During or shortly after the year 1619, Thomas Pavier
completed a project to publish a collected Plays of Shakes-peare. The collection included:
-The Merchant of Venice (dated 1600 and
showing the name of James Roberts for publisher);
-A Midsummer Night's Dream (dated 1600
and showing the name of James Roberts for publisher);
-Sir John Oldcastle (dated 1600 and
showing the initials “T.P.” for publisher);
-King Lear, (dated 1608 and showing the
name of Nathaniel Butter for publisher);
-Henry V (dated 1608 and showing the initials
“T.P.” for publisher);
-Yorkshire Tragedy, (dated 1619 and
showing the initials “T.P.” for publisher);
-Merry Wives of Windsor (dated 1600 and
showing the name of James Roberts for publisher);
-two parts of the Contention of York and
Lancaster (undated and showing the initials “T.P.” for publisher); and,
- Pericles (dated 1619 and showing the initials “T.P.” for
publisher).
All but three were collated, in the printer’s shop, as quarto
editions. Most of the surviving copies of these plays — generally
referred to as “the 1619 quartos” — are recorded as having been found packaged
as separate quartos.[1]
All of the plays, however, were
published on 7 1/2 by 5 5/8 inch paper. While standard
quarto type-page size of the time, of approximately 6 1/2 x 3 5/8 inch, was
maintained, the pages themselves were notably oversized. All shared this trait. They would eventually prove to share others
even more compelling.
The unusual quartos having been brought to the public's attention by A. W. Pollard, W. W. Greg set about investigating them at length. He felt that every standalone
1619 quarto he had seen had shown signs of once having been bound together
with others. Other also prominent
scholars, on the other hand, have suggested that the quartos were first sold separately in
expectation of gathering them together, after all had been published, into one
binding as a collected plays.
Greg's position has come to have far and away the greater supporting
evidence. His own close inspection of
that evidence makes the case that the quartos were all published over a number
of weeks, at most, regardless that they show title pages with dates between 1600
and 1619.
The latest date on the
title pages being 1619, Greg referred them all to that date. If he had any evidence to support that year,
it was that “On the 8th July, 1619,… Lawrence Hayes… entered…” into the
Stationers Register, “' Merchant of Venice,' formerly the property of his father,
Thomas Hayes (Arber, III. 651).”[2]
This, he felt, probably caused Pavier — a
publisher of as fluid ethics as most — to give his edition of the play a date
before anyone else had so clearly been given the rights.
In this way he could sell it as leftover copies of an older edition.
Even he, however, did
not offer this as sufficient evidence, in itself, for the 1619 date.
But we have just seen that the appearance of a single make of paper in one
play dated 1600, and in another dated 1619 would of itself suffice to call
these dates in serious question.[3]
While he did not address the issue, his reasoning for having changed an individual quarto publication date did nothing
to explain why a number of the other title pages also showed much earlier dates. In spite of all of this, he did turn around
in the same paper to declare it “the genuine date”.[4]
The very claim that at all of the quartos were, in fact,
printed at the same time became hotly debated in the wake of Greg’s
findings. His methods were sound but the
data seemed to some others, of high repute, to be insufficient to make a
definite claim.
William J. Neidig’s paper in the October 1910 number of Modern
Philology ended all resistance. It
employed newly developed photographic technologies to establish beyond a shadow
of a doubt that
This paper furnishes a complete and independent demonstration
that the Shakespeare quartos spoken of as bearing the dates 1600 and 1608 were
not printed in those years, but were printed within a few days of the quartos
bearing the date 1619.[5]
More precise than even Greg,
Neidig is careful not to perpetuate the idea that the quartos were proven to
have been published in 1619, only that, whenever they were published, they were
published within days of each other.
Nevertheless, the quartos would be referred to as “the 1619 quartos” to
this day.
Next: the Lord
Chamberlain’s Order >>>
[1] Pollard,
A. W. A Census of Shakespeare's Plays
in Quarto 1594-1709, xxxiii. Even
Thomas Jefferson purchased individual quartos which his nephew, Thomas Mason
Randolph, donated to the University of Virginia in 1853, and which were
subsequently were destroyed by fire in 1895.
[2]
Greg, W. W. On Certain False Dates in Shakespearian Quartos. THE LIBRARY.
New Series, No. 34, Vol. IX. April, 1908. 113 – 131@127.
[3]
Ibid., 122.
[4]
Ibid., 126. “In other cases he placed on the title-page the genuine date, 1619.”
[5] Neidig,
William J. “The Shakespeare Quartos of
1619” Modern Philology, Vol. VIII, No.
2, October, 1910. 145 – 164@162.
- Shakespeare as Burleigh's Guest at Castle Hedingham? February 4, 2019. “Like the once popular game in which a large circle of people is formed and a message whispered in the ear of the first person, who whispers it in the ear of the next, and so on, around the entire group, we do not know what exactly was the original message but only that the message we hear from the last person is strangely suggestive.”
- Why Shakespeare Appears on Title Pages from 1598. November 20, 2018. ‘These he finds unconvincing. The author’s name having appeared in a number of title pages after 1598, he continues, “it would seem foolish for publishers not to attach the Shakespeare brand to his previously unattributed plays—unless they had other reasons not to do so.”’
- The Nymphs of Doctor Foreman’s Macbeth. October 21, 2018. “How did Foreman make the mistake of describing them precisely as Holinshed? But differently from the text we have of Macbeth? To consider Foreman’s account a simple mistake would require an astronomically improbable coincidence.”
- The Battle Over Shakespeare's Early and Late Plays. September 24, 2018. “The answers to the post-Oxford dilemma, of course, are three.”
- Check out the English Renaissance Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
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