History of the Mer- With the extreme cruelty of Shylocke Written by W.SHAKESPEARE. Printed by F. Roberts,1600. THOMAS PAVIER'S TITLE-PAGE FOR HIS 1619 ISSUE OF UNIV OF MICH customary, the location of his shop where the volumes might be purchased.1 By these miscellaneous devices he so successfully concealed his original purpose of issuing a collected edition that the fact was not discovered until 1906, and then only through a fortuitous combination of circum stances. But though he succeeded in obeying the strict order of the authorities forbidding him to issue a collected volume of plays by Shakespeare, he paid no attention to the real purpose of that order, which was to protect the dead poet's reputation. On each of the quartos, with the exception of Henry V, he had conspicuously displayed the name of William Shakespeare as the sole author. Thus he did almost as much damage to the posthumous fame of the dramatist as if he had carried out his original project of including all ten plays in a single volume. The ten plays thus bound as nine individual quartos, with various dates and various imprints, were put on the stalls of Pavier's bookshop and disposed of to an unsuspecting public. Doubtless there was a ready sale for them; years before, the publishers of Troilus and Cressida had predicted that the time would soon come when booklovers would "scramble" for Shakespeare's plays. In a few cases eager buyers seem to have seized the opportunity to secure all ten plays at once. Since, as was then customary, the sheets were merely stitched in paper covers, some of the book-collectors who purchased all the plays had them at once substantially bound in a single volume. Several such volumes are known to have been 1 Since title-leaves were commonly displayed on posts throughout the city for advertising purposes, the omission of the place of sale suggests that Pavier made no effort to give wide publicity to his latest venture. The early dates would also preclude the possibility of his advertising some of them as new. formerly in existence; but in later times, with the great increase in the pecuniary value of Shakespeareana, these volumes were split up, and the individual units offered to buyers separately. Only one collection of all ten plays remains in its original form as bound at the time for its purchaser. In 1919, exactly three centuries after Pavier first set the quartos on sale at his shop, this volume was sold to an American collector for the sum of $150,000.1 1 The volume is now in the library of Mr. Henry Folger, of New York City. For the best discussions of Pavier's quartos see A. W. Pollard, Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, 1909, and W. J. Neidig, "The Shakespeare Quartos of 1619," Modern Philology, 1910, viii, 145. CHAPTER XXX THE FIRST FOLIO THE injury done to Shakespeare's reputation by Pavier, and the constant danger of a repetition of the offense, were probably among the causes that led the poet's actor-friends, at some date before October, 1621,1 to plan a complete and authentic edition of his dramatic works. At this time all the original venturers in the Globe enterprise were dead except John Heminges and Henry Condell. For nearly a quarter of a century they had enjoyed the poet's closest and warmest friendship (they were among the three persons in London to whom he left memorial rings), and now they were old men," ready to retire from active life. As a final tribute to their comrade, who had been so loyal to their interests, they resolved to collect and publish his plays. "We have but collected them," they write, "and done an office to the dead... without ambition either of self-profit or fame, only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare." 3 3 In the scheme they interested two men, William Jaggard, who by virtue of his monopoly of printing the 1 The date on which Othello was entered in the Stationers' Register. The play, it is clear, was released for publication because arrangements were under way to issue the First Folio, as shown by the manner in which the copyright was treated. In 1613 Heminges had been described as "old Heminges"; see p. 438. Both were parishioners of St. Mary Aldermanbury, Cripplegate, and both served there as churchwardens. • That they initiated the enterprise is clearly indicated by their statement: "We pray you, do not envy his friends the office of their care and pain to have collected and published them"; by Digges's line: "Shakespeare, at length thy pious fellows give the world thy works"; and by the poems from the Salisbury Papers cited on p. 342. |