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Play-Publishing in Elizabethan Times
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Two modern spectacles have become so familiar that we find it difficult to imagine even a prehistoric state without them: the author stalking a publisher, and the play treated as pure literature. There are, indeed, many plays—and even some successful ones—that do not reach print; but the closet-drama is established, and unquestioned as a literary form, in prose as well as verse. Hence it is difficult to visualize conditions that no more than three hundred years ago were the reverse of these: the play regarded as mere stage directions, not at all comparable with pure literature in prose or verse; and the publisher pursuing, satyr-like, the nymph-coy author for something to print. Yet the understanding of these surprising conditions is a pre-requisite to any establishing of Shaksperean or other Elizabethan texts, especially plays; for on it rests finally the main question of authenticity. A short survey of the following four aspects of Elizabethan publishing may help to show both their universality and their significance.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1919
References
1 Have with you to Saffron-Walden, McKerrow ed. (London, 1905), iii, pp. 27 f.
2 McKerrow ed., i, p. 341.
3 Abbott ed., ii, pp. 273 f.
4 Dramatic Works (London, 1874), ii, pp. 159-62.
5 Ibid., iv, p. 5.
6 Quoted in Shakspere Allusion-Book, I, p. 487.
7 Ibid., i, pp. 213 f.
8 Dyce ed. (London, 1843), ii, p. 355.
9 Malone (in the Boswell-Malone Shakespeare, 1821, iii, pp. 329 f.) says that “We … can now pronounce with certainty that our poet was entirely careless about literary fame, and could patiently endure to be made answerable for compositions which were not his own, without using any means to undeceive the publick.” But of course his literary fame rested on his poems, and the two earliest of those he had provided for; his plays gave him no valid claim to literary standing in his own time.
10 Comedies and Tragedies (London, 1873), i, p. 113.
11 Ibid., iii, p. 3.
12 Ibid., ii, pp. 99 f.
13 Ibid., iii, p. 125.
14 Shakspere Allusion-Book, i, p. 457.
15 Dramatic Works (London, 1874), iv, p. 5.
16 Bullen ed. (London, 1887), I, pp. lvii f.
17 Shak. Allus.-B., I, p. 438.
18 Ibid., i, p. 450.
19 Ibid., I, p. 455.
20 Ibid., i, p. 466.
21 Ibid., i, p. 457.
22 Ibid., i, pp. 457 f.
23 Bullen ed., i, p. 198.
24 Ibid., ii, p. 110.
25 Ibid., ii, p. 113.
26 Dyce ed. (London, 1859), p. 105.
27 Ibid., p. XXXV.
28 Tudor Facsimiles, ed. Farmer, 1908.
29 Ibid., 1913.
30 Dramatic Works (London, 1874), iv, p. 5.
31 Ibid., v, p. 163.
32 Note by Gifford : “i. e., the Drama : be had previously printed ‘Fame's Memorial,‘ and, probably, other poems, now lost.” (Gifford's ed. of Ford, i, p. 3.)
33 Bang ed., Materialien, Bd. xxiii, Louvain, 1908.
34 Dramatic Works (London, 1873), iv, p. 133.
35 Ibid., ii, p. 190.
36 Bullen ed. (London, 1886), vii, p. 143.
37 (London, 1756), v, p. 232.
38 Hazlitt ed. (London, 1857), ii, p. 6.
39 Dyce ed. (London, 1843), ii, p. 13.
40 Ibid., ii, pp. 16 f.
41 Bullen's Old English Plays, New Series (London, 1887-90), ii, p. 88.
42 “To the Reader,” in his Sermons, collected ed. of 1622, p. 6.
43 See The Facts about Shakespeare, pp. 31, 131; Lee's Life (London, 1919), p. 99; Delius, “Über den ursprünglichen Text des King Lear,” Shak. Jahrb., x, p. 65.
44 Dramatic Works, IV, p. 5.
45 Ibid., v, p. 163.
46 Lee's Life, p. 99, note. May this double-dealing be the cause of the difference between the Danter Q (1594) and the Alleyn ms. of Orlando Furioso?
47 “Boswell's Malone” Shakespeare (1821), iii, pp. 159 f.
48 Collier, Shakespeare (1858), v, p. 614.
49 Lee : “The playhouse authorities deprecated the publishing of plays in the belief that their dissemination in print was injurious to the receipts of the theatre, … Professional opinion condemned such playwrights as sought ‘a double sale of their labours, first to the stage and after to the press’ (Heywood's Rape of Lucrece, 1638. Address to Reader). A very small proportion of plays acted in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I—some 600 out of a total of 3000— consequently reached the printing press, and the bulk of them is now lost.” (Life, p. 100, note.) Gifford, speaking of Jonson's play Richard Crook-back, said : “It has perished, like most of the pieces brought out at their [Henslowe and Alleyn's] theatre; because they endeavoured to keep them in their own hands as long as possible.” (Jonson's Works (1843), p. 19.)
50 See The Facts about Shakespeare, p. 137; and for further particulars, Pollard's Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, pp. 9 f.
51 Shakspere Allusion-Book (London, 1909), I, p. 208.
52 Works, iv, p. 5.
53 “Boswell's Malone” Shakespeare (1821), iii, pp. 160 f., note.