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ABSTRACT
Every play collection represents an interpretative act that evaluates the materials it contains. In this quatercentenary year since the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio, this article positions the volume alongside other play collections from the period to show how they construct, through their strategies of selection and presentation, influential narratives that affect how we engage with the texts they contain. It identifies four practices that clarify a collection’s strategies – categorising, fixing, authorising, and fetishizing – and takes each of these in turn, casting a spotlight on the First Folio’s interest in ‘Histories’, its professed fixity, its valuation of Shakespeare as sole author, and its imperative to fetishize the book. Other collections, including Alexander’s Monarchic Tragedies (1604, 1607), Daniel’s Whole Works (1623), and Lyly’s Six Court Comedies (1632), advertise different strategies: some prioritise cross-genre readings; some construct networks of authorisers (including stationers and dedicatees) who inform reading practices; and some embrace a lack of fixity, denying final authority to the material book. This article demonstrates that Shakespeare’s Folio cannot be taken as a touchstone for plays in collection. The volume has, nevertheless, had an outsized influence on how we understand Shakespeare and his plays, and the work of other early modern writers.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See Pitcher, ‘Daniel’, para.7; Weiss, ‘Shakespeare’, 235–67.
2 Throughout this article, parenthetical dates refer to the publication year, rather than composition date.
3 Shakespeare, Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, verso opposite t.p.
4 Greg, Bibliography, IV, xxviii. See also Berger and Massai, Paratexts, II, 955–59.
5 Kewes, Authorship and Appropriation, 236–46.
6 Farmer and Lesser, ‘Types of Records’, DEEP. See my discussion of play collections in Lidster, Publishing the History Play, 180–87, which examines these parameters in more detail.
7 Lyons, 'English Printed Drama', ch.1 and ‘Serials’, 185–220.
8 Knight, Bound to Read, 1–18.
9 Murphy, Shakespeare in Print, 63–65.
10 Hattaway, 'Shakespearean History Play', 3–24; Hooks, ‘Making Histories’, 341–74; Kewes, ‘Elizabethan History Play’, 170–93; Lyons, ‘Serials’, 185–220; Smith, ‘Shakespeare Serialized’, 134–49.
11 Lidster, Publishing the History Play, 1–5, 180–87, 241–53.
12 Consider the lost plays ‘Longshanks’ (1595, Admiral’s Men); ‘Henry I’ (1597, Admiral’s Men); and Chettle, Dekker, and Drayton’s ‘Famous Wars of Henry I and the Prince of Wales’ (1598, Admiral’s Men). See entries within the Lost Plays Database. Misha Teramura shows that there was also a sustained interest in plays about early British history at a similar time, which have similarly been lost; see ‘Brute Parts’, 127–47.
13 Berek, ‘Defoliating Playbooks’, 395–416; Ezell, Oxford English Literary History, 42–53.
14 Lidster, Publishing the History Play, 205–14.
15 For Blount’s literary interests, see Massai, ‘Edward Blount’, 117–26.
16 Kesson, ‘Was Comedy a Genre’, 217.
17 Ibid.
18 Sandrock, 'Ancient Empires', 346.
19 Ibid., 346–64.
20 Reid, ‘Alexander’, para.13.
21 Gouws, ‘Greville’, para.15.
22 Hooks, Selling Shakespeare, 108–9.
23 See Jowett, Shakespeare and Text, 79–98.
24 Kastan, Shakespeare and the Book, 71.
25 Knight, Bound to Read, 57–84.
26 Smith, Shakespeare’s First Folio, 2–5.
27 Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Buxton 116.
28 A copy at the Bodleian Library, for example, replaces the dedication to Elizabeth (A2r-v) with a dedication to the Library (a, a2); see Arch. G d.47 (1).
29 Lidster, Publishing the History Play, 180–205. See Lesser’s sustained study of this publication venture in Ghosts, Holes, Rips, and Scrapes.
30 Knight, ‘Invisible Ink’, 53–62; Lesser, Ghosts, Holes, Rips, and Scrapes, chs. 1, 2; Lesser and Stallybrass, ‘Shakespeare’, 126–30. A Yorkshire Tragedy and Sir John Oldcastle contain false attributions to Shakespeare.
31 Folger Shakespeare Library STC 26101 (copy 2).
32 Galbraith, ‘English Literary Folios’, 63.
33 Brooks, From Playhouse to Printing House, 106–12.
34 See, for example, the division between Poetaster and Sejanus on Gg3v to Gg4r.
35 Masten, Textual Intercourse, 113–19, 127–28.
36 Ibid., 64–66. See also my discussion in Lidster, ‘Preliminaries and Paratexts’.
37 See, for example, the attribution of authorship in The New Oxford Shakespeare (2016–17).
38 Melnikoff, ‘Jones’s Pen’, 184–209.
39 Farmer and Lesser, ‘Canons’, 17–41.
40 Robinson, ‘Thomas Heywood’, 371–72.
41 The Wild Goose Chase and The Widow are thought to be singly authored by Fletcher and Middleton, respectively.
42 For early modern drama as a ‘patchwork’ of documents, see Stern, Documents of Performance.
43 Lidster, Publishing the History Play, 214–25; Laoutaris, ‘Prefatorial’, 57–63.
44 The preliminaries in Jonson's Cynthia's Revels (1601) exist in three states, two of which contain one of two special dedications: to William Camden, or to Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford.
45 Although Philotas is bibliographically independent from the collection, Greg argues that ‘there is no evidence that the play was issued separately’ (Bibliography, 1:349). Blount's name as publisher is linked only to Philotas, rather than the full collection.
46 Cadman, ‘Daniel’s Philotas’, 365–84.
47 Brooks, From Playhouse to Printing House, 106–12; Loewenstein, Ben Jonson.
48 Lesser, Renaissance Drama, 9–25.
49 Smith, ‘Follow the Money’ and Shakespeare’s First Folio.
50 Cummings, 'Shakespeare's First Folio', 54.
51 Ibid., 64; Robinson, ‘Book Fetishes’, 129–50.
52 Latour, Factish Gods, 2–11.
53 Matory, The Fetish Revisited, 280; Vizcaíno, ‘Liberation Philosophy’, 61, 69.
54 Cummings, ‘Shakespeare’s First Folio’, 64.
55 For example, one copy at the Bodleian Library (Buxton 116) lacks all texts from signatures A to N (second sequence), while many other copies are fragments containing one text only (Buxton 120 contains only The Civil Wars). Another copy (4° P 50 Art. (2)) is bound with Daniel Powel’s The Love of Wales to their Sovereign Prince (1616; STC 20159).
56 Dobson, Making of the National Poet, 227. See also Lidster, Wartime Shakespeare, ch.1.
57 Pask, Emergence of the English Author, 1–8.
58 The Huntington Library, call number RB 60611.
59 Reid, ‘Alexander’, para.13–20.
60 Laoutaris, ‘Prefatorial’, 48–67; Lidster, Publishing the History Play, 216–25; Taylor, ‘Making Meaning’, 55–72.
61 Cummings, ‘Shakespeare’s First Folio’, 58.
62 Stallybrass, ‘Marx’s Coat’, 312; Vizcaíno, ‘Liberation Philosophy’, 65.