University of Virginia Library

McKerrow notes that "many printers bought their paper in job-lots, and it is common to find a number of different watermarks in a book about the printing of which there appears to have been nothing abnormal." Ronald B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford, 1927), p. 101 n.

I have had the experience of listing a certain watermark five different ways before discovering it was a lean lion rampant upon a twisted escutcheon.

The Cooke plays were entered on 12 April and 29 July 1639, the Crooke and Cooke plays with Loves Crueltie on 25 April 1639. W. W. Greg, A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration, I (London, 1939), 50-51. Shirley controlled the whole group and published them while in Ireland. See my article, "Shirley's Publishers: the Partnership of Crooke and Cooke," The Library, 4th s., XXV (1944-45), 140-61.

These results will be printed elsewhere.

Greg, I, 52.

A companion Habington folio, The Historie of Edward the Fourth, entered ahead of the play, on 15 Nov. 1639 (Arber, iv, 489), has some of the same marks. Certain other Cotes folios and quartos of 1640, such as Parkinson's Theatrum Botanicum and Heywood's The Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts of Nine the Most Worthy Women of the World, contain decidedly different watermarks.

Notable is the shift in the prevailing colloquial spelling of "would" from "wod" to "wud" and of "should" from "shod" to "shud." This is not likely due to a change in copyists, for the manuscript would seem to have been holograph.

The new compositor may have come from work on The Humorous Courtier, for at E4r he set "Orf." (as if for Orseolo) as the catchword instead of "Af." (for Ascanio). Orseolo is the "humorous courtier" of the earlier play.

This pot occurs also in The Night-Walker and The Humorous Courtier. It is similar to Edward Heawood's no. 78 in "Papers Used in England after 1600," The Library, 4th s., XI (1930-31), 299. Heawood, p. 289, mentions a MS of 1633 with pot G/RO; and W. A. Churchill illustrates a pot G/RO of about 1645 as no. 469 in Watermarks in Paper in Holland, England, France, etc., in the XVII and XVIII Centuries and Their Interconnection (Amsterdam, 1935).

It resembles Heawood 89 and is found also in Wit without Money, The Night-Walker, The Humorous Courtier, and The Swaggering Damsell.

Similar "jesus" watermarks are illustrated in C. M. Briquet, Les filigranes (Paris, 1907), nos. 9461, 9463, 9465, and elsewhere. They were sometimes used as countermarks.

The measurements for the IHS, bird, and grape marks are taken from the folio pages of The Queene of Arragon (ICU copy).

Francisco de A. de Bofarull y Sans, Los animales en las marcas del papel (Villanueva y Geltrú, 1910).

Alexandre Nicolaï, Histoire des moulins à papier du sud-ouest de la France 1300-1800 (Bordeaux, 1935).

The Night-Walker, The Coronation, The Swaggering Damsell, The Queene of Arragon. A more homogeneous mixture of paper would be the normal result of the use of two moulds together in the manufacture of paper—see Louis Le Clert, Le papier (Paris, 1926), I, 17, and Dard Hunter, Papermaking (New York, 1943), pp. 88, 133. In fact, such trays were commonly made and used in matched pairs, so that one ordinarily cannot tell their watermarks apart. But in this group of plays the two marks are not at all alike and are not evenly distributed. Their association must be of a different kind.

It turns up also in Loves Crueltie, The Night-Walker, and The Humorous Courtier, but I find no parallel in the books.

Similar to Heawood, "Further Notes on Paper Used in England after 1600," The Library, 5th s., II (1947-48), no. 135 or 140, without the leaf and stem. Most illustrations, such as Briquet's show more than fifteen grapes. I find this mark in all seven of the Cotes plays dated 1640. Here it may be noted that the "1639" plays, Wit without Money and The Maides Revenge, contain some pots, letters, etc., not found in the 1640 plays, along with several marks that link them with them.

The indications are that the Rousel (or Rouse) mills were in Normandy. Cf. Heawood's notes on RO paper-marks in "Papers Used in England after 1600," pp. 282, 287, 291, and "Further Notes," p. 125, with his general evidence that most cheap papers came from northwestern France. A recent French authority provides a more definite clue: a legal record of 1636 shows that "Jean Huet et Nicole Rouxel, sa femme, natifs du pays et duché de Normandie," were paying "une chef rente de 12 l. 10 s. et un champart d'une rame de papier" for a mill near Morlaix in Brittany. See H. Bourde de la Rogerie, "Les papeteries de la région de Morlaix depuis le XVe siècle jusqu'au commencement du XIXe siècle," Contribution a l'histoire de la papeterie en France, VIII (Grenoble, 1941), 20. This monograph locates the mills of a number of Norman paper-makers, including some who had migrated to Brittany. The well-known Bodleian list of 1674 mentions various papers imported from Caen and Morlaix: R. W. Chapman, "An Inventory of Paper, 1674," The Library, 4th s., VII (1926-27), 406-8.

Chapman, p. 403. This is not quite half modern demy size. It has scarcely been noted that paper sizes have grown considerably since the Restoration.

The Warwick Castle-Folger copy of The Swaggering Damsell has this sequence of watermarks in nine sheets, A to I: grapes, two sorts of pots, lion, fleur-de-lis/PD, IHS, bird, grapes, IHS.

Readily factorable into pitfalls and snares.

The uncorrected copies are not among the twelve: they are respectively at Huntington and Texas.

A case might be made out for 2000 copies in terms of certain ratios and the number of surviving copies. But 1500 fits all the conditions and exactly suits the hypothesis on presswork discussed later. Similar considerations and the balanced distributions make an edition of 1250 or 1750 improbable.

He did reprint Fletcher's Wit without Money and The Night-Walker in 1661.

Arber, IV, 22.

Greg, I, 51.

Charlton Hinman, "New Uses for Headlines as Bibliographical Evidence," English Institute Annual 1941 (New York, 1942), pp. 208-14.

An edition of 1500 means that perhaps 1525 copies of each sheet would be printed. A quire would be allowed for proofs, waste, and possibly a few printer's copies. See Francis R. Johnson, "Printers' 'Copy Books' and the Black Market in the Elizabethan Book Trade," The Library, 5th s., I (1946-47), 99-100. The extra quire might introduce a foreign watermark into an edition sheet—such as the pot-fleur-de-lis mark in sheet B of The Opportunitie.

Edwin E. Willoughby, The Printing of the First Folio of Shakespeare (Oxford, 1932), pp. 27-28, and A Printer of Shakespeare: The Books and Times of William Jaggard (London, 1934), chs. xii-xiv.

Between 1627 and 1640 STC lists 264 books with Cotes imprints, an average of twenty books a year.

Henry R. Plomer, A Short History of English Printing (London, 1900), p. 179.

Ibid., p. 181. For instance, certain disallowed printers, such as John Norton the younger, continued to print.

Several bits of evidence point to facilities for easy proofing in Cotes's shop: (1) the relative infrequency of variant formes in Cotes quartos (just 5 out of 19 in The Opportunitie, not counting variant imprints); (2) the indications that some of these few variant formes are due to second corrections or "revises" (as in outer C and outer F of The Opportunitie; and (3) the further indications that first corrections were made either before printing began or before more than a few quires had been printed (as in inner G and inner K of this play). See discussion below. As for special "proof presses," they are first mentioned in Restoration times. A table of the "Number of Presses and Workmen Employed in the Printing Houses of London in 1668" lists two proof presses, and assigns Mrs. Ellen Cotes, widow of Richard Cotes, "3 Presses, 2 Apprentices, 9 Pressmen" (Plomer, pp. 225-26).

And assuming about 1000 perfected sheets a day.

Raising the suspicion of a reprint or cancel sheet.

That is, if they reached this paper on the same day, The Opportunitie was a day or two farther advanced in its printing.

The Night-Walker as clearly was not, though it may have preceded (or followed) these plays.

Both presses would be supplied from the same stockpile or warehouse room, but the accidents of time and choice would cause variations in the papers set out for each press.

Hinman, pp. 209-12.

For instance, the headlines of The Humorous Courtier seem to reflect the rule of inner forme on the press first:

In terms of the inner forme the sequence is B(i)-X C(i)-Y D(i)-Y E(i)-Xt F(i)-Y G(i)-Y H(i)-X I(i)-X K(i)-Xt. Exact alternation would have given shifts after C E G I or B D F H.

Fredson Bowers, "An Examination of the Method of Proof Correction in Lear," The Library, 5th s., II (1947-48), 31 n.1, 35.

Mr. Hinman has computed that a single press using one skeleton "as a rule printed daily about 900 perfected sheets," and remarks that "of course this number could sometimes be increased by the use of two skeletons." "New Uses for Headlines," pp. 209-10.

This would be regular. Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises, ed. T. L. De Vinne (New York, 1896), II, 210; quoted with comments by R. C. Bald, "Evidence and Inference in Bibliography," English Institute Annual 1941, p. 17.

Or, if imposition took place with both skeletons on the bench, the compositor may have found it easier to send outer K to press first, because of its three type pages, and therefore transferred to it skeleton Y from the nearer forme of I.

For the most satisfactory hypothesis concerning the customary order of proofing, printing, and correction, see Bowers, "An Examination of the Method of Proof Correction in Lear," pp. 28-30, and his fuller discussion, "Elizabethan Proofing," Joseph Quincy Adams Memorial Studies (Washington, 1948), pp. 571-86.

Such as preliminary proofs for outer C during the first pause or proofs for the other press (The Coronation) during either pause.

Bowers, "Proof Correction in Lear," p. 42 n. 2, and "Elizabethan Proofing," p. 578.

Such as "redevivd" for "redevind" at C1r 11 and "sister" for "sisters sister" at C3r 20. Of literal corrections C(i) has 5 out of 9, while C(o) has just 3 out of 14.

The invariant formes in The Opportunitie are generally clear of broken type, transposed letters, turned letters, foul case, raised quads, and similar mechanical errors. It is mainly such faults that are marked for correction in the two surviving page proofs of the Shakespeare Folio of 1623, when Thomas Cotes (later clerk of St Giles Cripplegate: Arber, III, 704) was probably Jaggard's foreman and corrector. See Willoughby, The Printing of the First Folio, frontispiece and pp. 62-64, and Charlton Hinman, "A Proof-Sheet in the First Folio of Shakespeare," The Library, 4th s., XXIII (1942-43), 101-7. Though Mr. Willoughby takes the Anthony and Cleopatra proof-marks as those for a second correction, the high percentage of literal changes and the rarity of the uncorrected state (existent only in the proof itself and the Bridgewater-Huntington copy) suggest the probability that these were the first and only corrections made. Of the Othello corrections marked in the Jonas-Folger folio and found in 95% of the Folger folios, Mr. Hinman says (p. 103): "there can be no real question but that the forme was unlocked for correction only once."

Unless there was an adjustment of the fallen "y" in "young" at D2v 22 (outer forme), its time of falling being uncertain. In copies checked, the defect occurs on all three papers used, and the correct form on spray and IHS papers.

For the error may have occurred at any time during the printing of the forme.

With a variation in speech-prefix forms. In this sheet only the full spellings "would" and "should" are used, "wud" making its first appearance at F1v. And the catchword "Orf.," reminiscent of the compositor of The Humorous Courtier, occurs at E4r.

Such as the printing of playbills (Greg, 1, 35) or the perfecting of a sheet of The Coronation.

At F1r 15 "and" became "or" and at F2v 14 "Lady" was changed to "body."

The Huntington Library so reports.

That is, "Bo." to "Bor." at K4r 15, leaving "Bo." unchanged in line 2 above.

Shirley had just crossed the Irish Sea in Owen's ship the Ninth Whelp; see my article "Shirley's Years in Ireland," RES, XX (1944), 22-28.

One might expect to find that the preliminaries of The Opportunitie and The Coronation were printed together, with both titles in one forme. But they were not: the plays have an identical line of type on their title-pages, "As it was presented by her." And the title-page of The Coronation was not printed when Shirley was about the printing-house, for it assigns this his play to John Fletcher.

Dr. Greg shows that half-sheet "a" of Shirley's masque The Triumph of Peace (printed by J. Norton, 1633/4) was presumably handled in this manner. W. W. Greg, "The Triumph of Peace: A Bibliographer's Nightmare," The Library, 5th s., I (1946-47), 114.

An interesting question arises as to what might have happened if Shirley had not arrived home in time to include the dedication. Cotes could have printed the title and dramatis personae back to back within a half-sheet, but he seems to have had little liking for quartos beginning with a blank leaf. He might have put in the catalog of Shirley's publications which fills a page in the preliminaries of The Maides Revenge and The Humorous Courtier; or he might have had a dedication from another hand, something like the one Andrew Crooke furnished for Loves Crueltie. The problem did not arise in printing The Coronation, for it has a prologue to fill out its preliminary half-sheet.

My census at present locates 28 copies of state 1 (20 in libraries), 19 of state 2 (14 in libraries), and 1 of state 3 (at the Huntington Library).

The four in the table plus the Huntington copy.

Typographical relationships imply the sequence of states here assumed. The undated state looks like a hasty modification of the main imprint, for words are run together. The date "1640" in the Dublin imprint is reset.

This assumes proportions of 7 and 5 for the Crooke-Cooke issue as against the two Crooke issues.

In view of an ordinance of 1635, Cotes may have allowed his men copy money instead of copy books; see Johnson, "Printers' 'Copy Books' and the Black Market," p. 99.

The main alternative would be printing in half-formes alongside other material; but it is difficult to identify possible material. As we have seen, it could not be half-sheet A of The Coronation. Nor would it likely be half-sheet K of that play, for it uses the headlines from outer I in a pattern which apparently implies imposition in a single forme; see Mr. Bowers' discussion of headlines and half-sheet imposition in this present volume. No other plays of the group have the grape watermark in their preliminaries, except The Swaggering Damsell, and in that play they occupy a full sheet.

Julian reckoning. Checked by a perpetual calendar and an almanac for 1640.

Both presses might be available if Cotes was not yet ready to start printing The Coronation. As noted, The Opportunitie was one sheet farther along when it reached the grape paper.

For discussions of the relay or "staggered" method see Edwin Wolf 2d, "Press Corrections in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Quartos," Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America XXXVI (1942), 193-96, and F. R. Johnson, "Press Corrections and Press-work in the Elizabethan Printing Shop," loc. cit., XL (1946), 285-86.

The shift from simultaneous to relay printing might be decided on if one press had got ahead of the other while perfecting B, or if one press took a special job for a few hours, or if a pressman came late to work. Of course, the relay method might have been used for B as well, though it seems less likely for a first sheet using equal amounts of two different papers.

"Shirley's Years in Ireland," pp. 25-27.

A week later, on April 28, two plays which he probably had brought with him from Ireland were entered on the Register by Richard Whitaker. Greg, Bibliography, I, 53.

Hinman, "New Uses of Headlines," p. 209.

The term job-lot watermarks proves inadequate. For any shift of marks within an edition sheet or between sheets, whatever its cause, may be valuable evidence. Some quartos contain only two or three different watermarks; for instance, the Chicago copy of Shirley's St Patrick for Ireland (Raworth, 1640) contains two varieties of hand watermark, probably from the same factory; and their sources usually will not be job-lots of paper. The term variant watermarks may be used safely enough in general situations, though most advantageously where a dominant watermark provides a norm.

Cf. Bowers, "Proof Correction in Lear," p. 29 and note.

This appears once in ICU—in the title-page (A1).

This sheet, F2-3, has the grape watermark in both copies.

Since writing this paragraph I have seen another copy of The Queene of Arragon, at the University of Pennsylvania. It contains none of the fine paper and resembles the Chicago copy, having as watermarks grapes (small), IHS, and once each a pot-G/RO and a large bunch of grapes. As it is the tallest of the three copies (11 1/8 x 7 1/8 in.), Newberry appears not to be a "large paper" copy. Two instances of presentation copies of play-quartos printed on fine paper are Jonson's Sejanus (1605) and Volpone (1607); see Greg, Bibliography, I, 342, 391. Mr. Heywood mentions several works printed on large paper in his "Further Notes," pp. 131-32.

Cf. McKerrow, p. 225. A recent example is in Southerne's The Disappointment (1684): Ray O. Hummel Jr., The Library, 5th s., I (1946-47), 68.

E.g., in a reprint of Cowley's Works (1688): W. W. Greg, The Library, 4th s., III (1922-23), 55.

As in the 1693 edition of Cowley: ibid., p. 56.

McKerrow, p. 233.