Compositors' Spelling Preferences and the Integrity of 2 Henry VI.

The article critically examines claims from the New Oxford Shakespeare Authorship Companion that Shakespeare’s play *2 Henry VI* was co-authored by Christopher Marlowe and possibly others, based largely on bibliographical evidence involving variant spellings of the interjection "O/Oh." It challenges the assumption that compositors in the First Folio consistently followed their copy texts’ spelling preferences, showing through detailed analysis that compositors frequently varied spellings even within the same page, undermining the reliability of such evidence for authorship attribution. The article also highlights the interventionist editorial practices of printers like Richard Field, which further complicate the use of spelling variants as authorial markers. Overall, it argues that the hypothesis of Marlowe’s co-authorship lacks convincing bibliographical support and that modern scholarship’s acceptance of Shakespeare as the sole author remains well-founded.