Second Folio, 1632
William Shakespeare. Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. London, 1632.
In 1632, Thomas Coates, printer, formed a syndicate in order to finance the publication of a new Shakespeare Folio. Coates had trained as an apprentice in the William Jaggard print shop, thus carrying on a connection to Jaggard. Coates basically reprinted the First Folio, page by page, although obviously setting the type anew. He had purchased the rights to the plays belonging to Isaac Jaggard from William’s widow.
Exactly why this new group of entrepreneurs decided to undertake this challenging publication remains unclear. Perhaps they saw some economic advantage. Perhaps they wanted to perpetuate Shakespeare’s “remains.” Most of the personal links to the First Folio had disappeared by 1632 through the deaths of William and Isaac Jaggard, printers; Edward Blount, publisher; John Heminge and Henry Condell, compilers; and William Herbert (Pembroke), dedicatee. Thus, Heminge and Condell’s epistle dedicatory and address to readers come, as it were, from the grave. And, how can the deceased Pembroke remain a patron? Clearly, some parts of the beginning sections of the Folio came to be regarded as simply part of the text, regardless of deaths. In the same way, the title page is almost identical to that of the First Folio, including the portrait of Shakespeare.
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Title Page
William Shakespeare. Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. London, 1632.
Image courtesy of the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio. The Kenneth Spencer Research Library copy is incomplete.
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Milton’s poem
William Shakespeare. Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. London, 1632.
One new part of the opening pages of the Second Folio is a poem by John Milton, although not attributed to him here. Milton, enthusiastically interested in the theater, became a legendary poet of the 17th century, as in his epic Paradise Lost. His poem in the Second Folio came to be named “On Shakespeare: 1630,” in John Benson’s edition of Shakespeare’s Poems (1640) and Milton’s Poems (1645). We can know of Milton’s interest in Shakespeare in part because of his personal copy of the First Folio, which he annotated, and which now resides in the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Image courtesy of the Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries, Oxford, Ohio. The Kenneth Spencer Research Library copy is incomplete.
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Reaction to the Folio
William Prynne. Histrio-Mastix. London, 1633.
The 1632 Folio helped spark an extensive, no-holds-barred screed against the theater by William Prynne, trained as a Barrister at Lincoln’s Inn and master of Puritan invective. Even he admits in his 512-page quarto, Histrio-Mastix, to “tedious prolixities,” a startlingly accurate assessment. Prynne epitomizes the ongoing attack on the theater by Puritans, who ultimately triumphed by Act of Parliament in 1642 in banning all theater activity. So it remained until the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660.
Prynne’s busy title page must have been a nightmare for the compositor setting the type, seen here.
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Catalogue
William Shakespeare. Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. London, 1632.
As in the First Folio, this catalogue lists all of the contents, according to genre, from comedy to history to tragedy. One notable change occurs: the Catalogue of the Second Folio lists “Troylus and Cressida,” a title missing in the First Folio, although both contain the play. As with the First Folio, the Catalogue lists the Histories in their historical chronological order, not in the order in which Shakespeare wrote them.
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Reader Correction
William Shakespeare. Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. London, 1632.
A clear example of reader involvement and reaction to the printed text can be seen here where the running title (which we might these days call “header”) in 1 Henry VI prints “second,” and an attentive reader in what appears to be a 17th-century hand, corrects with the word “first.” This minor example underscores how a great variety of readers responded to the Folios.
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Second Folio—printer error, p. 406-407 (Tragedies)
William Shakespeare. Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. London, 1632.
Another printer error problem in a running title occurs in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, the last play in the Tragedies. Suddenly on p. 407, we find “The Tragedy of Anthony and Cleopatra,” which is manifestly wrong. The correct type may have fallen out and the incorrect title inserted. Here the printing error remains uncorrected at least in the Spencer Library copy. This example reminds us that errors often remained in some copies, even if corrected in others, such as ones in the New York Public Library and the British Library.
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“To the Christian Reader”
William Prynne. Histrio-Mastix. London, 1633.
Instead of addressing the great variety of readers, Prynne includes an address “To the Christian Reader,” a prelude to his full-fledged attack on all kinds of vices. On the second page of this address, Prynne complains:
“Some play-books . . . are growne from Quarto into Folio, which yet beare so good a price and sale, that I cannot but with griefe relate it, they are now new-printed in farre better paper than most Octavo or Quarto Bibles.”
Surely, he has the most recent Folio in mind. In marginal notes Prynne singles out the Folios of “Ben Johnsons, Shackspeers, and others. Shackspeers Plaies are printed in the best Crowne paper, far better than most Bibles.” The physical qualities of the 1632 Folio, better than that of Bibles, mock Prynne’s religious view and are an affront to him.
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