University of Virginia Library

§1. Main Settings

Table 1 shows, in shades of gray, the distribution in surviving copies of the
completely different settings of each page. The rows of the table correspond to
the copies or reproductions I have examined, grouped by the four title-page vari-
ants which are separated by the horizontal white bands. The columns represent
the pages of each copy grouped by quire and forme. One can immediately see
what perplexed the earlier bibliographers. Some settings persist throughout the
print history: the outer formes of quires A and C, for instance, and even the
title page (a1r), remain substantially the same with relatively minor variants.
Other pages go through as many as three settings. Most of the new settings do
not line up with changes on the title page. The concept of "edition" as applied
to the whole book, and the normal role of the title page as the primary taxo-
nomic organizer, go out the window here. So does any hope of dealing with the
book quirewise, or even formewise. Only a page-by-page analysis will allow
us to specify the relationships among copies.

As it happens, this patchwork of settings (taken in conjunction with the vari-
ants they contain) works in our favor when we set out to put all the states, from
major to minor, into chronological order. Let us take the example of quire A
inner forme, where page A2r goes through two partial resettings, A1v gets one
complete resetting, and the other two pages exhibit only stop-press corrections.
In table 2, the heavy horizontal line separates the completely different settings
of A1v, while the lighter lines separate partial resettings or more minor altera-
tions. The relative positions of the lines between columns show the points of
introduction of new states, either simultaneously with changes on other pages or
independently from them. We have no immediate basis for deciding the order
in which some of these occurred. However, since the forme is the basic unit of
printing, these four pages must all live their lives in the same direction: a prov-
able sequence of variants on one page imposes an obligation on the sequences
of the others.

A4r, in its single setting, shows progressive improvement in spelling and
punctuation. In the first wave of correction, "sharpe sited" becomes "sharpe
sighted" and "Caduseus" becomes "Caduceus". In the next wave, the addition of
commas to a listing of architectural features helps to improve the sense. On A3v,
the correction of "Arber-worke" to "Arbor-worke", occurring part-way through
the second state of A4r, follows the same order. If we accept this sequence of
states for these two pages, the other two (A1v and A2r) must follow suit. There-
fore, setting 1 of both A1v and 2r does indeed come first, a fact that we would
otherwise have difficulty proving. Setting 2 of A1v then goes through two waves
of correction that lock partial resettings 2 and 3 of A2r into order. When, some
twenty-five years ago, I began to sort through all of the states of ToP, I was pleas-
antly surprised to find most of them clicking into place pretty readily in this same
way. I have recorded the rationales for the order of states in appendix 1, though
I would not encourage the reader to venture into that thicket quite yet.

The important thing to note in table 1 (the table of editions of the whole
book) is that there appears to be an orderly progression of settings of the constitu-
ent sheets. The various settings of one quire do not mix randomly with settings
of other quires. As the quire-breaks always fall at the same points in the text in
all the states, copies could in theory have been assembled from sheets of what-
ever combinations of settings were available at the gathering stage. The lack of
random mixing implies discrete stages of production and collation, and provides
one argument against the theory of simultaneous setting that has prevailed until
now. Only the late states of quire D show a more promiscuous behavior; I
will explain this in §8B.

The title-page variants, though seeming to dance to their own drummer, at
least dance in the same direction as the variants in quires A-D. In the earliest
copies of the title (fig. 1[A]), the "O" in "OF" in line 3 is sound. A small accident
soon dents the top of the O, and this damaged type persists through all of the
subsequent states. Reassuringly, the "third impression" title pages are found only
in copies having the latest states of the text, and we can see that the unique copy
of title 3, with its dangling comma after "Grayes-Inne", is just an uncorrected
version of title 4. Quire "a", therefore, shows a rational order of variants that also
tracks the evolution of the other quires, even if the title-page changes are out of
phase with those of the text pages.

Although, after we become familiar with table 1, we discern some comforting
regularities, we are left with the question of why some pages were reset and others
were not. The mystery deepens when we look more closely at the pages which
retain at least 50% of their original settings. TOP shows the normal pattern of
stop-press corrections found in most books of the hand-press period. But we also
encounter two phenomena which are unusual: (1) pages on which only the page
number is reset, where no correction was required, and (2) pages on which blocks
of text in a particular type style (usually italic) are reset—again with no substan-
tive changes to the reading—while the other portions remain untouched.

The seemingly capricious page-number resettings turn out to be a powerful
tool for reconstructing the sequence of events in John Norton's shop during the
printing of ToP. Once we understand what motivated them, we will be in a better

TABLE 1. Distribution of completely different settings

 

The three shades of gray indicate, from light to dark, one to three settings.	Clear cells indicate missing leaves. No attempt is made here to show partial resettings.

TABLE 2. Complete and partial resettings in forme A(i)

position to interpret the equally puzzling replacement of blocks of text on some
pages.