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In-folio et culture matérielle

Reading a Reader’s Marks in Folger Folio 68: Which Lines? What for? (Or a Study in Frustration)

Guillaume Coatalen

Résumés

Cet article tente d’interpréter les marques anonymes d’un lecteur dans l’in-folio 68 de la Folger Shakespeare Library à Washington. En examinant la variété des marques et les extraits qu’elles délimitent, nous offrons quelques hypothèses sur les raisons de ces choix, la date de ces marques ainsi que sur l’identité du lecteur. La constitution de collections de lieux communs constitue l’une des justifications les plus probables de ces marques et les extraits semblent obéir à la combinaison de deux critères, l’un esthétique, l’autre moral. Enfin, un appendice identifie tous les extraits et se veut un encouragement à poursuivre les recherches sur la première réception de l’in-folio.

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Texte intégral

1Markings in a Shakespeare folio trigger questions. Why did the reader choose to read Shakespeare in this format? And of course, why did he flag these particular lines? The folio offered a handy thought-to-be-comprehensive collection of the plays. The text was unencumbered by notes. The reader was either expected to know enough to understand the play or left to his own devices as to any problem he might encounter. This was vernacular literature meant to entertain which did not deserve learned annotations. While Folger Folio 68 does contain quite an impressive number of marked lines, it is otherwise frustratingly silent on the reader’s identity or even the period when the markings were made. The flagged material amounts to roughly 12,000 words, about 24 pages of a single-spaced text. This may seem modest compared to the total but is in fact relatively substantial.1 What we do know is that the copy was owned by the Wodehouse family since it includes a bookplate from the Wodehouse library with the date 1838. If it was acquired then, John Wodehouse, second Baron Wodehouse, would have probably been the purchaser, the Folger Library informs us.2 This study seeks to make some sense of the markings and the rationale behind the choices. Thus, it contributes to the rich critical literature of Shakespeare’s early reception by examining an intriguing case of reading marks.3 First, I will consider the marks themselves and then delve into the significance of the passages which caught the reader’s attention.

2Who is the reader? Is there only one? Did the same reader make the marks? The folio bears no name, let alone a date. Since more men could read, the general assumption when readers’ marks are found in a book is that the reader was male. In the case of Folio 68, the reader’s gender is corroborated by the presence of misogynistic lines spoken by the Clown in Anthony and Cleopatra:

You must not think I am so simple, but I know the diuell himselfe will not eate a woman: I know, that a woman is a dish for the Gods, if the diuell dresse her not. But truly, these same whorson diuels doe the Gods great harme in their women: for in euery tenne that they make, the diuels marre fiue. [sig. ZZ2r]

  • 4 Claire M. L. Bourne, “Marking Shakespeare”, Shakespeare 13.4, 2017, 367-386, p. 369.
  • 5 William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in the English Renaissance, Philadelphia, Universit (...)
  • 6 Accessible at http://shakes.meisei-u.ac.jp/ALL.html.

3The only information available is provided by the marks, the nature of the ink and the extracts themselves. As Claire Bourne notes, “interpreting sparse and fragmentary notes can prove frustrating and often impossible”.4 In Folio 68, the reading marks are sometimes quite unobtrusive, and the danger is to turn any spot or blemish into one. The other problem is that it is not always entirely clear where the marked text stops. Bill Sherman and Hannah August5 both examine more spectacular marks, these belong to the humble sort (Fig. 1). Unlike the Meisei folio,6 this one does not contain substantive comments on particular passages, nor does it offer inscribed names or drawings. The reader’s presence is tantalisingly discreet which makes the interpretative work difficult and what follows will necessarily be speculative. The only testimony available to try to reconstruct the reader’s motives, period and identity is given by the marks and the nature of the lines they point to. The material may be interpreted in a great variety of ways, generically, thematically and stylistically. The extracts make sense alone but also respond to one another in a chamber of echoes. Critical distance helps us to uncover certain common areas of interest.

Fig. 1 Folger Folio 68 (archive.org)

Fig. 1 Folger Folio 68 (archive.org)
  • 7 See Laura Estill, “Commonplace Markers and Quotation Marks”, March 7, 2014, accessible at https://d (...)

4The quotation marks or “dipples” at the beginning of lines are typical of flagged passages.7 In printed texts they may indicate lines worthy to be copied. The other marks, however, seem to be interchangeable, even if the cross may indicate that the entire speech was retained. In addition to the marks, the copy contains a few riddles (Fig. 2). One of them seems to read “doceo”, “I teach” in a seventeenth century hand, perhaps a child learning his Latin, while the titlepage bears a word in a cypher similar to the freemason cypher.

Fig. 2 Folger Folio 68 (archive.org)

Fig. 2 Folger Folio 68 (archive.org)
  • 8 See, for instance, “Britain, Empire and Julius Caesar”, p. 108-41 in Louise H. Marshall, National M (...)

5The following chart recording the number of extracts per play shows that the reader did not really care for comedies and preferred tragedies and histories instead. Perhaps he thought comedies were not to be taken as seriously as histories and tragedies. Also, comedies were the least annotated because, with time, readers could not understand the jokes any longer. According to a generic hierarchy inherited from antiquity, comedies staged lower characters to entertain while tragedies told the fates of princes and gods to move the audience. Only one extract is taken from Othello, and two miserly ones from Hamlet, the most marked-up being Julius Caesar. He is particularly interested in antiquity and mythology. The number of lines marked in Julius Caesar may participate in a larger fascination for the historical figure in the eighteenth century.8 On the whole, these are the choices of a serious reader even though he does appreciate humour, as illustrated by the clown Launce’s parody of a grieving speech in Act 2, scene 3 of the Two Gentlemen of Verona with its remarkable homoioteleuton, words with the same ending in close proximity to one another, “My Mother weeping: my Father wayling: my Sister crying: our Maid howling: our Catte wringing her hands” (Sig. [B5v]), among other figures of repetition. Among other devices, the tirade is a parody of the parable of the prodigal son, as pointed out by the character himself.

COMEDIES

HISTORIES

TRAGEDIES

Two Gentlemen of Verona 4

King John 3

Troilus and Cressida 9

Measure for Measure 2

Richard II 1

Titus Andronicus 6

Midsummer Night’s Dream 1

2 Henry IV 3

Romeo and Juliet 4

Henry V 2

Timon 9

2 Henry VI 1

Julius Caesar 17

3 Henry VI 1

Macbeth 8

Richard III 1

Hamlet 2

Henry VIII 5

Othello 1

Anthony and Cleopatra 4

Cymbeline 10

  • 9 Emma Smith, Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, Oxford, Oxford University (...)

6Did he/she/they read the entire folio? Presumably. Alternatively, the marks may have been done for the plays he had read. Emma Smith notes rightly that readers tended to dip in and out of the volume and did not read it from beginning to end.9 This is what was found relevant in the plays for this specific reader.

7Let us try to discover the rationale behind the reader’s choices. One way to make sense of the material is to try to establish whether other readers marked the same passages. DEx (the Dramatic Extracts database) does help but it records extracts kept in manuscripts from an earlier period and excludes extracts marked in printed texts.10 A strong case can be made to take into account such material since it was potentially singled out to be copied in commonplace books and miscellanies. No equivalent for DEx covers the eighteenth century but the database does inform us on how popular certain lines were. So do collections of printed fragments taken from Shakespeare’s plays.

  • 11 Christopher Salamone, Shakespeare and the Eighteenth-Century Miscellany, London, Taylor and Francis (...)

8On the whole, the extracts are significantly longer than the type of material kept in seventeenth century commonplace books. This feature alone may encourage us to date the marks to the eighteenth century even if extracts from Shakespeare’s verse (dramatic or not) copied in miscellanies tend to remain quite fragmentary in the period.11 Length here seems to be a fairly unusual feature. There are a few exceptions like the sententia “I am amaz’d me thinkes, and loose my way / Among the thornes, and dangers of this world” (Sig. B2r) or the rhyming couplets from Macbeth:

I ’ginne to be a-weary of the Sun,
And wish th’ estate o’th’ world were now vndon.
Ring the Alarum Bell, blow Winde, come wracke,
At least wee’l dye with Harnesse on our backe (Sig. nn3V)

9The rhymes would have made the lines easy to remember and might point to an eighteenth-century reader, a period when the rhyming couplet or heroic couplet was particularly used in verse.

  • 12 Kate Rumbold, “Shakespeare Anthologized” in The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts, ed (...)

10As pointed out by Kate Rumbold, in the eighteenth century Shakespeare’s plays were read as sources of beauty and morals.12 One factor which seems to guide him is the occurrence of arresting figures of rhetoric. These may be macro-figures of rhetoric like the allegory of a bud eaten by the canker or the allegory of the river or the extended Petrarchan simile between death and the absence of a lover, all three in the Two Gentlemen of Verona (extracts 1.] 2.] and 4.] in the Appendix). This is someone who is keen on amplification, as shown by the only extract he kept from Othello, where a week is further divided into days and hours (extract 1.]). Another related explanation for the flagged lines is the occurrence of commonplaces like the classic opposition between “merciful heaven” and “proud man” (Measure for Measure, extract 1.]), the long sermon-like development on the fear of death (Measure for Measure, extract 2.]), or the famous lines on twinship in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (extract 1]).

  • 13 See Jean-Christophe Mayer, “Commonplacing: The Myth and the Empirical Impulse”, Ch. 5, in Shakespea (...)

11It is not inconceivable that the extracts were meant to be kept in a commonplace book despite their length.13 Indeed, it is quite easy to assign commonplace headings to most if not all the marked lines. Several extracts, for instance, could furnish material for the heading “women”. These are predominantly of a misogynistic nature, like Posthumus’s speech in Cymbeline (extract 1.]), who declares that “For euen to Vice / They [women] are not constant, but are changing still”. This is slightly corrected by Cleopatra’s speech on the resolution of women (Antony and Cleopatra, extract 4.]). Contrary to early seventeenth-century poetic miscellanies, love does not feature prominently, and the lines devoted to Cupid from Troilus and Cressida seem to have been retained for the simile “like a dew drop from the Lyons mane” (extract 8.]). Tamora’s suggestive lines addressed to Aaron are however blatantly erotic (Titus Andronicus extract 1.]) but here again they may have caught the reader’s attention as a pastoral piece and variation on the Dido and Aeneas myth, notably in its Virgilian form.

  • 14 John Cotgrave, The English Treasury of Wit and Language, London, Moseley Humphrey, 1655, ESTC, R879 (...)

12That the extracts may have been chosen to be kept in a commonplace book is a hypothesis which is given more weight by the occurrence of material marked in the folio in printed collections of extracts from various dramatists, like John Cotgrave’s 1655 English Treasury of Wit and Language, or William Dodd’s popular Beauties of Shakspeare.14 In Cotgrave’s printed commonplace book, Julius Caesar’s second extract, a fragment of the first extract from Henry VIII, and the seventh extract from Troilus and Cressida occur (see Appendix). In Dodd’s Beauties, the only extract taken from A Midsummer Night’s Dream illustrates “Female Friendship” (extract 1.]), while King Richard’s “Of comfort no man speak” (Richard II, extract 1.]) comes under the heading “Vanity of Power and Misery of Kings”. The reader may have been influenced by both books when he marked the folio.

  • 15 Guillaume Coatalen, “Shakespeare and other ‘Tragicall Discourses’ in two Late Jacobean-Early Caroli (...)

13Morals are amply represented in the marked lines, notably the vagaries of fortune, bravery, honesty, friendship, treason, constancy or the power of gold. The stress is on the rejection of the world, and Shakespeare’s plays appear to be read like sources of religious wisdom, a practice already established in the early seventeenth century.15 Claudius’s musings on the redemptive power of prayers for a murderer is a case in point. The centrality of death is illustrated by the sermon-sounding lines taken from Richard II, beginning with “Let’s talke of Graues, of Wormes, and Epitaphs” (extract 1.]). A significant number of times, the reader picks lines on someone’s posthumous reputation which is encapsulated in the meaning of a name or in a testament (Richard II, extract 1.]). How the dead are remembered is a central concern. More widely, he is interested in the effect of death on ordinary people as in King John.

14The attention given to the particular condition of kings is closely related to morals and a warning on how fragile life can be even – and perhaps particularly – for the most powerful members of society. The suggestion, rooted in antiquity, in Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius, among other sources, may be that the court and its problems are to be avoided. The number of extracts on kinship may indicate that the reader was connected to the court. The famous speech on restorative sleep from the second part of Henry IV (extract. 1]) belongs to the topos of royal anxiety. The king, in the same play, muses on his own subjection to the law.

  • 16 Richard Halpern, Shakespeare Among the Moderns, Cornell, Cornell University Press, 2018, p. 72.

15Several plays are treated like sources of oratory since entire speeches are marked. Richard Halpern16 notes that late eighteenth-century manuals on rhetoric used Shakespeare as source material while Greek and Latin models continued to be taught as the foundations of the art of persuasion. The most obvious example is given by Antony’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech (extract 9.]) and its famous commoratio or synonimia (repeating the same idea in different words), “For Brutus is an Honourable man… And Brutus is an Honourable man… And sure he is an Honourable man” and his other speech deceptively presented like that of “a plaine blunt man”. In it, Antony resorts to the modesty topos:

For I haue neyther writ nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor Vtterance, nor the power of Speech,
To stirre mens Blood. (Julius Cæsar, Sig. llr)

while doing just what he pretends he cannot do at the end, after a cunning chiasmus:

But were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle vp your Spirits, and put a Tongue
In euery Wound of Caesar, that should moue
The stones of Rome, to rise and Mutiny (Julius Cæsar, Sig. llr)

16Surely, it is no coincidence that the speeches belong to Julius Caesar which Englished Antiquity. The reader may have made an immediate connection with his classical training at school, which was partly based on reading Caesar’s writings in the original.

17Part of the attraction of these speeches lies in the extensive use of arresting repetitions, notably in the form of parallelism, as in:

Why so didst thou: seeme they graue and learned?
Why so didst thou. Come they of Noble Family?
Why so didst thou. Seeme they religious?
Why so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet, (Henry V, Sig. [h4r])

or in:

How many makes the Houre full compleate,
How many Houres brings about the Day,
How many Dayes will finish vp the Yeare,
How many Yeares, a Mortall man may liue.
When this is knowne, then to diuide the Times:
So many Houres, must I tend my Flocke;
So many Houres, must I take my Rest:
So many Houres, must I Contemplate:
So many Houres, must I Sport my selfe:
So many Dayes, my Ewes haue bene with yong:
So many weekes, ere the poore Fooles will Eane:
So many yeares, ere I shall sheere the Fleece:
So Minutes, Houres, Dayes, Monthes, and Yeares,
Past ouer to the end they were created,
Would bring white haires, vnto a Quiet graue. (3 Henry VI, Sig. [p2v])

18Sometimes repetition may be restricted to a simple anaphora:

Though bladed Corne be lodg’d, & Trees blown downe,
Though Castles topple on their Warders heads:
Though Pallaces, and Pyramids do slope (Macbeth, Sig. [mm6v])

19The conscious display of figures of construction affecting the order of words characterises quite a few marked passages taken from Shakespeare’s earlier plays. The type of rhetoric was thought to be too artificial from John Donne’s time onwards. That the reader had an ear for these insistent repetitions is interesting in itself and might point to a period in the late eighteenth-century when such a style returned once more to favour.

20Beyond particular figures of speech, the reader was on the lookout for lines illustrating Shakespeare’s imagery and imagination, as in the case of the polymorphous cloud which takes on a multiplicity of forms in Anthony’s lines:

Sometime we see a clowd that’s Dragonish,
A vapour sometime, like a Beare, or Lyon,
A toward Cittadell, a pendant Rocke,
A forked Mountaine, or blew Promontorie
With Trees vpon’t, that nodde vnto the world,
And mocke our eyes with Ayre.
Thou hast seene these Signes,
They are blacke Vespers Pageants (Antony and Cleopatra, Sig. [yy5V])

or the allegory of time in Troilus and Cressida:

Time hath (my Lord) a wallet at his backe,
Wherein he puts almes for obliuion:
A great siz’d monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deedes past, (Sig. 2¶1r)

21Among the marked lines, the number of similes is noteworthy and suggests that the value of verse depends in no negligeable way on the ability to come up with unusual similes. It is also a typical figure of rhetoric taught at Grammar School level. Edward Pudsey’s notes recorded in his commonplace book (Shakespeare Birthplace Trust ER82/1/21), in the beginning of the seventeenth century, highlight them, as figures that may be of use.

22If no certain conclusions may be drawn from the marked material, the reader seems to have been a man from the eighteenth century, even if a later date is not impossible. The attention to the death of birds and flies might be the mark of the Romantic age and its sensibility. The reading combines aesthetic considerations and morals. Striking language illustrating general truths guided his choices, which is the essence of commonplacing. Ultimately, this study tests the limits of interpretation. In the absence of decisive information, like the reader’s identity, the history of marking and extracting lines from Shakespeare’s plays in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries leads to plausible hypotheses on the reader’s identity and rationale.

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Annexe

Marked lines in Folio 68

The text is taken from the folio. The extracts are numbered, and lineation is supplied by the through line-numbering (TLN) system.

Two Gentlemen of Verona

1.] Val. And Writers say; as the most forward Bu […] And all the faire effects of future hopes.     [TLN 47-52]

2.] Launce. Nay, ‘twill bee this howre ere I haue done weeping: […] nor speakes a word: but see how I lay the dust with my teares     [TLN 593-625]

 3.] Iul. The more thou dam’st it vp, the more it burnes: […] A blessed soule doth in Elizium     [TLN 999-113]

4.] Val. And why not death, rather then liuing torment? […] But flie I hence, I flie away from life     [TLN 1243-1260]

Measure for Measure

1.] Isab. Could great men thunder […] Would all themselues laugh mortall     [TLN 875-888]

2.] Cla. I, but to die, and go we know not where, […] To what we feare of death     [TLN 1353-1367]

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

1.] Is all the counsell that we two haue shar’d, […] But yet a vnion in partition,     [TLN 1238-1250]

King John

1.] And why rayle I on this Commoditie? […] Gaine be my Lord, for I will worship thee.     [TLN 902-913]

2.] Yong Arthurs death is common in their mouths, […] Cuts off his tale, and talks of Arthurs death     [TLN 1931-1946]

3.] And when they talke of him, they shake their heads, […] Cuts off his tale, and talkes of Arthurs death     [TLN 1931-1946]

4.] I am amaz’d me thinkes, and loose my way […] Among the thornes, and dangers of this world.     [TLN 2170-2171]

Richard II

1.] Let’s talke of Graues, of Wormes, and Epitaphs, […] All murther'd. For within the hollow Crowne     [TLN 1555-1570]

2 Henry IV

1.] How many thousand of my poorest Subiects […] Vneasie lyes the Head, that weares a Crowne.     [TLN 1708-1735]


2.] Chide him for faults, and doe it reuerently, […] As Aconitum, or rash Gun-powder     [TLN 2785-2796]

3.] Prin. You are right Iustice, and you weigh this well: […] Heauen shorten Harries happy life, one day.     [TLN 3350-3394]

Henry V

1.] King. The mercy that was quicke in vs but late, […] And God acquit them of their practises     [TLN 715-780]

2.] Our Children, and our Sinnes, lay on the King: […] Whose howres, the Pesant best aduantages.     [TLN 2078-21]

2 Henry VI

1.] So shall my name with Slanders tongue be wounded, […] To be a Queene, and Crown’d with infamie     [TLN 1749-1752]

3 Henry VI

1.] For what is in this world, but Greefe and Woe. […] When Care, Mistrust, and Treason waits on him.     [TLN 1122-1156]

Richard III

1.] Ile not meddle with it, it makes a man a Coward: […] endeuours to trust to himselfe, and liue without it     [TLN 962-973]

Henry VIII

1.] Car. What should this meane? […] And no man see me more.     [TLN 2088-2112]

2.] Wol. So farewell, to the little good you beare me. […] Neuer to hope againe    [TLN 2254-2276]

3.] Let’s dry our eyes: And thus farre heare me Cromwel, […] Thy Gods, and Truths. Then if thou fall’st (O Cromwell)     [TLN 2345-2364]

4.] An old man, broken with the stormes of State, […] Giue him a little earth for Charity.     [TLN 2581-2583]

Troilus and Cressida

1.] Troy. The Greeks are strong, & skilful to their strength, […] And skillesse as vnpractis’d Infancie.     [TLN 39-44]

2.] Force should be right, or rather, right and wrong, […] And last, eate vp himselfe.     [TLN 569-577]

3.] The still and mentall parts,[…] By Reason guide his execution.     [TLN 653-663]

4.] Troy. O vertuous fight, […] And sanctifie the numbers.     [TLN 1821-1833]

5.] Cres. Prophet may you be: […] Yea, let them say, to sticke the heart of falsehood,     [TLN 1834-1846]

6.] Achil. What am I poore of late? […] Fortune and I are friends, I doe enioy     [TLN 1946-1960]

7.] Ulis. Time hath (my Lord) a wallet at his backe, […] And farewels goes out sighing: O let not vertue seeke     [TLN 2021-2046]

8.] Sweete, rouse your selfe; and the weake wanton Cupid […] Be shooke to ayrie ayre.     [TLN 2103-2106]

9.] Vlis. Fie, fie, vpon her: […] And daughters of the game.     [TLN 2660-2668]

Titus Andronicus

1.] Tamo. My louely Aaron, […] Of Lullabie, to bring her Babe asleepe     [TLN 743-762]

2.] Mart. Vpon his bloody finger he doth weare […] So pale did shine the Moone on Piramus,     [TLN 973-978]

3.] Alas, a Crimson riuer of warme blood, […] Comming and going with thy hony breath.     [TLN 1086-1089]

4.] Oh had the monster seene those Lilly hands, […] As Cerberus at the Thracian Poets feete.     [TLN 1108-1115]

5.] For now I stand as one vpon a Rocke, […] Will in his brinish bowels swallow him.     [TLN 1223-1227]

6.] An. But? How: if that Flie had a father and mother? […] And thou hast kil’d him     [TLN 1506-1512]

Romeo and Juliet

1.] And yet no further then a wantons Bird, […] So louing Iealous of his liberty     [TLN 1041-1045]

2.] Iul. Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet neere day:[…] How ist my soule, lets talke, it is not day     [TLN 2098-2122]

3.] Iul. Farewell: […] Enter Lady of the house, and Nurse.     [TLN 2565-2610]

4.] I do remember an Appothecarie, […] What ho? Appothecarie?     [TLN 2846-2866]

5.] And fear’st to die? Famine is in thy cheekes, […] Then be not poore, but breake it, and take this     [TLN 2880-2885]

Timon of Athens

1.] When all our Offices haue beene opprest […] And set mine eyes at flow     [TLN 848-853]

2.] Tim. Let me looke backe vpon thee. O thou Wall […] Take thou that too, with multiplying Bannes:     [TLN 1565-1598]

3.] As we do turne our backs […] Walkes like contempt alone. More of our Fellowes.     [TLN 1616-1623]

4.] Ha you Gods! why this? what this, you Gods? why this[…] Do thy right Nature.     [TLN 1694-1708]

5.] Be as a Plannetary plague, when Ioue […] It is her habite onely, that is honest,     [TLN 1788-1793]

6.] Tim. That Nature being sicke of mans vnkindnesse […] That from it all Consideration slippes     [TLN 1862-1883]

7.] Tim. Not by his breath, that is more miserable. […] Poore Rogue, hereditary. Hence, be gone,     [TLN 1944-1969]

8.] Tim. A beastly Ambition, which the Goddes graunt thee t’attaine to. […] that seest not thy losse in transformation.     [TLN 2028-2048]

9.] O thou sweete King-killer, and deare diuorce […] May haue the world in Empire     [TLN 2086-2098]

Julius Caesar

1.] Cassi. Why man, he doth bestride the narrow world […] That her wide Walkes incompast but one man?     [TLN 226-246]

2.] Caes Would he were fatter; But I feare him not: […] Then what I feare: for alwayes I am Caesar.     [TLN 290-304]

3.] Cassi. I know where I will weare this Dagger then; […] I can shake off at pleasure.     [TLN 515-526]

4.] Betweene the acting of a dreadfull thing, […] The nature of an Insurrection.     [TLN 671-677]

5.] The valiant neuer taste of death but once […] Will come, when it will come.     [TLN 1009-1013]

6.] Breake vp the Senate, till another time: […] Loe Caesar is affraid?     [TLN 1079-1082]

7.] Caes I could be well mou’d, if I were as you, […] And constant do remaine to keepe him so     [TLN 1263-1278]

8.] If there bee any in this Assembly, […] I pause for a Reply     [TLN 1551-1568]

9.] An. Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears: […] And I must pawse, till it come backe to me     [TLN 1617-1651]

10.] Ant. But yesterday, the word of Caesar might […] Vnto their issue     [TLN 1663-1682]

11.] It is not meete you know how Caesar lou’d you: […] For if you should, O what would come of it?     [TLN 1686-1691]

12.] I haue o’re-shot my selfe to tell you of it, […] Whose Daggers haue stabb’d Caesar: I do feare it     [TLN 1695-1697]

13.] You will compell me then to read the Will: […] Shall I descend? And will you giue me leaue?     [TLN 1701-1704]

14.] Ant. If you haue teares, prepare to shed them now. […] Heere is Himselfe, marr’d as you see with Traitors     [TLN 1714-1742]

15.] Ant. Good Friends, sweet Friends, let me not stirre you vp […] The stones of Rome, to rise and Mutiny     [TLN 1754-1774]

16.] Bru. O Cassius, I am sicke of many greefes[…] O insupportable, and touching losse!     [TLN 2142-2149]

17.] We at the height, are readie to decline. […] Or loose our Ventures     [TLN 2228-2235]

18.] Bru. No Cassius, no: […] And then the end is knowne. Come ho, away.     [TLN 2470-2485]

Macbeth

1.] The Rauen himselfe is hoarse, […] To cry, hold, hold.     [TLN 388-405]

2.] Macb. I coniure you, by that which you Professe, […] To what I aske you     [TLN 1602-1613]

3.] Rosse. Alas poore Countrey, […] Dying, or ere they sicken     [TLN 2031-2040]

4.] And that which should accompany Old-Age,[…] Which the poore heart would faine deny, and dare not.     [TLN 2275-2279]

5.] Can’st thou not Minister to a minde diseas’d, […] Which weighes vpon the heart?     [TLN 2295-2300]

6.] To morrow, and to morrow, and to morrow, […] Signifying nothing.     [TLN 2376-2385]

7.] I ‘ginne to be a-weary of the Sun, […] At least wee’l dye with Harnesse on our backe.     [TLN 2410-2413]

Hamlet

1.] See thou Character. Giue thy thoughts no tongue, […] Take each mans censure; but reserue thy iudgement:     [TLN 545-555]

2.] King. Thankes deere my Lord. […] To giue in euidence. What then? What rests?     [TLN 2316-2346]

Othello

1.] Bian. And I was going to your Lodging, Cassio. […] More tedious then the Diall, eight score times?     [TLN 2370-2373]

Anthony and Cleopatra

1.] Ant. Sometime we see a clowd that’s Dragonish, […] They are blacke Vespers Pageants     [TLN 2979-2986]

2.] Ant. That which is now a Horse, euen with a thought […] As water is in water     [TLN 2988-2990]

3.] Mar. Death of one person, can be paide but once, […] Thy name so buried in her     [TLN 3011-3018]

4.] Cleo. No more but in a Woman, and commanded. […] But Resolution, and the breefest end.     [TLN 3255-3274]

5.] Clow. You must not think I am so simple […] for in euery tenne that they make, the diuels marre fiue     [TLN 3728-3733]

Cymbeline

1.] Post. Is there no way for Men to be, but Women […] The very Diuels cannot plague them better.     [TLN 1372-1406]

2.] Imo. True honest men being heard, like false Aeneas, […] But now thou seem’st a Coward     [TLN 1781-1796]

3.] Pis. Well then, heere’s the point: […] You made great Iuno angry     [TLN 1896-1908]

4.] Thou diuine Nature; thou thy selfe thou blazon’st […] Or what his death will bring vs.     [TLN 2541-2554]

5.] Arui. The Bird is dead […] Answer’d my steps too lowd      [TLN 2577-2601]

6.] Yes Sir, to Milford-Hauen, which is the way? […] A headlesse man? The Garments of Posthumus?     [TLN 2692-2711]

7.] Post. No blame be to you Sir, for all was lost, […] To dye with length’ned shame     [TLN 3026-3036]

8.] Our Britaines hearts dye flying, not our men, […] The rest do nothing.     [TLN 3048-3056]

9.] Bel. A goodly day, not to keepe house with such, […] Must curt'sie at the Censure.     [TLN 1601-1661]

10.] Pis. What shall I need to draw my Sword, the Paper […] And cry my selfe awake? That's false to’s bed? Is it?     [TLN 1753-1766]

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Notes

1 According to Marvin Spevack’s concordances, Shakespeare’s complete works consist of 884,647 words and 118,406 lines. However, counts may differ based on the criteria of what is included.

2 https://www.folger.edu/explore/collection-highlights/folger-first-folio-68/.

3 I am extremely grateful to Jean-Christophe Mayer who lent me his notes on the copy. The folio is accessible at https://archive.org/details/firstfolio/page/366/mode/2up?view=theater, last accessed.

4 Claire M. L. Bourne, “Marking Shakespeare”, Shakespeare 13.4, 2017, 367-386, p. 369.

5 William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in the English Renaissance, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008; Hannah August, “Reading Plays as Books: Interpreting Readers’ Marks and Marginalia in Early Modern Play Quartos”, Renaissance Drama 48.1, Spring, 2020, 1-30.

6 Accessible at http://shakes.meisei-u.ac.jp/ALL.html.

7 See Laura Estill, “Commonplace Markers and Quotation Marks”, March 7, 2014, accessible at https://drc.usask.ca/projects/archbook/commonplace.php.

8 See, for instance, “Britain, Empire and Julius Caesar”, p. 108-41 in Louise H. Marshall, National Myth and Imperial Fantasy: Representations of Britishness on the Early Eighteenth-Century Stage, Palgrave, Macmillan, 2008.

9 Emma Smith, Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 173.

10 https://dex.digitalearlymodern.com/.

11 Christopher Salamone, Shakespeare and the Eighteenth-Century Miscellany, London, Taylor and Francis, 2017. See too his “The Fragments, Scraps, the Bits and Greasy Relics”: Shakespeare and the Eighteenth-Century Poetic Miscellany, Eighteenth-Century Life 41.1, 2017, 7–31.

12 Kate Rumbold, “Shakespeare Anthologized” in The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts, eds. Mark Thornton Burnett, Adrian Streete, and Ramona Wray, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2011, p. 92-96.

13 See Jean-Christophe Mayer, “Commonplacing: The Myth and the Empirical Impulse”, Ch. 5, in Shakespeare’s Early Readers: A Cultural History from 1590 to 1800, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2018, 137-173.

14 John Cotgrave, The English Treasury of Wit and Language, London, Moseley Humphrey, 1655, ESTC, R8793; Rev. William Dodd, The Beauties of Shakspeare, Vol. 1, London, Printed for G. Kearsley, [1800 ?].

15 Guillaume Coatalen, “Shakespeare and other ‘Tragicall Discourses’ in two Late Jacobean-Early Caroline Commonplace Books from Oriel College, Oxford”, February 2007, English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700 13, 120-64.

16 Richard Halpern, Shakespeare Among the Moderns, Cornell, Cornell University Press, 2018, p. 72.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Fig. 1 Folger Folio 68 (archive.org)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9037/img-1.jpg
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Titre Fig. 2 Folger Folio 68 (archive.org)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/shakespeare/docannexe/image/9037/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 168k
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Référence électronique

Guillaume Coatalen, « Reading a Reader’s Marks in Folger Folio 68: Which Lines? What for? (Or a Study in Frustration) »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/9037 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/137t2

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Guillaume Coatalen

Sorbonne Université, VALE

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