 | JAMES SHIRLEY'S TRIUMPH OF PEACE:
ANALYZING GREG'S NIGHTMARE
by
STEPHEN TABOR
|  |
§10. Skeleton Formes
The patterns of transfer of the visible parts of the skeleton can sometimes
yield
information about the progress of formes through the press. In ToP, the only
identifiable recurring components of the headlines are the
page numbers and
their surrounding parentheses. The pagination of the book is
[i-iv], 1–8, 2i -24;
as quires A and B have duplicate
pagination, whole headlines could potentially
have been transferred between them
without change. The digits themselves provide
scanty evidence for the re-use of
skeletons: though the workman imposing
the forme might have recycled digits from
previous pages,
the types would have
tended to shuffle positions randomly, and
it is often difficult to tell whether one
of them is damaged or is just another
design variation in Norton's heterogeneous
stock. Pairs of parentheses, on the
other hand, occur on every page and could
number more or less centered. Being long, thin lines, parentheses are prone to
damage, and particularly in the case of a battered stock like Norton's, they ac-
quire an individuality that bibliographers can take advantage of. In my catalogu-
ing of those in ToP, I relied on visibly injured individuals, but made no attempt to
classify the infinite variations among the sound examples that could result from
different cuttings, variations in inking and impression, or even inversions.
A. PHASE I
In §9A, I showed that the sheets in Phase I were probably printed in the
order
B-C-D-A-a. The preliminaries do not participate in the sharing of visible
skeleton
formes, and in the following table I have arranged the other formes in
my proposed
order of printing. In this and the subsequent tables, the codes fol-
lowing the
page references stand for pieces of type. The abbreviations L, R, and
# indicate
left and right parentheses and the digit(s) they enclose. A code "L#R"
signifies
that the headline was transferred unaltered from a page earlier in the
printing.
An "x" indicates an individual type that is undoubtedly different from
the one in
the previous appearance of the headline; a question mark means that
the type is
not distinctive enough to tell whether it is the same or different.
For example,
in the table below, the left parenthesis from B1v recurs on C1v; the
page number
changes from 2 to 10, so neither of the two digits can be the same
types; and the
right parenthesis might be the same one from B1v, but I could
not verify this. The
same left parenthesis then migrates to D2v, where again the
the following digit of
the page number changes from 1 to 2 (hence "x"), and the
next zero and right
parenthesis could be the same types from C1v but are not
distinctive enough to
tell. So, all we can say definitely about these two transfers
is that the left
parenthesis is conserved. We cannot say even that the transfer was
direct from one
forme to the other; the headline could have been distributed
and the type
coincidentally picked off the top of the pile in the case for setting
the new
headline. In the first scenario, the action is deliberate and systematic, in
the
second it is unconscious and random. There is perhaps a tendency for types
to
remain in the same position in the new forme; codes printed in boldface
in the
following tables signify pages on which the type material recurs in the
same
quarter as in its immediately previous use.
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The appearance of Phase I is not one of particular regularity. Every
identifi-
able parenthesis switches at least once between outer and inner formes
during
the printing history. A slightly puzzling feature is the rapid re-use of
certain
types, at the transitions marked by the dashed vertical lines. For
instance, the left
parenthesis on C1v (inner forme) recurs immediately in D2v
(outer). Since outer
formes of ToP sheets were always
printed before the inner ones, this proximal
re-use means that the imposition of
D(o) had to wait for the machining and strip-
ping of C(i) to receive some of the
latter's headline. If presswork were proceeding
smoothly, it would have avoided a
bit of delay to take D outer's skeletons from
C(o), or from somewhere else further
back in the production. The same sharing
occurs with two types between D(i) and
the next following forme, A(o). These
"pinch points" suggest small delays in the
workflow after quires C and D, pos-
sibly to accommodate other jobs or even some
of the composition of ToP itself.
We can eliminate some of
these points if we drop the assumption that the order
of printing is the same as
the order of composition and rearrange the quires in
the table above; but no
arrangement gets rid of them entirely.
The parentheses that start their journey on B4v travel through all four quires
of
the main text, remarkably ending up on A4v with the same damaged "8". (My
notation
system cannot show that particular coincidence.) Because quires C and
D
intervened, this distinctive type could not have travelled with the
parentheses,
but was evidently put aside, or back into the case, after B(o) was
printed, and
randomly retrieved for use in A(o).
B. PHASE II
 |
Type-recurrence analysis (§9B) shows that the order of printing the quires
in
this phase was probably C-D-A(Phase IIa)-B-A(Phase IIb). Table 37 follows
this
order. In comparison with Phase I, Phase II seems to have proceeded in a
much
more orderly fashion. Recurring characters leapfrog adjacent formes, so that
any
one piece of type will appear only in the outer or the inner, and always in
the
same quarter of the chase (as shown by the bold typeface in the table). All
three
characters of the A2v headline, including the page number, recur on B2v. It
is
odd not to find any headline material from quire C participating in a transfer,
as
all of its pages were either reimposed or completely reset after it was
printed.
Quire A was printed in two distinct stretches of work, Phases IIa and IIb.
After
the first of these, the skeletons were stripped from five of its eight
pages.
Table 37 shows that A(o) in Phase IIa shares much of its headline material
with
all of its headline material was new. By the time I realized this, the three copies of
A(IIb) were not easily accessible and I was unwilling to exasperate my colleagues
with yet more requests for images. Therefore, I have no specific information on
the headlines of A(IIb).
C. PHASE III
In §9C, I was unable to find evidence for the sequence of printing the quires
in
this phase, so I tabulate them here in alphabetical order:
 |
This phase shows regular patterns of movement of headline material between
quires
A and C, and B and D. Once again the printer either did not have or did
not take
the opportunity to transfer the page numbers intact between sheets A
and B. The
re-use of material between B(i) and C(o) would create a "pinch point"
if Norton
followed the order shown, because the imposing of C(o) would have
had to wait
until B(i) was off the press, cleaned, and stripped. There are several
ways of
reordering the quire sequence to place comfortable intervals between the
re-uses
shown in the table: repeating Phase II's order of C-D-A-B would be one
of them.
But as we lack evidence of recurring types in the text, the most we can
say is
that it is slightly more likely that Norton printed the quires out of
sequential
order, but we do not know what that order might have been.
The five surviving copies from Phase IIIb are characterized by unique
page-
number settings in the outer forme of quire B. Their typographic material
shows
no distinctive forms that occur elsewhere in Phase III.
Okes could conceivably have transferred some headine material between the
two
formes of his quire D. Visual inspection shows no evidence of this, partly
because
because his type was more uniform and in much better condition than
Norton's and
the parentheses are too regular to show useful differences.
D. PHASE IV
From the evidence presented in §9D we know that the printing of sheet A
in Phase
IV preceded that of quire B. This phase is unique in having all the
headlines from
A(i) transferred intact to the same-numbered pages in B(i).
We would expect a
similar transfer between the outer formes, but this did not oc-
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quire C has only two new headlines in eight pages, with none of their material
used elsewhere. Okes' headlines remain with their type-pages, unchanged from
Phase III.
In conclusion, the patterns of headline re-use during the ToP
printing history
show that Norton's men took only partial advantage of this
potentially labor-saving
practice. This lack of regularity might be interpreted as
evidence of a chaotic
work-flow, but in fact, it is not that common to find any
book of the period to be
completely regular in this respect, and many show no
headline re-use at all. The
limited evidence of the practice in ToP gives the appearance that Norton settled
into a slightly more
systematic routine as he worked through the impressions.
| JAMES SHIRLEY'S TRIUMPH OF PEACE:
ANALYZING GREG'S NIGHTMARE
by
STEPHEN TABOR
| |