ABSTRACT
The TL MS displays all the characteristics of S.’s difficult rough first drafts. There is an impression of rapid conception and fast inscription, fundamentally controlled by the iambic pentameter, and by the severe underlying discipline of the terza rima (S. frequently marks completed tercets by a short horizontal line centred beneath), but constantly checked by copious running revisions, involving an often barely-legible hand overlaid with cancellations, underlined re-instatements, uncancelled alternatives, problems with ink-flow, over-writing, and inserted words and phrases. With the exception of ll. 392–405, which are known only from 1824, the sole source of TL is S.’s holograph draft in ink (except for some pencil corrections, and one page drafted entirely in pencil) on forty loose leaves in Box 1, ff. 19r-58v (all forty leaves are enclosed within a bifolium made from a sheet of coarse white paper). Most of the MS is written on thin Italian paper consisting of greenish or yellowish sheets measuring approximately 255 x 390 mm, which have been ready-folded (i.e. by the manufacturer or vendor) to form bifolia of conjugate pairs giving a four-page booklet, each page of each booklet measuring 255 x 195 mm. The sheets are watermarked ‘BENEDETTO PARODI’ across the 390 mm dimension, such that when the sheet is placed for use with the fold to the writer’s left, ‘PARODI’ appears on the first page (backwards on p. 2) and ‘BENEDETTO’ on the fourth page (backwards on p. 3). For the most part, S.’s draft uses the folded sheets in this way, progressing one bifolium at a time over fifteen complete four-page booklets, and usually beginning the use of each new bifolium ‘right way up’, i.e. with the fold to the writer’s left and the Parodi watermark visible correctly on the first page. There are, however, six bifolia where S. has started use ‘right way up’, but then for various reasons has inverted the booklet by turning it over while keeping the fold to the left, and used it ‘wrong way round’ (ff. 21r-22v, 25r-26v, 42r-43v, 47r-48v, 55r-56v, and 57r-58v); in these cases it is generally a reasonable inference that S.’s use of the booklet ‘right way up’ (i.e. resulting in draft which appears reverso on the fourth page of the booklet as now foliated) pre-dates the remaining draft in the booklet. The bifolium 42r-43v presents a strange anomaly: before use S. appears to have rotated the booklet through 180 degrees, so the watermark is upside-down and the fold to the writer’s right. S. has drafted ll. 373–85 on this page, then flipped over the whole booklet, so the Benedetto watermark is upside-down and the fold to the writer’s left, and drafted ll. 386–91. Both inside pages are blank (perhaps S. for some reason opened out the booklet and used it upside down, i.e. with the watermarks upside down, using first the left-hand half and then the right-hand). Folios 29r-34v are a gathering consisting of one bifolium wrapping two further bifolia (such that the outside leaves of a twelve-page booklet are one conjugate pair, f. 29 and f. 34; S. may have assembled this enlarged booklet once he resumed composition in earnest in mid-June). There are also three individual sheets which each represent one half of a conjugate pair (ff. 19, 20, and 41).
