University of Virginia Library

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-D1v, D1v blank), The Noble Gentleman (D2-F3v), The Captaine (F4-K1v, K1v blank), Beggars Bush (K2-M4v), and The Coxcombe (N1-P4v, P4v blank). To these, however, The False One (Q1-S4v, S4v blank) was added very late in the printing of The Coxcombe, evidently after the prologue (P3v) 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 (A1v), the players' dedication (A2-A2v), Shirley's address (A3-A3v), Moseley's address (A4-A4v); e (actually signed E) short poems by Corbett, Jonson, and Herrick (e1) and a long one by Birkenhead (e1v-e2v); and f poems by Powell (f1), Hills (f1v), Howe (f2), Palmer (f2v), Brome (f3), Harris (f3v-f4v), and Harrington (f4v). 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.