In brief, compositor E was an apprentice compositor in the first months of his
apprenticehood. The most significant of his attributes for my argument is, first, that he started his compositorial career under the tutelage of a senior compositor with whom he worked very closely, and second, the 'more routine work' that Hinman mentioned included E's distribution into type-cases of type set by other compositors.
AUGUSTINE PHILLIPS in 1605 left bequests to Shakespeare and others of his fellows in the King's Men, and |to James Sands, my apprentice, the some of fortye shillings, and a citterne, a bandore, and a lute, to be paid and delivered unto him at the expiration of his terme of yeres in his indenture of
apprenticehood'.(1) William Sly, another King's Man, in 1608 left forty pounds to |James Sandes'(Collier, 157) and most of his estate to |Sisely Browne', who as Cicely Sands had married the actor Robert Browne at Shoreditch in 1593/4.(2) James was probably related to her and to the Jane Sands who married the actor Christopher Beeston in 1602 (N&Q, ccxxxvi.39).