19. M^r. William " Shakespeares " Comedies, " Histories, & " Tragedies. " Publi?hed according to the True Originall Copies. " [Portrait] London " Printed by I?aac Iaggard, and Ed. Blount. 1623.

The bibliographical history of this most famous book has been written so completely by Mr. Sidney Lee that little remains to be said. The following notes aim only at recounting the facts suggested by a reading of the title-page.

Venus and Adonis, printed in 1593, and Lucrece, printed in 1594, were the only works of Shakespeare published during his lifetime with his consent and coÖperation; but sixteen of his plays were printed in quarto size, by various publishers, without his permission.

The plays here collected, in folio form, are thirty-six in number, and include sixteen hitherto unpublished,—all the plays, in fact, except Pericles. John Heming and Henry Condell, friends and fellow-actors of the dramatist, were professedly responsible for the edition, as appears in their dedication to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery:

"... that what delight is in them, may be euer your L.L. the reputation his, & the faults ours, if any be committed, by a payre ?o carefull to ?hew their gratitude both to the liuing, and the dead...." But the chief part of the real editorship is thought to have devolved upon the publisher, Edward Blount of The Bear, Paul's Churchyard, one of the firm pecuniarily responsible for the enterprise. His name and that of Isaac Jaggard, the printer, appear upon the title-page, as the licensed printers, but in the colophon we read that the book was "printed at the charges" of William Jaggard, printer to the City of London, and father to Isaac, Ed. Blount, "I. Smithweeke," or Smethwick, bookseller under the Dial, in St. Dunstan's Churchyard, and William Aspley, bookseller of The Parrots, Paul's Churchyard.

The "true originall copies" were probably found in the sixteen unauthorized quarto volumes, previously printed, the playhouse or prompt-copies, and in transcripts of plays in private hands. Heming and Condell touch on this matter in their address "To the great Variety of Readers": "It had bene a thing, we confe??e, worthie to haue bene wi?hed, that the Author him?elfe had liu'd to haue ?et forth, and ouer?een his owne writings; But ?ince it hath bin ordain'd otherwi?e, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his Friends, the office of their care, and paine, to haue collected & publi?h'd them; and ?o to haue publi?h'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with diuer?e ?tolne, and ?urreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and ?tealthes of iniurious impo?tors, that expo?ed them; even tho?e are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and all the re?t, ab?olute in their numbers as he conceiued th?."

The edition, as published, is thought to have numbered five hundred copies. About two hundred are now known, but of these less than twenty are in perfect condition. The price of the volume when issued was one pound, and the highest price so far paid is seventeen hundred and twenty pounds.

The book is not a fine specimen of typography; it contains numerous errors of all kinds, and the printer's ornaments are all such as are frequently met with in books issued before and after this date. This is especially and strikingly true of the large head-band of the archers which we have already noticed in the Bible of 1611, and of the large tail-piece used after twenty-five of the plays. The other head-pieces and initial letters are of commonplace character, and show much wear. The portrait, too, by Martin Droeshout, a young Flemish artist,

as Jonson assures us in his famous verses "To the Reader," is, as might be expected, hard and stiff, but it was undoubtedly done from a painting that has more claims to be considered "from the life" than any other. With all its technical faults, it "is intrinsically the most valuable volume in the whole range of English literature."

Folio.

Collation: One leaf without signature; A, eight leaves; A-Z, Aa-Cc2, in sixes; a, two leaves; Aa3-Aa6, b-g, in sixes; gg, eight leaves; h-x, in sixes; ¶, ¶¶, in sixes; ¶¶¶, one leaf; aa-ff, in sixes; gg, two leaves; gg-zz, aaa-bbb, in sixes.