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Notes
For a general description of the publication, see R. K. Turner, "The Beaumont and Fletcher Folio of 1647," in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, ed. Fredson Bowers, I (1966), xxvii-xxxv, which is based on W. W. Greg, "The Printing of the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio of 1647," The Library, 4th ser., II (1921-22), 109-115; R. C. Bald, Bibliographical Studies in the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio of 1647 (1938); the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library's Catalogue of English Books and Manuscripts 1475-1700 (1940); Johan Gerritsen, "The Printing of the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio of 1647," The Library, 5th ser., III (1949), 233-264; and W. W. Greg, A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration, III (1957), 1013-1018 (which takes account of the unpublished investigations of Allan H. Stevenson).
The evidence is too extensive for complete publication here. A typescript of the entire study of this section has been deposited with University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48107, from whom xerographic copies may be obtained.
The UWM copy was brought to the U. S. by Dr. Hoy and obtained from him by the Library Associates of the University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee, to whom I am much obliged. To Dr. Hoy himself I owe thanks not only for lending me his own copy but also for patiently tolerating my keeping it a great deal longer than I had originally contracted to do.
Evidence of this kind has long been in use by bibliographers. Its particular applicability to the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio was noticed by Bald, op. cit.; Guy A. Battle, "A Bibliographical Note From the Beaumont and Fletcher First Folio," Studies in Bibliography, I (1948-49), 187-188; and James S. Steck, ibid., pp. 188-191. Steck observes (p. 188) that "the center rule cannot be considered an integral part of the skeleton forme," citing as proof the migration from forme to forme of center rules in Section 5, where they move independently of the box rules. For a more elaborate discussion of such evidence and its relevance to the Shakespeare Folio, see Hinman, I, 150-180.
See Kenneth Povey, "The Optical Identification of First Formes," Studies in Bibliography, XIII (1960), 189-190.
Presumably if the edition were very large and the press run consequently long, only one compositor would have been necessary. There is no reason to think, however, that many more copies of the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio would have been printed than of the Shakespeare Folio, for the composition of which two workmen at a time were necessary unless one was setting another job while the other set Folio matter (Hinman, II, 513-529).
Hinman, I, 52-150. The method of recording types on cards described by Hinman was used in this study as well.
As a rule, the reliability of type identification increases with the number of copies examined, and in this case only two copies of the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio were available. Both were scrutinized with care at least three times and some troublesome pages many more. I located and recorded the types that I could find in one copy; then I examined the other to confirm the identifications and to add more, checking these against the first copy; and finally my assistant, using either copy, confirmed all the identifications once again. Thus each type recorded was seen by two people, but I am confident that a third pair of eyes could see some types that were missed and would disagree with some identifications, though I hope not many.
See Hinman, I, 126-138, where the causes of anomalous reappearances are discussed under the heads Stripping Accident, Centre-rule Accident, Distribution Accident, Imposition Accident, Presswork Accident, and Types Used as Quads.
". . . Whenever practicable, wrought-off material was distributed by the compositor who set it" but ". . . a compositor would ordinarily distribute pages which he had himself set before he distributed material set by someone else" (Hinman, I, 98 and 124). Thus Hinman is able to speak of Cases x, y, and z, out of which specific types proceeded and into which they returned. Retention of their own types seems also to have been the practice of the compositors of Albumazar Q1 (1615), described in Turner, "Reappearing Types as Bibliographical Evidence," Studies in Bibliography, XIX (1966), 198-209.
Hinman, I, 138, following which there is a useful discussion of the employment of center rules in printing and their value as bibliographical evidence.
Bald (p. 30) denies that the The's of the running-titles of The Coxcombe carry over to The False One, but three of them do (see Appendix A, Quires P and Q particularly). I think that his remarks on the failure of act heads used earlier to reappear in The False One (p. 31) are also mistaken.
An account of his career is given by C. William Miller, "A London Ornament Stock, 1598-1683," Studies in Bibliography, VII (1955), 136-138.
W. A. Jackson, ed., Records of the Court of the Stationers' Company 1602 to 1640 (1957), pp. 75 and 158.
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