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Proem Shakespeare S 'Plaies and Poems"
Proem Shakespeare s 'Plaies and Poems" In 1640, the publisher John Benson presents to his English reading public a Shakespeare who is now largely lost to us: the national author of poems and plays. By printing his modest octavo edition of the Poems: Written By Wil. Shake-speare. Gent., Benson curiously aims to complement the 1623 printing venture of Shakespeare's theatre colleagues, John Heminge and Henry Condell , who had presented Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies in their monumental First Folio. Thus, in his own Dedicatory Epistle "To the Reader," Benson remarks that he presents "some excellent and sweetly composed Poems," which "had nor the fortune by reason of their lnfancie in his death, to have the due accommodation of proportionable glory, with the rest of his everliving Workes" (*2r). Indeed, as recent scholarship demonstrates, Benson boldly prints his octavo Poems on the model ofHeminge and Condell 's Folio Plays. ' Nor simply does Benson's volume share its primer, Thomas Cores, wirh rhe 1632 Folio, bur both editions begin with an identical format: an engraved portrait of the author; a dedicatory epistle "To the Reader"; and a set of commendatory verses, with Leonard Digges contributing an impor tant celebratory poem to both volumes. Benson's engraving by William Marshall even derives from the famous Martin Droeshout engraving in the First Folio, and six of the eight lines beneath Benson's engraving are borrowed from Ben Jonson's famed memorial poem to Shakespeare in char volume. Accordingly, Benson rakes his publishing goal from Heminge and Conde!!. They aim to "keepe the memory of such worthy a Friend, & Fellow alive" (Dedicatory Epistle to the earls ofPembroke and Montgomery, reprinted in Riverside, 94), while he aims "to be serviceable for the con tinuance of glory to the deserved Author" ("To the Reader," *2v). -
"A Sharers' Repertory." Rethinking Theatrical
Syme, Holger Schott. "A Sharers’ Repertory." Rethinking Theatrical Documents in Shakespeare’s England. Ed. Tiffany Stern. London: The Arden Shakespeare, 2020. 33–51. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 26 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350051379.ch-002>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 26 September 2021, 08:28 UTC. Copyright © Tiffany Stern and contributors 2020. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 2 A Sharers’ Repertory Holger Schott Syme Without Philip Henslowe, we would know next to nothing about the kinds of repertories early modern London’s resident theatre companies offered to their audiences. As things stand, thanks to the existence of the manuscript commonly known as Henslowe’s Diary , scholars have been able to contemplate the long lists of receipts and expenses that record the titles of well over 200 plays, most of them now lost. The Diary gives us some sense of the richness and diversity of this repertory, of the rapid turnover of plays, and of the kinds of investments theatre companies made to mount new shows. It also names a plethora of actors and other professionals associated with the troupes at the Rose. But, because the records are a fi nancier’s and theatre owner’s, not those of a sharer in an acting company, they do not document how a group of actors decided which plays to stage, how they chose to alternate successful shows, or what they, as actors, were looking for in new commissions. -
Shakespeare's Impossible Doublet
Rollett - The Impossible Doublet 31 Shakespeare’s Impossible Doublet: Droeshout’s Engraving Anatomized John M. Rollett Abstract The engraving of Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout on the title page of the 1623 First Folio has often been criticized for various oddities. In 1911 a professional tailor asserted that the right-hand side of the poet’s doublet was “obviously” the left-hand side of the back of the garment. In this paper I describe evidence which confirms this assessment, demonstrating that Shakespeare is pictured wearing an impossible garment. By printing a caricature of the man from Stratford-upon-Avon, it would seem that the publishers were indicating that he was not the author of the works that bear his name. he Exhibition Searching for Shakespeare,1 held at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2006, included several pictures supposed at one time or another Tto be portraits of our great poet and playwright. Only one may have any claim to authenticity — that engraved by Martin Droeshout for the title page of the First Folio (Figure 1), the collection of plays published in 1623. Because the dedication and the address “To the great Variety of Readers” are each signed by John Hemmings and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare’s theatrical colleagues, and because Ben Jonson’s prefatory poem tells us “It was for gentle Shakespeare cut,” the engraving appears to have the imprimatur of Shakespeare’s friends and fellows. The picture is not very attractive, and various defects have been pointed out from time to time – the head is too large, the stiff white collar or wired band seems odd, left and right of the doublet don’t quite match up. -
An Introduction to William Shakespeare's First Folio
An Introduction to William Shakespeare’s First Folio By Ruth Hazel Cover illustration courtesy of Stephen Collins This eBook was produced by OpenLearn - The home of free learning from The Open University. It is made available to you under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. 2 Brush up your Shakespeare The comic gangsters in Kiss Me Kate, Cole Porter’s 1948 musical based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, offer Shakespeare’s poetry – by which they actually mean his plays – as a guaranteed way to a woman’s heart: quoting Shakespeare will impress her and be a sure-fire aphrodisiac. Today, Shakespeare has become a supreme icon of Western European high culture, which is ironic since in his own day Shakespeare’s craft – jobbing playwright – was not a well-regarded one. Indeed, those who wrote plays to entertain the ‘groundlings’ (as the people who paid just one penny to stand in the open yard round the stage in public playhouses were called) were often considered little better than the actors themselves – who, in their turn, were only one level up, in the minds of Puritan moralists, from whores. Shakespeare himself did not seem eager to advertise authorship of his plays by seeing them into print, and when some of his plays were printed, in the handy quarto-sized editions for individual consumption, his name was not always on the title page. (The terms ‘folio’ and ‘quarto’ refer to the size of the pages in a book: in a Folio, each sheet of paper was folded just once, with a page height of approx. -
Authorial Rights, Part II
AUT H O R I A L RIG H T S, PAR T II Early Shakespeare Critics and the Authorship Question Robert Detobel ❦ It had been a thing, we confess, worthy to have been wished, that the author himself had lived to have set forth and overseen his own writings, but since it hath been ordained otherwise and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envy his friends the office of their care and pain to have collected and published them, and so to have published them, as where (before) you were abused with diverse stolen and surrepti- tious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealths of injurious imposters that exposed them, even those are now offered to your view, cured and perfect of their limbs and all the rest absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them. John Heminge and Henry Condell From the preface to the First Folio, 1623 ULY 22, 1598 , the printer, James Roberts, entered The Merchant of Venice in the Stationers’ Register as follows: Iames Robertes Entred for his copie under the handes of bothe the wardens, a booke of the Marchaunt of Venyce or otherwise called the Iewe of Venyce./ Provided that yt bee not printed by the said Iames Robertes; or anye other whatsoever without lycence first had from the Right honorable the lord Chamberlen. Orthodox scholarship can offer no satisfactory explanation for the final clause, which states that the play could not be printed by Roberts, the legal holder of the copyright, nor by any other stationer, without the permission of the Lord Chamberlain. -
Hamlet on the Page
‗To the great Variety of Readers‘: Hamlet on the Page Reed Reibstein Pierson College, Class of 2011 Advisor: Edward S. Cooke, Jr. 1.] Introduction 9.] The Second Quarto (1604/5) 15.] The First Folio (1623) 19.] ―Theobald‖ (1733) 24.] Cranach Press (1930) 28.] Barnes & Noble (2007) 33.] Illustrations 46.] Bibliography 0 Introduction On October 7, 1930, Beatrice Warde gave a lecture to the British Typographers‘ Guild on ―printing,‖ by which she meant specifically the design of books.1 Throughout the lecture, subsequently widely reprinted, she constructed an analogy between wineglasses and books, arguing that just as the finest cup would be a ―crystal goblet,‖ allowing the drinker to focus on the wine rather than the vessel, ―Printing Should Be Invisible.‖ Warde explained, … the most important thing about printing is that it conveys thought, ideas, images, from one mind to other minds…. We may say, therefore, that printing may be delightful for many reasons, but that it is important, first and foremost, as a means of doing something. That is why it is mischievous to call any printed piece a work of art, especially fine art: because that would imply that its first purpose was to exist as an expression of beauty for its own sake and for the delectation of the senses.2 Warde‘s dichotomy between printing and art illustrates the difficulty of examining book design through the lens of art history. We view a painting or sculpture as the result of an artist‘s thought and labor. A poster may be thought of similarly (except with a more overtly commercial motive). -
A Brief History of the Audience I Can Take Any Empty Space and Call It a Bare Stage
A Brief History of the Audience I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged. —Peter Brook, The Empty Space The nature of the audience has changed throughout history, evolving from a participatory crowd to a group of people sitting behind an imaginary line, silently observing the performers. The audience is continually growing and changing. There has always been a need for human beings to communicate their wants, needs, perceptions and disagreements to others. This need to communicate is the foundation of art and the foundation of theatre’s relationship to its audience. In the Beginning ended with what the Christians called “morally Theatre began as ritual, with tribal dances and inappropriate” dancing mimes, violent spectator sports festivals celebrating the harvest, marriages, gods, war such as gladiator fights, and the public executions for and basically any other event that warranted a party. which the Romans were famous. The Romans loved People all over the world congregated in villages. It violence, and the audience was a lively crowd. was a participatory kind of theatre, the performers Because theatre was free, it was enjoyed by people of would be joined by the villagers who believed that every social class. They were vocal, enjoyed hissing their lives depended on a successful celebration—the bad actors off the stage, and loved to watch criminals harvest had to be plentiful or the battle victorious, or meet large ferocious animals, and soon after, enjoyed simply to be in good graces with their god or gods. -
William Shakespeare 1 William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare 1 William Shakespeare William Shakespeare The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed. National Portrait Gallery, London. Born Baptised 26 April 1564 (birth date unknown) Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England Died 23 April 1616 (aged 52) Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England Occupation Playwright, poet, actor Nationality English Period English Renaissance Spouse(s) Anne Hathaway (m. 1582–1616) Children • Susanna Hall • Hamnet Shakespeare • Judith Quiney Relative(s) • John Shakespeare (father) • Mary Shakespeare (mother) Signature William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 (baptised) – 23 April 1616)[1] was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.[2] He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon".[3][4] His extant works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays,[5] 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, the authorship of some of which is uncertain. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.[6] Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. -
THE CASE for the FOLIO Jonathan Bate
THE CASE FOR THE FOLIO Jonathan Bate ‘The First Folio remains, as a matter of fact, the text nearest to Shakespeare’s stage, to Shakespeare’s ownership, to Shakespeare’s authority’ (Charlotte Porter and Helen Clarke, preface to their Pembroke Edition, 1903) © Jonathan Bate 2007 THIS ESSAY OFFERS A MORE DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE EDITORIAL PROBLEM IN SHAKESPEARE THAN THAT PROVIDED ON pp. l-lvii/50-57 OF THE GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE RSC SHAKESPEARE: COMPLETE WORKS THE QUARTOS The original manuscripts of Shakespeare’s works do not survive: the sole extant composition in his hand is a single scene from Sir Thomas More, a multi-authored play that cannot really be described as ‘his’. Shakespeare only survives because his works were printed. In his lifetime there appeared the following works (all spellings of titles modernized here, numbering inserted for convenience only, sequence of publication within same year not readily established). They were nearly all printed in the compact and relatively low- priced format, which may be thought of as the equivalent of the modern paperback, known as quarto (the term is derived from the fact that each sheet of paper that came off the press was folded to make four leaves): 1] Venus and Adonis (1593) – poem. 2] Lucrece (1594) – poem. 3] The most lamentable Roman tragedy of Titus Andronicus, as it was played by the right honourable the Earl of Derby, Earl of Pembroke and Earl of Sussex their servants (1594) – without the fly-killing scene that appears in the 1623 First Folio. 4] The first part of the contention betwixt the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster, with the death of the good Duke Humphrey, and the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolk, and the tragical end of the proud Cardinal of Winchester, with the notable rebellion of Jack Cade, and the Duke of York’s first claim unto the crown (1594) – a variant version of the play that in the 1623 First Folio was called The Second Part of Henry the Sixth. -
Shakespeare Editions and Editors
Shakespeare Editions and Editors The 16th and 17th Centuries The earliest texts of William Shakespeare’s works were published during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in quarto or folio format. Folios are large, tall volumes; quartos are smaller, roughly half the size. Early Texts of Shakespeare’s Works: The Quartos and Bad Quartos (1594-1623) Of the thirty-six plays contained in the First Folio of 1623, eighteen have no other source. The eighteen other plays had been printed in separate and individual editions at least once between 1594 and 1623. Pericles (1609) and The Two Noble Kinsmen (1634) also appeared separately before their inclusions in folio collections. All of these were quarto editions, with one exception: the first edition of Henry VI, Part 3 was printed in octavo form in 1594. Popular plays like Henry IV, Part 1 and Pericles were reprinted in their quarto editions even after the First Folio appeared, sometimes more than once. But since the prefatory matter in the First Folio itself warns against the earlier texts, 18th and 19th century editors of Shakespeare tended to ignore the quarto texts in favor of the Folio. Gradually, however, it was recognized that the quarto texts varied widely among themselves; some much better than others. It was the bibliographer Alfred W. Pollard who originated the term “bad quarto” in 1909, to distinguish several texts that he judged significantly corrupt. He focused on four early quartos: Romeo and Juliet (1597), Henry V (1600), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602), and Hamlet (1603). His reasons for citing these texts as “bad” were that they featured obvious errors, changes in word order, gaps in the sense of the text, jumbled printing of prose as verse and verse as prose, and similar problems. -
Confessions of William-Henry Ireland
THE CONFESSIONS OF WILLIAM-HENRY IRELAND1 CONTAINING THE PARTICULARS OF HIS FABRICATION OF THE Shakspeare Manuscripts; TOGETHER WITH ANECDOTES AND OPINIONS (Hitherto unpublished) OF MANY DISTINGUISHED PERSONS IN THE Literary, Political, and Theatrical World. “THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHIKG BUT THE TRUTH.” LONDON, PRINTED BY ELLERTON AND BYWORTH, JOHNSON‟s COURT, FLEET STREET, FOR THOMAS GODDARD, CORNER OF PALL MALL AND THE HAYMARKET. 1805. (Price, 7s. 6d. in Boards.} PREFACE. IN the year 1796 I gave to the world a concise pamphlet, in which I avowed my- self the fabricator of the manuscripts at- tributed by me to Shakspeare. The papers themselves, and the cir- cumstances attending their production, had so highly excited the public curio- sity that the whole edition was disposed of in a few hours: and so great has since been the eagerness to procure a copy, that, though originally published at one shilling, a single impression has been sold, in a public auction-room, at the extrava- gant price of a guinea. This fact was known to many of my friends, who in consequence have often expressed surprise that I did not repub- lish the pamphlet, and have frequently importuned me to do so: but the revival of the subject, I conceived, might rather tend to injure than benefit me as a li- terary character: besides, I had already suffered much from the agitation of the question, and had reason to wish it might for ever rest in peace. The consideration, however, that I do but injure my own re- putation by silently bearing a more than merited portion of obloquy has at length incited me to give a narrative of the facts in the order in which they occurred, and a simple relation of the motives as they arose and operated on my conduct, that the world may be enabled to judge be- tween my contemners and me, and that my character may be freed from the stig- mas with which it has so undeservedly been sullied. -
How Quickly Nature Falls Into Revolt on Revisiting Shakespeare’S Genres
How Quickly Nature Falls Into Revolt On Revisiting Shakespeare’s Genres By Mike Stumpf 13 When the first folio edition of William Shakespeare’s works kinds of genres, such as tragicomedy. In addition, Polonius’s the reader passes through the various perspectives was published in 1623, “it was not clear whose idea the speech in the second Quarto (Q2) of Hamlet, printed in offered by the text and relates the different views collected volume was or even what was the precise motivation 1604, emphasizes the variety of dramatic modes available and patterns to one another he sets the work in for it” (Proudfoot, Thompson, & Kastan-1998, 8), but the as he states the players at Elsinore as “the best actors in the motion, and so sets himself in motion too. (Iser- inclusion of two actors that worked with Shakespeare in the world, [for] either for Tragedie, Comedy, Hiftory, Paftorall, 1978, 21) publication process underscores the importance of accuracy Paftorall Comicall, [or] Hiftoricall Paftorall” (Hamlet-1985, of authorial intent in the volume. This is especially important II.ii.415-416). Thus, publications prior to F1 highlight the Iser’s theory proposes a dualistic relationship between the since the actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, state availability of other genres to the F1 publishers. However, text and the reader where each has influence on the other. that while Shakespeare’s input would have been preferred, even though F1 was “publifhed according the True Originall However, this also subjects a work of literature to a certain set “he by death departed from that right, [and that] we pray Copies” (Moston-1998, 5), “Shakespeare himself does not of interpretational guidelines where one endpoint is authorial you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and seem to have undertaken to oversee the printing of his plays, intent and the other is any given reader’s perception of the paine to haue collected & publifh’d them.