III. The Printer of Section 2
Because the presentation of evidence hinges on the procedure
followed in the printing, it is convenient to turn first to a brief account of
the work of William Wilson and of the special features of the part
of the Folio for which he was responsible. Section 2 as originally planned
was to contain five plays:
The Custome of the Countrey
(A1-D1
v, D1
v blank),
The Noble
Gentleman
(D2-F3
v),
The Captaine
(F4-K1
v, K1
v blank),
Beggars Bush (K2-M4
v), and
The
Coxcombe
(N1-P4
v, P4
v blank). To these, however,
The False
One (Q1-S4
v, S4
v blank) was
added very late in the printing
of
The Coxcombe, evidently after the prologue
(P3
v) and
the epilogue (P4) of that play, which had been violently spaced out to fill
up as much of the end of Quire P as possible, had been set, but soon
enough for the same skeleton-formes as had been in use to be employed
further.
[17] An additional indication of
the late assignment of
The False One to Wilson is the
presence
on P4, the last page of
The Coxcombe containing letterpress,
of the catchword
The Chances, this play being the first in
Section 3. As for the preliminary sub-sections, A contains the title-page
(A1), a blank (A1
v), the players' dedication
(A2-A2
v), Shirley's
address (A3-A3
v), Moseley's address
(A4-A4
v); e (actually signed
E) short poems by Corbett, Jonson, and Herrick (e1) and a
long
one by Birkenhead (e1
v-e2
v); and f
poems by Powell (f1), Hills
(f1
v), Howe (f2), Palmer (f2
v), Brome
(f3), Harris
(f3
v-f4
v), and Harrington
(f4
v). Because the preliminary
material was set, for the most part, from fonts different from those
employed in printing the plays and because the skeletons in which it was
imposed cannot be identified, it is excluded from further
consideration.
About the printer not much is known that is relevant.[18] Wilson was bound in 1618 and
gained his
freedom in 1626. For twenty years thereafter he worked as a journeyman,
but in 1645 he won, along with the hand of Mary Okes, control of the shop
previously run successfully by her former husband John and before John by
his father Nicholas. During the earlier years of the history of this printing
house, the number of presses had been restricted to one, as specified by
orders of the Stationers' Company recorded under the dates of 9 May 1615
and 15 July 1623.[19] Even during the
time of Nicholas Okes's temporary and rather unhappy partnership with
John Norton, which seems to have lasted from 1628 to about 1636, a
second press apparently was not put into operation.[20] Yet after he took over management
of the
shop, Wilson printed a great many titles in a relatively short span of years,
a fact which suggests that he may have erected the second press which the
1668 survey of London printing houses credits to his step-son and successor
Edward Okes.
[21] Miller (p. 136)
thinks it likely that he did so, but not until 1653, when he applied to the
Company for a loan of £50. What historical information there is, then,
suggests that Wilson was printing on only one press at the time he worked
his part of the Folio, and the fact that his section was machined in two
skeleton-formes and no more tends to bear this out.
Moseley's entry of the Beaumont and Fletcher copies in September,
1646, and his dating of "The Stationer to the Readers" as 14 February,
1646, indicate that the 1647 of the Folio title-page is a calendar-year date
and that publication took place shortly before or after 25 March 1647. The
allusions to the printing of the volume in Moseley's address further suggest
that the body of the volume was completed, or nearly so, by 14 February.
Hence, "the bulk of the printing was done in the autumn and winter of
1646."[22] The year 1646 was a busy
one for Wilson. The STC lists eighteen titles, including
broadsides, which were issued from his press in that year, and there may
have been more to which his name was not added. He completed Francis
Hawkins' Youths Behavior by 5 October and the first edition
of
Thomas Fuller's Andronicus by 9 October, following this
with
a second edition evidently shortly thereafter, for it, like the first
edition, is dated 1646. During the winter he must have been occupied with
his part of Shirley's Poems of 1646, entered 31 October; his
part of Sir George Buc's large Historie of the Life and Reigne of
King
Richard III, 1646 in some copies, 1647 in others, entered 12
October; and some minor work.[23]
His compositors and his one press could not have been devoted exclusively
to printing Folio material during this time, and thus one can understand the
interruptions in the Folio printing indicated, as will be shown, by
bibliographical evidence.