Blount, Marlowe, and the First Folio
Résumés
Edward Blount, membre du consortium d’édition du Premier Folio, était un investisseur assidu dans les poètes et dramaturges anglais de l’époque moderne, publiant des œuvres de William Alexander, Ben Jonson, George Chapman, John Lyly et Christopher Marlowe, ce dernier étant à la fois son ami et l’exécuteur autoproclamé d’une partie de son patrimoine littéraire. Blount l’a affirmé dans la dédicace imprimée de sa publication de 1598 de Hero and Leander, déclarant : « Par ces méditations (comme par une volonté intellectuelle) je me considère l’exécuteur de l’auteur malheureusement décédé de ce poème. » L’édition de Blount a été publiée en parallèle à une autre édition précoce de Hero and Leander, imprimée plus tard la même année, qui incluait une suite posthume de Chapman. L’aval de Blount, ainsi que son implication dans la diffusion des œuvres de Marlowe, comprenaient également la publication de la traduction par Marlowe du premier livre de Lucain (1600), ainsi que la publication de quatre éditions ultérieures de Hero and Leander. Un intérêt critique important ces dernières années s’est concentré sur une possible collaboration entre Marlowe et Shakespeare, la main de Marlowe étant identifiée dans 1-3 Henry VI. Dans ce contexte, on a accordé moins d’attention critique à des figures telles que Blount, qui ont contribué de manière significative à la transmission ultérieure des œuvres des deux auteurs. Dans cet article, je soutiens que la relation personnelle de Blount avec Marlowe, et sa volonté d’aider à préserver ses œuvres, trouve un parallèle dans son investissement ultérieur dans le Premier Folio, et met en lumière le fait que l’investissement de Blount n’était pas simplement financier.
Entrées d’index
Mots-clés :
Marlowe Christopher, Blount Edward, Shakespeare William, Lyly John, édition de la première modernité, théâtre de la première modernité, Premier Folio, libraires, formation du canonKeywords:
Marlowe Christopher, Blount Edward, Shakespeare William, Lyly John, early modern publishing, early modern drama, First Folio, stationers, canon formationTexte intégral
- 1 Marlowe, Christopher, Hero and Leander by Christopher Marloe. Printed by Adam Islip for Edward Blou (...)
- 2 Gary Taylor and Rory Loughnane, “The Canon and Chronology of Shakespeare’s Works”, The New Oxford S (...)
1Edward Blount, part of the publishing consortium for the First Folio, was a serial investor in early modern English poets and dramatists, publishing works by William Alexander, Ben Jonson, George Chapman, John Lyly, and Christopher Marlowe, the latter to whom he was a friend and the self-proclaimed executor of part of his literary estate. Blount claimed as much in the dedication printed in his 1598 publication of Hero and Leander, “By these meditations (as by an intellectuall will) I suppose my selfe executor to the unhappily deceased author of this Poem.”1 Blount’s edition was published parallel to another early edition of Hero and Leander, printed later that year, which included a posthumous continuation by Chapman. Blount’s endorsement of, and involvement with, the dissemination of Marlowe’s works also included the publication of Marlowe’s translation of Lucan’s First Book (1600), as well as the publication of four later editions of Hero and Leander. Much critical interest in recent years has focused on a possible working relationship between Marlowe and Shakespeare, with Marlowe’s hand identified in 1-3 Henry VI.2 In this light, less critical attention has been given to figures such as Blount who contributed significantly to the later transmission of both authors’ works. In this article, I submit that Blount’s personal connection with Marlowe, and his willingness to help preserve his works, finds a parallel in his later investment in the First Folio, in which his involvement was primarily paratextual – specifically epitextual, by means more without than within the text – all of which sheds light upon how Blount’s investment was not simply financial, and indeed may have even been personal.
- 3 Gary Taylor, “Blount [Blunt], Edward (bap. 1562, d. in or before 1632), bookseller and translator,” (...)
- 4 Idem, §2.
- 5 R. B. McKerrow, ed., A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England, Scotland and Ireland, and (...)
- 6 Taylor, “Blount [Blunt], Edward”, op. cit., §5.
- 7 The three Boolean searches of the ESTC referenced were (W-publisher= Blount and W-year= 1578-1632 a (...)
2Edward Blount (bap. 1562) was the son of a merchant tailor, believed to have been the sixth of eight children and to have likely attended the Merchant Taylors’ School, a pupil of Richard Mulcaster alongside Edmund Spenser and Lancelot Andrewes.3 Blount became known, even contemporaneously, as having “an unparalleled gift for recognizing new works that would eventually become classics,” but had formidable assistance attaining that status.4 From 1578-1588 he was apprenticed to William Ponsonby, “the most important publisher of the Elizabethan period.”5 Gary Taylor has categorised Blount’s career, after being freed, as having “cosmopolitan ambition”; Blount specialised in cosmopolitan texts, publishing European histories, travelogues, and translations, and had cosmopolitan connections, including with English ambassadors which he used to sell rare books, even banned books, and manuscripts.6 Between 1578 and 1632, the year of Blount’s death, the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) contains eighty-seven records for unique publications on which Blount is listed as a publisher.7
- 8 Taylor, “Blount [Blunt], Edward”, op. cit., §3. The ESTC’s records corroborate this, with the sligh (...)
- 9 This percent is based on available data but may be skewed toward Blount’s later career. Although he (...)
3In contrast with his master Ponsonby, Blount’s publications were markedly secular; Taylor notes that Blount published no sermons until his partnership with William Barret, in 1609, despite the genre being both “popular and profitable.”8 Data from the ESTC indicate that, between 1609 and 1632, Blount published at least twenty-three items of religious nature – sermons, Bible proverbs, meditations, etc. – against a repertoire of at least eighty-seven individual publications. This means that, although Blount seems to have not published religious materials for nearly the first half of his career, by the end of it approximately 26 percent of his total publications were religious in nature.9
- 10 For a detailed accounting of how early modern poetry was formed by its stationers, see Megan Heffer (...)
- 11 See Lukas Erne, “Shakespeare’s Publishers” in Shakespeare and the Book Trade, Cambridge, Cambridge (...)
- 12 Blount also published works by William Alexander on five occasions, but these spanned fewer years ( (...)
- 13 Blount’s five publications of Hero and Leander (1598, 1609, 1613, 1617, 1622) roughly correspond wi (...)
- 14 Erne, op. cit., p. 158.
4Prior to his partnership with Barret in 1609 and subsequent increased publication of religious materials, Blount published primarily verse (i.e., drama, poetry, songs). It was during this time that Blount published Love’s Martyr (1601), a collection including poetry by Shakespeare, Marston, Chapman, and Jonson.10 Notably, Love’s Martyr contains Blount’s only Shakespearean publication prior to the First Folio. Lukas Erne has called its inclusion “marginal” implying that Blount was, at least at this time, less enthusiastic regarding Shakespeare’s literary preservation.11 Before Love’s Martyr, the first untranslated English-language verse Blount published was his first edition of Hero and Leander (1598). Blount professed himself executor of Marlowe’s literary will in its dedication to Sir Thomas Walsingham. Blount’s multiple reprints of the work (1609, 1613, 1617, 1622) made it his single most repeated publication, making Marlowe’s poem his most often repeated investment.12,13 Additionally, as Lukas Erne has observed, Thomas Thorpe, a friend and stationer associate of Blount, may have received a manuscript of Marlowe’s translation of Lucan’s First Book (of Pharsalia) from Blount, as Thorpe’s 1600 edition of it includes a dedication addressed to “His Kind and Trve Friend: Edward Blvnt,” establishing at least partial credit for the dissemination of that work of Marlowe’s as well.14 But regarding Blount’s direct dissemination of Marlowe’s works, the frequency with, and length over, which he published Hero and Leander is good evidence of the poem’s financial viability, and Blount’s commitment to, or otherwise belief in, the worthiness of the poem to be reprinted (as opposed to printing materials which were financially viable but without literary ambition). It is perhaps even suggestive, along with Thorpe’s dedication, of Blount’s early commitment to preserving Marlowe’s canon.
- 15 Gary Taylor describes De la Sagesse as “one of the foundational texts of post-Christian philosophic (...)
- 16 J. D. Chassanion, The theatre of Gods iudgements: or, a collection of histories out of sacred, eccl (...)
- 17 Meres, Francis. 1598. Palladis tamia Wits treasury being the second part of Wits common wealth. By (...)
5This commitment by Blount to a single literary work’s preservation is rivaled by only one other enterprise: his repeated publication of a translation of Pierre Charron’s De la Sagesse (Of Wisdom, 1601), a French-language writing, which Blount published, in partnership with William Aspley, four times across twenty-two years (c. 1608, c. 1615, c. 1620, c. 1630). Charron’s work was an influential contribution to neo-sceptical philosophy, and interpreted in some circles as atheistic in leaning.15 Marlowe’s works, certainly by 1598, would still have held the spectre of his violent death only five years prior, as well as his alleged atheism. Indeed, Thomas Beard’s Theatre of God’s Judgement (1597) libellously alleges that Marlowe “denied God and his sonne Christ, and not only in word blasphemed the trinitie, but also . . . wrote bookes against it,”16 while next year Francis Meres’ Palladis Tamia (1598) asserts “our tragicall poet Marlow for his Epicurisme and Atheisme had a tragicall death.”17 It would be overreaching, of course, to suggest that Blount was sympathetic to atheism; however, at a minimum, he tolerated religious unorthodoxy, repeatedly publishing an infamously alleged atheist’s work (Hero and Leander) as well as an infamously unorthodox Christian work (Of Wisdom) at a time when even toleration was dangerous.
- 18 Reavley Gair, “Walsingham, Sir Thomas (1560/61-1630), literary patron”, ODNB, 2004, §1. James Bedna (...)
- 19 Arthur Freeman, “Marlowe, Kyd, and the Dutch Church Libel”, English Literary Renaissance 3.1, 1973, (...)
- 20 For context regarding these events from Kyd’s perspective, see J. R. ‘Ronnie’ Mulryne’s ODNB entry, (...)
- 21 William Dinsmore Briggs first showed that the document concerning Marlowe’s prosecution for atheism (...)
6Marlowe died in mysterious circumstances on 30 May 1593, generating much popular and scholarly speculation. Some of the men accompanying Marlowe in Deptford on that fateful day have been linked with Elizabeth’s previous spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham. Interestingly, the person to whom Blount dedicated Hero and Leander, and to whom he endeared himself (while posthumously praising Marlowe), was Sir Thomas Walsingham, first cousin once removed from the noted spymaster.18 Thomas Walsingham and Marlowe were friends, and it was at Walsingham’s Scadbury residence that Marlowe was sought prior to his arrest in connection with the Dutch Church Libel.19 Shortly after his death, Marlowe’s former roommate and playwriting contemporary, Thomas Kyd, wrote two letters to Sir John Puckering, Head of the Privy Council. Kyd too had been arrested in connection with the Dutch Church Libel, and through his letters was hoping to regain favour.20 In the second letter, Kyd broadly disassociated himself from Marlowe’s character, but also made a point to specifically disassociate himself from Marlowe’s alleged atheism.21 In his desperation, Kyd was willing to implicate others, writing:
- 22 Thomas Kyd, “Kyd’s Letter to Sir John Puckering,” §6, as made digitally available by the Internatio (...)
For more assurance that I was not of that vile opinion[, atheism], lett it but
please your Lp to enquire of such as he conversd withall, that is which I am
geven to vnderstand with Harriot, Warner, Royden, and some stationers
in Paules churchyard, whom I in no sort can accuse nor will excuse
by reson of his companie, of whose consent if I had been, no question but
I also shold haue been of their consort, for ex minimo vestigio artifex agnoscit artificem.22 [All italics, bolding, original]
- 23 Other scholars who believe Kyd’s “stationers” comment likely refers to Blount include Tucker Brooke (...)
- 24 Blount had relationships with English ambassadors and was implicated in the trade of banned books ( (...)
7Given Blount’s preface to Hero and Leander and self-proclaimed closeness to the “unhappily deceased author,” it is plausible that when mentioning “some stationers” Kyd was referring to Blount as one of those who tolerated or shared “that vile opinion” along with Marlowe.23 Taken altogether, a picture emerges in which Blount and Marlowe shared a professional sphere and operated in the same approximate location at the same time. The men were also close together in age, only two years apart at birth, and it is plausible that both men either tolerated or entertained unorthodox religious views. It is even plausible they had both, at points, operated alongside or as state agents on the fringes of legality.24 Perhaps it should be little surprise they were friends.
- 25 Kiséry, op. cit., p. 364. Kiséry notes that, at the time of Marlowe’s death, his only published wor (...)
- 26 Idem, p. 374.
- 27 Idem, p. 370-371. See also Michelle O’Callaghan, Crafting Poetry Anthologies in Renaissance England(...)
- 28 Kiséry, op. cit., p. 367. Kiséry notes that Blount’s association with the Black Bear pre-dates Marl (...)
- 29 Kiséry, op. cit., p. 369. Blount shared the title for Hero and Leander with his friend and stationi (...)
- 30 In As You Like It, Phoebe says “Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might: / ‘Who ever loved that (...)
8Just as Blount’s English-verse publishing career began with Marlowe, so did Marlowe’s literary fame begin with Blount.25 András Kiséry has demonstrated how Marlowe’s late sixteenth-century popularity in London’s book trade centered on St. Paul’s Churchyard and the Black Bear bookshop, though “[i]n contradistinction to the much later Shakespeare folio, the Marlowe that emerged from the Bear was a distinctly and visibly collaborative one […] even as it strive[d] to assert the ascription of the text to the dead author.”26 Kiséry imagines the Bear may have been something resembling an early version of a “publishing house,” with its constituent stationers “making legal arrangements only when [it] was necessary to signal that the title belonged to the shop, and [...] the legal arrangements d[id] not adequately represent the realities of the underlying transactions [...] [indicative of a] shift of focus from the booksellers to the shop.”27 At a minimum, Kiséry argues, Blount seems to have had a share of the Black Bear starting in 1600, and may have been selling books from it as early as 1598.28 Moreover, Blount and the other stationers at the Bear worked to establish Marlowe “as something like a brand name,” and in doing so the Bear “did more than just divulge Marlowe’s [oeuvres]: it completed, joined, combined, isolated, and shaped them.” However, despite his early connection to Marlowe’s brand, Blount fell into financial hardship in the 1620s, shortly after his publication of the First Folio, and in 1624 had to sell off his most financially reliable title, Hero and Leander.29 While the dedication to Hero and Leander certainly implies that Marlowe was more personally beloved by Blount than Shakespeare, it is worth underscoring that, for most of Blount’s career, he likely saw Marlowe as a better investment too, a better “dead shepherd” to greener pastures than Shakespeare himself.30 It is fitting then that Blount at his lowest was buoyed, in part, by Marlowe, as Marlowe was posthumously buoyed, in part, by Blount; however, given the efforts undertaken by Blount and the others at the Bear ‘publishing house’ to financially grow Marlowe’s brand, it should not be surprising.
- 31 Kiséry also notes that, while a shop collecting and disseminating the body of works of a contempora (...)
- 32 Scragg, op. cit., p. 8-9. Scragg notes only the brother’s involvement in Samuel Daniel’s works, but (...)
- 33 Idem, p. 9.
- 34 Ibid. Scragg also notes that the Second Folio was published too in 1632, but by Robert Allott, to w (...)
- 35 Scragg, op. cit., p. 9. Scragg sets herself in opposition to the historic view, as presented by Leo (...)
9If Blount learned from Marlowe the value of a brand, he seems to have learned from Shakespeare the value of a collection. Leah Scragg notes that the publication of collected dramatic works was a novel practice in the late-Elizabethan and Jacobean eras,31 and provides this prospective chain of inspiration for Blount’s publication of collections before and after the First Folio: in 1604, Blount published Sir William Alexander’s collected plays; in 1616, Ben Jonson published his own Workes; then, alongside the First Folio in 1623, John Daniel (in collaboration with Simon Waterson) published his brother’s, Samuel Daniel’s, collected works.32 Scragg asserts that Blount’s involvement in the First Folio may have been prompted by Jonson’s 1616 self-publication, and moreover that Jonson’s commemorative poem in the prefatory materials of the First Folio (which contains the famous lines “how farre thou didst our Lily out-shine, / Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowes mighty line.”) may have inspired Blount to publish Lyly’s collected works, Sixe Court Comedies, in 1632. Blount retained publishing rights to sixteen of the plays in the First Folio until 1630, long after he had sold off Hero and Leander. 33Blount acquired a license to publish Lyly’s works in 1628, and it is Scragg’s belief that he, either due to increased age or decreased means, opted out of publishing the Second Folio to ensure Sixe Court Comedies’ completion, potentially at the cost of his health, as the collection finally appeared in 1632, the same year as his death.34 Based on Blount’s financial hardship shortly after having published the First Folio alone, it would be easy to assume that he had published Lyly, Marlowe’s fellow Canterbury-born dramatist, in the hopes of a similar, eventual, payoff; however, Scragg pushes back against this idea, arguing that because of his age and that he died the same year as Sixe Court Comedies’ publication, it seems likely that his publication of Lyly “was not simply a commercially motivated enterprise.”35 Blount appears to have been less motivated by a prospective payoff than a prospective legacy.
- 36 Peter Blayney, “The Publication of Playbooks” in A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. (...)
- 37 Alan Farmer and Zachary Lesser responded to Blayney’s initial argument in their article “The Popula (...)
- 38 Erne, op. cit., p. 158, p. 183-185. Erne has argued that, although Blount has been called “the pers (...)
10Further evidence for this position is Peter Blayney’s argument that playbooks were not generally seen as a “shortcut to wealth” because a publisher-bookseller, like Blount, “would normally have to sell about 60 percent of a first edition to break even,” and that “fewer than 21 percent of the plays published [during the time Blount was operating] reached a second edition inside nine years [meaning] no more than one play in five would have returned the publisher’s initial investment inside five years. Not one in twenty [...] during its first year.”36 Blayney’s broader argument is now contested,37 but regardless it seems unlikely that Blount, nearly seventy years old at the time he was seeking a publication of Lyly’s collected works, would have fully expected to see a return on his investment. Blount’s involvement with the First Folio as an attempt to establish Shakespeare’s financial brand has been questioned,38 and, given his late age at the time of his publishing of both the First Folio and Lyly’s collected works, it seems likely that Blount understood from Shakespeare that the value of publishing a collected works lied in more than its financial prospects alone.
- 39 Blount and Isaac Jaggard were the folio’s printers, as indicated on its title page; William Jaggard (...)
- 40 Massai, op. cit., p. 145. Massai argues that “authoritative” contemporaneously also meant something (...)
- 41 Idem, p. 132. Modern scholarship regarding stationers not being solely, or sometimes primarily, fin (...)
- 42 Massai, op. cit., p. 132-133.
- 43 Scragg, op. cit., p. 3. See also Amy Lidster’s Publishing the History Play in the Time of Shakespea (...)
- 44 Lorenzo Ducci, Ars Aulica Or the Courtiers Arte [Arte aulica.], London, Printed by Melch. Bradwood (...)
- 45 John Earle, Micro-Cosmographie, Or, A Peece of the World Discovered in Essayes and Characters [Peec (...)
- 46 Gerolamo Franchi di Conestaggio, The Historie of the Vniting of the Kingdom of Portugall to the Cro (...)
- 47 Scragg, op. cit., p. 4. I am paraphrasing Scragg’s depiction of these paratexts’ tones. Any origina (...)
- 48 For succinct descriptions of “paratext,” (a term first introduced by Gérard Genette in Introduction (...)
11It should be emphasised that Blount was not alone in his desire to publish the First Folio, nor able to do it alone. He was part of a consortium.39 Sonia Massai has argued that Blount’s greatest contribution (along with the dedicatee patrons, the brothers Herbert) to the folio was his literary credentials, or authority.40 As Scragg and others before have, Massai challenges the view that stationers were solely profit-driven, and argues instead that, like the authors they published, they were ideological actors.41 This hypothesis in conjunction with the collaborative nature of publishing means that the constituent members of these consortiums (stationers, editors, financiers, etc.) undertook different roles to fulfil the same goal, operating in a collaborative financial, ideological, and even artistic endeavour. Of the First Folio, Massai writes that its publication “required a combination of authorizing strategies associated with Shakespeare’s company, his stationers, and his patrons, rather than the intervention of any of these agents operating in isolation from (or in competition with) each other,” and that the First Folio’s prefatory paratextual materials were “clearly informed by Blount’s publishing strategies [...] includ[ing] the lavish use of ornaments to highlight the individual sections of their paratexts and the prominence accorded to dedications.”42 In her article, Scragg indicates some of Blount’s publishing strategies via his paratexts, noting the different purposes Blount’s prefatory materials generally served, which are instructive as to both his attempts to mediate the text for its prospective consumers, as well as his own investment in the publication itself.43 While Blount’s dedication to Thomas Walsingham in Hero and Leander (1598) utilises a personal and dutiful tone to assert himself as Marlowe’s literary executor, in Ars aulica or The Courtiers Arte (1607), he adopts a gently persuasive tone, asserting the appropriateness of the text for its courtier audience;44 in Micro-Cosmographie’s (1628) letter “To the Reader,” he strikes a defensive tone, justifying the publication of works which the authors themselves would not endorse;45 and in History of the Uniting of the Kingdom of Portugal to the Crown of Castille (1600), he even admits his responsibility for, but personal ignorance of, the text that follows.46,47 Scragg and Massai are pointing at two halves of the same thing; Blount’s trademark paratexts can be divided into two types: his peritexts, those “lavish ornaments” for which he had a knack, and his epitexts, the weight achieved when his name was thrown behind a production.48 Both types of paratext traded on some version of his personal credibility as a stationer.
- 49 Massai, op. cit., p. 133.
- 50 Idem, p. 144.
- 51 Idem, p. 146. For an examination of how anthologies featuring extracts of Shakespeare’s works shape (...)
- 52 The International Society for Knowledge Organisation (ISKO) describes paratexts as typically having (...)
- 53 Taylor, “Blount [Blunt], Edward”, op. cit., §2.
- 54 Further than my scope, Ben Higgins in his chapter, “‘Master William Shakesperes works’ Edward Bloun (...)
12In contrast with, or in addendum to, the belief expressed by Scragg that Jonson’s 1616 self-publication of his Workes inspired Blount’s participation in the First Folio, Massai argues that “Blount’s earlier dramatic publications provide a far more relevant link and influential model for Shakespeare’s Folio.”49 Instead of singularly constructing Shakespeare as a “self-authorizing” originem motus – a construction which Massai underscores the First Folio was attempting to create, but was not financially predicated upon – Massai notes how the First Folio’s paratexts give significant prominence to its peripheral agents, including Edward Blount, who helped authorise the publication, elevating Shakespeare’s plays from theatre to literature.50 Massai also notes that, when reissued in 1632 with minor edits, notable alterations were made to the paratextual preliminaries, such as adding poems like John Milton’s tribute to Shakespeare. She suggests that, while existing copies indicate readers focused on annotating the plays, there is evidence from manuscript commonplace books that readers viewed paratexts (epistles, letters, dedications) as essential, and often repurposed them.51 Although Massai is specifying the physical peritextual components of the First Folio, she is arguing implicitly that Blount’s contribution to the First Folio was primarily epitextual, providing, along with the brothers Herbert, authority (literary credentials).52 Like the prefatory peritexts, Blount’s epitextual authority was apparently meant, or at least readily availed itself to be, repurposed. He had built up his credibility with an “unparalleled gift for recognizing […] classics,”53 with Marlowe chief among his repertoire, and used his considerable influence to disseminate the canons of Shakespeare and Lyly.54
- 55 Bednarz, op. cit., p. 99. Bednarz submits the following chain of collaborative inspiration: that Ma (...)
- 56 Gary Taylor, “Shakespeare and Others: The Authorship of Henry the Sixth, Part One”, Medieval and Re (...)
- 57 Paul Vincent, “Unsolved Mysteries in Henry the Sixth, Part Two”, Notes and Queries 246, 2001, 270-2 (...)
- 58 Brian Vickers, “Incomplete Shakespeare: Or, Denying Coauthorship in 1 Henry VI”, Shakespeare Quarte (...)
- 59 Hugh Craig, “The Three Parts of Henry VI” in Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship, (...)
- 60 Hugh Craig and John Burrows, “A Collaboration about a Collaboration: The Authorship of King Henry V (...)
- 61 Gary Taylor and John V. Nance, “Imitation or Collaboration? Marlowe and the Early Shakespeare Canon (...)
- 62 Santiago Segarra, Mark Eisen, Gabriel Egan, and Alejandro Ribeiro, “Attributing the Authorship of t (...)
- 63 Taylor and Loughnane, op. cit.
- 64 Taylor and Loughnane, op. cit., p. 493-499, p. 513-517. Citing the work of Paul Vincent (“Unsolved (...)
- 65 Taylor and Loughnane, op. cit., p. 495-496. See also STC (2nd ed.) 17834, or ESTC citation no. S110 (...)
13The collaborative efforts undertaken by Blount and others to create the First Folio are paralleled by Marlowe and Shakespeare themselves. James Bednarz describes their relationship as “better construed as an open-ended intellectual collaboration than an act of plagiarism,” with the authors impacting “each other’s conceptions of tragedy,” and notes that Marlowe seems to have based Edward II partly on Shakespeare’s Henry VI and its proto-trope of the weak king.55 Modern and recent scholarship by Gary Taylor,56 Paul Vincent,57 Brian Vickers ,58 Hugh Craig,59 Hugh Craig and John Burrows,60 Gary Taylor and John Nance,61 Segarra et alii,62 and Gary Taylor and Rory Loughnane63 suggests that Marlowe and Shakespeare worked together even more closely than previously thought. By use of statistical analysis, feminine ending percentages, rare vocabulary, and classical allusion errors, Taylor and Loughnane note the presence of Marlowe’s hand in certain scenes of Shakespeare’s attributed canon, including all three parts of Henry VI.64 Interestingly, as noted by the coauthors, Francis Meres in Palladis tamia (1598) did not attribute any of the triptych to Shakespeare, despite attributing other works to him.65 This might be read as early contemporary evidence that the Henry VI plays were not seen as exclusively Shakespeare’s; however, the attribution of Titus Andronicus to Shakespeare alone would seem to rule against this. Blount, with his “unparalleled gift,” would have been well versed in both authors’ works, and it is possible he saw publishing the First Folio a continuation of his duties as “literary executor” to Marlowe.
- 66 See John Lyly, Sixe Court Comedies often Presented and Acted before Queene Elizabeth, by the Childr (...)
- 67 In 1632, Blount also published William Crompton’s marriage sermon, A wedding-ring; Nicolas Faret’s (...)
14I now offer a prospective chain of influence, a thread connecting Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Lyly through Blount. It is evident that Blount and Marlowe were acquaintances. After Marlowe’s death, Blount took professional and personal efforts to keep Marlowe’s work alive, and found financial incentive, and occupational credibility, in doing so. Blount spent the next twenty-five years of his career further building this professional authority. Perhaps inspired by his former master Ponsonby’s ability to shape a canon, or Jonson’s involvement in the publication of his Workes, Blount threw his considerable authority behind the creation of the First Folio, chiefly by influencing its paratexts, both the act of its printing as well as the authoritative associations implicit in his involvement. Blount may have remembered Marlowe’s hand in parts of the folio, making his participation in its dissemination conceivably a final act of service to his friend. Though this act proved to be financially self-sacrificial, enough so that he had to sell off the greatest of his treasures – his rights to publish Hero and Leander, the most lucrative title of his repertoire – he must have ultimately found it worthwhile, as he opted to do it again only nine years later, with Lyly’s Sixe Court Comedies, shortly before his death. But in this final collection Blount now said of his role as a publisher, “I am (my Lord) no executor, yet I presume to distribute the Goods of the Dead[.]”66 This trans-career change from his earlier description of himself as a literary executor to this simpler, less official but still evocative, “distributor of goods,” is telling. Given how Blount fit his peritexts to their audiences, it may be an attempt to somehow persuade the dedicatee, Viscount Lumley of Waterford, but I suspect this particular part of this end-of-career dedication has to do more with its dedicator than dedicatee.67 Across his career, at the unmoved core of his self-identification, Blount believed himself to be a distributor of the goods of the dead. By 1632 he may just as well have been referring to the texts of Lyly as to those of Marlowe, of Shakespeare, and even to those paratexts goods he himself offered – his artistry, his authority, and his “unparalleled” eye. The goods Blount was ultimately able to distribute of himself were the financial means, the social authority, and the personal will (all of which was fostered by printing Marlowe’s epic, but not his works) which he leveraged late in his career to heave, in a great finale, Shakespeare’s and Lyly’s canons from drama into literature.
Notes
1 Marlowe, Christopher, Hero and Leander by Christopher Marloe. Printed by Adam Islip for Edward Blount, London, 1598. Made digitally available through Archive.org, identifier: bim_early-english-books-1475-1640_hero-and-leander_marlowe-christopher_1598.
2 Gary Taylor and Rory Loughnane, “The Canon and Chronology of Shakespeare’s Works”, The New Oxford Shakespeare: Authorship Companion, ed. Gary Taylor and Gabriel Egan, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2017, 417-602, p. 493-499, p. 513-517.
3 Gary Taylor, “Blount [Blunt], Edward (bap. 1562, d. in or before 1632), bookseller and translator,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, §1-2 (accessible online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/2686, last accessed 20 January 2024).
4 Idem, §2.
5 R. B. McKerrow, ed., A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England, Scotland and Ireland, and of Foreign Printers of English Books 1557-1640, London, Blades, East & Blades, p. 217. The dictionary also notes that Ponsonby’s publications were primarily political and religious for approximately the first ten years of his practice.
6 Taylor, “Blount [Blunt], Edward”, op. cit., §5.
7 The three Boolean searches of the ESTC referenced were (W-publisher= Blount and W-year= 1578->1632 and W-Country of publica= enk), yielding 85 results; (W-publisher= Blunt and W-year= 1578->1632 and W-Country of publica= enk), yielding 11 results; and (W-publisher= b[lount] and W-year= 1578->1632 and W-Country of publica= enk), yielding 1 result. 10 of the records are repeated in the ESTC due to minor typographical differences within a single publication (e.g., a variant spelling on the title page), making the total 87. My Boolean inventory of Blount’s records, completed prior to the 2023 British Library ransomware attack, supplements volume three of the printed edition of the Short Title Catalogue (2nd. rev. ed.).
8 Taylor, “Blount [Blunt], Edward”, op. cit., §3. The ESTC’s records corroborate this, with the slight modification that a book of sermons was jointly published by Blount and Barret potentially as early as 1608 (A rumor of warres among the times and signes of peace, published “At London: Printed by G. E[ld] for Ed: Blount, and William Barret, [1608]”), and additionally the caveat that Blount is listed in the ESTC’s records as a “publisher” for a 1606 book of meditations (Divine Meditations, published “At London: printed by G. Eld: and are to be sold by Edward Blount, and Francis Burton, 1606.”).
9 This percent is based on available data but may be skewed toward Blount’s later career. Although he began publishing on his own in 1588, the ESTC has only five records of his sixteenth century publications: Odet de La Noue’s translated imprisonment poetry, The Profit of Imprisonment (1594); Charles Tessier’s French language court songs, Le premier liure de chansons & airs de court (c. 1597); John Florio’s translation dictionary, A vvorld of words, or Most copious, and exact dictionarie in Italian and English (1598); Christopher Marlowe’s epic poem Hero and Leander (1598); and George Silver’s fencing manual, Paradoxes of defence (1599). This relative scarcity contrasts against his later career, for example the ESTC has five records for his publications in 1614 alone.
10 For a detailed accounting of how early modern poetry was formed by its stationers, see Megan Heffernan, Making the Miscellany: Poetry, Print, and the History of the Book in Early Modern England, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
11 See Lukas Erne, “Shakespeare’s Publishers” in Shakespeare and the Book Trade, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, 130-185, p. 183, p. 158-159. “Shakespeare’s presence in Love’s Martyr – in terms of both the texts it contains and the way it was advertised – is at best marginal” (p. 183). Erne also notes that Blount entered Pericles and Antony and Cleopatra into the Stationers’ Register on 20 May 1608, but that Pericles did not appear anywhere until 1609, when it was published by Henry Gosson, and that Antony and Cleopatra did not appear anywhere before the First Folio. “[Blount] thus cannot be said to have been either among the significant publishers of Shakespeare’s poems, or prior to 1623, among those of his plays” (Idem, p. 159).
12 Blount also published works by William Alexander on five occasions, but these spanned fewer years (1604-1607) and four separate texts (Aurora [1604], The monarchick tragedies [1604, 1607], A paraenesis to the Prince [1604], The tragedie of Darius [1604]), meaning Blount had a less long-lasting dedication to both Alexander and any individual work of his.
13 Blount’s five publications of Hero and Leander (1598, 1609, 1613, 1617, 1622) roughly correspond with eight sequential editions of Venus and Adonis (1596, 1599, [1602?], 1602 [1607-8?], 1602 [1608-9?], 1602 [1610?], 1617, 1620), and five of Rape of Lucrece (1598, 1600, 1607, 1616, 1624), perhaps indicating a reciprocity between publications of erotica during that time. Marlowe’s translation of Ovid’s elegies was also published four times during approximately the discussed span (two editions [ca. 1599?], two editions [after 1602]). Comparison of the various works was done through the Marlowe Census (edited by Rob Carson) and Shakespeare Census (edited by Adam Hooks and Zachary Lesser) websites. For all mentioned publications, the dates in question are as estimated by the Short Title Catalogue (STC).
14 Erne, op. cit., p. 158.
15 Gary Taylor describes De la Sagesse as “one of the foundational texts of post-Christian philosophical atheism” (“Blount [Blunt], Edward”, op. cit., §6), and refers his readers to Tullio Gregory’s “Pierre Charron’s ‘Scandalous Book’” in Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, ed. Michael Hunter and David Wootton, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992. William Engel, Rory Loughnane, and Grant Williams, eds., in Memory Arts in Renaissance England, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2016, note that Charron was a Catholic advisor to Queen Margaret of France and Navarre, one of the central characters in Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris. They describe Charron’s philosophy, specifically as outlined in De la Sagesse, as deeply affected by Michel De Montaigne’s scepticism as well as contemporary neo-stoicism, primarily concerned with man’s inability to distinguish truth from falsehood despite his eager assumption of having knowledge (p. 201-202). From this perspective I call De la Sagesse (or Of Wisdom) Christian neo-sceptic philosophy more than outright post-Christian atheism, though its unorthodoxy remains its chief descriptor.
16 J. D. Chassanion, The theatre of Gods iudgements: or, a collection of histories out of sacred, ecclesiasticall, and prophane authours concerning the admirable iudgements of God vpon the transgressours of his commandements. Translated out of French and augmented by more than three hundred examples, by Th[omas] Beard, London, 1597, p. 148 Made digitally available through Early English Books Online, https://search.proquest.com/docview/2240871477/?accountid=10923.
17 Meres, Francis. 1598. Palladis tamia Wits treasury being the second part of Wits common wealth. By Francis Meres Maister of Artes of both vniuersities. London, 1598. Made digitally available through Archive.org, identifier: bim_early-english-books-1475-1640_palladis-tamia-wits-tre_meres-francis_1598.
18 Reavley Gair, “Walsingham, Sir Thomas (1560/61-1630), literary patron”, ODNB, 2004, §1. James Bednarz also believes Marlowe’s proximity to the spymaster by way of Thomas suggests he may have been an “agen[t] engaged in anti-Catholic intrigue” (James Bednarz, “Marlowe and the English Literary Scene” in The Cambridge Companion to Christopher Marlowe, ed. Patrick Cheney, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, 90-105, p. 91).
19 Arthur Freeman, “Marlowe, Kyd, and the Dutch Church Libel”, English Literary Renaissance 3.1, 1973, 44-52, p. 46. The entirety of Freeman’s article provides much of the historical context regarding the events of the Dutch Church Libel.
20 For context regarding these events from Kyd’s perspective, see J. R. ‘Ronnie’ Mulryne’s ODNB entry, “Kyd, Thomas (bap. 1558, d. 1594).”
21 William Dinsmore Briggs first showed that the document concerning Marlowe’s prosecution for atheism was not actually fragmentary but had its sheets bound in the wrong order. Briggs’ argument is that (unknown to the authorities, or even Kyd) the pages were derived from a 1549 treatise refuting the views of an unnamed “Late Arrian” who “denyed Christ deuinitie and equalitie, with God the father, affirmynge that he was but a mere Creature, and a passible man only, not God” (“On a Document Concerning Christopher Marlowe”, Studies in Philology 20.2, 1923, 153-59, p. 154, quoting sig. D4v.). Briggs asserts that the text was evidence that, if anything, Marlowe held unorthodox views about Christ’s nature, not atheistic ones (p. 153-159. The actual state of Marlowe’s religious beliefs (or lack thereof) remains unknown and likely unknowable. James Bednarz says of this obscurity “[t]hat Marlowe had been employed [as a state anti-Catholic agent] to counterfeit his religious beliefs makes it impossible, at this late date, to determine his theological allegiances, which might have been in considerable turmoil” (Bednarz, op. cit., p. 92).
22 Thomas Kyd, “Kyd’s Letter to Sir John Puckering,” §6, as made digitally available by the International Marlowe-Shakespeare Society, and who translate the Latin to read: “From the smallest trace the craftsman recognises craft.”
23 Other scholars who believe Kyd’s “stationers” comment likely refers to Blount include Tucker Brooke (The Life of Marlowe and the Tragedy of Dido Queen of Carthage, New York, Gordian Press, [1930] 1966, p. 70, footnote 2), Leah Scragg (“Edward Blount and the History of Lylian Criticism”, The Review of English Studies 46.181, February 1995, 1-10, p. 2), András Kiséry (“An Author and a Bookshop: Publishing Marlowe’s Remains at the Black Bear,” Philological Quarterly 91.3, Summer 2012, 361-392, p. 383), and Rebekah Owens (“Thomas Kyd’s Letter to Sir John Puckering: A Modern Spelling Transcription BL. Harleian MS 6849 ff. 218-19”, Notes and Queries 66.3, September 2019, 397-400, p. 399, footnote 9), though the list is not exhaustive. In Owens’ modernisation of Kyd’s letter, she notes that the others to whom Kyd was likely referring were mathematician and astronomer Thomas Harriot (1560-1621), author of Albion’s England William Warner (?1558-1609), and poet Matthew Royden (1580-1622). Kiséry in his article notes three of the same names, though he believes that “Warner” may refer to Walter Warner (1558-1643), a mathematician and natural philosopher.
24 Blount had relationships with English ambassadors and was implicated in the trade of banned books (Taylor, “Blount [Blunt], Edward”, op. cit., §5), and Marlowe has been suspected, since at least 1925, to have been an “agent in State affairs” (Leslie J. Hotson, The Death of Christopher Marlowe, London, The Nonesuch Press, 1925, p. 62).
25 Kiséry, op. cit., p. 364. Kiséry notes that, at the time of Marlowe’s death, his only published work was Tamburlaine, and that was published anonymously (p. 364). Moreover, although Blount was not the first to publish Marlowe, by publishing Hero and Leander (1598), Blount gave Marlowe his first attributed “runaway success” (p. 361). I note that there was a second 1598 edition of Hero and Leander, published for Paule Linley, which contained George Chapman’s conclusion, and which presumably contributed to, or possibly originated, the epic’s runaway success. For a comparison of the parallel 1598 editions, see the Marlowe Census website, edited by Rob Carson.
26 Idem, p. 374.
27 Idem, p. 370-371. See also Michelle O’Callaghan, Crafting Poetry Anthologies in Renaissance England, “Books in Process”, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020, p. 20-72 (accessible at : https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108867412, last accessed 13 January 2024), in which she notes the collaborative, often anonymous and with nuanced agency, nature of anthology production (p. 27-30, p. 39), and the role of bookshops as cultural “domains” [hubs] (p. 28-29).
28 Kiséry, op. cit., p. 367. Kiséry notes that Blount’s association with the Black Bear pre-dates Marlowe’s first published and attributed poetry, “The passionate shepherd to his love” (1600), though he also acknowledges that its attribution remains uncertain (p. 367-368).
29 Kiséry, op. cit., p. 369. Blount shared the title for Hero and Leander with his friend and stationing partner, Thomas Thorpe, who also fell upon hard times in the early 1620s. Thorpe did not recover from the financial hardship, and died c. 1625. Kiséry believes Thorpe may also have been an associate of the Bear “publishing house.”
30 In As You Like It, Phoebe says “Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might: / ‘Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?’” (3.5.80-81), referring to Marlowe and quoting from Hero and Leander.
31 Kiséry also notes that, while a shop collecting and disseminating the body of works of a contemporary author was “remarkable [...] by no means standard practice around 1600,” the stationers of the Bear may have been following the example of others, including William Ponsonby, Blount’s erstwhile master (op. cit., p. 381). Furthermore, of Ponsonby’s trendsetting, Sonia Massai underscores that he published the first authorised edition of Philip Sidney’s 1598 collected works, the incomplete 1590 version of New Arcadia, and the composite 1593 version of the Old and New Arcadia (Sonia Massai, “Edward Blount, the Herberts, and the First Folio” in Shakespeare’s Stationers: Studies in Cultural Bibliography, ed. Marta Straznicky, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 132-146, p. 144).
32 Scragg, op. cit., p. 8-9. Scragg notes only the brother’s involvement in Samuel Daniel’s works, but Simon Waterson is credited on the 1623 title page as the publisher (“Printed by Nicholas Okes, for Simon Waterson, and are to be sold as his shoppe in Paules Churchyard”).
33 Idem, p. 9.
34 Ibid. Scragg also notes that the Second Folio was published too in 1632, but by Robert Allott, to whom Blount had transferred his holdings in 1630. Gary Taylor indicates that Blount died in (or before) October 1632, and that on 3 October 1636 his copyrights were sold to Andrew Crooke (Taylor, “Blount [Blunt], Edward”, op. cit., §8).
35 Scragg, op. cit., p. 9. Scragg sets herself in opposition to the historic view, as presented by Leo Kirschbaum in 1955, that “[t]he printers, publishers, and booksellers in Shakespeare’s day were not interested in the printing of masterpieces for the delight of future ages. [...] Like the grocer and the goldsmith, they were mainly interested in money. They were thoroughly wide-awake business men who were out for a quick penny” (Leo Kirschbaum, Shakespeare and the Stationers, Columbus, Ohio State University Press, 1955, “The Stationers’ Company in Operation”, 25-86, p. 25).
36 Peter Blayney, “The Publication of Playbooks” in A New History of Early English Drama, ed. John D. Cox & David Scott Kastan, Chichester, New York, Columbia University Press, 1997, p. 389. Blayney argues that that only about one-in-five plays published between 1583 and the closure of the theatres in 1642 made a profit within its first five years after publication, and only one-in-twenty would have made a profit within its first year. Blayney notes three twenty-year periods: 1583-1602, or, the late Elizabethan era; 1603-1622, or, the early Jamesian era; and 1623-1642, or, from the First Folio to the English Civil War and the closure of the playhouses (p. 384). In these periods, Blayney asserts that ~48 percent of the plays published between 1583 and 1602 were reprinted within 25 years, that ~50 percent of the plays published between 1603-1622 were reprinted within 25 years, and that ~29 percent of the plays published between 1623-1642 were reprinted within 25 years (p. 387). From these numbers Blayney reasons that “demand for printed plays certainly existed, though it was far from insatiable […] so publishing plays would not usually have been seen as a shortcut to wealth” (p. 389).
37 Alan Farmer and Zachary Lesser responded to Blayney’s initial argument in their article “The Popularity of Playbooks Revisited” asserting that playbooks were more popular investments than Blayney suggests. Blayney responded in turn to the coauthors with another article, “The Alleged Popularity of Playbooks.” Both responses were included in Shakespeare Quarterly 56.1, Spring 2005, 1-32 (Farmer and Lesser), 33-50 (Blayney). Farmer and Lesser’s critique, boiled down to a single line: “While the myth of piracy is false, the ‘myth’ of playbook popularity happens to be true” (Farmer and Lesser, “The Popularity of Playbooks Revisited”, op. cit., p. 4). Blayney’s abridged response: “One can always make tortoises seem faster by disqualifying all hares, greyhounds, and cheetahs” (Blayney, “The Alleged Popularity of Playbooks”, op. cit., p. 47).
38 Erne, op. cit., p. 158, p. 183-185. Erne has argued that, although Blount has been called “the person who most heavily invested in William Shakespeare’s name,” the “dominant figure” in the First Folio (p. 158, quoting from Taylor’s “Making Meaning Marketing Shakespeare 1623” in From Performance to Print in Shakespeare’s England, ed. Peter Holland, Stephen Orgel, coll. Redefining British Theatre History, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p. 61), the idea that Shakespeare only became commercially significant after the First Folio “is a myth” (Erne, op. cit., p. 183). Instead, Erne asserts that it was the quartos and octavos, not the 1623 folio, which first created Shakespeare’s economic value and market in the book trade.
39 Blount and Isaac Jaggard were the folio’s printers, as indicated on its title page; William Jaggard (father to Isaac), Blount, John Smithweeke, and William Aspley were its “charging” publishers, as indicated on its ultimate page; John Heminges and Henry Condell, fellow actors with the Chamberlain’s Men, were its compilers; they in turn dedicated the play to its literary patrons, William and Philip Herbert. This list does not include all those who contributed peritextually to the folio, though I make specific note of Ben Jonson who provided the epigraph containing the now famous lines, “[H]ow farre thou didst our Lily out-shine, / Or sporting Kid, or Marlowes mighty line.” For a more detailed account of the First Folio’s publishing consortium, see Ben Higgins, Shakespeare’s Syndicate: The First Folio, its Publishers, and the Early Modern Book Trade, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022).
40 Massai, op. cit., p. 145. Massai argues that “authoritative” contemporaneously also meant something close to “authorised,” as in “authorised with literary credit.” This in contrast with simply meaning the “True Originall Copies” as referenced on title page.
41 Idem, p. 132. Modern scholarship regarding stationers not being solely, or sometimes primarily, financially motivated includes Marta Straznicky’s “What Is a Stationer” in Shakespeare’s Stationers: Studies in Cultural Bibliography, ed. Marta Straznicky, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, 1-16; Sonia Massai, op. cit., p. 1-16, 132-146; and Michelle O’Callaghan, op. cit., though these works are not alone. In O’Callaghan’s chapter, “Books in Process” (p. 20-72), she emphasises stationers’ “moral responsibility” in facilitating textual transmission for the commonwealth’s benefit (p. 21), the “civic-minded” nature of publishers acting in the public interest (p. 26), and stationers’ “civic duty” to promote reader engagement, which in turn gives meaning to literary works (p. 25).
42 Massai, op. cit., p. 132-133.
43 Scragg, op. cit., p. 3. See also Amy Lidster’s Publishing the History Play in the Time of Shakespeare: Stationers Shaping a Genre, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022, which includes, in part, examination of the role of stationers in shaping interpretations of texts through their use of paratexts. Lidster is particularly concerned with history plays, as would be for the case of the Henry VI triptych discussed below, and notes that their paratexts were used to “draw attention to [their] interweaving historical allegory and instruct readers how to understand and apply [their] history” (See her chapter “United Histories”, p. 156).
44 Lorenzo Ducci, Ars Aulica Or the Courtiers Arte [Arte aulica.], London, Printed by Melch. Bradwood for Edward Blount, 1607 Made digitally available via Archive.org, identifier: bim_early-english-books-1475-1640_ars-aulica-or-the-courti_ducci-lorenzo_1607, last accessed 14 January 2024): “This small Treatise [...] how I know not, but by a kinde of fate, should seeme destined to your protection: who from your owne practise in Court can cleereliest iudge of his arte” (sig. A4-A5).
45 John Earle, Micro-Cosmographie, Or, A Peece of the World Discovered in Essayes and Characters [Peece of the world discovered.], London, Printed by William Stansby for Edward Blount, 1628 Made digitally available via Archive.org, identifier: bim_early-english-books-1475-1640_micro-cosmographie-_earle-john-bp_1628_1, last accessed 14 January 2024): “I Haue (for once) aduentur’d to playe the Mid-wifes part, helping to bring forth these Infants into the World, which the Father would haue smoothered: who hauing left them lapt vp in loose Sheets, as soon as his Fancy was deliuered of them[.]” (sig. A2-A3).
46 Gerolamo Franchi di Conestaggio, The Historie of the Vniting of the Kingdom of Portugall to the Crowne of Castill Containing the Last Warres of the Portugals Against the Moores of Africke, the End of the House of Portugall, and Change of that Gouernment. The Description of Portugall, their Principall Townes, Castles, Places ... of the East Indies, the Isles of Terceres, and Other Dependences. [Dell'unione del regno di Portogallo alla corona di Castiglia], London, Imprinted by Arn. Hatfield for Edward Blount, 1600. Made digitally available via Archive.org, identifier: bim_early-english-books-1475-1640_the-historie-of-the-unit_conestaggio-g_1600 : “For the subiect it selfe I dare say nothing; since it is out of my element to iudge. But I haue heard others report it (and some of them also iudicious) to be a thing first and excellently written[.]” (sig. A2).
47 Scragg, op. cit., p. 4. I am paraphrasing Scragg’s depiction of these paratexts’ tones. Any originality is hers.
48 For succinct descriptions of “paratext,” (a term first introduced by Gérard Genette in Introduction à l’architexte, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1979) including demarcation of “peritext” and “epitext,” see Roswitha Skare, “Paratext,” Knowledge Organisation 47.6, 2020, 511-519, sections 1 and 3.
49 Massai, op. cit., p. 133.
50 Idem, p. 144.
51 Idem, p. 146. For an examination of how anthologies featuring extracts of Shakespeare’s works shaped his reputation and reflected contemporary reading habits, including readers’ marginalia, see Ted Tregear, Anthologizing Shakespeare, 1593-1603, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023.
52 The International Society for Knowledge Organisation (ISKO) describes paratexts as typically having the characteristics and components which are textual in nature (e.g., woodblock prints, dedications, epistles, etc.) but notes that there can be non-textual (e.g., iconic, material, factual) manifestations of paratext as well. See Skare, op. cit., section 3, §1-4. Massai argues that Blount provided “epistemological credit” (Massai, op. cit., p. 133, borrowing language from Gary Taylor’s 2006 McKenzie Lectures “England’s Greatest Literary Critic”, Oxford, 2006) to the First Folio project, lending it legitimacy and authority within the literary and publishing fields. Massai contrasts Blount’s literary reputation with the backgrounds of Heminge and Condell as actors and theatre professionals, noting that Blount had more cultural capital as a publisher to confer authority on the Folio. Massai argues that Blount’s authority (reputation) influenced fellow publishers/stationers, authors, and the literary community, helping to frame the First Folio as a serious literary undertaking worthy of patronage; this authority, unlike some other paratextual materials with which Blount had experience (e.g., textual ornaments, dedications), wouldn’t directly influence bookbuyers, but lent the project legitimacy among those who enabled its publication and ultimately helped to elevate the First Folio from theatrical scripts to literary texts.
53 Taylor, “Blount [Blunt], Edward”, op. cit., §2.
54 Further than my scope, Ben Higgins in his chapter, “‘Master William Shakesperes works’ Edward Blount at the Black Bear (op. cit., p. 41-78), credits Blount for connecting many now-famous Black Bear authors: “It is Blount who connects Shakespeare to Montaigne, Marlowe, John Lyly, and Samuel Daniel” (p. 77).
55 Bednarz, op. cit., p. 99. Bednarz submits the following chain of collaborative inspiration: that Marlowe based Edward II on Henry VI’s weak king, that Shakespeare in turn based Richard II and its “eloquent language of loss” on Edward II, and eventually developed further that pathos in Hamlet and King Lear.
56 Gary Taylor, “Shakespeare and Others: The Authorship of Henry the Sixth, Part One”, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 7, 1995, 145-205.
57 Paul Vincent, “Unsolved Mysteries in Henry the Sixth, Part Two”, Notes and Queries 246, 2001, 270-274; When ‘Harey’ Met Shakespeare: The Genesis of The First Part of Henry the Sixth, Saarbrücken, Verlag Dr Müller, 2008.
58 Brian Vickers, “Incomplete Shakespeare: Or, Denying Coauthorship in 1 Henry VI”, Shakespeare Quarterly 58, 2007, 311-352.
59 Hugh Craig, “The Three Parts of Henry VI” in Shakespeare, Computers, and the Mystery of Authorship, ed. Hugh Craig and Arthur F. Kinney, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, 40-77.
60 Hugh Craig and John Burrows, “A Collaboration about a Collaboration: The Authorship of King Henry VI, Part Three” in Collaborative Research in the Digital Humanities: A Volume in Honour of Harold Short, on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday and his Retirement, September 2010, ed. Marilyn Deegan and McCarty Willard, Farnham, Ashgate, 2012, 27-65.
61 Gary Taylor and John V. Nance, “Imitation or Collaboration? Marlowe and the Early Shakespeare Canon”, Shakespeare Survey 68, 2015, 32-47.
62 Santiago Segarra, Mark Eisen, Gabriel Egan, and Alejandro Ribeiro, “Attributing the Authorship of the Henry VI Plays by Word Adjacency”, Shakespeare Quarterly 67, 2016, 232-56.
63 Taylor and Loughnane, op. cit.
64 Taylor and Loughnane, op. cit., p. 493-499, p. 513-517. Citing the work of Paul Vincent (“Unsolved Mysteries in Henry the Sixth, Part Two”, op. cit.) and Hugh Craig (op. cit.), Taylor and Loughnane submit that Henry VI Part 2 was likely co-authored by Shakespeare and Marlowe, and possibly another, around 1590, with Shakespeare likely writing most or all of the third act (p. 493-496). Taylor and Loughnane also submit that Henry VI Part 3 was likely co-authored by Shakespeare and Marlowe around late 1590, and, by comparing the work of Craig and John Burrows (op. cit.) and Segarra et alii (op. cit.), the authors attribute from Part 3 at least 13 scenes (1.3, 1.4, 2.1, 2.2, 2.5, 2.6, 3.1, 3.2, 5.1, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6) to Shakespeare and 3 scenes (1.1, 2.3, and 5.2) to Marlowe (p. 496-499). Regarding the first part, the authors cite the work of Gary Taylor (“Shakespeare and Others: The Authorship of Henry the Sixth, Part One”, op. cit.), Paul Vincent (When “Harey” Met Shakespeare: The Genesis of The First Part of Henry the Sixth, op. cit.), Brian Vickers (op. cit.), Hugh Craig (op. cit.), Gary Taylor and John Nance (op. cit.), and Segarra et alii (op. cit.) to conclude that 1 Henry VI was likely co-authored originally by Thomas Nashe (Act 1), Christopher Marlowe (especially 3.2-8 and 5.3-5), and one or more unknown dramatists, after which (c. 1595), Shakespeare adapted the play, adding material (including scenes 2.4, 4.2, and 4.4). The authors note that Shakespeare’s hand is only clearly detectable in a few scenes, and that his input seems to have been an adaptation of a play mostly written by others, rather than major new composition (p. 513-517). All scene numbers and divisions are as they appear in the New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern Critical Edition.
65 Taylor and Loughnane, op. cit., p. 495-496. See also STC (2nd ed.) 17834, or ESTC citation no. S110013, for the short title catalogue records for Mere’s Palladis tamia.
66 See John Lyly, Sixe Court Comedies often Presented and Acted before Queene Elizabeth, by the Children of Her Maiesties Chappell, and the Children of Paules. Witten by the Onely Rare Poet of that Time, the Witie, Comicall, Facetiously-Quicke and Vnparalelld: Iohn Lilly, Master of Arts. London, 1632. Made digitally available via Archive.org, identifier: bim_early-english-books-1475-1640_sixe-court-comedies_lyly-john_1632, last accessed 14 January 2024), specifically its dedication to Viscount Lumley of Waterford (sig. A3). This is the same dedication as contains Lyly’s famous descriptor, “The Lyre he played on, had no borrowed strings.”
67 In 1632, Blount also published William Crompton’s marriage sermon, A wedding-ring; Nicolas Faret’s translated courtiers’ book, The honest man; and Juan de Santa María’s translated politico-religious discourse, Christian policie. Of those, only Christian policie contains a dedication by Blount. In this dedication Blount asserts his and the materials’ credibility (or ‘authority’), indirectly indicating himself to be the translator, and he references Lumley’s “ingenious acts in forraigne, (and in those forraigne, the most subtile and actiue parts)” which corroborates Blount’s connections to the sphere of state operatives. See Blount’s dedication as it appears in Juan de Santa María, for the full context (Christian Policie: Or the Christian Common-Wealth. Published for the Good of Kings, and Princes, and such as are in Authoritie Vnder them, and Trusted with State Affaires. / Written in Spanish, and Translated into English. [República y policía christiana. 1632], London, Printed by Thomas Harper, for Edward Blount, 1632, sig. ¶3-4, Made digitally via Archive.org, identifier: bim_early-english-books-1475-1640_christian-policie-or-t_juan-de-santa-maria_1632, last accessed 14 January 2024).
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Jonathan Pinkerton, « Blount, Marlowe, and the First Folio », Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare [En ligne], 42 | 2024, mis en ligne le 10 décembre 2024, consulté le 09 février 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/8546 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/137su
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