How the Infamous 1619 Shakespeare Quartos Became the 1619 Shakespeare Quartos.

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.

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[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.

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• 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.