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§7. Quire C

Table 21 shows four relatively clear-cut phases of production for all of quire
C. Phases II and III are signalled by reimpositions or resettings that run straight
across both formes. Phase IV is more subtle, having only two pages reimposed.
But the remaining pages (except for C3r, which comes over completely unchanged
from Phase III) all show revisions, some of them major, at the inception

TABLE 21. Variants in quire C

of Phase IV, and the timing of these coincides with the major discontinuities that
we have already shown initiating the final printing phase of the preceding quires.
(Appendix 3 shows this correlation most clearly.) Phase IV of this quire is found
only with the "third impression" title pages and vice versa. So, despite the lack of
extensive resetting at this point, we can still assert
the likelihood that the alterations to both formes preceding this final phase took place during a significant
pause in the press run.

On C2v, the action of the masque enters its final phase, which features numerous
songs set in italic. These provide the main source for the italic raids
discussed in §3.

The production of the quire went as follows:

A. PHASE I

C outer forme shows a normal pattern of variants whose sequence is all but
certain. The inner forme, however, presents an insoluble problem in the sorting
of the two variants of C1v, which at line 23 has either (1a1) "We change
the Seene" or (1a2) "We change the Scene". These are found in the combinations
shown in table 22. (The remaining three pages of C(i) are invariant, so
are not shown.) About half the sheets (the eight copies shown in the last row of
the table) have the latest states of both the outer and inner formes, as we would
expect, but the other ten sort illogically. Unlike the retrograde pattern of quire
B Phase I (§6A), the existence of all these permutations cannot be explained
by any plausible irregularity in turning the stack. Only dropping some portion
of the sheets on the floor and picking them up more or less at random would
cause the first state of the inner forme to be printed on the back of three of the
four variants of the outer forme. "Accidents at the press" is the last resort of the
baffled bibliographer, and I will not waste space here in trying to develop such an
explanation.

TABLE 22. Distribution of C1v variants in Phase I

On C4V the bottom lines of text are bent upwards at the right. The greatest
amount of deflection is a bit more than 2 mm—so, rather less than half the
height of one line—but bad register with the text on the back of the leaf makes
it quite noticeable. This much distortion would be impossible if the non-printing
space on the page were packed solid; there must have been a gap in the lockup,
and I would guess that one of the lines of Song 5 somehow got into the forme
without being justified. Such an oversight would also explain the slight misalignment
in lines 7–9 on the same page. This precarious situation might have made
it impossible for a workman to pick up and transport the locked-up forme in
the manner described by Moxon, 27 but the interaction of pressures along both
dimensions of the page was apparently sufficient to keep types from being pulled
during presswork. This is the most graphic demonstration in ToP that printing
could proceed with adequate stability even if regions of the forme lacked support
on all four sides. We have already seen instances in §6B of wandering alignment
between adjacent lines that probably arose from similar causes. 27a

B. PHASE II

Phase II shows raiding of italic on pages C2v, C3r, and C4v. These pages contained
all of the main caches of italic in the outer forme. C4v was particularly
heavy-hit, being totally reset except for the roman lines 7–9 and the last line. After
the raid, the italic Song 5 and its roman title on that page reappeared in pica size.

The inner forme of quire C offered an even richer source of italic than the
outer, but it was never raided at this point, or ever during the history of ToP.
The reason is probably that C(i) was on the press and inaccessible while C(o) was
being raided. C1v does show resetting of the italic in lines 8–10 and 25–27, but
this page was not a plentiful source for the font, and the resettings could have
arisen from some other cause. (For instance, the earlier state showed a comma

out of place in line 7, and it is possible that lines 8–10 were pied in the act of
repositioning it.)

C1r in this phase shows some horizontal instability in the page-number
position.

C. PHASE III

In this phase, pp. C2r and C3v—which lie side by side in the forme—undergo
the only complete resettings in the history of quire C. Head to head with
these, but later in the phase, C1v and C4r both show page-number shifts. These
are probably simultaneous but random drifts, as the types in the page numbers
appear to be the same before and after. However, the five copies which show this
deviation happen to be the same ones which contain quire B from Phase IIIb. I
will discuss this uncomfortable coincidence in §13.

Also in this phase, the text of C1v shows further instability around the same
points which changed in Phase II: the italic in lines 1 –10 and the last four lines
is reset, the fourth line up ("A Landschape the Scene.") going missing in the first of
two steps to a smooth transition between antimasques. When lines 8–10 were
changed in the previous phase, the period after "carryed off" in line 9 ended up
below the line (which shows another unstable lockup). In Phase III, it is properly
aligned, and the resetting of the nearby italic may have had some connection
with that repair-work.

D. PHASE IV

Phase IV, as mentioned above, is found only in "third impression" copies of
ToP, and, like the final phase of quire A, it introduces important textual revisions
that alter the page breaks within the quire. Edits on C1v and 2r shorten the word
count significantly, causing two-line chunks of the text to move backwards until
the original breaks resume at the end of C2v.

This phase gives us further examples of text that is reset either larger or
smaller than the prevailing 96 mm "english" size:

C1r: At the top of the page, a brace separates the list of three characters from
their stage directions on the right. In the original setting, the directions crowd
right up to the brace. In Phase IV, the direction is reset in 82 mm pica; the line
breaks are the same, but the page gains some needed white space.

C2r: The antimasque of the "phantastique Adventurer" has the same layout
as the previous example, with a brace separating the names of the characters
from their stage directions. In this last phase, the directions are rewritten and
lengthened, so the compositor reset them in pica type apparently to maintain
visual balance.