University of Virginia Library

§9. Order of Printing the Quires

In the preceding sections, we have been exploring ToP "vertically", as it were
—working out the histories of individual pages, studying their chemistry as they
combine into formes and quires, and watching each quire evolve in isolation
from the others. It is now time for a "horizontal" approach as we begin to reconstruct
the progress of printing the whole text, phase by phase. Table 30, a
modified version of appendix 3, shows how these phases align across the quires
of the surviving copies. It shows a fairly orderly stratification: for a given copy
of the book, the phase of any one of quires A-C serves as a good predictor of
the phases of the others. The few exceptions to this among the survivors result,
I believe, from the occasional necessity of making up copies with sheets from
neighboring phases. (I will discuss this further in §11–14.) But the phases do not
leapfrog one another: II and IV never mix in a copy, nor III and I or IV and I.
If sheets from more than one phase were available simultaneously for gathering
complete copies, there was nothing to stop Norton from mixing them indiscriminately,
because the text-breaks across quires never change. Except for the "third
impression" copies he would have no motivation for keeping the products of
one phase segregated from another. Therefore, I think we can safely hold to the
theory of four discrete printings of the book as a whole.

The recurrence of types can give us clues about the order of printing the
quires. (Lacking evidence to the contrary, I will assume for the ensuing discussion
that the order of printing in ToP is the same as the order of composition.) We would
expect Norton to work through quires A-D in sequence. But here, as so often, ToP
hands us a surprise. The recurring types in the first phase of printing that I could
confidently identify are distributed as follows:

A. PHASE I

TABLE 31. Recurring type material in Phase I

On first glance, the table appears to show nothing out the ordinary. Quire B
inner forme could have been set with type distributed from the outer forme of A;
Norton could even have begun at the title page and proceeded straight through
the book. But we need to take into account what happened to the individual
pages at the end of Phase I. In fact, the outer forme of quire A remained in substantially
the same setting through the printing history of ToP, whereas quire B
was distributed after Phase I. So, types from A(o) were not available to set B(i)—
rather the opposite. Therefore, A(o) was set after B(i) went through the press and
got broken down. Similarly, quire "a" continued to hang onto most of its type
(predominantly 96 mm italic) while D2r was raided for its italic after Phase I. (I
have indicated the point of the raid with a wavy border in table 31, distinguishing
the fate of that page from that of D4r, which was entirely distributed.) The
preliminaries could not have been set until printing was finished on quire D inner
forme. Furthermore, two letters on D2v show that that page could not have
been set until after the distribution of at least part of each forme of quire B; and
a distinctive bracket on C2r shows that C(i) cannot have been set before B(i)
was off the press. So, quires C and D both followed B. In §8A, I showed, on the
evidence of one broken parenthesis in the headline, that quire D was probably
printed after quire C. No other types from C show up elsewhere; it was probably
set while quire B was still being worked off, after which it held onto most of its

roman type through the succeeding phases. Italic raids on C after Phase I must
have supplied some other printing job than ToP. If, then, we may consider entire
quires as production units, it appears that the printing of Phase I followed the
sequence B-C-D-A-a. Nothing in the data shows that the preliminary quire "a"
had to come last, as long as it followed D from which it drew some of its type. But
preliminaries were normally printed at the end of the job, and if "a" followed D
directly, there would have had to be a pause for D(i) to be at least partly distributed.
(Remember that in ToP the inner formes were printed after the outer ones,
and it is only D(i) that provided types for quire "a".)

Something caused Norton to place quire A late in the schedule. A probable
reason emerges when we recall that quires B-D contain the text of the masque,
while quire A sets the stage, as it were, with a description of the costumes, scenery,
and the public procession that opened the performance. Most of this is written
in the past tense, as if reporting the finished event, while the stage directions
for the masque itself are mostly (though not exclusively) in the conventional
present tense. This division between reportage and direction again raises the
question of whether copies of the book were in fact available on the day of the
first performance—a matter which I will explore further in §16. The important
point here is that the details of the procession were more likely to be in flux until
the last minute, whereas a relatively stable text of the masque would have been
needed earlier so the performers could learn their parts. Though both sections
show light revision through the printing history, it would have made sense to
start work on the part least likely to change. Quite possibly, Norton began typesetting
the main text before Shirley had even finished writing the description of
the procession.

If typesetting and printing began with quire B, as the evidence above indicates,
this may explain why this quire alone was mostly distributed after Phase I—
seven of its eight pages broken up, as opposed to only one page each in quires A
and D, and none in C. I have already mentioned the often arbitrary pattern of
which pages got distributed and which survived into later impressions. However,
this first quire printed could represent an initial intent to play by the rules and
distribute type after running an impression—a routine that Norton could discard
if he learned that he would have to achieve faster production than planned.

Two other observations are worth mentioning here:

• Quires A, C, and D have a type-page width of 89–91 mm, but quires "a" and
  B measure 97 mm—three ens of english type wider. 35 These different widths
  imply at least two differently adjusted composing sticks, suggesting more than
  one compositor.
• 2.The last page of quire B has some overly generous leading, indicating some
  distress in copy-fitting. This could reflect a compensation for the unexpected
  use of the wider measure just mentioned.

B. PHASE II

TABLE 32. Recurring type material in Phase II

After Phase II, only four pages were distributed, plus italic portions of D2r
and D3r; recurring types therefore provide less evidence for the order of printing
in this phase than for Phase I. (The wavy border below D2r in this table shows
that only the italic portion was reset; one of its types turns up on B4v.) Here
again, it appears that quire A was printed after quire D: D1v was distributed at
the end of this phase and two of its types show up on A2r. On the other hand,
quire A held onto most of its type from this phase onward and could not have
supplied it to D or any other quire. It also looks (on the evidence of only two
types, but both are quite distinctive) as if quires D and C were finished print-
ing before quire B could be set—again, because quire B carries its types largely
unaltered into the next phase, while the donor pages in quires C and D give up
type after Phase II. These observations show that quires C and D were printed
before quires A and B. The fact that Phase II of quire A actually consisted of two
separate printings complicates the picture. In §5, I suggested that, after an inter-
ruption in the Phase-II printing of A(o), Norton chose to perfect the sheets he
had already printed rather than resuming the planned run of the outer forme and
then perfecting both sub-impressions in a single operation. The motive would be
to prioritize the completion of at least part of the planned impression of sheet A
in order to get some complete sets of sheets to the publisher for sale. This strat-
egy would make more sense if quire A came later, even last, in the sequence of
quires as printed. However, if quire A came last and if therefore B followed D
directly, the composition of B's outer forme (the first one printed in B) would have
had to wait for the italic from D2r (in the second forme printed in D) to become
available. This would leave the press idle, at least for purposes of machining ToP.
If, instead, A followed D directly, its outer forme would still be standing from
Phase I and printing could have proceeded on that while D was broken down
and the types incorporated into A(i). So, the slightly more likely sequence for this
second phase of printing was C-D-A(Phase IIa)-B. Probably Phase IIb of quire A
came last, but it cannot have been delayed long because two of the three surviv-
ing books that contain it also have Phase II of sheets B-D.

The textual changes in quire A are minor for Phase II and would have had
no bearing on a decision to leave the production of that quire for later. Possibly it

came later in the sequence because that was the order followed in Phase I. Quire
B, on the other hand, came into this phase with only one type-page intact; all the
others had to be reset. So, it would have made sense to commence printing with
quires C, D, and A, leaving time for the resetting of B.

I have left quire "a" out of the discussion for this phase because it holds onto
most of its original types throughout the production. We would normally expect
it to come late in the series, probably after quires B and/or A(Phase IIa).

C. PHASE III

TABLE 33. Recurring type material in Phase III

This phase began with the resetting of four pages, italic raids on two others,
and some localized resettings. Only the inner forme of quire B was distributed
before the next phase. Its donation of a distinctive bracket to C1v shows that C(i)
was composed after B(i) had finished printing. This is the only evidence for work
sequence that recurring type-matter affords in Phase III. (Of course Norton's and
Okes' typesettings of quire D did not share any material.)

Italic raids before this phase point to a continuing need for english italic for
another job; the distributed material does not reappear in reset portions of ToP.

D. PHASE IV

TABLE 34. Recurring type material in Phase IV

Both Norton's and Okes' quires D continue intact from the preceding phase,
and most of sheets A-C also enter Phase IV unchanged except for localized reset-
tings to accommodate revisions and resulting page-break changes. The exception
is quire B inner forme, which was entirely reset. As usual, there is no obvious
reason why Norton reset this forme and not others. But table 34 shows that some
of the types from the first page of text (A1r) turn up again in the two last pages—
B3V and 4r—of the newly set B(i). So, A(o) was already printed and being dis-
tributed before B(i) was ready for the press. A single letter "a" shows that Norton
printed sheet D and distributed some of its type before resetting three lines on
B3r. Therefore—if we again take sheets to be the units of production—both A
and D preceded B through the press. Quire C contains no distinctive types that

allow us to place it in a sequence, and again the few changes to quire "a" are
insufficient to establish links with any other. The sequence, then, was A-D-B,
with the positions of C and "a" unknown, though as usual we would expect the
preliminaries to come last.

Though the evidence of recurring types is very incomplete, it shows that Nor-
ton distributed at least portions of quires A and D while other quires remained to
be composed. It looks as if Norton knew that he had reached the end of the pro-
gram and there was no point in leaving type standing against further reprints.

Some type-matter distributed from Phase III found its way into reset passages
in Phase IV:

TABLE 35. Recurring type material between Phase III and IV

It appears that the types freed up by the distribution of B(i) after Phase III still
lay near the top of their boxes, available for picking up for Phase IV alterations
in quire A. This implies a rather short delay, or none at all, between Phases III
and IV.

A different case is the singleton leaf bearing "A speech to the King and
Queenes Maiesties", surviving in four copies of the final phase. It is set mostly
in Norton's italic i-1. I could identify none of its types with those used in the rest
of the book in any phase. This lack of recurrence is not too surprising, given the
small sample size, but it would also be consistent with a significant passage of
time between the distribution of ToP's main text and the setting of "A Speech".
During this period, the ToP types might get deployed on other jobs or covered in
the boxes by other types more recently distributed, making them less likely to be
picked for setting the new epilogue.