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Some Observations on the 1532 Edition
of Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso
by
Conor Fahy
The 1532 edition of Ariosto's Orlando furioso was the last edition of this great work to be printed in the author's lifetime. It has always been regarded as of prime importance for the text of the poem, because it was printed under the author's eyes at Ferrara, where he lived, and, compared with earlier editions, contained numerous variants, as well as extensive new material. It thus comprised a new version of the work, intended to supersede that published for the first time in 1516, also at Ferrara, and reprinted there with minor changes in 1521, and then in a host of reprints, apparently unauthorized, which appeared in Milan, Venice and Florence between 1524 and 1531.[1] Only in the last half-century, under the influence of modern textual and linguistic criticism, and of structuralist and post-structuralist critical theory, which sees each version of a work as a discrete entity, of equal interest to, and indeed value as, any other version, have scholars begun to take an interest in the 1516 edition of the Furioso and its text. This modern scholarly interest apart, once the 1532 edition, with its numerous stylistic and linguistic changes and its six additional cantos, had appeared, it immediately became and has remained the basis of the reading text of the work.
During these four hundred and fifty years of critical interest, an awareness has grown among Italian scholars that copies of the 1532 edition of the Furioso differ from each other in ways significant enough to affect the work of a critical editor. However, it was not until the critical edition of the Furioso published by Santorre Debenedetti in 1928 that a satisfactory account was given of these variations, and their nature explained. Though trained in a scholarly tradition almost entirely preoccupied with problems of manuscript transmission, and working before the appearance of the first manual of textual bibliography in any language, Debenedetti accurately identified the two sources of internal variants in the 1532 Furioso—authorial press-corrections and a cancelled sheet—and, hampered though he was by the
With these considerations in mind, I began a couple of years ago to re-examine the 1532 Furioso. The results, though still incomplete, have been extensive and, in some ways, surprising. A complete statement of my findings will be published in Italy in due course in book form; meanwhile, the present paper discusses certain points which seem to me to be of general interest.[2]
My discussion begins with a general proposition concerning the Furioso, that the first edition of 1516 and the definitive edition of 1532 were both financed by the author. The evidence for this is circumstantial, as no contracts between Ariosto and the two printers in question, Giovanni Mazocco for the 1516 edition, and Francesco Rosso for the 1532 edition, have yet been found, but none the less its cumulative effect is convincing. It was first presented more than fifty years ago by Michele Catalano, author of a richly documented biography of the poet, whose arguments in this context, though occasionally unacceptable on points of detail, are generally valid.[3] We begin with a letter from Ariosto's master and the dedicatee of the Furioso, Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, brother of the Duke of Ferrara, addressed to the Marquis of Mantua, dated 17 September 1515, requesting permission for the transport across Mantuan territory free of tax from Salò, on the shores of lake Garda, of 1000 reams of paper, "as I am about to arrange for the printing of a book
In the light of this letter, we can understand why there was a new edition of the work in 1521, though so far no similar evidence has come to light of the author's direct involvement in its publication.[9] With the 1532 edition, however, we are back on familiar territory. We have letters to the Doge of Venice and to the Ferrarese ambassador at the Milanese court requesting privileges for the new version of the poem, and a letter to the Duke of Mantua (the young man for whom Calandra had bought a copy of the 1516 edition, who had succeeded his father in 1519, and been elevated to the rank of Duke by the emperor Charles V in 1530) asking for free transport across Mantuan territory of more paper from Salò. This time the letter is written by the poet in his own name, and the amount of paper specified is 400 reams, which, if it is the quantity actually bought and used, would give a print-run for the 1532 Furioso of about 3000 copies.[10] The colophon of the 1532 edition is dated 1 October. Within three months Ariosto was seriously ill. He never recovered his health, and died on 6 July 1533. It is not surprising, then, that this time we have no evidence of his having been personally involved in the sale of his work. But we have ample evidence that this edition, too, was his property: the most striking, and the best known, is a letter from his brother Galasso written a few days after the poet's death, in which he complains that because of the poet's illness and death three quarters of the edition still remains in the hands of his heirs, unsold.[11]
I have dwelt on the evidence for the personal involvement of Ariosto in the Ferrarese editions of his masterpiece because it undoubtedly helps to explain the interesting features of the 1532 edition, as they emerge from the interpretation of the evidence provided by the collation of the surviving copies. The three features which I wish to discuss in this paper are: the press-corrections; the cancelled sheet; and the existence of perfect copies of the edition, consisting only of sheets in the corrected state.
The press-corrections
In the Nota at the end of the third volume of Debenedetti's 1928 edition of the Furioso the editor lists and discusses thirty-seven variants which have emerged from a collation of the eleven copies examined.[12] This list only contains variants relevant to the constitution of the text. In Debenedetti's working material, there is an unpublished list of thirty other variants, many of which are not relevant to the constitution of the text, e.g. they concern the correction (or the inadvertent creation) of printing errors. At the time of writing, I have collated ten of the eleven copies utilized by Debenedetti (the present whereabouts of copy no. 4 in the list in Appendix A is unknown) and the copies numbered 12 to 23 in the same list. The number of press variants of which I currently have note is 282. Of the new variants some fifty per cent are of Debenedetti's second type, those not relevant to the constitution of the text; the rest are stylistic or contenutistical variants which, like the thirty-seven variants in Debenedetti's Nota, cannot reasonably be attributed to anyone other than the author. The extent of the phenomenon can perhaps best be shown by relating it to the structure of the volume. As has been mentioned, the 1532 Furioso is a quarto in eights, with thirty-one gatherings, and so sixty-two sheets. My 282 variants are regularly distributed from beginning to end of the volume, and occur in ninety-one of the 124 formes needed to print it. This figure is the more impressive if one bears in mind that the sample on which I have been working is small—less than one per cent of the print-run, if the figure of 3000 is correct—and if I confess frankly that my collations have been selective rather than comprehensive.[13]
Only seven of the sixty-two sheets which comprise the volume have no press-variants. Of the fifty-five sheets in which variants have so far been found thirty-six have variant states of both formes. Thus, it was certainly not the norm in the printing of this volume for the second forme of a sheet to receive its final corrections while the first forme was on the press. Presumably, a final proof of the second forme was not normally taken until perfecting had actually begun. But there is another aspect of the press-correcting which deserves comment. In seventeen of the thirty-six sheets with variant states in both formes, the uncorrected states of both formes (and consequently also the corrected states) only occur together, that is, in the same copy or copies. The number of copies involved is, in one case, one copy; in five cases, two copies; in four cases, three copies; in one case, four copies; in two cases, five copies; in three cases, six copies; and in one case, seven copies. Twelve of the sheets involved belong to the second half of the volume. The phenomenon assumes even greater proportions if we include "near-miss" cases, in which there is a difference of only one or two copies in the group of those with uncorrected (or corrected) states of both formes. This gives a further twelve sheets, again concentrated in the second half of the volume. Indeed, after gathering N there is only one sheet where there is not some close connection between the list of copies with uncorrected (or corrected) states for the two formes of a sheet. A much less extensive instance of this phenomenon was discussed many years ago in connection with seventeenth-century editions of Massinger's plays, and was taken to demonstrate an "orderly regularity in perfecting".[14] This assumes, of course, that all the edition of a sheet is printed on one side before perfecting begins. In the printing of the 1532 Furioso, the cases listed above involving a certain number of copies provide a substantial obstacle to the acceptance of this explanation. The presence of the uncorrected state of both formes of some sheets in a sizeable minority of the surviving copies suggests that there was a delay in proofing these formes, and it is stretching credence a bit far to require that the same length of delay which occurred in performing this operation on the first forme should also occur later, in the printing of the second forme. More consistent with the evidence in these cases is the hypothesis that both formes were corrected at the same time, after some of the edition had been printed and perfected. As for the
The cancelled sheet
The regularity with which press-variants occur throughout the edition and, in particular, the nature of some of those which are clearly attributable to the author, involving words, phrases, and even whole lines, and, in one case, two consecutive lines, lead one to reflect on the reason for their presence. Given the quality of the Orlando furioso, its importance to the author, and the circumstances of its printing, I believe that they represent, not the main, but the final act of correction carried out by the printer and the author on the text of this edition. They are, as it were, the tip of the iceberg of correction; the bulk of the correction is invisible, hidden to modern eyes, because it was carried out on proof-sheets which have not survived; indeed, I would suggest that the surviving press-corrections are due, not only to eleventh-hour changes of mind, but also to the fact that the corrections carried out on the proofs were sometimes so extensive as to make it difficult for all of them to be correctly transferred to the type under the sort of pressure normal in early printing.[16]
It would be nice to be able to produce, in support of this contention, one of the proof-sheets of the 1532 Furioso, discovered in those treasurehouses of rare finds, the libraries of Italy. I cannot do that, but I hope to persuade readers that I can do nearly as well, by demonstrating that the cancellandum of inner A is to be understood as representing, more or less, the text of that sheet as it appeared in the proofs.
It was once again Debenedetti who first realised that the numerous variants to be found between copies in ff. A3-6—he lists approximately one hundred—were attributable to two different settings of type.[17] He argued
Debenedetti's explanation of this accident—for such it certainly is—was that some pages of the 1521 text used as printers' copy had been marked with provisional corrections, which, due to the author's absentmindedness ("era distrattissimo!", Debenedetti adds), he had never revised. As with Debenedetti's consideration of individual variants, this explanation engages the textual situation without paying any attention to its bibliographical context, but whereas for the press-variants Debenedetti's great sensitivity triumphantly carries the day (only one of his thirty-seven textual choices turns out to be contradicted by the bibliographical evidence), in the case of the cancelled sheet his lack of bibliographical awareness leads him into an untenable position. The 1521 and 1532 editions, though identical in structure—they are both quartos in eights—do not have the same disposition of text on the page: in the earlier edition each page has two columns of four stanzas, while in the definitive edition the text is arranged in two columns of five stanzas. Thus, none of the sheets of one edition contains exactly the same text as the corresponding sheet of the other edition, even in the first gathering, where there is no new material. In the 1521 edition the portion of text contained in inner A of the 1532 edition (Canto I, st.18-Canto II, st.14)
Obviously, Type I of inner A in the 1532 edition prints its not yet linguistically or stylistically mature text because that is what the compositor found in his exemplar, which, as has already been said, was a marked-up copy of the 1521 edition.[19] The crucial question is, what was the relation of the text in the relevant portion of the exemplar to the text it carried elsewhere? Debenedetti's explanation requires that, while for the rest of the work the exemplar should bear a text which, except for the press variants, (which, apart from one instance—the outer forme of outer C—comprise only a handful for each forme), had already reached the stage of linguistic and stylistic maturity witnessed by the definitive edition, for the seventy-eight stanzas in question, which comprise neither a discrete bibliographical nor a discrete textual unit in the exemplar, it should have a text which failed to reach this standard by such a long way that an average of nearly fifty corrections per forme had to be introduced in a new setting of type to bring it up to the same level as the rest of the work. In human affairs, nothing is impossible; for the historian, however, in his task of reconstructing the past out of the inadequate documentation which remains, it is the probable which counts. In the circumstances, what Debenedetti suggested is improbable. More probable is that the text represented by Type I of sheet inner A reveals the linguistic and stylistic condition of the exemplar not only in that passage but in the surrounding text as well; the reasonable assumption is, in other words, that all the text of the exemplar, at least in the early part of the work, presented this same provisional linguistic and stylistic quality. The reason why this provisional quality does not now show elsewhere in the 1532 edition, except in the press-variants, can only be that it was removed by extensive corrections carried out on proofs before printing began. Type I of sheet inner A thus represents the text of the exemplar before the author corrected the proofs, Type II indicates the nature and the order of the corrections he introduced into the proof-sheets.
The fact that three of the four surviving vellum copies of the edition, which were presumably sent to Ariosto's patrons and influential friends as soon as printing was over, contain Type I of inner A suggests that Type II was printed after all the rest of the edition, after, indeed, an unknown number of copies had already left the printing-house.[20] What little can be gleaned
One can only speculate how Type I came to be printed. Perhaps the author was prevented by other commitments from correcting proofs for this sheet. More likely, I think, is the hypothesis that he made corrections, but that they failed to find their way into the forme. We are presumably at the very beginning of the printing of this edition; the printing house may not have yet settled into a proper rhythm for this job.[22] It is significant that, in addition to the cancel, the one sheet with numerous press variants—outer C—also belongs to the early gatherings of the volume. The high number of variants in its outer forme, twenty-three in all, suggests that here, too, the author's corrections had not been incorporated into the forme before printing began; in this case, however, the omission was noticed early in the press run (four of the copies examined have the uncorrected state, nineteen, including the vellum copies, the corrected state) and so did not require a cancel.[23]
In postulating an Ur-text of the definitive edition of the Furioso entrusted to the printers' copy and requiring heavy correction to bring it to its final form, I am not suggesting anything which clashes with what we know of Ariosto's artistic practices or of his preparatory work on this edition. Like most writers, he was always dissatisfied with what he had written; the letter from his brother Galasso, already quoted, shows that even after the publication of the definitive edition he was thinking of further amendments. As for the preparation of the text of the definitive edition, he had certainly begun work by early 1528, the date of his request for a privilege from the Venetian authorities. In the swiftly changing climate of opinion on linguistic matters in sixteenth-century Italy, four years was a long time: solutions adopted early
One has to admit, however, that if Type II of sheet inner A was a cancel, intended to correct an oversight which had left some early pages of the text linguistically and stylistically disfigured, it was a very unsuccessful one. Of the twenty-four surviving copies listed in Appendix A only three contain the cancellans. I have no satisfactory explanation of why this should be so. I assume that it is connected with the fact that the author, who owned the edition and probably took responsibility for its distribution, as he seems to have done with the first edition, was afflicted with a fatal illness within three months of the completion of the printing.[25]
Perfect copies of the 1532 Furioso
When I embarked on this study, I expected that the numerous uncollated copies of the 1532 Furioso would reveal unrecorded states of some formes, which would allow me to make a contribution, perhaps an extensive one, to the constitution of the critical text of the work. These copies do indeed contain such states, with many textual variants, as has been said, yet I am unable to propose a single change to the text established by Debenedetti, because his text, in every case, already has the correct reading in these places.
To understand how this is so, we must go back to Debenedetti's work on this edition. Having considered the thirty-seven variants affecting the reading of the text, and decided, impressionistically but with remarkable accuracy, which reading was to be preferred, Debenedetti then looked at the way those readings were disposed in the eleven copies he had consulted. He found that two copies (nos 9 and 10), though they differed in one variant for which he
Debenedetti described copy no. 10, somewhat ambiguously, as "large", and as "the only copy with margins intact".[28] Thanks to the courtesy of the present owner, I have been able to examine the copy recently, and have formed the opinion that it is printed on larger paper than the other surviving paper copies. This opinion is based on a comparison between the measurements of the margins in copy no. 10 and those of the spaces between the edges of the type-page and the edges of the sheets in copy no. 21, a complete copy in sheets of the 1532 Furioso.[29] We have only to posit the practice of running the large paper copy or copies through the press last of all in the printing of each forme to obtain a satisfactory explanation of why copy no. 10 always has the corrected state.
The situation is not as clear in the case of copy no. 9, whose dimensions are approximately the same as those of the majority of other paper copies.
Ariosto was one of the greatest poets of the European Renaissance, and the Orlando furioso was his life's work. He published it in his home town, Ferrara, while in the employment of the Ducal family, who took a keen interest in the poem. He had the motivation and the means to ensure that the printing of his masterpiece was carried out under his close and continual supervision. The evidence suggests, as I have argued in the preceding pages, that, when publishing the definitive edition of his great work, he availed himself of these circumstances to receive and heavily correct proof-sheets, either of each forme, or of both formes of a sheet together, and that he arranged with the printer to have some copies made up consisting only of sheets in the corrected state. These are not unnatural requirements on the part of an author; on the contrary, for one as great as Ariosto, and in his enviable position, it would have been surprising if he had been content with less.[33]
APPENDIX A COPIES OF THE 1532 EDITION OF THE ORLANDO FURIOSO [34]
- 1. Ferrara, Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea [S.16.1.16] Type I
- 2. Ferrara, Biblioteca Comunale Ariostea [S.16.1.17] Type I
- 3. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale [Banco Rari 160] Type I
- 4. Biblioteca Melziana [private collection; subsequently belonged to Marchese di Soragna; present whereabouts unknown] Type I
- 5. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina [GG.II.197] Type I
- 6. Venice, Biblioteca Marciana [Rari 440] Type I
- 7. Milan, Biblioteca Trivulziana [Triv.G.101] Type I
- 8. Vicenza, Biblioteca Comunale Bertoliana; printed on vellum [Bacheca 18.2.1.(raro 1)] Type I
- 9. Bologna, Biblioteca Universitaria [Raro C.5] Type II
- 10. Biblioteca Melziana [private collection; now the property of Professor Cesare Segre, Milan] Type II
- 11. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana; printed on vellum; presentation copy for Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este [Barb.lat.3942] Type II
- Other copies
- 12. London, British Library; printed on vellum; Grenville copy [G.11068] Type I
- 13. London, British Library [C.20.c.11] Type I
- 14. Manchester, John Rylands University Library; Spencer copy, formerly owned by G. A. Barotti [10195] Type I
- 15. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana [Rossiano 4686] Type I
- 16. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana [Ferraioli IV.4086] Type I
- 17. Oxford, Bodleian Library [4.A21.Art.] Type I
- 18. Oxford, Codrington Library, All Souls College [mm.10.13] Type I
- 19. Frankfurt-am-Main, Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek [IL 1930/307 Nr.1] Type I
- 20. Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale [Palat.2.7.3.15] Type I
- 21. Verona, Biblioteca Capitolare [R.VIII.4] Type I
- 22. Cambridge (Mass.), Houghton Library, Harvard University [*IC5.Ar434.5160.1532] Type I
- 23. New York, J. Pierpont Morgan Library; printed on vellum; Charlemont copy [PML 800] Type I
- 24. [formerly Cambridge (Mass.), Houghton Library, Harvard University; sold at auction in London in 1962; purchased by Carlo Alberto Chiesa of Milan, who sold it to a Milanese collector, now dead; present whereabouts unknown] Type I
Copies utilized by Debenedetti for the 1928 edition
Notes
According to G. Agnelli and G. Ravegnani, Annali delle edizioni ariostee (1933), these unauthorized reprints numbered fifteen. This information needs to be re-examined in the light both of our present knowledge of sixteenth-century Italian printing, and of a proper distinction between the concepts of edition and issue, but, even if only approximate, clearly indicates the great success of the Furioso with its early readers. I take this opportunity of acknowledging the generous support of the British Academy, which enabled me to examine the copies of the 1532 Furioso in European libraries, and of the American Philosophical Society, which made possible a visit to the United States to examine the Harvard and Pierpont Morgan copies. A list of copies of the edition is given in Appendix A.
My examination of the 1532 Furioso has been selective, not comprehensive, and has focused on those elements of its printing history which are likely to prove especially interesting and instructive to my Italian colleagues (in particular, I have not carried out a detailed analysis of the type). It was occasioned by an invitation to participate in the II Seminario Internazionale sulla trasmissione dei testi a stampa nel periodo moderno, organised by the Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, a study group of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, and by the Università degli Studi della Tuscia, and held in Rome-Viterbo on June 27-29, 1985. The resulting paper was read to the Seminar on 28 June 1985 and will appear in its Atti. The present note is an English version, substantially re-arranged and rewritten, of that paper.
See M. Catalano, Vita di Ludovico Ariosto ricostruita su nuovi documenti (1930-31), I, 428-434; 595-605.
Catalano, II, 150-151. In fact, as Ariosto was to clarify years later, all that was actually ordered and received from Salò for the printing of the 1516 edition was 200 reams of paper, not the huge quantity mentioned in the Cardinal's letter, which seems intended to satisfy Arisoto's needs for many years.
Catalano, II, 149-150; L. Ariosto, Tutte le opere. Volume III. Satire. Erbolato. Lettere, ed. C. Segre, G. Ronchi and A. Stella (1984), 157-160.
The relevant part of the letter reads: "Non eri l'altro vene in questa terra mess. Ludovico Ariosto, gentilhomo ferrarese, quale à portato una capsa di libri, li qualli lui à composto sopra a Orlando, ch'è quasi tanto volume come l'Innamoramento di Orlando, et lui l'à intitulato Orlando Furioso, quale è uno bello libro, più bello che non è lo Inamoramento di Orlando. Lui ne ha donato uno al Ill.mo S. v.ro patre et uno a madama v.ra matre et uno al R.mo Cardinale; li altri lui li vole fare vendere. Se piace a la S.V. che io ve ne manda uno, io li mandorò (sic), perché io so che quella si dileta di havere di questi libri, maxime una Opera nova et così bella como è questa. Como lui li facia vendere, io ne comprarò uno et il farò ligare et il mandarò ala S.V." (Catalano, II, 158).
For this letter see Ariosto, Tutte le opere, III, p. 177. The relevant part reads: "Per m. Gian Iacomo Bardelone ho havuto sei lire di nostra moneta, li quali vostra M.tia mi ha rimessi, credo, per parte de li denari che si hanno d'havere dal venditore de li miei Orlandi a Verona. Di che ringratio quella, ma mi paron pochi a quelli ch'io aspettava; e non posso credere che quel libraro non li habbia expediti tutti, perché in nessuno altro luogo di Italia non so dove ne restino più da vendere: e se fin qui non gli ha venduti, non credo che più li venda. Per questo seria meglio che il libraro li rimettesse qui, perché subito troverei di expedirli, perché me ne son dimandati ogni dì."
There are, however, two contracts with booksellers, one in Genoa and the other in Ferrara itself, which suggest that the author owned the 1521 edition as he had owned its predecessor, but did not have the time, or perhaps the inclination, to concern himself in the same way with its sale (Catalano, II, 232-233; 236-237). There is also a fragmentary but highly suggestive document of March 1523 certifying the repayment by Ariosto of a loan apparently received in November 1520 "ad merchationem in arte stanpandi libros" (Catalano, II, 246).
For these letters see Ariosto, Tutte le opere, III, 452-453; 458; 461. The 1532 Furioso is a quarto in eights, collating A-Z a-h, and thus comprises sixty-two sheets. It is quite likely that Ariosto, with the eternal optimism of the author-publisher, envisaged an edition of this size. The first edition, which contained sixty-six sheets, would, if printed on 200 reams, as Ariosto stated, have comprised about 1500 copies; as has been said, it ran out in less than five years. Between 1516 and 1532 the Furioso had become famous throughout Italy, and beyond.
For the date of this letter, see C. Dionisotti, "Notizie ariostesche," Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 106 (1935), 224-229. The text, with the erroneous date of 8 July 1534, is given in Catalano, II, 344-345. The relevant part of the letter reads: "Del quale privilegio ha potuto poco godere, perché, havendo a pena fornito di stampare, s'ammalò, et dopo l'essere stato VIII mesi infermo finalmente s'è morto, come V.S. havrà potuto intendere: et così non solo non ha potuto ristampare il libro di novo, come havea in animo di fare, parendogli, come era, d'esser stato mal servito in questa ultima stampa et assassinato; ma per la sua malattia sono restati i tre quarti dei libri in mano de gli heredi, che non si sono venduti." Other evidence is to be found in a draft of Ariosto's will made during his last illness, in which he left to his son Virginio "omnes libros intitulatos Orlando furioso ipsius D.ni Testatoris, existentes penes ipsam D.nam Alexandram [his wife] quotquot fuerint" (Catalano, II, 333). We also have a note in the Estense archives of the payment in March 1532 of 300 lire to Tommaso di Salò on Ariosto's behalf for the purchase of paper (Catalano, II, 323).
See Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed Debenedetti (1928), III, 415-426. The figure of thirty-seven excludes the numerous variants found in the cancelled leaf, for which see below.
The decision to collate selectively rather than comprehensively was taken when it became apparent, for reasons which will emerge later, that my researches were not likely to make a significant contribution to the critical text of the Furioso. As my control I have used transparent xeroxes of the John Rylands copy (no. 14). I have collated word for word copies no. 6 and 13. For the remaining paper copies my approach has been to begin by collating those formes in which I had not yet found any variants, and then to collate other formes as the pattern of variants suggested and time allowed. Every one of the paper copies collated for the first time has yielded at least one state previously not documented. The copies on vellum (nos. 8, 11, 12, and 23) are not susceptible to collation by my control xeroxes, as the dimensions of their type-pages are several millimetres smaller than those of the paper copies, owing to the greater shrinkage rate of vellum over the years; consequently, I have collated them only spasmodically. There is no doubt that they were printed from the same setting of type and concurrently with the paper copies; indeed, one of the peripheral points of interest to have emerged concerning the printing of this edition is that in the opening gatherings the vellum sheets occasionally went through the press early enough to pick up uncorrected states of a few formes, but after gathering G, where in the inner forme of the inner sheet the group of vellum sheets went through the press after the first round of press corrections but before the second, the printers saw to it that the vellum sheets always went through the press late enough to avoid any uncorrected states, even in formes in which there was more than one round of press-corrections.
See A. K. McIlwraith, "Marginalia on Press-corrections in Books of the Early Seventeenth Century,", Library, 5th. ser., 4 (1950), 238-248.
On the hypothesis of printing and perfecting part of the print-run of a sheet as a day's work see P. Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (1972), 132.
For recent presentations of the printing process in early continental printing see J. Veyrin-Forrer, "Fabriquer un livre au xvie siècle," in Histoire de l'édition française, ed. H. J. Martin and R. Chartier, I (1982), 279-301; J. Rychner, "Le travail de l'atelier," ibid., II (1984), 42-61.
Ariosto, Orlando furioso (1928), III, 406-414. The fact that Debenedetti regarded these four leaves as forming a "half-sheet" does not detract from his contribution to the solving of the problem they pose. Though the fount used is the same, the two settings of type are immediately apparent when one is superimposed on the other, as with transparent xeroxes, or with the Hinman Collating Machine.
This assertion cannot be documented without a thoroughgoing linguistic discussion, which would be out of place here. A few examples are: the treatment of double consonants (always a delicate matter in the language of north Italian writers) and of the diphthongs ie and uo, more "irregular" in Type I than elsewhere in the edition, and the presence of forms such as dui, altrimente, arricciosse, corrected to duo, altrimenti, arricciossi in Type II, in conformity with the language of the rest of the sheets of the 1532 edition.
This is shown by some forty shared misprints elsewhere in the work. Of course, for the additional material the author must have supplied manuscript copy. Some autograph fragments of this material have survived, though not the copy sent to the printers.
The fourth vellum copy, no. 11, the only surviving vellum copy with Type II of inner A, is a presentation copy for Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este, and presumably remained at Ferrara in the weeks following the publication of the edition. It has a number of other peculiarities, including a non-typographical title-page and an unique setting of type for f. A2r, the first page of text. One of the vellum copies with Type I, no. 23, bears on a guard-leaf a note in a sixteenth-century hand stating that it was given by the author to the poetess Veronica Gambara, who lived at Correggio, some 50 miles from Ferrara; see my article, "L'esemplare già Charlemont dell'Orlando furioso del 1532," Lettere italiane, 14 (1962), 441-450.
I have so far been unable to identify the watermark of Type II in copy no. 9, the only Type II paper copy readily available. It is possible that analysis of the types would provide further evidence, but I doubt whether the effort involved (for which see A. Hammond, "The White Devil in Nicholas Okes's Shop," Studies in Bibliography, 39 (1986), 135-176, particularly pp. 159-161) would be justified in this case.
Another indication of an early lack of rhythm which was gradually eliminated as printing progressed can be found in the treatment of the vellum sheets (see note 13); also relevant is the gradual establishment of a pattern of press-correction, as discussed above.
The linguistic variants of this forme all refer to phenomena identical with those shown by the variants of inner A (see n. 18), e.g. insertion of the Tuscan diphthongs ie and uo (rivera > riviera, leva > lieva, lochi > luoghi, giova > giuova), -e > -i (pare > pari).
It is interesting that three hundred years later another great north-Italian writer, Alessandro Manzoni, in preparing the publication at his own expense of the definitive edition of his novel I promessi sposi, the text of which had been subjected to a similar process of linguistic revision lasting several years, stipulated, in a ferocious contract with his printers drawn up by a lawyer friend, the right, which he exercised to the full, to make as many corrections on the proofs as he thought necessary. Manzoni's contract, and many other documents concerning this edition, are reproduced in M. Parenti, Manzoni editore: storia di una celebre impresa manzoniana illustrata su documenti inediti o poco noti (1945). The edition was printed on one or more large Stanhope presses; numerous proofs, ranging from galleys to perfected sheets, are preserved in the Biblioteca Braidense, Milan; for further information, see my articles "Galley Proofs in an Italian Edition of 1840-42," The Library, 6th ser., 2 (1980), 469-470; and "Per la stampa dell'edizione definitiva dei Promessi Sposi," Aevum, 56 (1982), 377-394.
During a discussion at the 1985 Seminar, and afterwards privately, Paul Needham expressed the opinion that the two typographical settings of sheet inner A of the 1532 Furioso, because of their distribution among surviving copies, were unlikely to represent a cancellandum and its cancellans, as both Debenedetti and I maintain, and should probably be attributed to the desire to produce further copies of the sheet. I have to admit that the distribution evidence, "arranged vigorously", to borrow a phrase from Dr Needham's memorable article on the printing of the Mainz Catholicon (PBSA, 76 [1982], 395-456), does point in that direction. However, I believe that in this case the distribution evidence is outweighed by the bibliographical and textual considerations I have outlined, which are valid both against Debenedetti and against the theory of an increase in the print-run, and which, under the stimulus of Dr Needham's comments, for which I am very grateful, I have arranged as vigorously as I am able.
See R. B. McKerrow, An Introduction to Bibliography for Literary Students (1927), p. 209. The phrase also appears in the first version of McKerrow's manual, the article "Notes on Bibliographical Evidence for Literary Students and Editors of English Works of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 12 (1914), 211-318.
I owe this information to Carlo Dionisotti, whose informant was Debenedetti himself. From the same source I understand that Debenedetti subsequently purchased the copy. Its present owner, Prof. Cesare Segre, is Debenedetti's nephew.
On this copy see my article "A Copy in Sheets of the Orlando furioso of 1532," in course of publication in La Bibliofilia. The maximum margin measurements of copy no. 21 are 30mm for the bottom margin and 19mm for the outer margin, as against 35mm and 25mm in copy no. 10. My examination of the latter did not include the watermark, which is difficult to identify in quartos. Indeed, had it not been for the chance of finding a copy in sheets, I doubt if I would know for certain what the watermarks of the paper used for the 1532 Furioso were. Further work prior to the full publication of my results will include an attempt to establish the identity of the paper used in copies 9 and 10.
The fact, as already stated, that paper copies other than copies 9 and 10 all have a varying number of formes, from nine to thirty, in their uncorrected state, coupled with the number of sheets involved (sixty-two), makes the unintentional assembly of a "perfect" copy implausible.
The fact that Type II of inner A is only present, among the paper copies, in the two which have all the corrected states of the rest of the volume is further, if indirect, proof that it was intended as a cancellans, and is not the result of a decision to run off further copies of the sheet.
For proof-reading in sixteenth-century continental printing, see the references in my article, "Introduzione alla bibliografia testuale," La Bibliofilia, 82 (1980), 151-180, especially pp. 167-168. As for perfect copies, even McKerrow, after the statement quoted on a previous page (see n. 26), expressed the following disclaimer: "I do not deny that it is possible that a few sheets in the most correct state might be selected to be made up into presentation copies for the author's friends," though adding "but I have certainly never come across any evidence of such a practice, nor does it seem at all likely" (Introduction, pp. 209-210). A young British scholar, Neil Harris, is planning a study, similar to that which I have undertaken on the 1532 Furioso, on the printing of the 1516 and 1521 editions of the work, as part of a three-year perfezionamento at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa.
This list comprises copies of the 1532 Furioso utilized by Debenedetti or by me. From Debenedetti's notes, it appears that he located copies 20 and 21 too late to be able to incorporate their readings in his edition. Copies 15 and 16 did not become available for public consultation (indeed, copy no. 16 did not actually reach the Vatican) until after the publication of Debenedetti's edition. From information supplied to me in 1961 by the staff of the Houghton Library, Harvard, before copy no. 24 left their possession, it is clear that it belongs to Type I, but the rest of its readings are now unfortunately lost. The copies in this list are printed on paper, unless otherwise stated. Press marks are given in square brackets. I would be very grateful for information about copies of the edition not included in this list. I should add that the copy given in the Library of Congress Union Catalogue as belonging to the library of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute is a "ghost", and that the copies stated in the same source to be found in the library of Duke University are photocopies of some of the items listed here.
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