Shakespeare for the "Triers": Richard Hawkins and Q2 Othello at the Serjeants' Inn

In 1630 the Stationer Richard Hawkins began selling an edition of Shakespeare's Othello from 'his shoppe in Chancery-Lane, neere Sergeants-Inne'. This edition, identified by modern scholars as Q2, is remarkable as the first edition to fully conflate existent quarto and folio texts of a Shakespeare play. Scholars have remarked on the process that brought Q2 into beingbut the question of why a 17 th century