Those who lived
in London, or frequently visited it, could of course go to the theatres
and see plays again and again if they wished, for as long as the plays remained
in a company's repertory. And as long as a play retained theatrical drawing
power it was in the interests of the company not to print it or at any rate
this seems to have been the companies' attitude. Probably the fear was not
so much that people would read the play instead of going to see it, as that
once it had appeared in print it would be available for the use of other,
rival companies of actors. In 1600, for instance, the Admiral's Men borrowed
forty shillings "to give unto the printer to stay the printing of Patient
Grissell", and in 1608 a group of London companies made a formal agreement
that they would not allow the publication of their play‑books. Surreptitious
copies of plays sometimes appeared, resulting in that class of texts which
we have come to call "bad quartos". The most notable instance is Shakespeare's
Hamlet, and perhaps the most surprising thing about the quarto that appeared
in 1603 is that anybody bothered to print it at all. The printers must have
been trying to cash in on a major theatrical success but if the play was
ever acted or read in the shape in which it was first printed it must have
caused serious disappointment. A good version appeared soon afterwards. For
once a company permitted a play to appear while it was still "good box‑office"
in order to correct a false impression that might have been conveyed by
the wretchedness of the first printed text. There are other cases, too,
in which the text of a printed play is so bad that its being offered for
either reading or acting can be regarded only as a confidence trick.
But there must
have been a good market for plays, for they were printed in large numbers
even after they had lost their first novelty. (...)
The example of
Shakespeare is the best known. He was an unusually successful dramatist,
in print as well as on the stage. Richard II appeared in six editions from
1597 to 1623; Henry IV, Part One in seven editions from 1598 to 1623; Romeo
and Juliet five times from 1597 to 1623. And these were commercial
editions, intended to make money. Yet in not one of his plays published in
his lifetime is there anything to dignify it as a work of literature no dedication,
no epistle, no commendatory poem. The only partial exception is Troilus and
Cressida, the 1609 edition of which has a printer's epistle. What is more,
about half of Shakespeare's plays were not printed till seven years after
he died. We may contrast this with the situation in regard to his narrative
poems. Venus and Adonis, carefully printed in 1593 with the author's own dedication
to the Earl of Southampton, appeared in sixteen editions between then and
1640 eleven up to 1617; and Lucrece, which first appeared a year later than
Venus and Adonis, also with a dedication to Southampton, went through six
editions up to 1616. Here obviously was Shakespeare, the man of letters,
making his bid for fame. So far as he was concerned, the theatre was its
own medium, and the publication of the plays was little more important than,
perhaps, the provision of a printed libretto at the performance of an opera.
(cf. Charactery)
Jonson's revolutionary
stand
Jonson,
if anyone, laboured to confer literary respectability upon the popular drama.
The climax of Jonson's campaign
to demonstrate his literary respectability within the genre of stage pieces
comes in 1616 with the publication of his Works. This was the grand gesture,
and it represents a landmark in the history of the presentation of English
plays as literature. No English writer for the popular stage had previously
published his collected plays as his "works", though some plays, mostly
academic in nature, had appeared in collections of their author's writings.
Jonson's is a handsome volume of more than a thousand pages.
The next dramatist
whose plays were published in folio
was Shakespeare; and it is appropriate that the first words printed in the
volume the address "To the Reader" should be by Jonson. The title page, we
cannot help remarking, does not describe these plays as "Works"; they are
Mr William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, published according
to the true original copies". They are printed along with a portrait of the
author (Jonson had not gone as far as that but Shakespeare, after all, was
dead), a dedication, another epistle, and a variety of commendatory verses,
including Jonson's great tribute. The texts themselves, unfortunately, have
not undergone as careful supervision as Jonson had devoted to his own plays,
though Heminge and Condell, who were responsible for the volume, were not
without editorial concerns and capacities. The Shakespeare Folio has a list
of '"the names of the principal actors in all these plays", and it may be
only because Shakespeare was so closely bound up with the affairs of a single
company that we do not have the more detailed information about the plays'
early performances provided by the Jonson Folio. There is much about Shakespeare's
plays that we do not know and that we should be likely to know if they had
been Jonson's. Yet Shakespeare would have been the less Shakespeare had he
displayed the egotism and self‑esteem that contributed to Jonson's concern
for his own immortality. The Shakespeare Folio does not tell us all we should
like to know, but it does one supremely important thing: it provides us with
the texts of plays that had not previously been printed, and that might otherwise
have been lost to us. Mad it not been for Jonson's example and, we may conjecture,
encouragement, Shakespeare might have been known today by only about half
of his output, for the greatest of all collections of plays as literature
might not have appeared.
from Stanley
Wells, Literature and Drama, London 1970, pp 36‑50