University of Virginia Library

GATHERING THE SHEETS

Now that we have laid out the evolution of each page of ToP and considered
how the pages shared typographic material in their progress through the several
phases of printing, we will examine how the various states group themselves
together in formes and sheets, and how the finished sheets were gathered into
copies ready for folding and binding. Earlier investigators (notably Unger, Jack-son, and Greg) were perplexed by the range of permutations of states in copies
of ToP that they examined. They attempted to explain some of the complexity as
resulting from duplicate settings run off concurrently to satisfy the expected high
demand for the text. While this was true diachronically—Norton did, in fact,
set many of the pages more than once through the various phases—it is not true
synchronically: different settings were not in production simultaneously except
for Norton's and Okes' quire D. Instead, surviving copies show a degree of ho-
mogeneity consistent with separate phases of printing the whole book, each phase
yielding a discrete batch of complete copies that left the establishment before the
products of the next phase could mix with them. The uncommon exemplars that
show mixing between phases can be attributed to slightly unequal supplies of in-
dividual sheets at the time of collation, requiring some copies of a given phase to
be completed with products of the previous or following one. 36 The ensuing dis-
cussion will refer to appendix 3, and it assumes that the proportions of surviving

copies of the various states shown in the table bear some statistical relationship to
the numbers that were originally printed. I have found no evidence that Norton
treated the products of any one phase with particular favor, nor do I have any
reason to suppose that different versions had different rates of survival.

§11. Phase I

Appendix 3 shows that eighteen of the nineteen copies surviving from Phase
I (about 95%) are homogeneous throughout (ignoring stop-press corrections).
In other words, they contain the earliest settings or impositions of all the sheets
including the preliminaries. The one exception is Huntington 69434, in which
quire D comes from the next printing. This is an example of the situation just
described in which one quire was evidently printed a bit short in one phase and
had to be completed from the next. There is nothing special about quire D that
might have led to a short printing; recall from our type analysis that it was prob-
ably printed third of the five quires in Phase I.

If quire D was printed short, it seems that quire "a" was printed long. In
addition to the nineteen complete copies from Phase I, four copies from the
second printing have Phase I preliminaries. This extrapolates to a 21% surplus
of first-printing quire "a"—an odd amount, being too little to represent an in-
tended second impression but too large to have resulted from a trifling accidental
overrun. The discrepancy persists in Phase II, in which each quire survives in
approximately equal numbers, but a residue of preliminaries is pushed over into
Phase III copies. In Phase III, Norton apparently shorted the run of quire "a"
by a number about equal to the initial overrun, so Phase IV copies are finally
homogeneous (if we disregard Okes' contribution)–all "third impression" title
pages come with text sheets from the last printing. The phase relationship of
quire "a" with the main text looks like this:

TABLE 40. Staggered distribution of production phases of quire "a"

The first two impressions of the preliminaries may occur with either of two
impressions of quires A-D, and the second and third printings of the main text
can each come with two possible variants of the title page. It was this ladder-like
asynchrony that led earlier bibliographers to believe that Norton had printed
simultaneous duplicate settings of the text.

In a given copy, we should not necessarily expect early stop-press variants of
any one sheet to sort with early states of the others, or later with later, though
there may be a tendency for this to happen. 37 Appendix 3 indeed shows an es-
sentially random pattern in this regard.

§12. Phase II

Phase II represents a print run that was probably smaller than the first; there
are ten survivors, as opposed to nineteen for the first printing. The phase is com-
plicated by the two sub-phases of sheet A, the products of which consort with the
other sheets of the book in contrasting ways. Sub-phase IIa is found only with
Phase II of sheets B-D, and it sometimes occurs with the residue of Phase I prelimi-
naries. Sub-phase IIb, on the other hand, comes only with Phase II prelimi-
naries, and one copy (Folger STC 22459.2) even has quires B-D from the third
phase. These groupings support my earlier assertion that Phase II consists of two
batches of copies that left the shop at different times, or were at least sequestered
so they could not intermix. The A sheets may have been a bit over-printed, as
evidenced by the Folger copy that is hybridized with Phase III.

TABLE 41. Schematic contents of copies with quire A from Phase II

§13. Phase III

This is the phase where the quire D sheets printed by Nicholas Okes first
make their appearance, in 41% of the surviving copies from that phase. Most,
though not all, copies come with the title page omitting the words "of Grayes
Inne". During the course of Phase III we see the skeleton changes to the outer
forme of quire B that define Phase IIIb of that sheet, as discussed in §6.

The following table shows the composition of Phase-III copies. The patterns
of association, based on a very small sample size, are at particular hazard of be-
ing broken by new copies of ToP that may happen to emerge, and the following
discussion need to be read with that caveat in mind.

TABLE 42. Schematic contents of copies with quires B—D from Phase III

Three copies with quires C and D from Phase III (shaded above) contain
quire "a" from the previous phase, and one of these also has quire A from the
previous phase. Because of their residual Phase-II content, they are likely to have
been among the first exemplars from Phase III to be gathered into complete cop-
ies. Two of these three copies contain Norton's quire D and one has Okes'. This
statistically equal representation is consistent with my earlier conclusion that the
two men's sheets were effectively printed "simultaneously", so were about equally
available to use in any copy of Phase III.

In §6B, I discussed an imposition of B(o) that I called Phase IIIb. The five
copies containing it show some puzzling patterns in their makeup. In most re-
spects they behave like normal copies from Phase III. However, none of them has
quire "a" from the earlier phase, and all five have quire D in Norton's printing.
The first point is not especially surprising, given the rarity of Phase III copies
with quire "a" from Phase II. On the other hand, if Norton's and Okes' printings
of quire D were equally available to make up those five copies, the probability
of their ending up only with Norton's is 1/32, or about 3%; so perhaps this does
call for some explanation. In §6B, I argued that Phases IIIa and IIIb of B(o) were
perfected in one run with the same inner forme. In the resulting stack(s) of sheets,
the two sub-phases would probably have remained separate strata. Hanging the
sheets up to dry could have led to some intermixing of the two states, but by the
time Phase III copies were assembled, the two sub-phases of sheet B might still
have had enough spatial segregation to create dissimilar patterns of association.
If, for example, the IIIb's ended up in a remote stack and were retrieved late in
the collation process, and if the supply of Okes' quire D had arrived somewhat
before Norton's and was exhausted first, there could be a tendency for Phase IIIb

of sheet B to end up with the remainders of Norton's quire D. But we cannot draw
any conclusions about what happened, and with the discovery of more copies the
pattern shown in table 42 could easily fall apart and we would have something
different to explain.

Phase IIIb of forme B(o) also associates with unique states of forme C(i) and
page D1r:

• C1v has the page number and parentheses displaced about 2 mm to the right
  with respect to other copies of Phase III.
• On C4r, in the same forme, the page-number types have moved 4 mm to
  the right.
• In both these cases the page-number materials are unchanged except in position,
  and there is nothing to indicate whether the states are earlier or later than their
  Phase III cohorts.
• On D1r, the italic signature mark "D" shows three possible positions in the
  Phase IIIb copies:

• 2a1: Under the "hi" of "white," in the last line. This is the normal position
  in Norton's Phase IIIa copies, but it is also found in the Phase IIIb copy at the
  Bristol Central Library. Line 10 has the misprint "Masqncrs".
• 2a2: Under the comma. "Masquers" is now correctly printed, so this state is
  later than the preceding, and the handling required to make the correction may
  be sufficient to explain the signature-mark shift. The state is uniquely associated
  with Phase IIIb of B(o), occurring in three of the five copies.
• 2a3: Under the "w". Line 10 also has "Masquers". This state is found in
  the Newberry copy of Phase IIIb, but also in all of Norton's Phase IV sheets, so
  it is evidently the latest of the three. Its presence in the Newberry copy prob-
  ably results from a slightly short run of quire D which had to be made up from
  Phase IV.

The materials and alignments of the headlines are invariant in all of these
states.

The five copies containing Phase IIIb of quire B are already unusual in their
B(o) skeleton, but the association of that skeleton with unique states in two other
quires is unsettling. I cannot imagine an event happening during the printing of
one sheet that would manifest itself at about the same point during the printing
of another. The arbitrary realignments in quires C and D are reminiscent of St.
Catharine's College Z59, with its unique page-number placement on B4v (§6B);
but here they coincide with the unique skeleton settings of B(o). Three of the
seven states that appear during this sub-phase improve the readings found in
their Phase III cohorts, 38 though another (B2v:2c2) actually introduces a textual
corruption that persists through Phase IV. One is tempted to suggest that the
copies containing Phase IIIb of quire B are witnesses to a separate production
phase of the entire book, with no changes except the reset skeleton of forme B(o),
corrections to D1r, and incidental shifts on C(i). (There were later deliberate
changes and attendant shifts on B2v, B4r, and D1r.) How the five IIIb copies

came to combine all these unusual features is, to my mind, ToP's greatest remain-
ing mystery.

§14. Phase IV

The latest copies of ToP—those which the title page calls "the third impres-
sion"—comprise the most homogeneous group in the whole publication history.
Of the 27 pages in quires "a" and A-C, 24 have settings, impositions, or vari-ant states that are unique to this printing. 39 The sheets of quire D printed by
Norton for this phase are characterized by state D1r:2a3, whereas his output
for Phase III contains D1r:2a1–2. (The latest state of that page also occurs in
the Newberry copy, one of the five from Phase IIIb discussed in the preceding
section; but we can probably regard this as another instance of an earlier-phase
copy that had to be completed with a quire from the next phase.) No unsophisti-
cated copy of Phase IV contains sheets from earlier printings, if we except Okes'
quire D, which I have argued was likely the product of two separate print runs
that are now indistinguishable.

The single-leaf "Speech to the King and Queenes Maiesties," alluding to
the second performance of 13 February, is bound into four of the nine traceable
copies of Phase IV. Its placement among the sheets would probably have been at
individual binders' discretion. As a sort of dedication, it could logically belong at
the end of the preliminaries after Shirley's original dedication; or, as it referred to
an event later than the first performance documented by the book, it could come
last. The copies I have seen show two in the first location and two in the other
(and Greg reported that his copy had it bound after quire a.) Being a singleton, it
would have been prone to loss, and one does not know whether it was originally
included with the sheets of all Phase-IV copies or whether it was available only
for those sold later. I could not find any of its damaged types elsewhere in the
book, so there is no obvious evidence that it was set soon after the last phase of
printing. In §16, I will give archival evidence that might have a bearing on the
addendum, but from the physical evidence it is not possible to say anything with
greater certainty.

§15. A Digest of the Workflow

In this section I attempt a narrative of the entire production cycle of ToP. It
follows the order of printing the quires in each phase as far as I have been able
to determine. "Distributed" means the entire page was broken down and the type
put back in the cases. "Stripped" means that the skeleton (always the headlines,
and generally the direction lines as far as I can tell) was removed—either for
distribution or for transfer to another forme—leaving the bare type-pages to be
tied up for later impression. "Replaced" means that the tied-up pages, complete
with their previous skeletons, were newly imposed for reimpression. When all the
pages of a forme were replaced unaltered, I would not rule out the possibility that
they were still locked in their chase when set aside.

As it is difficult to assign a significance to transfers of individual types in skel-
etons, I have mentioned only cases where two or more types in a cluster seem to
have been moved together.

A. PHASE I

As I demonstrated in §9A, the quires were likely printed in the order B-C-
D-A-a. Quires B and C have different measures and could have been composed
simultaneously. Quire "a" has the same measure as quire B and was possibly
composed with the same stick. English-sized type (20 lines = 96 mm) is used for
the text throughout.

B outer forme

Pauses for correction: one, affecting B1r only: heading reset with characters'
names in roman. The same page later incurs damage to ll.7 up and 9 up.

After printing: the stack of sheets is flipped in a non-standard but explainable
way (§6A), scrambling the states during the perfecting run. All pages are distrib-
uted except B3r, which is stripped and kept standing. One piece of type from
B4V reappears in D(o), and parentheses from the B4V headline are transferred
to the headline of C4r.

B inner forme

Pauses for correction: one: one comma added to B3v, two to B4r.

After printing: all pages distributed. One identified type reappears in D(o).

C outer forme

C4v has an egregiously cock-eyed lockup, the last lines of text bending up-
ward into a hole left by the omission of some spacers; page number 16 is mis-
printed "61".

Pauses for correction: three, eventually affecting all of the pages; one change
deletes a stage direction on C3r

After printing: all pages stripped. The italic songs on C2v, C3r, and C4v are
removed and distributed, presumably for use in another job but certainly not for
ToP; the remainder of the text is kept standing. The fact that C(i), an even richer
source of italic, remains untouched in this wave of raids shows that the songs in
C(o) may have been taken while C(i) was on the press and inaccessible.

The unperfected sheets are shuffled in an unexplained manner that results in
an anomalous distribution of the two states of the inner forme.

C inner forme

C4r headline gets its parentheses from B4V

Pauses for correction: one, correcting a spelling on C1v.

After printing: distributed: C3v, and C2r except most of ll.5–9. Other two
pages stripped and kept standing. At least one type from the C1v headline is
transferred to D2v in that quire's outer forme. That is the next one on the press,

so printing on D(o) probably follows a short delay. Headline parentheses are also
transferred from C4r to D3v (both on inner formes).

Some time before the next phase, C4r l.10 and C1v italic and brackets in
ll.8–10 and last three lines are removed and distributed.

D outer forme

Pauses for correction: one: a word added to D1r, making better sense but dis-
turbing the first three lines in the process. A bit of type damage takes place later
on D4V, and still later on the previously disturbed lines of D1r.

After printing: all pages kept standing with their skeletons.

The unperfected sheets are shuffled in an unexplained manner that results in
an anomalous distribution of the three states of the inner forme.

This quire is printed a little short.

D inner forme

D3v gets its parentheses from C4r.

Pauses for correction: one, fixing a typo and a misalignment.

It is possible that a small number of sheets printed with D(o) are not perfected
in this phase, but are perfected with the inner forme characteristic of Phase II.
(See the discussion of B.L. Ashley 1697 in §8A.)

After printing: D4r distributed, the rest stripped. Some headline material is
transferred to A(o). That is the next forme of ToP to go onto the press, so the
transfer probably causes at least a short delay in presswork.

Some time before the next phase, sections of italic are removed from D1v,
D2r, and D3v, to be used at least partly for setting quire "a". Remainder of text
kept standing.

A outer forme

A4v gets its parentheses from D3v (same position in forme).

Pauses for correction: none.

After printing: distributed: A1r ll.1–9 and the last; A4v ll. 1–2. Remainder of
text stripped and kept standing.

Some time before the next phase, four lines of italic on A2v-3r are also
distributed.

A inner forme

Pauses for correction: three, affecting spelling and commas.

After printing: A1v and bottom half of A2r distributed (from "These moving
forward ..." to end); other pages stripped and kept standing.

"a"

The dedication (pages a2r-v) contains italic raided from D2r and 4r. All
three pages of preliminaries are imposed together and printed by work-and-turn.
There is no evidence of the use of bearer types on blank a1v. Most likely, each
sheet is perfected immediately.

Pauses for correction: one, correcting a typo on a2v. Part-way through the cor-
rected state, the "O" in l.3 of the title page suffers damage.

After printing: acorns and direction line stripped on a2r, otherwise all type-
pages kept standing.

The number of sheets printed, on the evidence of surviving copies, is about
20% greater than those of the other quires.

At this point, the products of Phase I either leave Norton's shop or are pack-aged and remain unmixed with later printings. A few sets of sheets apparently
linger without quire D, which was printed a bit short.

Meanwhile, composition is proceeding on another unidentified job or jobs
which cause italic passages to be removed from the standing type in quires A,
C, and D.

B. PHASE II

The sequence of quires in this phase is less certain than for Phase I (see §9B).
The history is complicated by the two sub-phases of quire A, and there is no
evidence for the position of quire "a" in the sequence because after Phase I it
has no typographic interaction with the other quires. I have placed it last below,
as it was normal to print the preliminaries after finishing the text.

C outer forme

Preparation for printing: italic songs on C2v, 3r, 4v reset. On the latter page,
Song 5 and its title are set in pica (20 lines = 82 mm, with the title in roman;
the title "Song 3" on C3r is also in pica). All new skeletons. The distortion of the
last line on C4v is remedied.

The use of pica type on C4v probably indicates a shortage of the english size,
which is the default for ToP. The use of pica roman for the title "Song 5." may
be deliberate, to match the type of the song itself; but it also creeps into the title
on C3r, where the song itself is reset in english.

Pauses for correction: none. The page number on C1r shows some looseness.

After printing: all pages stripped and kept standing. None of the headline mate-
rial shows up in the other quires.

C inner forme

Preparation for printing: C1v (italic and brackets, ll. 8–10, and last three lines)
and C4r l.10 reset. Other minor adjustments to 3v and 4r. All pages reimposed
with new skeletons.

Pauses for correction: none.

After printing: C1v: italic and brackets in ll. 1–10 and last four lines distrib-
uted. Otherwise, all pages stripped and kept standing. None of the headline
material shows up in the other quires.

D outer forme

Preparation for printing: pages replaced along with their original skeletons. The
damage to the first three lines of type on D1r, already disturbed, probably occurs

at this point, producing state 1a3. If not, the damage happens early in the print-
ing (§8A).

Pauses for correction: none.

After printing: D1r distributed; all other pages stripped and kept standing.
Some headline material from D1r, 2v, and 4v is transferred to the same posi-
tions in A(o).

Some time before the next phase, two stretches of type are distributed: D2v
ll.18 through the end of the page, and the italic song on D3r.

D inner forme

Preparation for printing: D4r reset; five-line stage direction at the top of D1v
reset in roman; raided italic portions of D2r and 3v reset in the same italic font.
All new skeletons.

Pauses for correction: none. It appears that a residuum of sheets printed with
the outer forme from Phase I are perfected with this batch.

After printing: all pages stripped and kept standing except for the following,
distributed: D1v (all); D2r italic song ll. 1–8 only; D3V roman section. Headline
parentheses from D4r are transferred to A4r (inner forme).

A outer forme Phase IIa

Preparation for printing: the following are reset: A1r ll. 1–9 and last; A2v-3r,
four lines of italic (set in great primer size, 20 lines = 120 mm.); A4v ll. 1–2.
Textual revision to A3r.

All new skeletons, including the rule on A4v, but omitting its catchword;
the lines of acorns on A1r may be new. A2v headline gets its parentheses from
D2v.

Pauses for correction: none. The catchword on A2v goes gradually out of align-
ment. Printing is halted before all sheets of this forme are machined.

After printing: all pages stripped and kept standing. Some headline material
from A1r, 2v, and 4v is transferred to the same positions in B(o).

After a delay, apparently to allow other work to play through, it appears that
Norton decides to perfect this partial run of sheet A rather than complete the
Phase-II impression of outer-forme sheets.

A inner forme Phase Ila

Preparation for printing: A1v, and bottom half of A2r (from "These moving
forward ...") reset. Commas added on A4r. All new skeletons, including the row
of ornaments on A3v. A4r headline gets its parentheses from D4r.

Pauses for correction: none. A4r shows looseness in l. 7.

After printing: all pages kept standing: A1v stripped, the others with their
skeletons.

If Norton's strategy at this point is to rush out as many copies as he can with
the partial run of sheet A, the logical next step is to machine the two remaining
quires before returning to complete the impression of A:

B outer forme

Preparation for printing: B1r, 2v, 4V reset; B1r has 28 pairs of acorns, with two
inverted. On B3r (reimposed), rewriting of the tavern direction from one to three
lines forces the last four lines of type on this page onto the verso. B2V gets its
entire headline from A2v.

Pauses for correction: none. On B4v l. 2, the last two letters of "coold" are lost
in two stages.

After printing: all pages stripped and kept standing. B1r loses its acorns along with
the page number. The four overflow lines of type from B3r are respaced to three
lines and transferred to B3v, which is therefore probably being reset at this point.

B inner forme

Preparation for printing: all pages reset. B3v starts with the three overflow lines
of type from B3r, but the page break at the bottom is kept unaltered by reducing
leading and running a stage direction into a dialogue line.

Pauses for correction: one: page number on B4r is reset part-way through. There
is a confused series of seemingly accidental variants (§6C). One copy also has
page number on B2r set in a font not seen elsewhere.

After printing: all pages kept standing with their skeletons.

At this point Norton would be able to assemble a certain number of Phase-II
copies using the remainder of quire "a" from Phase I. He might now return to
print further copies of the preliminaries with some revisions:

"a"

Preparation for printing: title page realigned; direction line and acorn pairs
(27) on a2r newly set; comma added on a2v. The forme is printed by work-and-
turn.

Pauses for correction: none.

After printing: all pages kept standing.

At this point Norton can assemble further complete copies, exhausting the
supply of sheet A from Phase IIa. Unlike the previous batch, these copies all
contain sheet "a" from Phase II. Now Norton returns to complete the Phase-II
impression of sheet A:

A outer forme Phase Ilb

Preparation for printing: all new skeletons. A2v catchword marries with first line
of roman on next page. (That is the third line of text, so the workman evidently
overlooked the two short lines of italic that begin the page). Some quads left up
on A4v.

Pauses for correction: none.

After printing: all pages kept standing: A3r and 4v with their skeletons, A1r
and 2v without.

A inner forme Phase IIb

Preparation for printing: A1v gets new skeleton; other pages replaced with their
skeletons, but A3v page number shifts.

Pauses for correction: none.

After printing: all pages kept standing with their skeletons.

This brings the print run of quire A equal to those of the other text quires,
and the last copies from Phase II can be sent to the warehouse, uniquely contain-
ing quire A from Phase IIb. There may actually be a few copies of sheet A left
over: one surviving copy from Phase III contains quire A from IIb.

C. PHASE III

The sequence of printing the quires in this phase is indeterminate, though
rather more likely to have been in scrambled order. I give it here in the order
A-B-C-D-a.

A outer forme

Preparation for printing: A1r and 2v get new headlines; A3r and 4v are replaced
unaltered, but in the process the quads on A4V get lowered.

Pauses for correction: one? On A3r, one copy shows displacement and damage
at upper left, and slight displacement of the skeleton elements. Possibly during
the act of repairing the damage, the "3" goes missing from the signature mark.
The page number on A1r prints indistinctly or not at all.

After printing: all pages kept standing: A4V probably keeps its headline but
loses the rule; the others are stripped.

A inner forme

Preparation for printing: all pages replaced unaltered.

Pauses for correction: one: the famous "bride/bridle" correction on A1v.

After printing: all pages stripped and kept standing. Some headline material
appears in the same positions on C(i).

B outer forme Phase IIIa

Preparation for printing: all pages get new skeletons; B1r receiVes 25 pairs of
acorns, with endpieces. Headline parentheses on B4V are the same as on D4v. In
the process of reimposition, some disturbance and damage occur on B1r and 2v,
and the catchword is left off of 4v.

Pauses for correction: none. One copy shows a page-number shift on B4V.

After printing: all pages stripped and kept standing. B1r loses its acorns along
with the page number.

This printing of B(o) is somewhat short with respect to the other text quires
in Phase III—something prevents Norton from machining the full white-paper
stack. He will complete it when he has dealt with whatever has caused the inter-
ruption. Meanwhile, he strips the outer forme of B and puts it aside. The situ-
ation is similar to the interruption in the run of quire A in Phase IIa, but here
only the outer forme is affected and both sub-phases are backed up with the same
state of the inner forme. Once again it is illogical for Norton to strip the skeletons
if he expects to resume presswork soon. Nevertheless, after a presumably short

delay, it appears that B(o) gets reimposed and put back on the press for a short
completing run, which constitutes Phase IIIb of the outer forme:

B outer forme Phase IIIb

Preparation for printing: all pages get new skeletons; B1r gets 28 pairs of acorns,
all properly oriented. Typo on B1r gets corrected. The tavern direction on B3r is
rewritten from three lines to one again and positioned flush right.

Pauses for correction: one: on B4V the word "stndy" in l.13 is corrected, after
a fashion, by turning the "n" upside-down. Perhaps as an accident during this
operation, the comma after "Laughter' on B2V, l.23, goes missing.

After printing: all pages kept standing; B2v keeps its skeleton, the others are
stripped. B1r loses its acorns along with the page number.

Phases IIIa and IIIb of B(o) are now perfected together:

B inner forme

Preparation for printing: all pages reimposed along with their skeletons.

Pauses for correction: none.

After printing: all pages distributed. Headline parentheses on B3V are the same
as on C2v, which indicates that either C(o) does not follow B(i) directly, or there
is a short delay between the stripping of B(i) and the imposition of C(o).

The five surviving copies containing B(o) from Phase IIIb all contain Norton's printing of quire D, and most show displacements of skeleton types on C(i) and D(o). I am not able to explain the coincidence of these particular variants in this cohort.

C outer forme

Preparation for printing: all pages reimposed with new skeletons. C2v shares
some headline material with B3v.

Pauses for correction: none.

After printing: all pages kept standing with their skeletons.

C inner forme

Preparation for printing: C1v: italic and brackets in ll. 1–10 and last four lines
reset, dropping the third line from the bottom; the italic is face i-i; first letter of
"Invention" lowercased, l.6 up. C2r reset except for most of ll. 5–9. C3V reset,
with italic sections in alternative face i-2. Some respacing on C4r.

Pauses for correction: none. For reasons still unclear, the copies bound with
B(o) in Phase IIIb show page-number shifts on C1v and C4r (side-by-side in the
forme), and the comma at the end of C4r l.6 shifts right.

After printing: all pages kept standing, C1v and 4r with their skeletons, C2r
and 3v without.

By this point in the production, Norton eVidently has made an arrangement
with his partner Nicholas Okes to divide the job of printing quire D. (For the
possibility that Okes was an unwitting collaborator, see §8B.) Okes composes
his own setting of those eight pages using his own type. Each man then prints
roughly equal numbers of the quire for Phase III. Some of each man's sheets are

gathered with Phase II of the preliminary quire, in which "of Grayes Inne" still
appears on the title page after Shirley's name; one of these copies, with Okes'
quire D, also contains Phase IIb of quire A. From these groupings, it appears that
each man's production was equally available for assembling the first copies from
Phase III, so their work on this quire was effectively simultaneous.

D outer forme (Norton)

Preparation for printing: D1r reset. D2v ll. 6–7 respaced to one line, and bot-
tom half of page reset beginning with l.17. Italic portion of D3r reset in alterna-
tive italic i-2. On D4v, l.4 respaced. New skeletons all around; D4v shares some
headline material with B4v.

Pauses for correction: one, correcting spelling and punctuation on D1r and ap
parently causing a signature-mark shift.

After printing: all pages kept standing with their skeletons.

This printing of quire D is probably a bit short, as one surviving copy from
Phase III was apparently completed with quire D from Norton's final state
(D1r:2a3).

D inner forme (Norton)

Preparation for printing: D1v reset. D2r ll. 1–8 reset in the default italic (i-1).
D3v roman section reset, and the word "Proclayming", l. 4 up, gets a lowercase
first letter (incorrectly, as it follows a period).

D2r, 3v, and 4r are reimposed with headlines set in pica size; D4r lacks
catchword, and word-spacing of l. 3 and last three lines shifts a bit. Because the
headline on D1v is a different size from those of the other three pages, it was
evidently set in a different operation, probably during the resetting of the text.
The use of pica for the other headlines could indicate a shortage of english-sized
numerals and parentheses, but more likely the workman simply dipped into the
wrong case. The direction lines of all four pages are set in the correct size.

Pauses for correction: none.

After printing: all pages kept standing with their skeletons.

Quire D (Okes)

Preparation for printing: all pages newly set.

Pauses for correction: none.

After printing: all pages kept standing with their skeletons.

Some complete copies of the book are probably made up at this point, using
up the leftover preliminaries from Phase II and containing Okes' and Norton's quire D indiscriminately.

"a"

Preparation for printing: "of Grayes Inne ," is removed from the title; motto re-
spaced to two lines to compensate; spacing of imprint slightly disturbed. a2v loses
the rule below the signature, which may therefore have been treated as part of
the skeleton. The headline, however, is unchanged. On a2r, leading is adjusted

around l.5 of the heading, moving the line closer to the succeeding one. In the
process, the loss of a spacer after "and" in l.3 causes a gradual rightward drift
of the first two words in the line.

The forme is printed off by work-and-turn.

Pauses for correction: none.

After printing: on a2v, "The humblest ... Shirley." stripped; all pages otherwise
kept standing unaltered.

On the evidence of surviving copies, quire "a" has a print run sufficient to
supply all copies from Phase III. The remainder of the third printing of ToP can
now be collated and shipped.

D. PHASE IV

Products of this last phase of work are the most uniform. All copies have "The
third impression" on the title page. Although most of the formes underwent ex-
tensive alteration, or even resetting, before printing began on each, there were no
stop-press alterations thereafter. The only complication is the existence, carried
over from Phase III, of the two settings of quire D printed by Norton and Okes.
These occur in eight and six surviving copies respectively.

In light of the evidence that there were four main work phases, and B(o) and
all of quire A seem to have had five printings each, we need to take Norton's final
claim of three "impressions" with a grain of salt. We cannot know whether Nor-
ton actually believed this, whether the various starts and stops in the work cycle
caused him to lose count, or even what he understood as an "impression". In the
period 1600–40, the word was used on title pages essentially synonymously with
"edition", but only one-fifth as often. One finds it most commonly on title pages
of devotional works that went into many settings, like Arthur Dent's Plaine Mans
Path-Way to Heaven; but the title pages of Shakespeare's second and third folios
also identify them as later "impressions". Norton himself used the term in 1624
(STC 25090a, in a collaboration with Augustine Mathewes), 1633 (23503), 1634
(twice, 3129a and 22459b [ToP]), and 1637 (20274); all of these except Triumph
of Peace were completely new settings. It is likely that, in the case of ToP, Norton
was basing his count of impressions on the changes of title-page wordings which
would have been noticeable to contemporary readers: states 1a1 and 2, which
contained "of Grayes Inne"; 1b, lacking those words; and ici and 2, the avowed
third impression.

Phase IV seems to have followed Phase III rather closely, as some types from
distributed portions of III turn up in IV. These types evidently remained near
the top of their compartments in the type case without moving off to other jobs.
The recurring types within this phase (see §9D) show that quire B inner forme
(which had been distributed after Phase III) was reset after the last copies of quire
A outer forme came off the press; and D(o) contributed one type to B(o). For the
account below I have followed the order A-C-D-B-a.

In this phase, a new paragraph added to A2r causes a change of page breaks
through the rest of the quire.

A outer forme

Preparation for printing: all pages reimposed; A4V probably retains its headline
but gets a new rule and regains its missing catchword. A1r: heading slightly re-
spaced and the leading removed between it and the text. A2V receives the last
three lines of text from the preceding page, reset; its last two lines of type are
moved to the top of A3r. A3r: one textual correction; last three lines removed
and transferred, probably immediately, to A3v in the inner forme. A4v: last four
lines from previous page reset and added at top; l.2 up, "variety" changed to
"uariety".

Pauses for correction: none.

The text of ToP, especially in the later phases, shows struggles with the letters
u and v. These resulted from orthographic changes taking place in the printing
trade around 1630–35. Prior to this, the two graphics were variants of the same
letter, which was used to denote the sounds u and v indiscriminately. The letter
took the v-form at the beginning of words and the u-form elsewhere. Hence the
words "beauty" and "variety" used the graphics as we do today, while "every"
and "unless" were rendered as "euery" and "vnlesse". Within the space of a few
years, the English printing trade converted nearly universally to the modern us-
age, but for some compositors this must have been a period of confusion. Thus on
A4v of ToP in Phase IV we find, in the same line, the aberrant spellings "beavty"
and "uariety".

A inner forme

Preparation for printing: on A2r, the addition of a new paragraph of three lines
after the first one leads to the following dislocations:

A2r: last three lines of text removed and distributed. (The text has already
been incorporated, reset, on A2v in the outer forme.) For no apparent reason,
the bottom half of this page is again reset from the line beginning "These mov-
ing forward". (This same portion of text received an arbitrary resetting between
Phases I and II.)

A3v: receives the last three lines of type from A3r in the outer forme. These
force the last four lines of type to the top of A4r.

A4r: receives the four lines of type from A3v. These force out its last four lines,
which have already been incorporated, reset, in A4v in the outer forme.

There is one spelling change on A3v. New skeletons all around.

Pauses for correction: none.

After printing: headlines removed and transferred to B(i); the rest distributed.

C outer forme

Rewriting of the text on C1v and 2r leads to some altered page breaks.

Preparation for printing: all pages restored with their skeletons from Phase III.
C1r: four lines of roman at top reset in pica, perhaps to relieve crowding. C2v:
first two lines removed and probably distributed; blank line added above direc-
tion line to compensate. C4v: spelling correction.

Pauses for correction: none.

C inner forme

Preparation for printing: text revised and shortened on C1v; to compensate, the
setting of the first two lines on the next page is transferred in type to the bottom of
this one. More revision to C2r, and two lines of text brought over from the verso
in the outer forme (probably reset). C3v: improvements to spelling and leading.
C4r: spelling correction. C1v and 4r retain their previous skeletons, though 4r
shows a slight page-number shift; new skeletons for C2r and 3v.

Pauses for correction: none.

As in Phase III, both Norton and Okes contribute sheets of quire D to this
final printing. The sequence below assumes that Okes machines his Phase-IV
sheets in a separate printing, though his two impressions are indistinguishable.

D (Norton)

Preparation for printing: all pages replaced with their skeletons, but the signa-
ture mark on D1r shifts about 5 mm to the left. This is the only feature distin-
guishing this phase of Norton's quire D.

Pauses for correction: none.

D (Okes)

Preparation for printing: all pages replaced with their skeletons.

Pauses for correction: none.

Apparently, some D sheets from this impression are used to complete copies
from Phase III.

B outer forme

Preparation for printing: B2v replaced unaltered from the previous phase; the
others get new skeletons. B1r gets a heading of 26 pairs of acorns with an end-
piece on the right only. The bottom of B3r receives the first three lines of text
from B3v, reset, apparently to relieve an imbalance; the tavern direction revised.
B4v: last two lines of italic reset in pica.

Pauses for correction: none. At various points during printing, the page numbers
shift on B1r, B2v, and B4v.

B inner forme

Preparation for printing: all pages reset, with pica roman used for the directions
for gentleman and beggars on B3v. Headlines transferred from A(i) with numbers
unchanged.

Pauses for correction: none.

"a"

Preparation for printing: title page: "The third impression." added above motto;
probably as a consequence, leading adjusted elsewhere, and ll. 1, 4, and 7 re-
spaced; the line "February the third, 1633." reset, with a period in place of the
comma; "Gent." in authorship statement replaced with "of Grayes-Inne,", with
accidental omission of the "Gent.". On a2v: "The humblest ... Shirley." newly
set. The forme is printed by work-and-turn.

Pauses for correction: one, restoring "Gent." to the end of the authorship
statement.

"A Speech to the King and Queenes Maiesties"

Printed an undetermined period after the main book, with no variant states
found in five examples. It is not found in surviving copies from before Phase IV;
I cannot say whether all copies from the last impression originally contained it.

Phase IV of The Triumph of Peace brings us to the end of a process that left
behind artifacts of a bibliographical complexity unsurpassed, in my experience,
for a book of its modest length. Once the last copies were sold, the masque stayed
out of print for the next two centuries. 40

§16. When, How Many, and How Fast?

I have argued that the complexity of ToP shows the printer's response to a
high but short-lived demand for a text, so it behooves us to ask: were they first put
on sale, how many copies were printed, and how long did it take to print them?
Although ToP is the most thoroughly documented stage production before 1640,
the archival record fails to give straightforward answers to these questions. The
relevant documents are as follows: 41

• 17 October 1633: a letter from Thomas Coke to his father Sir John mentions
  that the King had requested the masque "about a fortnight agoe". "Who is the
  poet or who makes the maske dance I doe not yet understand." 42 We do not know
  whether Thomas was simply not privy to the decision process, or whether the
  organizers had not yet picked their poet. But if his chronology can be trusted, the
  members of the Inns had only four months to find a writer, commission music,
  construct sets and costumes, learn the parts, and pull it all together. No wonder
  that Coke, in the same letter, reports "no law studied in the Ins of Court now all
  turnd dancing scools".
• Bulstrode Whitelocke, in his Memorials of the English Affairs, gives an even
  shorter timeline, dating the original idea ofthe masque to "about Allholantide"—
  so, around the beginning of November, with three months to prepare. 43
• 17 January 1634: Shirley is admitted to membership in Gray's Inn. This honor
  is recorded on the earliest states of the title page of ToP, so it would seem to
  provide a terminus post quem for the first printing. However, I have suggested in
  my discussion of the title-page variants in §4A that Shirley's claim to the honor
  might have anticipated its actual granting, which created an embarrassment that
  led to the subsequent deletion of "of Grayes Inne" from the title pages of Phase
  II of the preliminaries. So, this timepoint could be less significant than it seems.
  It is possible, however, that his actual admittance was contingent on delivery of
  the completed manuscript.
• 24 January: the publisher William Cooke brings a copy of ToP to Stationers
  Hall for license and registry. The entry, signed by Cooke, reads "Entred for his
  copy under the hands of Master Attorney Sir John ffinch and Master weaver
  warden The maske of the four Inns of Court with the Sceane as it is to be presented
  before his Maiesty at Whitehall the third of ffebruary next." (Finch was one of the
  eight members of the main committee overseeing the masque, and one of two
  from Gray's Inn. Edmund Weaver was the Stationers' Company official who
  recorded the entry.) The wording of the entry shows that the clerk, as we would
  expect, was looking at a manuscript rather than the printed book. It is entirely
  possible that Norton was already hard at work on ToP, but a scrupulous printer
  (which Norton was not) would have waited until entry was completed.
• 3 February (first performance): a warrant is issued for payment of £15 to
  "mr Sherley poett for the Masque in full of his gratuity". 44 Fifteen pounds re-
  presents the Middle Temple's quarter-share of the total amount: expenses for the
  masque were borne equally by the four Inns of Court. So, on the day of first
  performance, Shirley is authorized to be paid £60 in full for the text. However,
  a further warrant of 21 November 1634 requests £5 for Shirley on behalf of the
  Middle Temple, its share of a total additional payment of £20. 45 No reason is
  given for this warrant; either the the Inns decided on a bonus to the handsome
  original fee, or it involves compensation for writing the epilogue "A Speech to the
  King and Queenes Maiesties", which was added to copies of the last printing of
  ToP. In either case, we are still lacking pieces of the puzzle, for Shirley's eighteen-
  line addendum was certainly not worth one-third of the whole masque text. A
  general accounting of all expenses for the masque complicates matters further by
  recording a total of £100 paid to Shirley. 46 The accounts often present this sort of
  confusion. Even the second warrant's November date offers no evidence bearing
  on the printing of the epilogue, for the warrant belongs to a group of late settle-
  ments for services that were mostly rendered in February 1634 or earlier.
• John Finet, in his undated memoirs, 47 describes both performances of ToP
  and mentions "the description of the Maske since being printed". This seems to
  mean that the book was not finished even by the time of the second performance
  on 13 February. But drawing a definite conclusion from Finet's wording runs the
  risk of being over-literal.
• Between 3 and 13 February: Justinian Pagitt writes to his cousin Tremyll, 48 "I
  have sent you a booke of our Masque which was presented on munday last." So,
  the second performance had apparently not yet taken place. At the time of writ-
  ing, Pagitt was a member of the Middle Temple in his early twenties, and he rode
  in the procession introducing the first performance. We cannot say for certain
  that the "booke" he sent was a printed copy, but it would seem extravagant to
  prepare a 7500–word manuscript to send away to a cousin. All of the surviving
  eyewitness accounts focus on the visual and social aspects of the performance;
  none mentions the qualities of Shirley's text.
• 19 February: William Gawdy writes to his father Framlingham, sending him
  a copy of "the booke". 49 William, aged about 22, had used family connections
  to get a ticket to the second performance. Again it is not certain that he was
  sending a printed copy, but the combination with Pagitt's letter adds to the evi-
  dence that the book had come out at least by mid-February. If manuscripts were
  circulating, Pagitt and Gawdy would more likely refer to them as "copies" than
  as "books". 50 Furthermore, neither man is known to have had direct access to
  Shirley, and it was only from Shirley or the very few organizers of the event that
  complete transcriptions of the masque could legitimately have been had. (Even
  the actors would have received copies only of their own parts, with cues.) The
  circumstances of the masque made it ideal for publication, and it was in nobody's
  interest to cut into potential profit by encouraging scribal circulation.
• 21 November 1634: John Herne, disburser of funds for the masque, issues
  a warrant for 25s. payable to "mr Wakelye—printer". 51 This figure represents
  the Middle Temple's quarter-share of a £5 payment to the book wholesaler (not
  printer) Thomas Walkley, who was evidently acting as middleman between the
  Inns and the publisher William Cooke. As with Shirley's fees, we do not know
  precisely what this payment was meant to cover, and the date of the warrant
  probably has little relation to the dates of services rendered.

From a marketing standpoint, it would have been ideal to have the printed
book available the day of the first performance, if not a few days before. Milit-
ating against that were the short timeline from the conception of the masque to
its performance and the inevitability of many last-minute changes, particularly
in the procession. Whitelocke's memoirs tell of adjustments made to head off
squabbles over matters like precedence and color schemes. 52 Such frictions must
have been constant, especially in the staging of a masque that dealt so overtly
with class conflict. 53 In §9A, I showed that the first impression of quire A, which

contains the description of the procession and the decoration of the Banqueting
Hall, was printed after the text of the masque itself, comprising quires B-D. This
sequence probably reflects the order in which the sections arrived at Norton's
shop. A professional like Shirley would first compose the more laborious liter-
ary portion of his commission, then turn to the reportage. Small changes to the
latter could be incorporated up to, and even during, the printing of the quire
containing it. 54

Printed masques conventionally preface the main text with a description of
the set design in the past tense, and the title page almost always gives an exact
date of performance. These features create a framing device that presents the
performance—usually the only one—as a fait accompli. This convention might
have no more value in dating the publications than a condemned criminal's "last
words", which might be already printed and available at the public execution. 55
But there is no more reason to suppose that masques were printed in advance of
their performance than there is for any other type of dramatic text. Specifically,
we have no evidence that the first printed ToP was available before or at the first
performance, but we have good reason to believe that it came out shortly after-
wards, even before the second performance.

As to how many were printed, there is no archival record. In fact, we have
almost no figures for the edition size of any early Stuart dramatic text. The only
report for a play that I am aware of is 1500 copies for the second edition of Beau-
mont's Philaster (1622, STC 1682), but Peter Blayney cited this as an optimistic
response to an unusually successful first edition, and therefore atypical. 56 David
Bergeron found that the print runs for the Lord Mayors' shows in the 1630s gen-
erally ran 300–500, 57 but neither the genre nor the intended readership of these
brief accounts compare closely with those of a play or masque. Edition sizes of
non-dramatic works that emerge in archival sources vary widely, and since the

motive for recording the numbers is often a disciplinary action for irregular print-
ing, we need to exercise caution in treating the figures as normative.

In the absence of relevant archival records we can draw our evidence only
from the number of surviving exemplars. I have been able to locate 55 reason-
ably complete copies of ToP (which I define as lacking no more than one quire).
This represents an average of 13.75 copies per printing. I performed a survey of
39 editions of other individually printed masques catalogued in ESTC. These show
an average survival rate of 10.64 copies per edition (σ = 5.84; in contrast to ToP,
none of them shows evidence of reprinting from standing type). One is tempted,
then, to suppose that ToP's average print run was somewhat higher than average
for a masque. It was also unique in running to four impressions; only Chapman's
Memorable Maske, Campion's Discription of a Maske, Heywood's Loves Maistresse, and
Daniel's True Discription of a Royal Masque went into a second edition before 1640.
We could extrapolate from our reasonably hefty sample to conjecture that the four
printings of ToP yielded a total of about 1.3 ˙ 4n copies, where n is the average
print run for a masque and 1.3 is the factor by which the average print run of ToP appears to exceed that of an average masque. However, these figures rest on shaky
foundations. For several reasons, ESTC often fails to list all known copies of an
edition. This incomplete reporting could magnify the apparent disparity between
ToP's numbers and those of other masques which have not attracted as much scru-
tiny. Even if the factor 1.3 is valid, the higher-than-average survival of ToP could be
partly the result of higher retention rates due to the masque's contemporary fame.
And because we have no good evidence for the normal print run of a masque, as-
signing a value to n in the equation above is a very subjective process.

The relative sizes of ToP's four printings are also hard to fix. If we use quire C
as the most stable marker of which phase a particular copy of ToP comes from,
the numbers of survivors are 19, 10, 17, and 9 respectively. By the time I was
reaching the 50-copy mark, I assumed that the relative distributions had stabi-
lized. But I was surprised when, late in my investigations, several more copies of
ToP emerged and most of them clustered in Phase III. This skewing of the data
scuttled my preliminary conclusion that a large first printing was followed by
three approximately equal but smaller ones.

Is the spread in the survival rates of the four printings of ToP statistically significant? Suppose we assume that each production phase yielded the same
number of copies. A random sample from the entire printing history should yield
approximately equal numbers from each printing—again, 13.75 in our case. Out of a sample of 55, the chances of drawing 19, 10, 17, or 9 copies of any one print-
ing would only be about 3, 6.6, 7.1, and 4% respectively. 58 So, the dispersion ap-

pears significant, and we have reason to believe that the first and third printings
were larger than the second and fourth, perhaps by a factor of 11/2 to 2.

The temptation to estimate the print runs from these admittedly wobbly
figures is a powerful one, as some of my respected predecessors have demon-
strated with recourse to even skimpier data. I hope that the disclaimers above
will safeguard any speculations I make from hardening into claims if they are
quoted later. I will guess that the anticipation generated by the run-up to ToP's performance led Walkley or Cooke to set the initial print order optimistically
at 1200 copies. Perhaps they would have gone higher had it not been for the
Stationers' Company restriction. The three remaining printings might have con-
tained 750, 1000, and 750 copies respectively, yielding a total of 3700 copies, or 16,650 sheets. 59

The printed masque, to my thinking, was a nine-days' wonder that the text
alone could not sustain once the impact of the public spectacle faded. How
long did the interest last, and how long did it take Norton to produce the four
printings? We can start by estimating the time required for the first printing.
The initial setting contained about 24,800 ens of visible text type, not including
skeletons and display text. Donald McKenzie, in his The Cambridge University Press
1696–1712 (Cambridge: University Press, 1966), cites an exceptional typesetter
who averaged about 10,600 ens per day over a five-week period in 1702, but a
more normal rate was 6,300 ens for that compositor, and usually lower for other
individuals. 60 In January 1634, John Norton had two apprentices, the senior one
having close to seven years' experience. 61 We have no evidence that he also
employed a journeyman, but recall from �8B that a document dated one year
later charged Norton and Okes with hiring illegal workmen unaffiliated with the
Stationers' Company. This allegation makes it impossible to estimate the number and skills of workers thatNorton
could potentially put onto a job. But let us as-
sume that either Norton or his senior apprentice, working flat-out, were capable
of setting 10,000 ens per day. Based on this rate, the undistracted composing of
ToP should have occupied two and a half man-days. So, typesetting should not
have been a bottleneck in getting ToP onto the market.

Presswork went slower than composing, for a comparable amount of text. In
the case of the Cambridge Press, McKenzie found that "an output of well over
1000 perfected sheets a day from a full-press [employing two men] was quite
regularly achieved and sustained for lengthy periods." 62 ToP comprised four and

a half sheets. If we apply McKenzie's finding to my hypothetical figure of 1200
copies for the first printing of ToP, a full-press dedicated to the one job should
have taken about five and a half days—just short of a regular work-week—to
machine the nine formes of ToP, not counting the time to change the formes. If
Norton delegated two men to the press and one man to composing (and distrib-
uting, for the first italic raid), he should have been able to complete Phase I with a hard six-day week's work plus an extra day or so. Of course, preparing for
the job—making design decisions, casting off copy, readying the paper, cutting
frisket sheets, and the like—would have taken some additional time. But one can
imagine Norton receiving copy as late as the day of registry—24 January—and,
if necessary, having finished books from Phase I available very shortly after the
first performance nine days later.

The later printings, since they re-used standing type to varying degrees, de-
manded much less composition time. Norton's shop set 24,800 ens for Phase I;
Phase II involved the resetting of about 9680 ens, Phase III (including its sub-
phases) 3960, and Phase IV 4110. Nicholas Okes had to set 6220 ens for his
Phase III quire D; then his Phase IV was either an unaltered reimpression or was
printed as part of Phase III. I have figured his total press time as the same either
way. Using my thoroughly unreliable edition sizes, and the rates of work given
above—setting 10,000 ens a day and printing 1000 sheets a day—and rounding up to the half-day, we arrive at the following approximate figures:

TABLE 43. Estimate of minimum production time for all copies

So, the entire production cycle of ToP required a little less than one man-
week of composing, and somewhat less than three weeks at full-press. Of course
these calculations cannot give an actual total. We assume, for instance, that com-
posing and presswork often went on simultaneously—a sensible apportionment
of labor in Norton's small shop would be two men printing and one composing.
His partner Okes could have been working concurrently on his share, so his

hours (though only less than two days) should not figure in the total time. And
my estimates of the print runs could be too high. All of these factors would com-
press the computed time required to print all the copies. It is worth noting that
the imprint date remains 1633 in all four impressions. For this publication Nor-
ton was using the legal calendar, in which the year date changed on Lady Day
(25 March). If the fourth printing of the ToP preliminaries began after this day,
he would have had some motivation for advancing the year date to emphasize
the book's currency. But this would have been a small improvement, and we have
seen that Norton's attention to detail was fitful at best. Still, we can say with some
confidence that Norton could not have turned out all four impressions of ToP in
less than three or four weeks.

This is a best-case estimate, and I have not factored in some contingencies
that must have dilated the history. For instance, besides the preliminary jobs al-
ready mentioned (design, frisket cutting, etc.), I have omitted the time required
to compose the title page, other display lines, and skeletons. Every setting or
resetting implies a distribution; because that job can be put off indefinitely, or
run concurrently with printing, I have ignored it in my calculations. Most impor-
tantly, the later italic raids show that Norton had one or more other jobs in train
along with ToP, as was normal in printing shops. Since I have not been able to
identify these jobs, I cannot gauge their impact on the ToP history.

The paper evidence, on the other hand, serves to constrain the timeline. I
have assembled watermark information, in more or less detail, for three-fifths of
the copies of ToP as well as (mostly single copies of) fourteen of the twenty-seven
publications Norton put his name to in 1633 and 1634. Among this group, ToP is almost unique in having one type of mark that I have not found named or
described anywhere. In one version, it is a fat spindle with pointed or slightly
rounded terminations; in the other, one end of the spindle is either a full semi-
circle or softly flattened into a broad but still curved base, the other end being
pointed. (Figure 4 gives slightly idealized renderings.) All varieties have a sinuous
line inside, running roughly down the long axis, usually connected to the spindle
at the sharper end and sometimes terminating in a loop inside. Most of the forms
have an additional short line coming out of each end, often with its own termi-
nating loop. I have found eight spindle variations in ToP, and in Phases I-III of
quires A-D it is the dominant type of mark. Second most common is a hand, usu-
ally containing the initials "PD" (four varieties). Another has initials "GM", and
in a sixth variety the initials are lacking or illegible. The hands all have a flower
or a grape cluster at the fingertips. The third type of mark includes six varieties
of pot, two containing the initials RP or RF. One of these may have a handle and
might therefore be called a jug. Finally, there is one example of a broad mark
(over four centimeters) of uncertain form, but apparently bracketed by two short
convex columns. I have called this "posts". In all the copies examined, only one
sheet (quire C of B.L. Ashley 1696) seemed to lack a mark. The frequencies of
the marks in quires A-D are as follows: 63

[Description: FIGURE 4. Spindle watermarks in Triumph of Peace. ]

TABLE 44. Distribution of watermarks by phases

         

Phase	Spindle	Hand	Pot	Posts	No mark
I	29 (71%)	9 (22%)	2 (5%)	0	1 (2%)
II	22 (92%)	1 (4%)	0	1 (4%)	0
III	18 (90%)	2 (10%)	0	0	0
IV	9 (36%)	12 (48%)	4 (16%)	0	0

The spindles, I believe, are significant for two reasons. First, their frequency
drops at Phase IV, with hands coming into the majority and pots making a surge.
Although the sample size is small, these shifts could indicate a transition into a
different mixture of paper stocks and hence a rather longer pause after Phase III
than after I or II. Secondly, of the other books printed by Norton in 1633–34
that I was able to examine, only one contains a spindle: that is the Huntington
copy of the seventh quarto of Richard II , dated 1634. It has two specific versions
found in ToP, as well as two ToP hands, along with two marks which I found in
Richard II only. The received wisdom about printers' paper stocks is that they
bought only what they needed for specific jobs, and this makes economic sense.
Indeed, the stock found in ToP Phases I-III is consistent with a single batch of
paper assembled by a vendor from the products of two or more makers. The
odd post or pot could either be odds slipped into the ream by the vendor or
leftovers from a previous lot remaining in Norton's shop. In practice, the end of
a job never precisely coincides with the end of the paper supply, and Norton was
a busy man, printing about 250 edition-sheets that we know of in 1633 (though
that number drops to around 150 the next year). A more sensible response to a
continuous need for the middling-quality pot-sized paper found in virtually all
of Norton's books of the period would be to periodically estimate the projected
demand for incoming work and top off an in-shop supply that all the jobs could
draw upon. Thus, we would expect frequently to find the same marks (by which

I mean paper from the same specific moulds) in publications printed around the
same time. This is the sort of evidence we find in ToP and Richard II , 64 and I pre-
dict that if more copies of the latter are examined, they will contain a proportion
of spindles to hands comparable to that of Phase IV of ToP. A finding of similar
paper stocks would indicate that the two books were printed in quick succession,
ToP first, or even with some overlap.

The distinctive mixture of marks in the four phases of ToP tightens their
temporal bond. It reinforces the evidence that Norton produced the first three
impressions in as short a time as he could. It also shows that there is little chance
that he paused for long between Phases III and IV. Standing paper, like stand-
ing type, is vulnerable to appropriation by more urgent projects. The fact that
the paper in Phase IV shows significant overlap with the distinctive paper stock
used in the previous printings is consistent with my finding of broken types from
Phase III recurring in Phase IV (�9D). Both support a conclusion that Norton
did not wait long before embarking on the last impression. I would guess that the
four print runs were all over within two months.