Among the few authors who imposed their own spelling were Gonzalo Correas, whose Ortografía kastellana appeared in 1630 with specially-cut letters, and Fernando de Herrera, whose modest reforms can be seen in his works printed in Seville from 1572 to 1592.

Many photographs and facsimiles have been published of the manuscripts of Lope and Calderón, although they represent only a fraction of the material available. It must be remembered that authors' habits tended to change over the years. See Cruickshank, «Calderón's Handwriting», MLR, 65 (1970), 65-77.

For some examples, see Cruickshank, «Some Uses of Palaeographic and Orthographical Evidence in comedia Editing», BCom, 24 (1973), 40-5.

Thus Calderonian spellings «edna» and «adlante» (for Etna and Atlante, found in his autograph manuscripts over a lengthy period) are sometimes preserved in early printed editions. In the Tercera parte text of En la vida todo es verdad y todo mentira, a press-correction altered the «standard» spelling «decidido» to the more eccentric «dicidido». This suggests that the compositor's copy had «dicidido», a deduction which is supported by the fact that in the autograph manuscript, which survives, Calderón wrote «dicidido». In the same volume, however, another press-correction altered «O tu. Belcro, dios» to «O tu, Belero, dios». Another source reveals that no proper name was intended, but the adjective «velero». Our knowledge of Calderón's spelling indicates that he would have written this word with a «v»; he must have intended to say «O tú, velero dios» (referring to Cupid). The partial correction of the parte suggests that the compositor's copy was not Calderón's original: see his Tercera parte de comedias (Madrid, 1664), fol. 18r, col. 1, line 25; and fol. 210r, col. 2, line 33.

R. M. Flores, The Compositors of the First and Second Madrid Editions of Don Quixote, Part I (London, 1975); and «The Compositors of the First Edition of Don Quixote, Part II», JHP, 6 (1981), 3-44.

The classic example of this kind of scholarship is C. Hinman's The Printing and Proof-reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare (Oxford, 1963).

Cf. T. L. Berger, «The Printing of Henry V, Q l», The Library, VI, 1 (1979), 118-20, 125.

For example, in line 1601, VSL retains QCL's error «las ruinas»; in 1286, VSL corrects QCL's «vecellas» to «vencellas»; but in 1480 omits QCL's «con» in error.

In 1480, VS restores the «con» omitted by VSL; in 1643, VS changes VSL's wrong «hacerle» to «hacerlo», although QCL reads «hacerse» (this shows that VS was not corrected with reference to QCL, but it does not prove that Calderón did not make the correction; he could hardly have recalled in 1670 what he had written in 1635); in 1697 VS alters VSL's «tu» (which makes sense) to «tan», the kind of «improvement» that authors often make; in 2747, VS corrects VSL's meaningless «de vna» to «Dafne».

See A. E. Sloman's edition (Manchester, 1961), pp. xxxvi-xxxvii; a good example is lines 700-1, where QCL reads «En este misero, en este / mortal Planeta, ò signo». Line 701 is short, and VT reads «En aqueste, pues, del Sol / ya frenesi, ò ya delirio». This is Z's reading, apart from «delito» for «delirio», which must be VT's own change. All line-references are to Sloman's edition.