80

The original edition of the first comedy written by Molière L’École des femmes was published in March 1663 and includes a number of typographical anomalies which A.-J Guibert had duly detected though he proved unable to interpret them correctly. Archaeological analysis enables us to understand that the splitting of the responsibility for printing the work between two workshops in Paris and the lack of effective coordination between them led to the presence of a cancel at the beginning of the last quire. The printing of Les Précieuses ridicules in 1660 was also split between various houses so as to bring forward the publication of the play. Jeanne Veyrin-Forrer’s work had already established that there had been three different layouts and that there were various types of sheets for each of them and therefore to conclude that the copies which remained until our time contained sheets from the various printing houses. Yet the knowledge of the typographical ornaments used in the various Parisian workshops at the time enables us to identify very clearly the six printing houses which were involved in the production of three successive editions. It makes it also possible to determine very accurately which workshop produced which sheets and to establish the identity card of each of the known copies.