). But that's an
awful lot of copy, so I cut it short. Blayney understands that eyeskip
(homoeoarchton in this case) can occur with either line, and that
correction may err. Van Dam is also unusually perceptive.

I quoted Melchiori's attempt at the crux. Van Dam's could not be
cited without pointing out some of his alterations. But I couldn't
explain them at that point without getting off topic. He knew that
almost all unmetrical verse is corrupt, or misapprehended by the
modern reader (e.g. 'ry't', not 'ri-ot'). He perceived that 'captain'
may have been added later by D because it is at the end of the
line and extra-metrical. I couldn't digress there either, but had
to note the emendation, which I justify later in the paper.

If the restoration had been properly placed the eyeskip may
have been credited long before now. But I didn't want to snip
too much of the key observation. If Hand D is transcription,
the credit goes to Van Dam, from whom I learned it. Jerry






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