University of Virginia Library

DEVELOPMENT BY QUIRES

§4. Quire "a"

A. a1R (TITLE PAGE)

The four main states of the title page are shown in figure 1. A quick compari-
son reveals that these states are largely in the same setting. Note, for instance, the
damaged "M" in "Majesties", line 9, and the wrong-font final "3" in the imprint
date, which is common to all states. It is relatively easy to demonstrate, with a
purely typographic proof, that the order of states shown in figure 1 is also the
order of printing. As mentioned in §1, the "O" in line 3 is sound (as illustrated)
in some copies of state 1, but shows damage in others. Therefore, state 1 must
be the earliest. State 3 (a unique survival at the Folger), with its dangling comma
after "Grayes-Inne", must precede state 4. One would assume that the "third
impression" copies came last, and this is borne out by the association of this state
with later states of quires A-D, as we shall see. If we play devil's advocate and
posit an order of 1,3,4,2—moving the "third impression" forwards—we would
not be able to explain why line 11 of the title ("February the third, 1633.") starts
in one setting in state 1, changes to another for states 3 and 4, then reverts to the
original one in state 2. (The presence of a comma or a period after "third" is the most obvious marker.) So, we can safely accept the order as illustrated.

State 1 is further complicated by a deliberate realignment (state 1a2, not
illustrated). Figure 1(A) shows the first word of the title sitting too far left with
respect to the following line. During the printing of state 1, but after the damage
to the "O" in line 3, the alignment was altered by shifting "THE" rightwards so
that the "T" lay closer to the "V" below than to the "I". As a result, the word
came to sit too far right on the page considered as a whole, but with respect to
the following line, it is an improvement. No version of the title ever gets each
line quite centered.

Table 6 shows the hierarchy of changes that we have just worked out. The
numbering of the states refers to appendix 1. For the title, I have called the four
states 1a (with three sub-variants), 1b, 1c1, and 1c2. The notation "1" recognizes
that all are in the same basic setting and that the fourth is a stop-press variant
of the third. The taxonomic key ignores other adjustments, even the resetting
of line 11, that accompany the revisions signaled by the chosen markers. (A full
account of the evolution of the ToP title page would provide enough material for
a separate article.)

TABLE 6. Evolution of the title page

The reason for the deletion of "of Grayes Inne" in state 1b, and its restoration in
1c, is unclear. Shirley was admitted to honorary membership in the Inn on 17Janu-
ary 1634. This was a common enough practice for individuals who had rendered a
significant service, and it should not have been controversial. Quite probably, Shirley
was led to expect it as part of his compensation for writing the masque. He may have
allowed the words to creep into the printer's copy in advance of the actual bestowal.
When someone called attention to the error, the words were deleted, only to be re-
stored (in a new setting, of course) in state 1c, which was evidently printed after the
honor was official. Since there is no evidence that anyone tried to suppress them in
earlier copies, the deletion could represent a minor adjustment for a minor embar-
rassment. It could even have happened as a stop-press correction. This theory would
have a corollary that the printing of at least state 1a was well underway or completed
by the middle of January, and this would support Greg's assumption that the pub-
lisher aimed to have copies ready for sale by the first performance of the masque
on 3 February. 21 However, the archival evidence and other facts I will adduce in
§16 argue against the book's having been on sale that early. The disappearance and
reappearance of "of Grayes Inne" is the first of many mysteries surrounding ToP that
I will have to leave without a complete solution.

B. a2R

As with a1r, there was only one setting of this page. The following table shows
its states along with those of the title page.

TABLE 7. States of the title page and a2r

At the head of a2r is a decorative band composed of pairs of acorn orna-
ments. The early state has 28 pairs of acorns, the later two have 27. It is nearly
impossible to find individuality in acorn ornaments, but tiny differences show
that the change results from resetting, not a loss of one pair on the end. The
reduction happens simultaneously with a clear resetting of the direction line—
signature mark "a2" and the catchword—without a change of reading. There
being no reason to reset the acorns and direction line in mid-run, it appears that
the printing of a2r underwent a pause at this point during which the skeleton
(including the acorns in this case) was replaced. Another arbitrary change oc-
curred later, when the equal leading above and below line 5 of the heading (the
single word "THE") was disturbed and that line drew closer to the one below.
The same operation apparently dislodged a space two lines above, following the
words "Equall and", so that copies printed thereafter show a gradual rightward
drift of those two words.

C.a2v

Like the others in quire "a", this page has only one major setting (see table 8).

The first change to a2v is the stop-press correction of "ond" to "and". (The
error was a simple one for either the typesetter or the previous distributor to
make—the "o" box in the typecase lay just above the "a".) All copies of the un-
corrected state also have the undamaged "O" on the title page (a1r:1a1a). After
the correction to "and", further copies were printed before the "O" on the title
became damaged (initiating state a1r:1a1b). The addition of the comma after
"Honourers" on a2v occurs at the same point as the re-alignment of the first line
of the title page (producing a1r:1a2). The copies with the "Third impression"
title page (starting at a1r:1c) also show a resetting of the closing two lines of the
dedication on a2v, with no difference in reading. This sort of arbitrary change
should remind us of the headline resettings that, as I have argued, signal pauses

TABLE 8. States of the title page, a2r, and a2v

TABLE 9. States of quire "a"

in the printing. The loss of the rule below the dedication's signature is another
such indicator; it coincides with the disappearance of "of Grayes Inne" on the
title (a1r:1b). Shirley's signature to the dedication and the rule below it seem to
operate as part of a quasi-skeleton that is less stable than the text on which it borders.

D. QUIRE "a" ENCOMPASSED

Let us now combine in one sweep of the eye the states of the three type-pages
comprising quire "a". Table 9 is a "plain English" version; table 10 shows the
variants using the shorthand keyed to appendix 1. In both tables I have provi-
sionally placed double lines at the points of possible reimposition that I have
discussed above, which seem to indicate breaks in the printing.

TABLE 10. States of quire "a"

Note that the changes on all three pages tend to occur in lockstep. Quire
"a" is a half-sheet, which would most economically be produced by half-sheet
imposition run off by work-and-turn. 22 In this method, all the pages of the quire
are printed at once, and the sheets are flipped end-to-end and perfected with the
same pages on the back. When cut in half, each sheet yields two copies of the
quire. If this were the case with ToP, and if one examined the type impression
in many copies, about half will show that a2 recto was printed before the verso,
while the other half will show the opposite sequence. I have attempted this exami-
nation on 23 copies of ToP—a difficult process because the outer leaves normally
show most of the soiling and were usually washed and pressed at some point.
Only leaf a2 can be analyzed in this way because the title leaf verso is blank.
But the test did show a mixture of sequences of printing, so we can be confident that
quire "a" was printed by work-and-turn.

Because Norton used half-sheet imposition, all three type-pages of quire "a"
were accessible to alteration at the same time. So, it is not remarkable to see
changes taking place across all three pages simultaneously. The thing to note
at these transitional points is the mixture of arbitrary revisions with apparently
rational ones. When the number of acorn pairs drops from 28 to 27, the title
page gets a small realignment and the comma is added on a2v. Later, when "of
Grayes-Inne" is removed from the title (state a1r:1b), the rule disappears from
under the dedication on a2v and the line spacing changes on a2r; the latter is
an apparently random disturbance that entails the accidental loosening of a line.
The addition of "The third impression" to the title (state 1c) brings with it some

needless resetting on a2v. These bursts of purposeless activity strengthen our ear-
lier suspicion that the printing of the preliminaries proceeded in several discrete
spurts of work, of which the double-rule boundaries I drew in the tables above
mark only the most obvious transitions. I believe we have good evidence of four
printings, and that the double-rule segments in tables 9–10, indicating pauses in
the work, should run straight across both formes. I will refer to these printings,
or discrete periods of work on the formes, as "phases", and table 11 incorporates
them into a comprehensive scheme for quire "a":

TABLE 11. Production phases of quire "a" and their variants

My accounts of quires A-D will be less detailed than the foregoing and will
ask the reader to refer to the taxonomic key of appendix 1.

§5. Quire A

Table 12 results from mentally removing quire A from every copy of ToP
and arranging its pages in order from early to late states. Heavy horizontal cell
borders indicate complete resettings; double-rule borders show reset headlines
indicating reimpositions of standing type. Again the printing seems to divide into
several phases. The table shows that the formes evolve in the same direction,
which indicates that the printer was executing an orderly flip of the stack after
printing the first forme: the first-printed sheets of one forme became the first-
printed of the other. This pattern generally holds throughout ToP, though we will
find some aberrations in the other quires.

The table reveals that, as with the preliminary quire, Norton turned out sheet
A in several discrete phases of work. The most common marker of a shift to a
new phase is the resetting of the skeleton, or extensive text, of multiple pages
at the same points in the production history, though quire A does not show this
consistently. As mentioned in the previous section, it is often impossible to say
what motivated Norton to distribute some pages and not others. In the case of
quire A, all but one of the pages (A1v) retain at least half of their original settings
throughout the printing history. A1v was reset after Phase I, and the bottom half
of A2r was reset twice. Work on Phase II of quire A—the most clear-cut transi-
tion point in the quire's evolution—began by reimposing all of the outer-forme
type-pages set for the first phase. (Analysis of the type bite shows that quires A–D

TABLE 12. Production phases of quire A and their variants

of ToP always went through the press outer-forme first.) For the perfecting run,
Norton reimposed the inner forme using two pages with minor changes from
Phase I (A3v and A4r, which lay head-to-head), but the other two pages of the
forme were either completely or partly reset (A1v and A2r respectively).

Other phase shifts were more subtle, and the transition from IIb to III was
barely a whisper: only two pages got stripped and a couple of raised quads were
pushed down on a third. The backing forme shows no sign of a corresponding
interruption. This lack of correlation requires some fancy explaining. My feeling
is that the reimpositions on A1r and 2v, though they affect only two pages out of
eight in the quire, were still associated with a work stoppage. The lowering of the
quads on A4v, which happens at the same time, was probably an unintentional
result of removing the type-page at the end of Phase IIb and replacing it for
Phase III. Furthermore, on the evidence of the surviving copies of ToP, the number
of quire-A sheets in Phases IIa and IIb combined (11) is approximately equal to the number of sheets of the other text quires in their own undivided Phase II
(quire B, 10; C, 10; D, 11). Copies of the book that contain Phase III
of sheets B-D also contain Phase III of sheet A. (One exceptional copy from Phase III (Folger STC 22459.2) has an A-sheet from IIb, which indicates a possible slight
overrun of the A sheets that found their way into the following phase. I discuss
the overrun in more detail in §13.) These are the reasons I have designated the
two sub-phases within the second impression of quire A.

It is likely that Norton's original intent was to print Phase II as a continuous
job, but that something interrupted the machining of the outer forme and the
type was removed from the press. This marked the end of Phase IIa. When he
was able to resume work, he had two options. The simpler was to put the outer

forme back on the press, complete the intended second impression of that, then
perfect the sheets from Phases IIa-b of the outer forme together. However, a
skeleton resetting on A1v and a page-number shift on A3v in the inner forme
suggests that the perfecting of IIa-b also proceeded in two phases of work. Norton
perfected all the IIa sheets before doing another printing of both formes to
complete Phase II. Although it required more shifting of formes, this tactic would
prioritize the completion of some number of finished A-sheets. This would allow
a more speedy assembly of at least some copies of the whole book.

The inner forme of Phase IIb is indistinguishable from that of Phase III except
for a stop-press correction which appears part-way through the latter phase
(A1v:2b2). On the evidence of table 12, Norton could even have printed the inner
forme of Phase IIb and continued straight on to print the inner forme of Phase
III in the same run, perfecting the sheets of the latter phase with the outer forme.
But the type-impressions show that Norton always printed his outer formes first. So, we have to conclude that Norton began Phase III of quire A with only minor
changes to the outer forme (new skeletons for A1r and A2v) and none at all
to the inner. The boundary line between Phases IIb and III continues invisibly
right across the inner forme. We will later see similar arbitrary patterns in the
production of the other sheets.

A few other observations on quire A are worth making:

• In the outer forme, the four pairs of variants A1r:2c1–2,
  A2v:2a1–2, A3r:2b1–2, and A4v:2b1–2 all involve printing accidents. The last two pairs
  result from specific, one-time events. On A3r, the "3" in the signature mark
  drops out in the second state. (This may have occurred during the act of repairing
  some type damage and mis-alignment at the upper left, shown uniquely in copy
  bL 644.0.44. 23 ) A4v:2b1 has the quads printing between the two paragraphs, as
  mentioned above; these rose during the reimposition preceding Phase IIb and
  disappeared again at the inception of Phase III. (The rule below the text shows
  various bends during these changes.) In contrast, the "variant" on A2v involves
  a progressive downward creep of the last letter of the catchword, so these are not
  two distinct states. Similarly, the A1r variants involve a page number that prints
  more or less faintly—evidently a function of variable depths of impression—and there is no clear progression one way or the other over the course of printing. All
  these changes present a random picture in appendix 2, but if one plucks out only
  Phases II and III of quire A and puts the rows in order by state, the progression
  becomes clear.
• In A1v:2b1, the jockey in the torchlight parade holds a "bride" in his
  hand; state 2b2 corrects this to "bridle". Previous attempts at ordering ToP (most
  recently in the STC) have tried to use this difference to characterize major groupings
  of whole copies, but we see here that it is simply a stop-press variant within
  Phase III.
• Copies of the book with sheets from Phase IV of quire A come only with a
  "third impression" title page, and vice versa. In this final phase, a paragraph of description
  added to A2r affects the page breaks for the rest of the quire. Sometimes

  ---

  135

  
  
  
  the transferred text was moved in type, sometimes it was reset. The method used
  depended largely on whether the lines travelled to a facing page (i.e. in the same
  forme) or to the verso (printed in the next forme, in which case the transferred
  text was usually reset). Section 15A gives the specifics of this process.
• Between Phases I and IIa, the four lines of italic split between A2v-3r were
  raided and reset in great primer size (120 mm).
• In Phase IIb, the catchword on A2v, which heretofore correctly read
  "The", changes incorrectly to "All". This marries with the first word in roman
  type on the next page, but ignores the two lines of italic that precede it. We would
  expect this sort of error to arise during the italic raid after Phase I, but that had
  already occurred. Instead, it appears that the workman doing the reimposition
  for Phase IIb did not notice the italic lines and took his cue from the first paragraph
  in roman. The error persists through Phase III.

§6. Quire B

A. PHASE I

The early phase of quire B presents one significant difficulty:

TABLE 13. Variants in quire B, Phase I

Only three pages show variant states in this phase. Those on B1r are:

1a1 heading wholly in italic

1a2 heading reset with characters' names in roman

• type relatively undamaged
• first letters of ll. 7 up and 9 up are damaged

We can be reasonably certain that this is the correct order because the type
damage does not occur during state 1a1, and the reset heading follows the normal
convention by giving proper names in a contrasting type style.

The variants in B3v-4r, in the backing forme, involve commas. 24 Neither
state is obviously the earlier, but the direction of the change is less interesting at
this point than its confused relationship with the outer forme: the early and late

states of the outer forme each occur with both states of the inner forme. The
distribution of surviving copies is as shown below:

TABLE 14. Distribution of selected variants of quire B in Phase I

If, after printing the outer forme, the printer followed a normal turn of the
heap of sheets that contained B1r, we would expect the changes on B3v-4r, in the
backing forme, also to follow an orderly progression from early to late. We saw
this pattern in quire A. In contrast, the distribution of states in Phase I of quire
B shows a sort of "countercurrent eddy", indicated by the shaded cells above.
It appears that a disorderly stack-turn took place. To understand this concept,
first recall that a normal print run of a forme might produce several hundred
sheets, yielding a thick pile of damp paper with the last-printed sheets on top.
To preserve the same order and orientation of sheets going through the press
on the perfecting run, the pile had to be inverted end-to-end. Since the pile was
too bulky to turn as a unit, the workman had to transfer it in several handfuls,
inverting each one onto the new stack.

Suppose instead that the workman carelessly transferred one handful of sheets
straight across without turning it. This would produce a stratum of sheets with
the printing facing the wrong way. We would expect the pressman, when working
down the pile and finding this mistake, to utter a curse, turn the affected sheets
to align with the others, and go on working. But he might also utter a curse and
start picking up the sheets from the opposite end, using a slightly different motion
to place them on the tympan. The pinholes—normally positioned slightly
asymmetrically—would help prevent mishaps in perfecting, and the pressman
might enjoy the little bit of variety until reaching the underlying layer of correctly
oriented sheets. This seems to be what happened in Phase I of quire B. Let us
use our sample of the nineteen copies of that phase to stand for the entire first
printing of this gathering. The machining of the outer forme (containing B1r)
produced a heap like the one on the left below, with the later states on top.

If we now back up these partially garbled sheets with the inner forme containing
B3v-4r, which begins with state 1a1 and switches to state 1a2 about half-way
through, we get the observed distribution of variants (table 15).

A stack turn with handful B transferred without flipping is the only scenario
that yields the observed results if we assume the printer started the perfecting
run at the top of the stack and worked his way straight through. Our thought
experiment also shows that state iai of B3v-4r most likely came first. If state 1a2
had been earlier, we would have to hypothesize a second turning of the garbled
stack—this time correctly done—yielding the inverse of the first column above.
The reader may verify that this does not yield the observed distribution of states.
We cannot change the boundaries of group B without creating a conflict with the
observed combinations, so that cohort must represent the survivors of a manageable
number of sheets that the worker was comfortable picking up with two
hands. It is tempting to extrapolate from our nineteen-copy sample to estimate
the total number that were printed in Phase I. If group B represents one "grab",
the total first printing of the quire might have contained four roughly equal
handfuls of damp sheets, each of which in ToP measured about 41 by 31 cm. 25 A
practical trial might provide an estimation of the edition size. However, it proves
difficult to locate a source of poor-quality, lightweight, handmade paper with

TABLE 15. Distribution of copies resulting from anomalous transfer of handful B

similar characteristics to that used in ToP; and I have been no more successful in
getting usable data from present-day fine printers regarding their paper-turning
habits. It turns out that there are a host of variables that make it impossible even
to approximate an upper limit on the edition size by this means.

It should make us slightly uncomfortable that B1r state 1a2b is absolutely
coextensive with group A. The last handful (or more likely two) appears to have
contained only that state, which occurs nowhere else; and state 1a2a is found
only in handful B. If my analysis above is correct, and if further copies of ToP
were to come to light, one of them might contain B1r:1a2a combined with a
later state of B3v-4r.

B. QUIRE B, PHASES II-IV, OUTER FORME

The next phases of quire B are so complex that it is necessary to analyze the
two formes separately.

After Phase I, three of the pages of B(o) were reset and one (B3r) was reprinted
with a new skeleton. Phase II's only variants occur on B4v (in states 2a1 –3) in the
passage "ayre, ... with an artificiall bellowes coold". The last word also appears

TABLE 16. Variants in quire B outer forme, Phases II-IV

as "cool" and "coo". Neither reading makes as much sense as "coold" (2a1), and
the variants probably result from a two-stage accidental loss of letters from the
end of the line. Frisket slip is not a suspect here because there are no intermediate
states—the letters are either completely present or completely lacking.

For Phase IIIa, all of the pages have new skeletons. Page B4v state 2b2,
found uniquely in a copy at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge (Z.59), presents
a problem because the page number has shifted horizontally. However, the type
appears to be the same and the page is unchanged in other respects, so reimposition
is not likely to be the cause. If looseness in the line caused the shift, we
would also expect slightly different spacing among the three characters of the
page number, but we do not see this either. It remains an unexplained problem,
but a minor one.

In the discussion of quire A, I identified a point within Phase I at which press-
work was interrupted, but the other formes of the book from that phase did not
show a similar hiatus. Sub-Phases IIa and IIb were in effect separate printings of
quire A, with both formes showing changes. Quire B is a slightly different case.
Again, it appears that a more urgent job interrupted the printing, this time during
Phase III of the outer forme. The delay was long enough that the type-pages
were stripped and probably tied up. After the other job played through, printing
of B(o) resumed with a new skeleton, including a new arrangement of acorns on
B1r. (I have not been able to determine whether the direction lines were reset as
well—they are closely similar.) These re-imposed copies constitute Phase IIIb.
However, both of these impositions of the outer forme occur with identical states
of the inner forme. The two sub-phases of the outer forme seem to have gone
through a single perfecting run. 26 Apart from this one forme—and a couple of
other small variants which I will discuss in §11–14—these five copies resemble
the twelve others from Phase III.

The following corrections demonstrate that Phase IIIb indeed followed
Phase IIIa:

TABLE 17. Variants in quire B, Phases IIIa,b

In Phase IV of this forme, a few things are of interest:

• On B1r, the page number wanders a bit horizontally over the 15th pair
  of acorns.
• Likewise, on B2v, the stem of page number "4" can point to the first letter
  of "the" below, to the "o" in the preceding word, or anywhere in-between.
• In this phase, B3r picks up the first three lines of text (in a new setting)
  from the following page, relieving some crowding on the latter.
• On B4V, the four flush-right italic lines have been raided and are reset in
  smaller (pica) size. The two centered italic lines on the same page are unaffected,
  perhaps because it was not worth the trouble to get at them. On this page also
  the page number is horizontally unstable. This example of wandering, along with
  items 1 and 2 above, are among many in ToP that demonstrate that lockups on
  the press bed must have been much less rigid than Joseph Moxon's descriptions
  would lead us to expect.

C. QUIRE B, PHASES II-III, INNER FORME

TABLE 18. Variants in forme B(i), Phases II-III

The inner forme of quire B is even more perplexing than the outer one.
Phase II begins with a complete resetting of all four pages. Shortly afterward,

B4r alone acquires a reset skeleton (state 2b), which persists into Phase III. The
direction of the change from 2a to 2b is confirmed by a textual correction and
progressive damage to line 7 during state 2b. For only one page of a forme to
change its skeleton is puzzling enough. But it also occurs against a background
of changes to its forme-mates B1v-2r which do not develop in consistent directions.
These variants are:

B1v: The "V" beginning line 10 is more or less displaced downward, or is
entirely absent. Where it is absent, the "D" from two lines down drifts up into
the vacant space.

• B2r: 1. St. Catharine's College (Cambridge) Z.55 shows a unique setting of
  the page number. The number "3" comes from a different font than that found
  elsewhere in the book, being rounded and with the upper loop noticeably smaller
  than the lower. It is evenly spaced between undamaged parentheses. All the other
  copies have the usual narrow "3" with loops about the same size, and one or
  both of the page-number parentheses are either damaged or fouled with ink. This
  number was apparently not locked up tight, and it can fall anywhere from close
  to the left parenthesis to centered between the two. The direction line appears
  to contain the same type as does the St. Catharine's copy.
• In some exemplars, the right ends of lines 1 and/or 4 creep upwards by
  varying degrees.
• The comma ending line 6 prints either normally or as a blob.
• A stray bit of metal resembling a hyphen may show in the empty space
  between lines 6 and 7 and below the "na" of "nature" in line 4.

A tabulation of these features shows some correlation among certain manifestations
of variant 1 above (a bit of dirt on the right parenthesis at about 2 o'clock),
variant 2 (both lines displaced), and the blobby comma in variant 3. But other
characteristics do not line up, either with each other or with the amount of type
damage on B4r. Most of the features are of a transient nature and could be
reversible: for instance, the wayward "V" on B1v could drift, fall out, and be
replaced, so late copies might look like early ones. The loose page number with
its parentheses could have fallen apart near the end of the run, and all three types
could have been reset to produce the unique manifestation in the St. Catharine's
copy. The stray metal in variant 5 could have been slightly raised in the forme
throughout this phase, but would print only when sufficient pressure

Excessive attention to these details might not be either productive or healthy,
but it is not so easy to dismiss the skeleton change on B4r early in Phase II (the
transition from state 2a to 2b), mentioned above. Because there is no evidence
of changes on the other three pages of the forme at that point, it presents a challenge
to my theory that arbitrary page-number changes are signs of work stop-
pages. It is another occurrence I will have to leave unexplained.

D. QUIRE B, PHASE IV, INNER FORME; QUIRE B RECAPITULATION

The final phase (IV) of forme B(i) shows a resetting of all the pages. For no
obvious reason, the four-line roman-face stage direction on B3v beginning "The
Gentleman ..." is now set in pica, one step smaller than the surrounding text.

TABLE 19. Forme B(i), Phase IV

Combining all that we have discussed about both formes of quire B generates
table 20, which is puzzling in its fragmentation and necessarily evasive about
correlations among certain states below a certain level of detail.

TABLE 20. Synopsis of variants in quire B

Nevertheless, it is possible to discern two events, initiating Phases II and IV,
that clearly interrupted work on the entire quire. These resulted in the resetting
or reimposition of almost all the pages. The outer forme underwent two more
skeleton changes on its own, introducing Phases IIIa and IIIb.

§7. Quire C

Table 21 shows four relatively clear-cut phases of production for all of quire
C. Phases II and III are signalled by reimpositions or resettings that run straight
across both formes. Phase IV is more subtle, having only two pages reimposed.
But the remaining pages (except for C3r, which comes over completely unchanged
from Phase III) all show revisions, some of them major, at the inception

TABLE 21. Variants in quire C

of Phase IV, and the timing of these coincides with the major discontinuities that
we have already shown initiating the final printing phase of the preceding quires.
(Appendix 3 shows this correlation most clearly.) Phase IV of this quire is found
only with the "third impression" title pages and vice versa. So, despite the lack of
extensive resetting at this point, we can still assert
the likelihood that the alterations to both formes preceding this final phase took place during a significant
pause in the press run.

On C2v, the action of the masque enters its final phase, which features numerous
songs set in italic. These provide the main source for the italic raids
discussed in §3.

The production of the quire went as follows:

A. PHASE I

C outer forme shows a normal pattern of variants whose sequence is all but
certain. The inner forme, however, presents an insoluble problem in the sorting
of the two variants of C1v, which at line 23 has either (1a1) "We change
the Seene" or (1a2) "We change the Scene". These are found in the combinations
shown in table 22. (The remaining three pages of C(i) are invariant, so
are not shown.) About half the sheets (the eight copies shown in the last row of
the table) have the latest states of both the outer and inner formes, as we would
expect, but the other ten sort illogically. Unlike the retrograde pattern of quire
B Phase I (§6A), the existence of all these permutations cannot be explained
by any plausible irregularity in turning the stack. Only dropping some portion
of the sheets on the floor and picking them up more or less at random would
cause the first state of the inner forme to be printed on the back of three of the
four variants of the outer forme. "Accidents at the press" is the last resort of the
baffled bibliographer, and I will not waste space here in trying to develop such an
explanation.

TABLE 22. Distribution of C1v variants in Phase I

On C4V the bottom lines of text are bent upwards at the right. The greatest
amount of deflection is a bit more than 2 mm—so, rather less than half the
height of one line—but bad register with the text on the back of the leaf makes
it quite noticeable. This much distortion would be impossible if the non-printing
space on the page were packed solid; there must have been a gap in the lockup,
and I would guess that one of the lines of Song 5 somehow got into the forme
without being justified. Such an oversight would also explain the slight misalignment
in lines 7–9 on the same page. This precarious situation might have made
it impossible for a workman to pick up and transport the locked-up forme in
the manner described by Moxon, 27 but the interaction of pressures along both
dimensions of the page was apparently sufficient to keep types from being pulled
during presswork. This is the most graphic demonstration in ToP that printing
could proceed with adequate stability even if regions of the forme lacked support
on all four sides. We have already seen instances in §6B of wandering alignment
between adjacent lines that probably arose from similar causes. 27a

B. PHASE II

Phase II shows raiding of italic on pages C2v, C3r, and C4v. These pages contained
all of the main caches of italic in the outer forme. C4v was particularly
heavy-hit, being totally reset except for the roman lines 7–9 and the last line. After
the raid, the italic Song 5 and its roman title on that page reappeared in pica size.

The inner forme of quire C offered an even richer source of italic than the
outer, but it was never raided at this point, or ever during the history of ToP.
The reason is probably that C(i) was on the press and inaccessible while C(o) was
being raided. C1v does show resetting of the italic in lines 8–10 and 25–27, but
this page was not a plentiful source for the font, and the resettings could have
arisen from some other cause. (For instance, the earlier state showed a comma

out of place in line 7, and it is possible that lines 8–10 were pied in the act of
repositioning it.)

C1r in this phase shows some horizontal instability in the page-number
position.

C. PHASE III

In this phase, pp. C2r and C3v—which lie side by side in the forme—undergo
the only complete resettings in the history of quire C. Head to head with
these, but later in the phase, C1v and C4r both show page-number shifts. These
are probably simultaneous but random drifts, as the types in the page numbers
appear to be the same before and after. However, the five copies which show this
deviation happen to be the same ones which contain quire B from Phase IIIb. I
will discuss this uncomfortable coincidence in §13.

Also in this phase, the text of C1v shows further instability around the same
points which changed in Phase II: the italic in lines 1 –10 and the last four lines
is reset, the fourth line up ("A Landschape the Scene.") going missing in the first of
two steps to a smooth transition between antimasques. When lines 8–10 were
changed in the previous phase, the period after "carryed off" in line 9 ended up
below the line (which shows another unstable lockup). In Phase III, it is properly
aligned, and the resetting of the nearby italic may have had some connection
with that repair-work.

D. PHASE IV

Phase IV, as mentioned above, is found only in "third impression" copies of
ToP, and, like the final phase of quire A, it introduces important textual revisions
that alter the page breaks within the quire. Edits on C1v and 2r shorten the word
count significantly, causing two-line chunks of the text to move backwards until
the original breaks resume at the end of C2v.

This phase gives us further examples of text that is reset either larger or
smaller than the prevailing 96 mm "english" size:

C1r: At the top of the page, a brace separates the list of three characters from
their stage directions on the right. In the original setting, the directions crowd
right up to the brace. In Phase IV, the direction is reset in 82 mm pica; the line
breaks are the same, but the page gains some needed white space.

C2r: The antimasque of the "phantastique Adventurer" has the same layout
as the previous example, with a brace separating the names of the characters
from their stage directions. In this last phase, the directions are rewritten and
lengthened, so the compositor reset them in pica type apparently to maintain
visual balance.

§8. Quire D and "A Speech"

Readers who have followed me to this point will, I trust, agree that the thirty-six
pages of The Triumph of Peace comprise a Wunderkammer of bibliographical
problems, any one of which could support a separate study. The last quire will
not disappoint.

A. QUIRE D PHASES I-II

Quire D begins life with an outer forme showing an orderly progression of
variants:

TABLE 23. Variants in forme D(o), Phases I-II

The second state of D1r supplies a missing word; at the same time the first
three lines lose their horizontal alignment. This state gives way to a third one
in which the same three lines of type are damaged. D4v shows a more subtle
change, in which the right parenthesis of the page number suffers damage near
the bottom; this occurs while D1r is in its second state.

The inner forme on this set of sheets also shows a regular progression, but
with a clear work stoppage indicating two phases:

TABLE 24. Variants in forme D(i), Phases I-II

The variants are

D1v: State 1a1 has a comma that has slipped into the line below, and a damaged
parentheses to the right of the page number. In state 1a2, the comma is
correctly positioned and the parenthesis is sound. This sequence, which could
have gone in the opposite direction, is confirmed by

D2r: The second state (1a2) corrects a typo, improves sense by adding a
comma, and pushes down one of two quads that were printing inappropriately
in the first state.

The conspicuously damaged parenthesis in D1v:1a1 is the same one found on
C2v, also in Phase I, in the same position to the right of the page number and in
the same quarter of the forme. This recurrence gives us a clue about the order
of printing these quires in Phase I. There are two possibilities:

• Quire D came first. The damaged parenthesis was removed part-way
  through Phase I as one of five stop-press improvements to the inner forme, but
  instead of being discarded it was put back in the type-case and later set—coincidentally
  in the same position—in the headline of C2v.
• Quire C came first. After Phase I of that quire the damaged parenthesis
  either persisted on D(i) as part of the skeleton, or returned to
  the type-case to be set—coincidentally in the same position—on D1v. In either case, part way
  through Phase I of quire D, its damaged state caught the eye of the corrector
  and it was discarded.

The second possibility—that the parenthesis remained as part of the skeleton
and was later replaced by a sound type—is much more likely; and indeed this
damaged parenthesis never reappears in later states of ToP.

The independent typographic evidence that Phase II of the inner forme followed
Phase I is rather slight: the correction of one error in line 8 of D3v, which
kept the same setting of the first twenty-one lines from Phase I. However, as most
copies of ToP containing Phase II also contain later states of quires A-C, we can
be confident of this direction of change.

When we put together Phases I and II of the two formes of D, their relationship
becomes complicated:

TABLE 25. Variants in quire D, Phases I-II

This table shows two oddities beyond the fault-lines indicating the pauses in
production, which by now we have become accustomed to:

• There were two production phases of the inner forme, marked by skeleton
  changes on three pages (D1v, D2r, and D3v) and a complete resetting of D4r.

  ---

  148

  
  
  
  However, the outer forme of the same sheets appears to be the product of one
  continuous printing, with states 1a2 and 1a3 each appearing within Phases I or II,
  not during a pause between them.
• Phase I of this quire shows an illogical mixing of states between the two
  formes. If we consider only the states in this phase and ignore the invariant pages,
  the scheme looks like this:

TABLE 26. Distribution of states of quire D, Phase I

This is very nearly a random shuffling; like the permutations of quire C in
Phase I, it cannot be attributed to any plausible method of flipping a single stack.
The three combinations that do not occur are early/early, middle/middle, and
late/middle; but there is no guarantee that these would not emerge if new copies
of the book were to come to light. As with quire C, I am unable to explain the
distribution of variants here.

Point 1 above—the fact that the inner forme goes through two production
phases while the outer forme appears to have only one—is easier to explain if
we suppose that the outer forme went through two printings with no alteration
during the pause between them. Phase II of D(i) associates mostly with the third
state of the outer forme (D1r:1a3), in which the first three lines of type on D1r
show damage. The accident that caused this may in fact have come in the transition
to Phase II. The distribution of surviving copies is as follows:

TABLE 27. Correlation of D1r variants with phases of D(i)

Only two copies (McMaster University, and British Library Ashley 1697,
shaded above) show sheet D with its inner forme from Phase II but the outer
forme in the undamaged state typical of Phase I. 28 If we take the hypothesis that

the outer forme had two separate printings corresponding to Phases I and II of
the inner forme, there are at least two possible explanations for the observed
distribution:

• The damage occurred early in the second printing of D(o), or
• McMaster and Ashley 1697 represents a small residue of sheets which for
  some reason were not perfected during Phase I. The damage occurred during
  the replacement of the outer forme in preparation for Phase II. The Phase II
  sheets with the damaged type were combined with the Phase I leftovers and
  perfected with Phase II of the inner forme.

It is more likely for damage to occur at points of transition than during
periods of repetitive work, so I lean toward the second explanation. Either one
requires some special pleading to fit the hybrid copies into a plausible narrative.
There is no doubt, though, that they are closely associated with the skeleton
change in D(i), which marks the end of Phase I of that forme, and the same phase
also produced about equal numbers of quires A-C.

Before Phase II came the pause during which italic was raided in quires A
and C. Norton raided quire D as well, but only the inner forme. Three of its
constituent pages show the italic in a new setting in Phase II, while the fourth
page—consisting almost entirely of italic—was entirely reset. D3r, in the outer
forme, could have supplied a good amount of the font but was not touched.

For Phase II of quire D, Norton printed the outer forme, as I have argued,
unchanged from its Phase I state except for the damage to D1r (which could also
have happened early in Phase II). Following Phase II, another small italic raid
occurred on both formes, carrying off the songs on D2r and D3r. The former leaf
had already been raided, even more extensively, following Phase I. The second
raid shows a continuing need for the font beyond its earlier use to set the dedication
for ToP; some other job was interrupting at this point. Concurrently with
these replacements, and quite bafflingly, the roman portion of D3v—about two
thirds of the page—was reset. I cannot begin to suggest a reason for this.

B.QUIRE D PHASES III-IV

Uniquely for ToP, Phases III and IV of quire D contain two different settings
that mix randomly in copies containing Phases III and IV of the other quires. I
will call these settings A and B:

TABLE 28. Quire D settings, Phases III-IV

Setting A, in six out of the eight pages of the quire, is simply a reimposition of
the standing type from Phase II; the first two pages are reset. Setting B contains
typographic features not found elsewhere in ToP, nor in any of Norton's printing
from the years 1633–34 that I have seen. The characteristics are:

           

Quire D, setting B		Rest of ToP (Norton)
k	The diagonal arms are stunted, the upper-right serif failing to reach the x-height and sometimes tilted upward.	k	The upper diagonal arm consistently reaches the x-height.
w	In some examples, the left V meets the right one a bit downward from the middle serif; the bottom of the left V falls below the baseline of the right one, so that the letter usually appears to tilt to the left.	W	The left and right V's meet the middle serif at the same height, and the letter does not tilt.
h	The curvature of the legs is midway between that of Norton's i-1 and i-2; the right leg ends pointing left.	h	In i-1 the legs curve slightly toward each other but do not approach closure; the right leg ends pointing 45 degrees below horizontal. In i-2, they close almost completely; the right leg ends pointing straight left.
3	Full-bodied.	3	Abnormally narrow.
o	Ranges with the other lowercase letters.	o	Usually too large.

[Description: Setting B, showing stunted "k" (Houghton STC 22459a.5)]

[Description: Setting A (Norton), showing oversized "o" (Huntington 69432)]

These are strong tendencies, not invariable markers, but the differences are
pronounced enough to indicate that a second printer's type was used in setting
B. The immediate suspicion falls on Nicholas Okes, with whom Norton at this
time had an informal and increasingly fractious partnership. 29 Okes had already

left traces in ToP, though probably involuntarily. The factotum on a2r came from
his 1609 stock as catalogued by Peter Blayney 30 —Norton is known to have filched
other woodcut material during their association. To confirm my hunch about
Okes, I surveyed English books printed in 1633–34, searching for the odd "k"
and "W" in particular. Unsurprisingly, this did not yield an unequivocal answer.
Early-modern printers' typographic stocks were not proprietary, homogeneous,
or static, and there are no woodcut elements in quire D to help finger the collaborator.
I found versions of the stunted "k" in the repertoire of numerous
printers, including at the university towns, and "W" showed great variability in
most samples. Many texts I looked at did not even contain english-size type—
the smaller pica is much more common—and a good proportion were Latin, in
which letters "W" and "k" are rare. My search for definite fingerprints became
an exercise in probabilities, trying to estimate frequencies of the characteristic
sorts in scattered pools of the target font. In the end, though, my survey supported
Nicholas Okes as the most likely owner of the type used in quire D setting
B. 31 A hardier investigator than I might be able to clinch the identity with
a survey of broken types in Okes' other productions, but for narrative simplicity
in this account I will treat it as a certainty.

Though Okes' type may appear in setting B, we cannot assume that he had
personal responsibility for the printing. A series of undated petitions beginning in
late 1635 shows a deteriorating relationship with his partner. Okes' most interesting
complaint is that Norton, "wanting Capacitie himself for the Government
of a presse hath enterteined ayded & assisted a Company of disorderlie & factious
persons for the erecting of an unlawfull presse in a secrett place, and hath
without [my] knowledge & Consent ... secretly conveyed out of [my] house [my]
formes and lettres which afterwardes were discovered and seized by the master
& wardens of the Company of Stacioners & at their hall melted and defaced to
[my] great disgrace and losse." 32 The chronology of these events is vague, but
another document, dated January 1635, reinforces the impression that both men
were accustomed to playing fast and loose in their business. This list, endorsed
by Sir John Lambe of the High Commission, claims that the two printers jointly
employed, in addition to five authorized apprentices, six individuals "brought
upp to Printing against order". 33 The latter group, which included a butcher,
a gingerbread maker, and a garbler, may have constituted the "disorderly and
factious" team that Norton recruited to run his clandestine press. There is no
evidence that the "Okes" ToP quire D was printed off-site, or even that Norton

had such an operation while TOP was being printed. But the partnership clearly
operated in the shadows, and we cannot take for granted the ostensible paternity
of any of their productions.

Okes' setting of quire D occurs in seven of the seventeen surviving copies of
Phase III and in four of the nine copies of Phase IV Possibly Norton and Okes
each printed about equal numbers of sheets to supply the last two phases, or Okes
printed rather fewer. I have not found any variants in Okes' sheets. Although the
typesetting is not error-free, one gets the impression of a more assured compositorial
hand than Norton's crew could muster. It is not clear why Norton brought in
a second printer at this late stage to run off a "duplicate" setting of the quire. In
§16, I will show that the time gained by running the same eight pages of text on
two presses was nearly offset by the time taken in setting them anew. The complications
of using a clandestine off-site press would further reduce or even negate
the advantage. This consideration, along with the greater professionalism of
Okes' quire D setting, argues against Norton's direct agency in its production.

We know that Phases III and IV of sheets A-C contain multiple impressions,
so we would expect sheet D to show evidence of this as well during Okes' involvement.
However, as mentioned, Okes' sheets contain no variants that I have
identified. Norton's sheets for Phases III-IV are also virtually identical, but D1r
shows some interesting small changes:

2a1: l. 10 has "Masqncrs"; signature mark under the "hi" of "white,"

2a2: l. 10 has "Masquers"; signature mark under the comma of "white,"

2a3: l. 10 has "Masquers"; signature mark under the "w" of "white,"

From the spelling correction it appears that states 2a2 and 2a3 follow 2a1. The
shifts in the direction line raise the spectre of reimposition. However, the signature
mark—anomalously, an italic "D"—appears to be the same type in all three states.
(Transient bits of foreign matter appear either as specks within the letter [mostly
in 2a2] or falling across one or the other serif.) The page number also appears
invariant in composition and position. It would be tempting to attribute the states
of the direction line to random shifts due to loose lockup, except that there are n
ointermediate states, and the variants tend to sort in a complex but fairly orderly
fashion with sheets of the other quires. Norton's states of sheet D show the following
distribution:

TABLE 29. Correlation of Norton's D1r states with B(o) and C(i) in Phases III-IV

The table shows that state D1r:2a1 is found only with Phase-III copies of the
other quires, while 2a3 associates (with a single exception) with Phase-IV copies.
State 2a2 (shaded) is transitional between 2a1 and 2a3, and it occurs in copies
having B(o) from Phase IIIb. Those same copies have unique states of pages in
the inner forme of sheet C. In §11–14, I will return to these links among the
three quires. For now, it appears that the D sheets containing Norton's D1r:2a3
could represent a discrete Phase IV, his final one for that quire. The "leakage" of
2a3 into Phase III, represented by the Newberry copy, could have resulted from
Norton's having printed sheet D a bit short in phase III. Thus, a small group of
Phase-III copies of the book may have been made up with Phase-IV sheets of
quire D. Those hybrids probably went to the warehouse along with the purebred
Phase-IV copies.

If we accept that Norton printed Phases III and IV of quire D as distinct
impressions, what about Okes? Might he have printed all his sheets for both
phases in one go? If we allow this possibility, we have to explain the fact that, in
the surviving copies, Okes' contribution makes up about an equal proportion in
each phase: respectively 41 and 44%. When, after Phase III, a workman began
collating complete copies, he would probably start picking D-sheets from a homogeneous
batch of one or the other man's production, whichever came to hand
first. This process would almost certainly produce different Norton/Okes ratios
in Phases III and IV So, either the D sheets after Phase III already contained
about 40% of Okes' work, or Norton deliberately manipulated the ratio to equal
that in the upcoming Phase IV. Such an intervention supposes obscure motives
and more fastidiousness than I can credit Norton with. The same objection applies
to a hypothesis that both men printed their sheets for Phases III and IV
in a continuous run. The more plausible explanation is that Norton brought in
Okes to print a half-share of Phase III sheets, but asked him to keep the eight
pages in type, skeletons intact, against a probable fourth printing. When that
need came about, Okes was able quickly to reimpose the pages without alteration
for the new run. This scenario asks a high degree of precision from Okes, and
requires that he tie up eight pages of type without knowing for certain whether
they would be needed—otherwise, why not go ahead and print Phases III and
IV together? I cannot give a detailed and definitive account of Okes' work cycle.
It is intertwined with the mystery of why he got involved at all; if we knew the
answer to one, the other would probably follow. However, I favor the theory
that Norton's and Okes' teams worked in tandem on Phase III of quire D, and
that—on the slim evidence of surviving copies—each produced an approximately
equal number of sheets, of which Norton's contained states D1r:2a1 and
the much less common 2a2. Once they reached the end of Phase III, the pages
of type from both printers' pairs of formes were tied up and there was a pause,
during which completed copies from Phase III were assembled and dispatched.
After an indeterminate time came Phase IV, for which both printers again machined
approximately equal runs of their respective settings of quire D. Norton's
sheets of these final copies differ from those of Phase III only in the position of
the signature mark on D1r, which moved about three millimeters, probably during
the reimposition process, producing state 2a3 of that page.

TABLE 30. Phases in the printing

Norton and Okes seemed to feel that a further impression would be called for
after Phase III, but something prevented them from going on to print a double
run of quire D. The publisher Cooke may have been uncertain about demand.
But Phase IV also ushers in the bulk of the substantive textual variants in ToP
These occur in the description of the procession on A2r and A3r, in the tavern
direction on B3r, and in antimasques on C1v and C2r. None of the variants are
stylistic; they seem rather to document actual changes in the performance. By the
end of Phase III, Norton and Okes may have known that revisions were coming.
Although, in the event, none of these fell in quire D, the printers may not have
known this, and therefore put the type-pages for the last quire aside until the
matter was settled.

The singleton epilogue leaf "A speech to the King and Queenes Maiesties",
found in only four copies (and Greg's own copy, now untraced), 34 exists in a single
state, printed by Norton using mostly his workhorse italic i-1. The page is headed
by the now-familiar motif of a double row of acorns (28 pairs in this case). I will
consider the history and status of this addendum in succeeding sections.

§9. Order of Printing the Quires

In the preceding sections, we have been exploring ToP "vertically", as it were
—working out the histories of individual pages, studying their chemistry as they
combine into formes and quires, and watching each quire evolve in isolation
from the others. It is now time for a "horizontal" approach as we begin to reconstruct
the progress of printing the whole text, phase by phase. Table 30, a
modified version of appendix 3, shows how these phases align across the quires
of the surviving copies. It shows a fairly orderly stratification: for a given copy
of the book, the phase of any one of quires A-C serves as a good predictor of
the phases of the others. The few exceptions to this among the survivors result,
I believe, from the occasional necessity of making up copies with sheets from
neighboring phases. (I will discuss this further in §11–14.) But the phases do not
leapfrog one another: II and IV never mix in a copy, nor III and I or IV and I.
If sheets from more than one phase were available simultaneously for gathering
complete copies, there was nothing to stop Norton from mixing them indiscriminately,
because the text-breaks across quires never change. Except for the "third
impression" copies he would have no motivation for keeping the products of
one phase segregated from another. Therefore, I think we can safely hold to the
theory of four discrete printings of the book as a whole.

The recurrence of types can give us clues about the order of printing the
quires. (Lacking evidence to the contrary, I will assume for the ensuing discussion
that the order of printing in ToP is the same as the order of composition.) We would
expect Norton to work through quires A-D in sequence. But here, as so often, ToP
hands us a surprise. The recurring types in the first phase of printing that I could
confidently identify are distributed as follows:

A. PHASE I

TABLE 31. Recurring type material in Phase I

On first glance, the table appears to show nothing out the ordinary. Quire B
inner forme could have been set with type distributed from the outer forme of A;
Norton could even have begun at the title page and proceeded straight through
the book. But we need to take into account what happened to the individual
pages at the end of Phase I. In fact, the outer forme of quire A remained in substantially
the same setting through the printing history of ToP, whereas quire B
was distributed after Phase I. So, types from A(o) were not available to set B(i)—
rather the opposite. Therefore, A(o) was set after B(i) went through the press and
got broken down. Similarly, quire "a" continued to hang onto most of its type
(predominantly 96 mm italic) while D2r was raided for its italic after Phase I. (I
have indicated the point of the raid with a wavy border in table 31, distinguishing
the fate of that page from that of D4r, which was entirely distributed.) The
preliminaries could not have been set until printing was finished on quire D inner
forme. Furthermore, two letters on D2v show that that page could not have
been set until after the distribution of at least part of each forme of quire B; and
a distinctive bracket on C2r shows that C(i) cannot have been set before B(i)
was off the press. So, quires C and D both followed B. In §8A, I showed, on the
evidence of one broken parenthesis in the headline, that quire D was probably
printed after quire C. No other types from C show up elsewhere; it was probably
set while quire B was still being worked off, after which it held onto most of its

roman type through the succeeding phases. Italic raids on C after Phase I must
have supplied some other printing job than ToP. If, then, we may consider entire
quires as production units, it appears that the printing of Phase I followed the
sequence B-C-D-A-a. Nothing in the data shows that the preliminary quire "a"
had to come last, as long as it followed D from which it drew some of its type. But
preliminaries were normally printed at the end of the job, and if "a" followed D
directly, there would have had to be a pause for D(i) to be at least partly distributed.
(Remember that in ToP the inner formes were printed after the outer ones,
and it is only D(i) that provided types for quire "a".)

Something caused Norton to place quire A late in the schedule. A probable
reason emerges when we recall that quires B-D contain the text of the masque,
while quire A sets the stage, as it were, with a description of the costumes, scenery,
and the public procession that opened the performance. Most of this is written
in the past tense, as if reporting the finished event, while the stage directions
for the masque itself are mostly (though not exclusively) in the conventional
present tense. This division between reportage and direction again raises the
question of whether copies of the book were in fact available on the day of the
first performance—a matter which I will explore further in §16. The important
point here is that the details of the procession were more likely to be in flux until
the last minute, whereas a relatively stable text of the masque would have been
needed earlier so the performers could learn their parts. Though both sections
show light revision through the printing history, it would have made sense to
start work on the part least likely to change. Quite possibly, Norton began typesetting
the main text before Shirley had even finished writing the description of
the procession.

If typesetting and printing began with quire B, as the evidence above indicates,
this may explain why this quire alone was mostly distributed after Phase I—
seven of its eight pages broken up, as opposed to only one page each in quires A
and D, and none in C. I have already mentioned the often arbitrary pattern of
which pages got distributed and which survived into later impressions. However,
this first quire printed could represent an initial intent to play by the rules and
distribute type after running an impression—a routine that Norton could discard
if he learned that he would have to achieve faster production than planned.

Two other observations are worth mentioning here:

• Quires A, C, and D have a type-page width of 89–91 mm, but quires "a" and
  B measure 97 mm—three ens of english type wider. 35 These different widths
  imply at least two differently adjusted composing sticks, suggesting more than
  one compositor.
• 2.The last page of quire B has some overly generous leading, indicating some
  distress in copy-fitting. This could reflect a compensation for the unexpected
  use of the wider measure just mentioned.

B. PHASE II

TABLE 32. Recurring type material in Phase II

After Phase II, only four pages were distributed, plus italic portions of D2r
and D3r; recurring types therefore provide less evidence for the order of printing
in this phase than for Phase I. (The wavy border below D2r in this table shows
that only the italic portion was reset; one of its types turns up on B4v.) Here
again, it appears that quire A was printed after quire D: D1v was distributed at
the end of this phase and two of its types show up on A2r. On the other hand,
quire A held onto most of its type from this phase onward and could not have
supplied it to D or any other quire. It also looks (on the evidence of only two
types, but both are quite distinctive) as if quires D and C were finished print-
ing before quire B could be set—again, because quire B carries its types largely
unaltered into the next phase, while the donor pages in quires C and D give up
type after Phase II. These observations show that quires C and D were printed
before quires A and B. The fact that Phase II of quire A actually consisted of two
separate printings complicates the picture. In §5, I suggested that, after an inter-
ruption in the Phase-II printing of A(o), Norton chose to perfect the sheets he
had already printed rather than resuming the planned run of the outer forme and
then perfecting both sub-impressions in a single operation. The motive would be
to prioritize the completion of at least part of the planned impression of sheet A
in order to get some complete sets of sheets to the publisher for sale. This strat-
egy would make more sense if quire A came later, even last, in the sequence of
quires as printed. However, if quire A came last and if therefore B followed D
directly, the composition of B's outer forme (the first one printed in B) would have
had to wait for the italic from D2r (in the second forme printed in D) to become
available. This would leave the press idle, at least for purposes of machining ToP.
If, instead, A followed D directly, its outer forme would still be standing from
Phase I and printing could have proceeded on that while D was broken down
and the types incorporated into A(i). So, the slightly more likely sequence for this
second phase of printing was C-D-A(Phase IIa)-B. Probably Phase IIb of quire A
came last, but it cannot have been delayed long because two of the three surviv-
ing books that contain it also have Phase II of sheets B-D.

The textual changes in quire A are minor for Phase II and would have had
no bearing on a decision to leave the production of that quire for later. Possibly it

came later in the sequence because that was the order followed in Phase I. Quire
B, on the other hand, came into this phase with only one type-page intact; all the
others had to be reset. So, it would have made sense to commence printing with
quires C, D, and A, leaving time for the resetting of B.

I have left quire "a" out of the discussion for this phase because it holds onto
most of its original types throughout the production. We would normally expect
it to come late in the series, probably after quires B and/or A(Phase IIa).

C. PHASE III

TABLE 33. Recurring type material in Phase III

This phase began with the resetting of four pages, italic raids on two others,
and some localized resettings. Only the inner forme of quire B was distributed
before the next phase. Its donation of a distinctive bracket to C1v shows that C(i)
was composed after B(i) had finished printing. This is the only evidence for work
sequence that recurring type-matter affords in Phase III. (Of course Norton's and
Okes' typesettings of quire D did not share any material.)

Italic raids before this phase point to a continuing need for english italic for
another job; the distributed material does not reappear in reset portions of ToP.

D. PHASE IV

TABLE 34. Recurring type material in Phase IV

Both Norton's and Okes' quires D continue intact from the preceding phase,
and most of sheets A-C also enter Phase IV unchanged except for localized reset-
tings to accommodate revisions and resulting page-break changes. The exception
is quire B inner forme, which was entirely reset. As usual, there is no obvious
reason why Norton reset this forme and not others. But table 34 shows that some
of the types from the first page of text (A1r) turn up again in the two last pages—
B3V and 4r—of the newly set B(i). So, A(o) was already printed and being dis-
tributed before B(i) was ready for the press. A single letter "a" shows that Norton
printed sheet D and distributed some of its type before resetting three lines on
B3r. Therefore—if we again take sheets to be the units of production—both A
and D preceded B through the press. Quire C contains no distinctive types that

allow us to place it in a sequence, and again the few changes to quire "a" are
insufficient to establish links with any other. The sequence, then, was A-D-B,
with the positions of C and "a" unknown, though as usual we would expect the
preliminaries to come last.

Though the evidence of recurring types is very incomplete, it shows that Nor-
ton distributed at least portions of quires A and D while other quires remained to
be composed. It looks as if Norton knew that he had reached the end of the pro-
gram and there was no point in leaving type standing against further reprints.

Some type-matter distributed from Phase III found its way into reset passages
in Phase IV:

TABLE 35. Recurring type material between Phase III and IV

It appears that the types freed up by the distribution of B(i) after Phase III still
lay near the top of their boxes, available for picking up for Phase IV alterations
in quire A. This implies a rather short delay, or none at all, between Phases III
and IV.

A different case is the singleton leaf bearing "A speech to the King and
Queenes Maiesties", surviving in four copies of the final phase. It is set mostly
in Norton's italic i-1. I could identify none of its types with those used in the rest
of the book in any phase. This lack of recurrence is not too surprising, given the
small sample size, but it would also be consistent with a significant passage of
time between the distribution of ToP's main text and the setting of "A Speech".
During this period, the ToP types might get deployed on other jobs or covered in
the boxes by other types more recently distributed, making them less likely to be
picked for setting the new epilogue.

§10. Skeleton Formes

The patterns of transfer of the visible parts of the skeleton can sometimes
yield information about the progress of formes through the press. In ToP, the only
identifiable recurring components of the headlines are the page numbers and
their surrounding parentheses. The pagination of the book is [i-iv], 1–8, 2i -24;
as quires A and B have duplicate pagination, whole headlines could potentially
have been transferred between them without change. The digits themselves provide
scanty evidence for the re-use of skeletons: though the workman imposing
the forme might have recycled digits from previous pages,
the types would have
tended to shuffle positions randomly, and it is often difficult to tell whether one
of them is damaged or is just another design variation in Norton's heterogeneous
stock. Pairs of parentheses, on the other hand, occur on every page and could

very easily be re-used along with the surrounding spacing material that held the
number more or less centered. Being long, thin lines, parentheses are prone to
damage, and particularly in the case of a battered stock like Norton's, they ac-
quire an individuality that bibliographers can take advantage of. In my catalogu-
ing of those in ToP, I relied on visibly injured individuals, but made no attempt to
classify the infinite variations among the sound examples that could result from
different cuttings, variations in inking and impression, or even inversions.

A. PHASE I

In §9A, I showed that the sheets in Phase I were probably printed in the
order B-C-D-A-a. The preliminaries do not participate in the sharing of visible
skeleton formes, and in the following table I have arranged the other formes in
my proposed order of printing. In this and the subsequent tables, the codes fol-
lowing the page references stand for pieces of type. The abbreviations L, R, and
# indicate left and right parentheses and the digit(s) they enclose. A code "L#R"
signifies that the headline was transferred unaltered from a page earlier in the
printing. An "x" indicates an individual type that is undoubtedly different from
the one in the previous appearance of the headline; a question mark means that
the type is not distinctive enough to tell whether it is the same or different.
For example, in the table below, the left parenthesis from B1v recurs on C1v; the
page number changes from 2 to 10, so neither of the two digits can be the same
types; and the right parenthesis might be the same one from B1v, but I could
not verify this. The same left parenthesis then migrates to D2v, where again the
the following digit of the page number changes from 1 to 2 (hence "x"), and the
next zero and right parenthesis could be the same types from C1v but are not
distinctive enough to tell. So, all we can say definitely about these two transfers
is that the left parenthesis is conserved. We cannot say even that the transfer was
direct from one forme to the other; the headline could have been distributed
and the type coincidentally picked off the top of the pile in the case for setting
the new headline. In the first scenario, the action is deliberate and systematic, in
the second it is unconscious and random. There is perhaps a tendency for types
to remain in the same position in the new forme; codes printed in boldface
in the following tables signify pages on which the type material recurs in the same
quarter as in its immediately previous use.

TABLE 36. Recurrence of headline types in Phase Ia—b

The appearance of Phase I is not one of particular regularity. Every identifi-
able parenthesis switches at least once between outer and inner formes during
the printing history. A slightly puzzling feature is the rapid re-use of certain
types, at the transitions marked by the dashed vertical lines. For instance, the left
parenthesis on C1v (inner forme) recurs immediately in D2v (outer). Since outer
formes of ToP sheets were always printed before the inner ones, this proximal
re-use means that the imposition of D(o) had to wait for the machining and strip-
ping of C(i) to receive some of the latter's headline. If presswork were proceeding
smoothly, it would have avoided a bit of delay to take D outer's skeletons from
C(o), or from somewhere else further back in the production. The same sharing
occurs with two types between D(i) and the next following forme, A(o). These
"pinch points" suggest small delays in the workflow after quires C and D, pos-
sibly to accommodate other jobs or even some of the composition of ToP itself.
We can eliminate some of these points if we drop the assumption that the order
of printing is the same as the order of composition and rearrange the quires in
the table above; but no arrangement gets rid of them entirely.

The parentheses that start their journey on B4v travel through all four quires
of the main text, remarkably ending up on A4v with the same damaged "8". (My
notation system cannot show that particular coincidence.) Because quires C and
D intervened, this distinctive type could not have travelled with the parentheses,
but was evidently put aside, or back into the case, after B(o) was printed, and
randomly retrieved for use in A(o).

B. PHASE II

TABLE 37. Recurrence of headline types in Phase II

Type-recurrence analysis (§9B) shows that the order of printing the quires in
this phase was probably C-D-A(Phase IIa)-B-A(Phase IIb). Table 37 follows this
order. In comparison with Phase I, Phase II seems to have proceeded in a much
more orderly fashion. Recurring characters leapfrog adjacent formes, so that any
one piece of type will appear only in the outer or the inner, and always in the
same quarter of the chase (as shown by the bold typeface in the table). All three
characters of the A2v headline, including the page number, recur on B2v. It is
odd not to find any headline material from quire C participating in a transfer, as
all of its pages were either reimposed or completely reset after it was printed.

Quire A was printed in two distinct stretches of work, Phases IIa and IIb.
After the first of these, the skeletons were stripped from five of its eight pages.
Table 37 shows that A(o) in Phase IIa shares much of its headline material with

the corresponding pages of B(o). When A(o) went back on the press for Phase IIb,
all of its headline material was new. By the time I realized this, the three copies of
A(IIb) were not easily accessible and I was unwilling to exasperate my colleagues
with yet more requests for images. Therefore, I have no specific information on
the headlines of A(IIb).

C. PHASE III

In §9C, I was unable to find evidence for the sequence of printing the quires
in this phase, so I tabulate them here in alphabetical order:

TABLE 38. Recurrence of headline types in Phase III

This phase shows regular patterns of movement of headline material between
quires A and C, and B and D. Once again the printer either did not have or did
not take the opportunity to transfer the page numbers intact between sheets A
and B. The re-use of material between B(i) and C(o) would create a "pinch point"
if Norton followed the order shown, because the imposing of C(o) would have
had to wait until B(i) was off the press, cleaned, and stripped. There are several
ways of reordering the quire sequence to place comfortable intervals between the
re-uses shown in the table: repeating Phase II's order of C-D-A-B would be one
of them. But as we lack evidence of recurring types in the text, the most we can
say is that it is slightly more likely that Norton printed the quires out of sequential
order, but we do not know what that order might have been.

The five surviving copies from Phase IIIb are characterized by unique page-
number settings in the outer forme of quire B. Their typographic material shows
no distinctive forms that occur elsewhere in Phase III.

Okes could conceivably have transferred some headine material between the
two formes of his quire D. Visual inspection shows no evidence of this, partly
because because his type was more uniform and in much better condition than
Norton's and the parentheses are too regular to show useful differences.

D. PHASE IV

From the evidence presented in §9D we know that the printing of sheet A
in Phase IV preceded that of quire B. This phase is unique in having all the
headlines from A(i) transferred intact to the same-numbered pages in B(i).
We would expect a similar transfer between the outer formes, but this did not oc-

TABLE 39. Recurrence of headline types in Phase IV

cur. Norton's printing of quire D carries over its headlines from Phase III, and
quire C has only two new headlines in eight pages, with none of their material
used elsewhere. Okes' headlines remain with their type-pages, unchanged from
Phase III.

In conclusion, the patterns of headline re-use during the ToP printing history
show that Norton's men took only partial advantage of this potentially labor-saving
practice. This lack of regularity might be interpreted as evidence of a chaotic
work-flow, but in fact, it is not that common to find any book of the period to be
completely regular in this respect, and many show no headline re-use at all. The
limited evidence of the practice in ToP gives the appearance that Norton settled
into a slightly more systematic routine as he worked through the impressions.