By way of comparison, in 1616 William Jaggard set a total of 2261 k/ens, mainly pica roman, and Thomas Snodham set 4087 k/ens, using roughly the same amounts of long primer, pica, and english roman type. These composing and machining estimates illustrate how Stansby could work on multiple large volumes simultaneously without running short of type, e.g., William Alexander’s Monarchic Tragedies (STC 345, 547 k/ens brevier roman), The Secrets of Alexis (STC 312.5, 1794 k/ens pica blackletter), Francis Godwin’s De praesulibus Angliae commentarius (STC 11941, 1204 k/ens pica roman), William Martyn’s The History and Lives of Twenty Kings of England (STC 17526, 902 k/ens english roman), Samuel Purchas’ Purchas his Pilgrimage (STC 20507, 3958 k/ens pica roman), Ben Jonson's Workes (STC 14751, 1576 k/ens english roman), Walter Ralegh’s History of the World (STC 20638, 4431 k/ens english roman), Richard Hooker’s Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (STC 13716, 1070 k/ens english roman), and William Camden’s Annales rerum Anglicarum (STC 4496, 731 k/ens great primer roman). The dozens of smaller projects also in Stansby’s house during this time meant that he could minimize disruptions in daily workflow caused by interruptions in the progress of larger volumes (for example, waiting for proof sheets to return from the author) by filling in the void with smaller works.

Specifically how Stansby fit all the pieces into the ongoing puzzle that was his house’s production schedule largely remains unknown. Some documentary evidence provides us with the occasional landmarks: information such as entry dates in the Stationers’ Register or dated letters from the author to the reader included in a volume’s preliminary leaves (usually the last sheets printed). Even more rare are instances that give us exact dates: William Camden’s diaries record that his Annales went to the printer on 13 February 1615 and was published 8 June of the same year (Camden, ed. Sutton, 2001); Mark Bland has located a presentation copy of Godwin's De Praesulibus given to Camden and dated 23 March 1616 (Bland, 1995, 1.209). For the most part, though, charting in any detail the complex workflow of Stansby’s printing house would at best be a speculative exercise.

Fortunately, we have a better idea of F1’s place in the schedule. On 20 January 1615, Stansby registered with the Stationers most of the texts planned for inclusion in the folio not already under company protection, ‘Certayne Masques at the Court never yet printed written by Ben Johnson’ (Arber, 1875-94, 3.562). While not foolproof, entry in the Stationers’ Register usually signaled that production was close to commencement or had already begun. Twenty-two months to the day later, a York bookseller named John Foster was buried at the church of St. Michael le Belfrey. When the contents of his shop were inventoried on 26 November 1616, among the folio volumes was a copy of ‘Johnson’s Workes . . . x s’ (Davies, 1868, 343; see also Barnard and Bell, 1994). That places the beginning of work on F1 close to the completion of the Camden and Martyn volumes, creating a temporary slow period during the folio's first weeks of printing that will be explored further below, and the printing of its final gatherings around the time the large Purchas and Ralegh projects commence, which also affected the folio's production history.

Comparing the list of stationers holding an interest in the texts of F1 with evidence derived from an examination of the paper stocks used in the folio provides some insight into how the project came together (for further analysis of the paper stocks in F1, see Gants 1998). Walter Burre owned complete or partial rights to seven of the nine plays, John Smethwicke owned Every Man Out of His Humour, Matthew Lownes owned Poetaster, and various parts of the poetry, entertainments and masques were owned by Edward Blount, Richard Bonion, Thomas Thorpe and Henry Walley. In addition, Richard Meighen, who had worked with these stationers before, also invested in the work. Given that financing the project probably included substantial funding from the original copyright holders, and recognizing that paper constituted a significant expense in a book’s production, it would not be surprising if the printer William Stansby arranged part or all of his paper supply individually with the different interested parties. In fact, this is what we see in the printing of the plays. Every Man Out of His Humour, owned by Smethwicke, is printed almost exclusively on one stock of paper, with some remnants appearing in the final quires. This selection of paper changes abruptly to a second stock with the commencement of printing on Cynthia's Revels, owned by Burre. One gathering into Poetaster, owned by Lownes, the type of paper used switches again, this time to a mixture of a third and fourth stock. Finally, with the printing of Sejanus and the remaining plays, all owned by Burre, the sheets are again from the second stock, Burre’s stock, a type that continues with only a few interruptions through Volpone, Epicene, and parts of The Alchemist and Catiline. Interestingly, the remainder of the folio (the poems, entertainments and masques) displays another paper-stock distribution arrangement, with the early sections of Epigrams printed on the left-over Burre stock, the section from the middle of Epigrams through Hymenaei printed primarily on a new mixture of stocks, and then The Haddington Masque through to the end on paper from two previously used stocks. The pattern of paper use in the masques and entertainments indicates that Stansby, who registered for himself the remainder of the unpublished court masques just before beginning production on the folio, also had a minor hand in financing the book’s final quires.

Going back to at least Whalley, students of Jonson have commented on the numerous corrections and emendations made to the texts of F1 while it was at press. Current editorial consensus holds that Jonson had some involvement in the changes found in the first four or five plays in the collection, but after that his influence wanes. The main reason for such a view rests with the distribution of all press variants across the folio’s 1028 pages; graphing the distribution onto a histogram produces a one-tailed bell curve, i.e., a large number appear at the beginning, but their frequency slopes down the farther one progresses. Typically, proof correction in a Jacobean printing house consisted of three stages: 1) a check for errors introduced by the compositor such as wrong font, inverted letters, or transpositions ( Moxon, 247-50); 2) corrections made by the author, either at his or her residence or at the printing house (see esp. P. Simpson, 1935, 1-41); 3) a final scan to ensure the main text and notes are aligned, the headlines and direction lines are correct, and to fix any other imperfections that might mar the page. Anyone taking even a cursory glance at an early modern codex will quickly conclude these stages were often more honored in the breach, especially if the printing house was experiencing a slow period of activity. When an establishment was busy, production of one volume could be halted to allow for author’s proofs, and the slack taken up by another. However, when business slowed, pressure to commence printing while proofs were still with the author increased to avoid equipment and workers standing idle. Should the proofs come back requiring changes, the press would be stopped, corrections made, and printing restarted. Earlier uncorrected sheets would not be discarded but rather used to make up the finished book, resulting in a mixture of early and late textual states from which editors derive their lists of press variants.