Citing previous analyses, he summarizes how certain identifiable compositors, anonymous but betraying themselves through the traces of their individual technique and vagaries in spelling, personally typeset which of the plays - and even which sections of the plays. Laoutaris reconstructs each stage in the physical production cycle - editing, pre-press composition, and printing - in clear and fascinating detail. In today’s money, this equates to “roughly a year’s wages for the average labourer.” The customer in question, one Thomas Longe, was likely no laborer, at least by trade. Laoutaris identifies a contemporary buyer, presumably typical, who paid £120 for Shakespeare’s book. These might include earlier printed versions of single plays, theatrical prompt-books, multiple performance transcriptions, disparate actors’ texts, and even Shakespeare’s own manuscripts or drafts.Īs distinct from more compact “quarto” or “octavo” versions - which, due to their unique pre-press requirements, permitted greater economies of scale in the printing process - a folio edition meant a substantially larger finished size and a much heftier price tag. What’s more, establishing a text faithful to the Bard’s intent for a given play could itself be challenging, if not befuddling, as widely variant copies were often in circulation. In the first place, there was Jacobean London’s bureaucracy for registering secure copyright amid the city’s helter-skelter theater culture. Preparing and producing the book required many steps. Though the literati tended to consider plays as creations of secondary worth, Shakespeare’s folio was to include dramatic works only, a remarkable assertion of their perceived value.Īs Laoutaris retells the saga, it’s no surprise that it took the syndicate of Shakespeare’s friends so long to get the First Folio into readers’ hands. It’s also impressively readable, written with pace and assurance.Īmong the printers and booksellers of the time, a large-format “folio” edition like this was a big deal: only Jonson, among English playwrights, could claim an omnibus folio of his works, but Ben’s volume featured poetry along with plays. This volume, issued some seven years after his death, has become known as the First Folio, and it’s the subject of Chris Laoutaris’ Shakespeare’s Book, a masterful and engaging study of the circumstances surrounding the volume’s creation, as well as its historical setting and physical production. Notable members of this select company, including fellow poet/playwright Ben Jonson, hit upon a singular means of honoring Shakespeare’s memory: publishing a collection of all his plays, an unprecedented tribute. Critically, the circle also included printers and booksellers. When he died in 1616, William Shakespeare left behind a circle of prominent admirers: actors, playwrights, poets, and patrons among the nobility and even on the throne.
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