|
Of Shakespeare's Plays |
||
|
....
By Michael J. Cummings...© 2003 Revised in 2006 . .......Nevertheless, unscrupulous publishers sometimes bought copies of plays from equally unscrupulous actors who had obtained a handwritten copy of the play or had written it down from memory. Occasionally, a publisher attended a play and copied the script himself while actors performed their parts. For example, publisher John Danter, hoping to make money by selling Romeo and Juliet, used notes taken during a 1597 performance of the play to piece together a copy of it for public sale.  .......These
methods of acquiring a copy often resulted in the publication of scripts
with many errors. To preserve the integrity of a play, the acting company
that owned the script sometimes made its own arrangements to publish the
text. Consequently, different printed versions of the play--some accurate,
some inaccurate--were in circulation. Shakespeare's poetry also appeared
in different versions. In at least one instance, a printer even published
poems of other authors under Shakespeare's name in hopes of capitalizing
on the magic of his byline.
.......There were two publishing formats: quarto and folio, which are explained below. The plays containing errors generally were in quarto form, although some good copies were published in this format. In 1623, friends and admirers of Shakespeare compiled a reasonably authentic collection of 36 of Shakespeare's plays in a folio edition of more than 900 pages that was entitled Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories & Tragedies. To what extent the original manuscripts of the plays had been edited is uncertain. The printer and publisher was William Jaggard, assisted by his son Isaac. This edition became known as The First Folio. Because of the presumed authenticity of this collection, later publishers used it to print copies of the plays. Other folios were printed in 1632, 1663 and 1685. In 1664, a second printing of the 1663 folio included the first publication of Pericles, Prince of Athens. .......The following paragraphs explain the difference between quarto and folio formats. ........Quarto:
A quarto is sheet of printing paper folded twice to form eight separate
pages for printing a book.
........Folio:
A folio is a sheet of printing paper folded once to form four separate
pages for printing a book.
........The
publishing industry operated under the control of the Worshipful Company
of Stationers, a trade organization which the government established
and supervised in order to guard against printing subversive books or books
unduly critical of the Crown. If a play met government
standards--that is, if it did not attempt to inflame the people against
the crown--a publisher could print and sell the play.
 |