The English Renaissance in Context: Looking at Older Books The History of the Book Books from the 16th and 17th centuries are both quite similar to and different from books today. The similarities include such things as use of the Codex format, general page layouts, use of title pages, etc. The codex book has been around for a long time. Its roots go back to the age of Cicero, though it only comes into more general use with the spread of Christianity throughout the later Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries CE. Since then, the codex book has undergone a long and gradual evolution during which time the book, its properties, and characteristics became firmly embedded in Western consciousness. Roughly speaking, the general layout of the page that we use today came into existence in the 13th century, with the rise of the universities and the creation of books for study. It is possible, for example, to look at a page in a medieval manuscript and experience a general orientation to it, even if you cannot actually read the text. The evolution of the book, we emphasize, was slow. Such conventions as pagination, title pages, foot or endnotes, tables of contents, indices, et alia are by and large relatively recent additions. We take these features for granted; but prior to the age of Gutenberg, they are hard to find. University of Pennsylvania Libraries - 1 - Furness Shakespeare Collection The English Renaissance in Context: Looking at Older Books Renaissance books can certainly look very different from books today. They exhibit a variety and diversity that have long since been standardized and homogenized. Typefaces can seem strange and difficult to read; orthography is inconsistent (i.e. no spellcheck); and basic information such as author and title can change in unexpected ways. For many people, trying to read a 16th or 17th century book in whatever language they are fluent is a daunting, disorienting process. Yes, Renaissance books are different, and because they are they can be rich sources of historical documentation that illuminate the text they transmit. They help root us in the period; they suggest the time and the place; they give us a feel for a historical moment we would not experience using a modern book. What we will do here is introduce you in a general way to the world of early printed books around the time of Shakespeare. University of Pennsylvania Libraries - 2 - Furness Shakespeare Collection The English Renaissance in Context: Looking at Older Books Title Pages Consider the following three title pages. ? What types of information do they give you? ? What do they not tell you? ? What purposes might they have served? Modern title pages are integral parts of the book today. They provide a more or less codified array of information that permits the identification of a copy of a text. Now look again at these three examples from the early 17th century. We know these works as Henry V, King Lear, and Romeo and Juliet. However, these pages provide much longer, exaggerated titles. The author is sometimes given top billing (Lear), sometimes less prominence (Romeo), or is simply omitted altogether (Henry V). Performance or audience-specific information (“new and improved version”) are provided. University of Pennsylvania Libraries - 3 - Furness Shakespeare Collection The English Renaissance in Context: Looking at Older Books An illustration known as a printer’s device appears in all three. This device is an emblem with a motto expressing some tag or pithy adage that would have been familiar to most readers of the day. The printer’s device was a sort of logo or calling card. It expressed his identity as a printer. Finally, it tells us when and where the book was printed. It also tells us who the “publisher” was: Nathaniel Butter, “T.P.”, and John Smethwicke. In the latter case it tells us where we can, in fact, buy the book. But why? And why is “T.P.” reluctant to divulge his name? Keep in mind that “publishers” in a modern sense did not exist at the time. It was the bookseller who provided the capital to produce the book. And thus, one might have to go to a specific shop to get a specific title. Sometimes printers were also booksellers and hence publishers. In the beginning, this was the case. Over time, an increasingly segmented division of labor separated printing from bookselling and book retailing from book publishing. So what are these title pages? Are they perhaps really the printer/bookseller’s advertisements for books? They certainly seem to take pains to “advertise” the merits of the book, and they are more consistent about displaying their own logo than the name of the author. In fact, title pages are typically the creation of the printer/bookseller, and have little or nothing to do with the author. Their function is to attract customers by calling attention both to the virtues of the work and the solidity and reputation of the printer through his device. University of Pennsylvania Libraries - 4 - Furness Shakespeare Collection The English Renaissance in Context: Looking at Older Books Pages & Their Contents Here is an opening from the second quarto of King Lear. What do you notice? To begin with, there are no page numbers. At the bottom right of each page are catchwords (But at left, Kent at right), which anticipate the first word of the next page. Why? Catchwords were not important for the reader, but for the binder. They allowed the binder to ensure that he had correctly assembled all of the leaves; in other words, that they pages of the book were in their proper sequence. On the bottom center of the right page is a letter (G in this example), usually with a number. In this particular case, the letter designates the beginning of a new gathering or signature. A printed book is essentially a set of conjoined gatherings or signatures. These gatherings are made by folding the large sheet of paper that the printer uses to make the leaves and pages of a book. The most common paper size for press printing in this period, called foolscap, was between 40.5 and 44.5 cm long and between 31 and 33.5 cm wide. That’s about 16 to 17.5 inches long and 12 to 13 inches wide. The more the sheet is folded, the small the size of the book. The book’s content influences its format: large volumes are expensive, weighty, commanding presences; small volumes, cheaper, portable, and unimposing. Thus, a single fold will yield a folio, two folds a quarto, three folds an octavo, and so forth. Since there are typically no page University of Pennsylvania Libraries - 5 - Furness Shakespeare Collection The English Renaissance in Context: Looking at Older Books numbers, it is common practice to refer to individual pages by their place in the signature. Thus in this quarto, there will be four leaves and eight pages per signature. A single leaf contains a recto side and a verso side. The recto side is the right side of the opening; the verso, the left side. What can complicate matters slightly is that signature markings, when they are given, are only found on the recto side of a leaf –and moreover, only on as many pages as necessary. Quartos tend to have signatures on the first and second rectos, and not on the third or fourth, because the action of folding the printed page forces those latter signatures into order automatically. So this opening (previous page) displays signatures F4v and G1r. While G1r is evident, F4v is implied: although no label appears on the left side of the opening, the nature of quarto printing dictates that the page before G1r has to be F4v. University of Pennsylvania Libraries - 6 - Furness Shakespeare Collection The English Renaissance in Context: Looking at Older Books Illustrations, by Ruth Samson Luborsky More than 5,000 pictures and diagrams were printed as parts of Elizabethan books. The great majority were woodcuts printed with the texts, though a few were engravings printed separately and inserted in the book. What follows are eight examples showing how images appeared in various places in books and the different roles they played. This frontispiece (the verso of the title page) shows an image of the author. Thomas Becon's collection of prayers and meditations helped establish a Protestant alternative to Catholic traditions of liturgical prayer. Becon's portrait, first printed on the frontispiece to the first edition of 1588 [STC 1744], was reused as a frontispiece to twenty other editions and copied in yet another edition. The reproduction is taken from the fifth edition of 1563. This frontispiece represents the dedicatee of the book. Queen Elizabeth's portrait as the prime mover of the heavenly spheres appears as a frontispiece to the Sphaera civitatis (1588) by John Case. It faces a page with a Latin poem in her honor hailing her as "Tu Virgo, regina potens, tu Mobile Primum Elisabetha." University of Pennsylvania Libraries - 7 - Furness Shakespeare Collection The English Renaissance in Context: Looking at Older Books This frontispiece represents the subject of the book. On this title page is an image printed as an advertisement for the book (like one on a book jacket today). Later in the same book, the reader would see the same image repeated in the pertinent part of the text. The busts of British rulers from Edward I to Henry V appear on the frontispiece to Thomas Walsingham's Historia breuis (1544), which chronicles their reigns. On this frontispiece is an image printed as an advertisement for the book (like one on a book jacket today).