Shakespeare of Stratford/The Printing of Shakespeare's Works

by Tucker Brooke

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THE PRINTING OF SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS.

Of the forty works commonly ascribed to Shakespeare nineteen—including Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, the Sonnets, and sixteen plays—were published in separate, quarto editions previous to the date of his retirement, about 1611. Another play, Othello, was first published in quarto in 1622. The remaining twenty plays first appeared in the collected Folio edition of the poet’s dramatic works in 1623.

Normally one finds, about the date of the first publication of each of the works printed in quarto, an entry in the register of the Stationers’ (printers’ and booksellers’) Company of London, establishing the publisher’s copyright in the work and his authority from the censors to print. There are two plays, however—Romeo and Juliet and Love’s Labour’s Lost—for which no entry or license prior to publication has been found. Conversely, two other plays were entered on the Stationers’ Register (one of them conditionally) which remained unprinted till included in the Folio. These were As You Like It (entered, ‘to be stayed,’ Aug. 4, 1600) and Antony and Cleopatra (entered, May 20, 1608).

The quarto editions are good, bad, and indifferent. Among the best are the first editions of Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, probably printed under Shakespeare’s personal supervision; the second editions of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and the first of 1 Henry IV and Love’s Labour’s Lost, issued by special authority of Shakespeare’s company. The worst of the bad quartos are the first editions of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and all the quartos of Henry V, the Merry Wives, and Pericles, the text of which evidently depends upon truncated and very inexact reconstructions of the acted plays, obtained against the will of the company. Another group of bad quartos is a set of spurious editions issued in 1619 by Thomas Pavier with false earlier dates; these include the second editions of The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and King Lear, and the third edition of Henry V. To the same group belong also the 1619 Pericles and Merry Wives, the dates of which have not been falsified.

Elizabethan printing was of indifferent quality, and the best printers of the day were not the ones who brought out the cheap play quartos. Misprints are numerous and differences of text frequently appear in different copies of the same quarto, owing to the slovenly habit of waiting to correct errors till they were casually observed as the sheets were being printed off. The tendency is for the text of a play to degenerate through the series of editions, each later quarto being printed from the one immediately preceding it and adding typographical errors to those its predecessor had accumulated. Except in the case of the two poems, it is unlikely that Shakespeare exercised supervision over the printing of any of his works. Some were undoubtedly printed fraudulently and without the aid of an authoritative manuscript.

Of the twenty titles which appeared in print before 1623, Titus Andronicus and Henry V are anonymous in all the quartos, and Shakespeare’s name appears for the first time on the title-page of certain copies of the fourth, undated, edition of Romeo and Juliet.^[1] The second quartos of Richard II, Richard III, and 1 Henry IV are the earliest to indicate his authorship, the first quartos of these plays being anonymous. Otherwise Shakespeare is marked as the author in the first and all subsequent editions.

The Folio, with all its faults, is a better printed book than the average of the quartos. For twenty of the plays it is, as said, our sole authority. For the other sixteen plays^[2] the Folio sometimes follows an entirely independent and superior manuscript, as in Richard III, Henry V, and Merry Wives; but more often shows that it was printed from one of the quarto editions, with the text corrected, expanded, or cut for the actors’ needs. Where a number of quarto editions had appeared (e.g. Romeo and Juliet and 1 Henry IV), it was one of the later and typographically less correct ones which was so used. The chief textual embarrassments of Shakespeare students arise from these cases, where the ‘good’ quartos and the Folio offer alternative readings. Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV, Hamlet, Lear, Troilus and Cressida, and Othello are the plays in which this conflict of authority is most apparent.

LIST OF QUARTO EDITIONS OF SHAKESPEARE’S WORKS BEFORE 1628

		Entry in Stationers’ Register	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Q5	Q6	Q7	Q8	Q9
Venus and Adonis		Apr. 18, 1593	1593	1594	?[3]	1596	1599	1599	1602	1617	1620
Lucrece		May 9, 1594	1594	1598	1600	1607	1616
Titus Andronicus		Feb. 6, 1594	1594	1600	1611
Richard II		Aug. 29, 1597	1597	1598	1598	1608[4]	1615
Richard III		Oct. 20, 1597	1597	1598	1602	1605	1612	1622
Romeo and Juliet	}	No entry of either till Jan. 22, 1607	1597	1599	1609	n.d.[4]
Love’s Labour’s Lost			?[5]	1598
1 Henry IV		Feb. 25, 1598	1598[6]	1599	1604	1608	1613	1622
Merchant of Venice		July 17, 1598[7]	1600	‘1600’ (1619)[8]
Henry V		Aug. 4, 1600	1600	1602	‘1608’ (1619)[8]
Much Ado about Nothing		Aug. 4, 1600[7]	1600
2 Henry IV		Aug. 23, 1600	1600
Midsummer Night’s Dream		Oct. 8, 1600	1600	‘1600’ (1619)[8]
Merry Wives of Windsor		Jan. 18, 1602	1602	1619
Hamlet		July 26, 1602	1603	1604 1605[9]	1611	n.d.
Lear		Nov. 26, 1607	1608	‘1608’ (1619)[8]
Sonnets		May 20, 1609	1609
Troilus and Cressida		Feb. 7, 1603[7]	1609[4]
Pericles		May 20, 1608	1609	1609	1611	1619
Othello		Oct. 6, 1621	1622

1. The title-page in this edition varies in different copies, some having and some omitting Shakespeare’s name.
2. The Folio does not include the Poems, Sonnets, or Pericles.
3. Only one fragmentary copy known, from which title-page and date are missing.
4. There are two issues of this edition with differing title-pages only. (The later issue of Troilus and Cressida adds a preface.)
5. No copy known, but there is reason to believe that the 1598 edition was not the first.
6. There is a fragmentary copy thought to be earlier than this.
7. Provisional entries. Later entries of Merchant of Venice, Oct. 28, 1600; Much Ado, Aug. 28, 1600; Troilus and Cressida, Jan. 28, 1609.
8. Spurious edition bearing false date, really printed in 1619.
9. Some copies of the second edition of Hamlet are dated 1604, others 1605.