27-11-2018, 08:08 AM
(27-11-2018, 06:51 AM)Morten St. George wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[quote="-JKP-" pid='23667' dateline='1543258812']
The VMS marginalia on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (to the right of your rotated m) includes a shield in the form of a fleur de lys, similar in design to the shield seen on the 1597 publication. This is where your expertise comes in handy: Does shield overwrite the number 1 or does the number 1 overwrite the shield? Another possibility: Does the shield stop just before reaching the number 1 and then continue on the other side? For sure, this will determine which was written first: the marginalia or the numbering. Beware: cryptic writing can be deliberately deceptive, that is, they might want you to think one was written before the other whereas in reality they could have been done at the same time.
Based on historical considerations, both the marginalia and the numbering would have been done between 1584 and 1625.
It doesn't look like a shield to me. It looks like a flower with three petals close to the viewer and one on the side farthest from the viewer. Bell-shaped, like Campanula or blue Gentian flowers:
It looks to me like the number one overwrites the drawing but I can't tell for certain because the ink colors are similar. It could be either way. When over-writing something else, there's always the possibility of a slight ink-skip because of the minutely raised texture of the underlying ink bumping the pen, so sometimes it's hard to tell.
The best way to figure it out is not by looking at an individual folio number, but by going through the folio numbers and seeing if there are others that overwrite (or underwrite) the drawings. The folio numbers are relatively consistent and were probably added all in one session. It's better to look at the context to see if there are other things that make the data clearer.