University of Virginia Library

I

The materials which enable us to form an assessment of Harington's design-intentions are quite plentiful. First of all, the advertisement to the reader, as D. F. McKenzie has written,[5] is "a remarkably informative statement about the range of reader responses that Harington thinks to elicit" (p. 104). In it, Harington explained "more plainely, then for the learned sort had haply bene requisite" the arrangement of the book, the functions of its component parts (or, rather, most of them, including the illustrations), and how and in what spirit he wished the book to be read. The language is plain and direct, admirably suited to its immediate purpose; yet it abounds, as so many old documents do, and like the rest of Harington's prose in this book, in fascinating half-expressed thoughts, which I shall be attempting to elucidate and amplify. If one reads the text of the advertisement straight through and counts up all the main verbs in the active voice and first person singular, one gains a very clear impression indeed of Harington's close personal involvement in every part of the book. So, too, the wording of its title suggests clearly enough Harington's concern with the book's presentation as well as with its substance:

In the 1591 edition, the advertisement occupies one full page (sig. A1) immediately preceding the plate for Book I. Its location there as part of the first regular gathering suggests that it may have been set and printed at or near the beginning of the printing-job, and not as the other preliminaries were at the end of it. This may account for the lack of any mention in it of the general allegory of the whole work and the life of Ariosto, both of which appear at the back of the book, after the poem and before the index, and may well have been late additions to the book's contents—just as most or all of the third part of the preface, the defence of Harington's own work, certainly was. If the general allegory and the life of Ariosto were indeed late additions, then Harington was willing to make a virtue of necessity, for he wrote them in such a way that they suit their location at the back of the book, balancing and complementing the preliminary material, and they are addressed (the first explicitly) to readers "that haue read the former Poeme". However, it is possible they were planned to go there from the beginning, and were not mentioned in the advertisement simply because Harington did not there wish to draw attention to them.

More light is shed on Harington's conception of the book's design, and on the chronological sequences of composition, design, and printing, by the

two surviving manuscripts, both of which ante-date the printed book. Bodleian MS Rawl. Poet. 125 is a scribal fair copy of the first twenty-four cantos, and is said to look like a "mock-up" for an elaborate edition to be illustrated both by engravings and also by woodcuts deriving from one or more of the Giolito editions.[6] Either that, or else perhaps it preserves two separate attempts at planning, one for woodcut illustrations and one for engravings. The inclusion of a Perseus and Andromeda engraving adapted to serve as an illustration of the Rogero and Angelica episode at the end of Book X shows that Harington at-one stage was considering an alternative plan to the straightforward copying and adaptation of the engravings by Girolamo Porro in the Franceschi edition. British Library MS Add. 18920 is a fair copy of Books XIV-XLVI, mostly in Harington's own hand, and has the special interest of being the manuscript that was used as printer's copy in Field's printing-house.[7] It is from this manuscript that we know of Harington's keen interest in details of the book's layout, ornament, and typography, expressed in what McNulty (p. xlii) called his "peremptory" instructions to Field; and it is by reference to this manuscript—to the layout of the material on the page, to the deletions and revisions and additions, to the printers' signature and page-number notations, to errors in the stanza-numbering, and so on—that many small puzzles about the making of the printed book can be resolved, wholly or in part. Missing from this manuscript are the end-of-canto notes on the moral, the history, the allegory, and the allusion, except those for Books XXVI, XXIX-XXXVII, XXXIX, and XLIV-XLVI, which are present. The presence in the manuscript of some of these end-of-canto notes may possibly be related to Harington's absence or irregular attendance at the printing-house while the book was being printed. Some of those present in the manuscript may have been written early, before Harington went away for a time; but those for Book XXXVI, at least, were written late, after the copy was cast off for the press, for they are written around a deleted signature-notation which is copied out again below.

Further information about Harington's design-intentions can be obtained by comparing the 1591 edition with other printed books, and especially with the various Italian editions of Ariosto's poem that served as its design-models. These include not only the 1584 Franceschi edition but also the Valgrisi edition and possibly earlier Italian editions as well.[8] In particular,

it is instructive to compare the treatment by the English printers and engravers of these Italian design-models with Harington's treatment of his literary sources for the poem and its apparatus.[9]

Reference was made earlier to some doubtful points of chronology. A good deal is clear, however, and before going on to consider the book's design in more detail, it will be worth while sketching out some of the salient facts that can be inferred. The poem itself was the first part of the British Library manuscript to be copied out, with room being left for the addition in single or double column of the verse-arguments; but the fair copy of the verse was not necessarily completed before the earlier cantos were revised, equipped with verse-arguments and marginal notes, and printed. The marginal notes were evidently entered in at various times. They are in handwriting of various sizes and degrees of neatness, now in secretary script, now in italic. Since several have been traced to their sources in Lavezuola's "Osservationi" and Ruscelli's "Annotationi" incorporated in the Franceschi edition, it seems likely that Harington, while using these and perhaps other commentaries, would turn from one place to another in the manuscript to enter his marginal notes. The end-of-canto notes (mostly absent from the manuscript) seem to have been written in sequence, beginning from the beginning; this is observable from the text, for some promises made about them are not fulfilled, or their fulfilment is deferred.[10] From Book IV on, most of them, like Ruscelli's canto-by-canto "Annotationi" in the Valgrisi and Franceschi editions, were written to fit the available space left over at the end of the verse; they usually end neatly at or near the foot of the page. The general allegory was written after the work of annotation was complete, as can be seen from its first paragraph; so also, presumably, was the life of Ariosto. Drafts or early versions of the preface and the index seem to have been in existence at an early stage of the work, although both were printed late. They are both referred to in the advertisement to the reader, somewhat inaccurately, and also in marginal notes and elsewhere.[11] In brief, the text of the work seems to have

been composed in a rather complicated chronological sequence.

The printers, however, seem to have worked through the book systematically, gathering by gathering, from A to ¶. The sequence of setting within each gathering does not appear to follow a regular pattern. There was no need to keep to one, since most of the text consisted of verse in regular stanzas, easy to cast off accurately. The running-titles never wander further than into an adjacent book or gathering, forward or back. Wrong page-numbers are few and far between, even though there are some lengthy sequences of them in the printer's copy, most but not all subsequently corrected. The major confusion in page-numbering occurs in Book XXIV, after an irregular gathering of four leaves at the end of Book XXIII—about which more later. An interesting improvement in the layout of the canto-openings is first made in Book XIV. These layouts are of three types. Book I, with a lengthier headtitle than the rest, has the first six stanzas on the first page. The remainder have the first seven, the break between columns coming after the first line of the third stanza in Books II-XIII, XV and XXVI, but after the second line of the third stanza (a decided improvement) in Books XIV, XVI-XXV, and XXVII-XLVI. It seems clear that the improvement in layout was made too late for Book XV but in time for Book XIV; or, in other words, that sig. K4 was printed before sig. I5. (The untypical break later on, at Book XXVI, was necessitated by an extra turned-over line, mistakenly indented below the initial in the first stanza.) From Book XIV on, also, and not before, there regularly appear below the notes of allusion such lines as "The end of the Annotations vpon the fourteenth booke". Questions of layout and presentation were evidently reconsidered at this stage of the job, and it may be more than sheer coincidence that, from Book XIV on, the printer's copy has survived—though it is of course not known when the copy for Books I-XIII and the verse-argument for Book XIV was lost. Harington's manuscript direction to Field at the end of the annotations to Book XLVI shows that only then was the type chosen for the preface, general allegory, and life of Ariosto. Pointedly, I think, these were to be—and are—in the same fount of pica roman as Field had used for printing The Arte of English Poesie (1589): "Mr Feeld . . . I would have the allegory (as allso the appollygy and all the prose that ys to come except the table [)] in the same printe that Putnams booke ys." Not only the fount of pica roman but also the initials and ornaments of "Putnams booke" were used again in Harington's.[12]

I have been unable to establish whether the sheets regularly went through the rolling press, for the printing of the engravings, before or after the printing of the text; it may or may not be significant that two of the wrong page-numbers, "208" at sig. S3v and "141" at sig. X5, are on the same side of the sheet as engravings. The printers regularly made allowance for these engravings in their casting-off, and in the 1591 edition (unlike the 1607 and 1634 reprints, and for that matter unlike the 1584 Franceschi edition)[13] they are all correctly printed, in their proper places and the right way up.

Thus, with only one major exception (the irregular gathering of four leaves at the end of Book XXIII), the work of preparing and printing the book seems to have gone reasonably smoothly, once the methods of annotating and illustrating it had been chosen and devised. The only major alteration in the book's contents made in the course of printing seems to have been the addition of new material at the end of the preface and possibly also at the back of the book. The additions—if that is what they are—were intended principally but not solely to answer and forestall readers' criticisms of the translation, verse, and notes. These last, the end-of-canto notes in particular, seem to have given Harington a good deal of trouble, for in them he "strained" himself not only "to make mention of some of my kindred and frends" (as he wrote in the third part of the preface) but to organize them according to a preconceived fourfold division (moral, history, allegory, and allusion) and at the same time to make them fit neatly on the page. However, the chosen method was applied pretty consistently, and the description Harington gives in the advertisement to the reader of the functions of these end-of-canto notes is quite remarkably accurate.