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Folio & Co: Shakespeare and the theatrum libri

Introduction
Gilles Bertheau
Cet article est une traduction de :
Folio & Co: Shakespeare et le théâtre du livre [fr]

Texte intégral

1On the occasion of the fourth centenary of the publication of William Shakespeare’s first Folio, the Société Française Shakespeare proposes to study not only one of the world’s most famous books – Mr William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. Published according to the True Originall Copies (1623) – but to integrate it into a wider reflection on the issues surrounding the in-folio format in the history of books, literature and ideas.

2Traditionally used for sacred or historical books – Edward Hall’s The vnion of the two noble and illustrious famelies of Lancastre and Yorke (1548), John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (Acts and Monuments, 1563), Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577) – the in-folio format, with the exception of the in-plano, is the largest printing format for books. In addition to the fact that it is sometimes more economical to publish a single work in this format than several in-quarto volumes, the in-folio itself carries a special meaning that the other smaller formats do not have to this degree, which is why, for example, The Workes of the Most High and Mightie Prince, Iames by the Grace of God, King of Great Britaine etc. by King James VI of Scotland and I of England were published in this prestigious format.

3What makes the 1623 Folio unique is that, for the first time, a volume of this format had been devoted exclusively to plays, unlike The Workes of Beniamin Jonson, published as an in-folio in 1616, which mixed drama, court masks and poems. Fifteen years after the second edition of Shakespeare’s Folio (1632), the same research of generic unity presided over the publication of the other large folio of dramatic works in the period, that of the Comedies and Tragedies Written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen, published in 1647.

4Generally speaking, because it’s a costly publication, the in-folio is characterized by the presence of a highly elaborate paratext, involving a substantial number of authors/artists and highlighting the printer’s talent: title, frontispiece, table of contents, dedicatory epistles, tribute poems, index, illustrations and, of course, author attributions. The paratext thus contributes to making the book a monument: Foxe’s is “a just tomb” raised to the spirits of martyrs, like a shrine (see Thomas Ridley’s introductory text), while the Folio of 1623 is likened to Shakespeare’s “remains” by John Heminge and Henry Condell in their dedicatory epistle to William and Philip Pembroke (sig. A2v). The paratext is one of the ways in which the in-folio format raises the question of the status of the author or authors, as is evident in the case of William Shakespeare, or, in another field, George Chapman, who published his translations of the Iliad (1609, 1611), the Odyssey (1614) and the Complete Works of Homer (1616, 1624) in this format.

5The first four articles in this issue (by Lucy Munro, Jonathan Pinkerton, Béatrice Chaix Rouchon and Mickaël Savchenko) each tackle in their own way this dual question of authorship and unity in in-folios. From this perspective, Lucy Munro seeks to rebalance the prestige that authors and theater companies bring to in-folio editions. In her article “‘Masters of their own Goods’: Company Politics and Folio Publication, 1616-1652”, she analyzes in detail the links between the in-folio editions of Jonson (1616), Shakespeare (1623), Beaumont and Fletcher (1647) and Fletcher (1652) and the King’s Men. She shows how, over a period stretching from the reign of James I to the Commonwealth, the relationship between book and stage transformed in a rapidly changing political and commercial context. This question of authorship is also the subject of Jonathan Pinkerton’s article, “Blount, Marlowe, and the First Folio”. In it, he examines the role of Edward Blount, “self-appointed executor” of Christopher Marlowe’s unfinished poem Hero and Leander, in the transmission of Marlowe’s works, as well as those of John Lyly and William Shakespeare, in the publication of the First Folio, in which his “professional authority” made him a participant. This article depicts the portrait of a man concerned with “distributing the goods of the dead”. In her article “Michael Drayton’s 1619 Folio: ‘Small Volume’ and ‘Monument’”, Béatrice Chaix Rouchon examines the relationship between the physical size of the folio as an object and the assertion of authorship and offers an analysis of Michael Drayton’s strategy. Despite his humble stance, the very conception of his work demonstrates a real ambition for status. Small in size and number of pages, this in-folio nonetheless possesses characteristics highlighted by a comparison with the folios of Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare, which testify to Michael Drayton’s concern to assert the dignity of the poet, his volume being made up solely of poems, to the exclusion of his plays. Finally, in his article on Michael Taylor, “‘Euery thing so interwouen, one with another’: le paratexte dans All the Workes of Iohn Taylor the Water Poet (1630)”, Mickaël Savchenko returns to this notion of unity, which is severely undermined by this atypical and unclassifiable in-folio of the works of the man known since 1612 as “the water poet”. Through a detailed presentation of the way in which this volume – and especially its paratext, as elaborate as it is disparate – is constructed, he shows how John Taylor uses the practices usually associated with the in-folio to signify the paradox of his situation as an author who, while taking the opposite view of the scholarly world of his time, nevertheless intends to promote himself as an author.

6While often used to promote poets and playwrights during their lifetime, the in-folio format can also play a decisive role in the reception of their work, as can be seen from the articles by Rémi Vuillemin, Nathalie Dauvois, Line Cottegnies and Jean-Louis Haquette. The importance of Petrarchanism in Europe, and particularly in England, is well established, but the study of two in-folio editions of Petrarch’s works in Latin and Italian enables Rémi Vuillemin to shed new light on how the poet’s work was received in Shakespeare’s homeland. In his article “L’in-folio bâlois des œuvres de Pétrarque (1554 / 1581) et l’historiographie du pétrarquisme anglais”, he highlights the zones of passage and porosity between Latin and Italian Petrarch, and underlines the image of the poet as a proto-Protestant. The question of the role of the in-folio in reception is also at the heart of Nathalie Dauvois’ article on Pierre de Ronsard: “Ronsard, le monument de ses œuvres et le modèle des poètes classiques. De l’in-folio de 1584 aux in-folio de 1623 ». Tracing an editorial path that began during the author’s lifetime, she shows how the in-folio format’s unifying and monumental function in 1584 gave way to the risk of scattering this unity when Ronsard’s editors posthumously published him in two in-folios saturated with scholarly commentaries intended to elevate his status to that of Homer, Virgil and Ovid. Paradoxically, this choice led to a certain disaffection for Ronsard in a more worldly 17th century. Returning to a fundamental question raised by the classification of the plays in the 1623 Folio into three distinct genres – “Comedies”, “Histories” and “Tragedies” – Line Cottegnies addresses the effect of seriality induced by the order in which the historical plays were presented by John Heminge and Henry Condell, from King John to Henry VIII. In “The First Folio and the Invention of Serial Shakespeare – Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3”, she analyzes in detail the conditions of composition, performance and publication of these plays, and questions the notion of “the author’s intentionality” that underlies the idea of seriality. In particular, she focuses on the three parts of Henry VI, showing that the first part (never published before 1623) was not conceived as the beginning of a coherent sequence, and that Heminge and Condell were responsible for creating the figure of Shakespeare as historian of England as it came to be known in posterity. Finally, in his article “Paradise lost in-folio: sketch of a continental survey, from London to Paris, via Verona”, Jean-Louis Haquette studies the reception of John Milton’s poem in Europe in the 18th century through its in-folio editions, in particular the Italian translation that the Italian Paolo Rolli published in England in 1729, the one he published in Verona in 1742 (the first on the Continent) and the Paris edition in 1792. The author shows how, with the 1742 in-folio published in Verona, we witness the consecration of the poet whom Addison wanted to set up as the equal of Homer, against Voltaire’s opinion – already contested by Rolli, who was also anxious to defend Italian poetry – which explains the delay with which France recognized Milton’s genius.

7In addition to the huge investment (in terms of money, time and skilled labor) involved in this prestigious format, the role of printers and booksellers in a rapidly developing book market must also be carefully considered. The publication of this type of work is always a big financial undertaking: John Day almost went bankrupt for the Book of Martyrs, due to the cost of paper, and Heminge and Condell strongly insisted that readers should buy the book first and foremost (“To the great variety of readers”, sig. A3). Even before the Folio of 1623 was produced, commercial and legal negotiations were needed to ensure that the plays in the possession of the theatrical companies could be bought back for publication.

8These material aspects of the book are precisely addressed in the articles by Guillaume Coatalen, Lara Hansen-Morse and Julian T. Neuhauser. The latter, in “Printing-Practice-as-Research: Using Letterpress for Research and Teaching Early Modern Literature”, draws on a now well-established critical literature as well as on his personal pedagogical experience to show how reproducing as faithfully as possible the writing and printing gestures of the Shakespearean era helps to illuminate our understanding of both non-dramatic (Shakespeare’s Sonnets, for example) and dramatic texts (Shakespeare’s plays). The end of the article highlights the role of practice-as-research in the study of four lines from scene 2 or 3 (depending on the editors) of act II of Romeo and Juliet. Dedicated to a specific copy of Shakespeare’s Folio, Guillaume Coatalen’s article, “Reading a Reader’s Marks in Folger Folio 68: Which Lines? (Or a Study in Frustration)” looks at the material aspect of the reception of the first Folio, detailing and analyzing all the marks left on the book by an anonymous reader, who undoubtedly wanted to build up a collection of commonplaces, guided either by the aesthetic quality of Shakespeare’s poetry, or by its moral value. Finally, in “Hidden Gems: The Watermarks of the First Folio”, Lara Hansen-Morse makes a detailed study of the watermarks on the paper used to print the First Folio. By analyzing the distortions in the crown design specific to the so-called “crown paper”, she shows that the Jaggard printers used different paper suppliers.

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Gilles Bertheau, « Folio & Co: Shakespeare and the theatrum libri »Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare [En ligne], 42 | 2024, mis en ligne le 10 décembre 2024, consulté le 08 février 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/8472 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/137sr

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Gilles Bertheau

Université de Tours

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