Shakespeare Promptbooks LIBRARY of the UNIVERSITY of ILLINOIS at URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
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JL llv Shakespeare Promptbooks LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN x792.9 cop. 3 REFERENCE The Shakespeare Promptbooks University of Illinois Press, Urbana and London, 1965 The Shakespeare Promptbooks A Descriptive Catalogue CHARLES H. SHATTUCK .U!UC © 1965 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Manu- factured in the United States of America. Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 65-11737. C*V3 Preface and Acknowledgments The terminal date of this catalogue of Shakespeare promptbooks is the year 1961. But this is not the real end of it. The Festival Thea- tres of the three Stratfords, whose books I have accounted for, have already added four seasons, and presumably they will march on to the millennium, accumulating more (and ever more illuminating) rec- ords of their productions. A fourth Stratford in New Zealand has been rumored. The newly established National Theatre in England, New York's Shakespeare in the Park, and many another festival theatre yet to be created or to be professionalized, besides independent produc- tions in usual frequency, will swell the records of the future. Nor is the catalogue final for the theatre of the more remote past. Although I have combed the well-known depositories of theatrical ana and canvassed by mail several hundred libraries, museums, and histor- ical societies where older promptbooks might be stored, undoubtedly I have missed a good many. Some now in private hands will eventually drift into public collections. Some now buried unrecognized in the general shelves of library stacks, or even taken for junk and scheduled for the dustbin, may become known for what they are and be moved to prouder places. In order that the record can be brought nearer to completeness, the editors of Theatre Notebook, the organ of the Society for Theatre Research, have generously agreed to print supplemental lists from time to time. If the discoverers of new-old material will communicate their findings to me, I shall assemble these lists, with full acknowledg- ment to the contributors. Here too can be corrected the grosser errors I have committed, as users of the catalogue point them out to me. This cooperative gesture by the Society for Theatre Research is not my only reason for gratitude to the officers and members of that organi- zation, for they have assisted in many ways to make my project known while it was in process and to direct me toward sources of material in England. The American Society for Theatre Research and Conference 3 (Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research) of the Modern Language Association have also afforded me opportunity in their bulletins and at their annual conferences to advertise my needs. I am grateful to nearly three hundred librarians and curators throughout America, the British Isles, Australia, and New Zealand, who have responded to inquiry about their institutional holdings; but there is room here to speak only of those who, having found material ^> for me, have generously sent along detailed information or made the material accessible. These include John Alden of the Boston Public Library, Phyllis Ball of the University of Arizona, Anne Bolton of the Old Vic Theatre, Clara Mae Brown of the Joint University Libraries VI PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS of Nashville, Mrs. Cavanna of the Edwin Forrest Home, Flora Colton and William Miller of the University of Pennsylvania, Mary Isabel Fry and the staff of the Henry E. Huntington Library, Freda Gaye of the British Theatre Museum, Margaret Hackett of the Boston Athe- naeum, John Hayes of the Festival Theatre at Stratford, Ontario, Martin Holmes of the London Museum, James Kingsley of the Uni- versity of Minnesota, Marion P. Linton of the National Library of Scotland, Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchenson, June Moll of the University of Texas, Waveney R. N. Payne and the staff of the Bir- mingham Shakespeare Memorial Library, Robert Quinsey of the Uni- versity of Nebraska, May Davenport Seymour of the Museum of the City of New York, Alan Suddon of the Toronto Public Library, and Edwin Wolf of the Library Company of Philadelphia. At the Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library George Freedley and his staff, at the Enthoven Collection George Nash and his staff, at The Players Louis Rachow and the late Patrick Carroll have been partic- ularly hospitable and helpful during my protracted tours of study in those places. Alma De Jordy, Clarissa Lewis, Isabelle Grant, and Helen Welch of my own University's Library have been patient with demands for more books, more film-strips to work with. Mrs. Herbert McAneny of Princeton has found and described for me several documents not available during my visits there. Eileen Robinson of the Royal Shake- speare Theatre Library not only provided generous working accom- modations during a month's visit in 1962 but has reported new ac- quisitions and answered many queries since then. Helen Willard of the Harvard Theatre Collection has gone far beyond the call of duty to put the Harvard books and the whole working apparatus of the collection at my disposal. To Dorothy Mason of the Folger my indebt- edness can hardly be reckoned—except to say that she has encouraged this project from its inception, helped to define the method and from time to time criticized the results, invented the excellent numbering system of the great Folger collection of promptbooks, and spent many weeks of working days putting that collection in its present fine order so that I could proceed with it. Friends and professional fellow workers who have contributed ad- vice, information, and encouragement include Muriel St. Clare Byrne, G. B. Harrison, Hubert Heffner, Barnard Hewitt, Philip Highfill, Lucyle Hook, Laurence Irving, James McManaway, A. M. Nagler, of the Pratt Insti- A. H. Scouten, and J. Wesley Swanson. Paul Cooper tute and Frederick Hunter of the University of Texas have reported the facts about two important books that would not otherwise have been available. David MacArthur of Milwaukee Downer has supplied PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Vll the chronology of Winthrop Ames's productions. Sybil Rosenfeld, from her knowledge of eighteenth-century actors and scene painters, has dated and localized several hitherto unidentifiable promptbooks of that era. My colleague G. Blakemore Evans, deeply versed in the mysteries of the oldest promptbooks, has steadily afforded me his counsel and the raw materials of his own research. Alan S. Downer and Arthur Colby Sprague have kept my courage up by friendly assur- ances that the catalogue would be worth doing, and have given to an early draft of the first fourth of it a severe and most helpful reading. Elizabeth Dulany, assistant editor at the University Press, has pre- vented innumerable errors and inconsistencies from going into print. Last and above all I am grateful to my wife, whose judgment, skill, and hard labor at note-taking made the gathering of materials pos- sible in the allotted time. To all these helpers my thanks. The mistakes are my own. The work has been sustained by a Folger Fellowship in the summer of 1961, a sabbatical leave from the University of Illinois and a Guggen- heim Fellowship through 1961-62, and several grants for purchase of tools and materials by the Graduate College Research Board of the University of Illinois. Charles H. Shattuck University of Illinois Urbana, Illinois June 1, 1964 Contents Introduction 1 Symbols and Abbreviations in the Older Promptbooks 14 A Register of Libraries and Collections with Promptbook Holdings 24 All's Well That Ends Well 29 Antony and Cleopatra 33 As You Like It 43 The Comedy of Errors 67 Coriolanus 73 Cymbeline 81 Hamlet 91 Henry IV, Part 1 128 Henry IV, Part 2 141 Henry V 145 Henry VI 154 Henry VIII 155 Julius Caesar 172 King John 192 King Lear 206 Love's Labor's Lost 232 Macbeth 236 Measure for Measure 269 The Merchant of Venice 276 The Merry Wives of Windsor 303 A Midsummer Night's Dream 322 Much Ado About Nothing 333 Othello 354 Pericles 380 Richard II 382 Richard III 391 Romeo and Juliet 411 The Taming of the Shrew 433 The Tempest 449 Timon of Athens 462 Titus Andronicus 466 Troilus and Cressida 467 Twelfth Night 469 The Two Gentlemen of Verona 490 The Winter's Tale 495 Addenda 507 Index 509 Introduction The purpose of this catalogue of promptbooks is to promote new studies in the history of staged Shakespeare. When this history can be written entire, it will touch upon nearly everything that matters in the English-speaking theatre. For through all the centuries that our theatre has been professionally conscious of itself, the plays of Shakespeare have given the body its spine; and whatever fashions in dramatic form, production method, and social or esthetic intention have come and gone, the plays of Shakespeare have been keyed to those fashions. It does not matter very much, practically, whether the original author of the plays was Francis Bacon or Edward de Vere; it has often mattered greatly that the "effective" authors have been the Nahum Tates and Colley Cibbers and modern film scenarists who actually rewrote the plays, the multitude of Johnsons and Coleridges and Dr. Joneses who have told us what they "mean," and all the Garricks and Guthries whose stage imagery has spread upon the plays the form and pressure of their separate generations. There is no end to the vitality of "Shakespeare." Like the mythic John Barleycorn of Burns's ballad, he has always given us good whis- key. In every theatrical season "they took a plough and ploughed him down, put clods upon his head," but under the cheerful spring showers he rose again.