University of Virginia Library

§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

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  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.