University of Virginia Library

The only authoritative discussion to date of the printing history of the 1616 Workes is Johann Gerritsen, "Stansby and Jonson Produce a Folio: A Preliminary Account," ES 40 (1959): 52-55. Dr. Gerritsen lists several surprising facts revealed by the headline evidence, including the printing of Every Man in His Humour out of sequence and at two widely separated intervals, and the extensive reimposition of unreset pages in the final quires.

I would like to express my gratitude to the staffs of the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Houghton Library, the Library of Congress, the Boston Public Library, and the Newberry Library and especially to the staff of the University of Wisconsin's Memorial Library for their assistance and cooperation. Special thanks are due to the Folger Shakespeare Library for photographing and allowing me to reproduce the pictures of the headlines appearing in this article. The facsimile referred to is The Workes of Benjamin Jonson, 1616, With an Introduction by D. Heyward Brock (1976). This copy was one of eight collated by the Oxford editors, that labelled "B2" in their "Survey of the Text" in Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson (1925-1952), IX, 51-71. This edition is hereafter referred to as HS. The microfilm copies of the Jonson Folio are in the collection Early English Books, 1475-1640, Selected from Pollard and Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue, University Microfilms Intl., Ann Arbor, Mich., reels 755 and 756; these are the copies called "M1" and "M2" respectively by the Oxford editors. The microprint copy is in the collection Three Centuries of Drama: English, 1512-1641, ed. Henry Willis Wells, Readex Microprint.

Review of HS IX-XI, ES 38 (1957): 123.

The text of the masques ends on 4Q4r; 4Q4v is a blank page. Quire 4Q is a gathering of two sheets. Here and elsewhere in this paper, when in a discussion of headlines one page of a forme is given within brackets, it is to be understood that the page has no headline. Although Dr. Gerritsen's is the only account of the reimposition of unreset pages in the Workes, it makes no mention of the headline variation in ¶3r.4v and 4Q1r, and seems to deny the latter: "4Q was not reimposed or reset . . ." (1959, p. 55).

Quires A-F are printed with three skeletons, G-O with five, P-2N with six, 2O-2S with five, 2T-2Z with four, 3A-3N with five, 3O-3R with four, 3S-4A with two, 4B-4C with three, 4D-4O with four, and 4P, 4Q, and ¶ with five. These numbers do not include resetting or reimposition. Quires A-F, containing the text of Every Man in His Humour, are exceptional. As Gerritsen has shown, the play was printed out of sequence and at two separate intervals. It is not clear why the number of skeletons in use in quires 3S-4C fell so low.

The large-paper copies are discussed by William A. Jackson, The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library. English Literature 1475-1700 (1940), pp. 572-573. According to Jackson, "It is apparent from the imprints peculiar to the separate titles of the large-paper that such copies were the concern of Stansby alone, though he may not have had any for sale but solely for the author's use." Jackson, however, was certainly wrong in asserting that the large-paper copies always present the later state of variants; whereas the large-paper copies contain the later state of reset sheets G1.6 and G2.5, Gerritsen has shown (1959, p. 54) that the large-paper copies contain the earlier state of reset quire 2Y. Gerritsen's correction is supported by the evidence offered here concerning the later quires.

The verso headline of Skeleton o uses letters in its running title that are taken from Running title III; the bottom rule of the verso headline is the same as the recto upper rule in Skeletons 3B and 3C turned end to end. The recto headline of Skeleton o uses letters from Running title IX; its upper rule is the same as the bottom rule in the verso headline of Skeleton 3.

There is a textual variant in re-imposed 4N2v.5r not recorded by Herford and Simpson. On 4N2v, in marginal note "c", the period drops out of "eyther. As". This cannot have been a deliberate change; the period may have been broken or pushed down or pulled in inking, after the forme was unlocked and reimposed, i.e. after its original imposition.

Here and afterwards, when reference is made to variants found in large-paper copies, it is to be understood that the original state of these variants appears in all large-paper copies as well as some small-paper copies.

There is one change in the letters of Running title VII (the verso running title of Skeleton 1B) when they enter the configuration labelled Skeleton 1Bv.6r: the original capital M has been replaced by a swash capital M. Both headlines in Skeleton 6 have a swash M; when Running title VII was paired with the verso headline of Skeleton 6, the compositor probably gave it a swash M so that it would match its forme-mate, although this does not give a consistent appearance to the printed book, as these swash letters appear pages apart from each other. The swash M in the headlines of formes printed with Skeletons 6 and 1Bv.6r seem to have puzzled Simpson, whose account of the variation (HS IX, 71) is not very clear. The swash M is always and only found in pages imposed with Skeletons 6 and 1Bv.6r.

The rules of Skeletons 5 and 6 appear in the following pages of The Surveyor: Skeleton 5 verso rules: B2v, C2v, D3v, D4v, E2v, E4v, F5v, G3v, G4v, G5v, H4v, H6v, I1v, I4v, K2v, K4v, K6v, L5v, M3v, M5v, N1v, N2v, O1v, O2v, O3v, P1v, P3v, P5v, Q3v, Q5v, Q6v, R4v, R6v, S3v, S5v, T4v, V2v, V4v, V5v Skeleton 5 recto rules: B2r, B5r, C1r, C2r, C5r, D3r, D4r, E3r, E5r, F2r, G2r, G3r, G4r, H1r, H3r, I3r, I6r, K1r, K3r, K5r, L2r, M2r, M4r, N4r, N5r, N6r, O4r, O5r, O6r, P2r, P4r, P6r, Q1r, Q2r, Q4r, R3r, R5r, S2r, S4r, T3r, V2r, V3r, V5r Skeleton 6 verso rules: A4v, A5v, A6v, D5v, E1v, F4v, F6v, G2v, G6v, H1v, H2v, I5v, K3v, K5v, L2v, L3v, L6v, M1v, M2v, N4v, N5v, N6v, O4v, O5v, O6v, P2v, P4v, P6v, Q1v, Q2v, Q4v, R1v, R3v, R5v, S1v, T1v, T2v, V1v Skeleton 6 recto rules: A6r, D2r, E6r, F1r, G1r, G5r, H5r, H6r, I2r, K2r, K4r, L1r, L4r, L5r, M5r, M6r, N1r, N2r, N3r, O1r, O2r, O3r, P1r, P3r, P5r, Q3r, Q5r, Q6r, R2r, R4r, R6r, S5r, T1r, T4r, V1r, V4r, X3r. Changes in the rules of Skeleton 6 are particularly striking. The verso rules change position between quires I and K and again between quires R and S. In quire A the rules are found as they appear from quires K-R. The recto rules have the same configuration as in their appearance in the Workes in quires N-R of The Surveyor only; in quires A-M the upper rule is turned end to end; in quires S-X both rules are turned end to end.

Herford and Simpson do not cite this press-variant in their survey of the text in vol. IX. Curiously, however, we find the following textual note in VII, 390: "rip'ned] ripned F1."

HS IX, 71. According to Jackson, op. cit., "the nature of the changes" in the large-paper copies indicates that they present the later state.

Herford and Simpson regarded the 1616 folio as the authoritative text for all of the work it contains. They concluded that Jonson prepared the copy for the printers, read and corrected proofs, and introduced further corrections in the course of the volume's printing. "The basis for this decision was a thorough examination of [Every Man Out of His Humour] which, being the first play printed, is quite the most heavily corrected in the volume (Gerritsen, 1957, p. 121). Herford and Simpson recognized that the earlier works were much more heavily revised and corrected by Jonson than the later works in the folio: "The Masques . . . show no signs of the author's correction except on the last two pages, where he transposed effectively the final speeches. . . . Jonson cannot have read the proofs" (HS IX, 72). However, their edition is still based on the folio rather than the quarto texts of such works as the Haddington Masque, The Masque of Beauty, The Masque of Blacknesse, and Hymenaei, even though the earlier editions show more sign of the author's editorial care than the folio does. Thus, "the Herford-Simpson Jonson was ostensibly an edition of the works which by a mistaken choice of copy-text for many parts turned itself into an edition of the Folio" (Fredson Bowers, "Greg's 'Rationale of Copy-Text' Revisited," SB 31 (1978): 114). See also T. H. Howard-Hill, "Towards a Jonson Concordance," RORD 15-16 (1972-73): 17-32.

Gerritsen, 1959, p. 55. There the forme is wrongly named "3S2.5v," but that Gerritsen has 3S2v.5r in mind is clear; he refers to the recto page as the title-page to the Epigrammes.

According to Herford and Simpson, "The change must have been made by the author for literary reasons. He transposed the speeches of Pallas and Astraea, leaving the final word with the latter: returning to a transformed earth, she found a heaven there and wished to stay in it . . . for James was on the throne" (VII, 420).

See the description of the changes in the rules of Skeleton 6 in note 11 above.

Morrison lists the following works as printed in 1616 by Stansby: STC 345 (22 sheets), STC 1658 (70), STC 4099 (8), STC 7244 (9), STC 10639 (30), STC 12230 (10), STC 12256 (16), STC 14751 (258), STC 19059 (4), STC 20748 (62), STC 21019 (10), STC 23623 (3), STC 24371 (20), STC 25294 (10). These give a subtotal of 543 sheets. In addition to these, Peter Blayney has given me several more titles which he has found to have been printed by Stansby in 1616: STC 6488 (15 sheets), STC 7219 (31.5), STC 7472 (9.5), STC 11254 (1), STC 11941 (88), and STC 20914 (7). These add up to 152 sheets. I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Blayney for his generosity and encouragement during my visit to the Folger Shakespeare Library. Morrison also lists 13715, a putative edition of Hooker's Laws which has since been shown to be a ghost. Book V of STC 13716, the 1619 edition of the Laws, is dated 1616 and is probably the source of the old STC entry; Book V consists of 24 sheets. Thus, depending on whether or not we include the 24 sheets of Book V of STC 13716, we have a total of either 695 or 719 sheets printed by Stansby in 1616.