Shakespeare and the Book Trade

Abstract

Shakespeare and the Book Trade follows on from Lukas Erne's groundbreaking Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist to examine the publication, constitution, dissemination and reception of Shakespeare's printed plays and poems in his own time and to argue that their popularity in the book trade has been greatly underestimated. Erne uses evidence from Shakespeare's publishers and the printed works to show that in the final years of the sixteenth century and the early part of the seventeenth century, 'Shakespeare' became a name from which money could be made, a book trade commodity in which publishers had significant investments and an author who was bought, read, excerpted and collected on a surprising scale. Erne argues that Shakespeare, far from indifferent to his popularity in print, was an interested and complicit witness to his rise as a print-published author. Thanks to the book trade, Shakespeare's authorial ambition started to become bibliographic reality during his lifetime.

Economies of Scale: Shakespeare and Book History

“…To gain orientation in the recent literature on Shakespeare and book history, let us look briefly at the two recent studies whose titles suggest filial connections with Kastan's Shakespeare and the Book : Lukas Erne's Shakespeare and the Book Trade () and Adam Hooks’ Selling Shakespeare : Biography , Bibliography , and the Book Trade (). The books' objectives are similar.…”

“…The books' objectives are similar. Erne frames his study as “the first … that presents a comprehensive case for seeing the presence of Shakespeare in, and the use of him by, the book trade as consistent with the terms of his own literary art in plays and poems alike” (7). Hooks writes that his study “recovers Shakespeare as he was known at various points during his life and afterlife … by looking at the ways in which particular poems and plays were bought and sold within particular bookshops at particular times” (30).…”

Stylometric Techniques for Multiple Author Clustering

“…William Jaggard first printed The Passionate Pilgrim in 1598-99, and the authorship of the 21 poems within it was attributed to William Shakespeare [1]. However, Bartholomew Griffin's 1596, Fidessa More Chaste Than Kind, already contained poem 11 [2].…”

“…The list grows, and in 1598, Jaggard's brother John printed Richard Barnfield's, The Encomion of Lady Pecunia, containing poems 8 and 11 [1]. By 1609, only five had been confirmed as Shakespeare's (poems 1, 2, 3, 5, and 17) having appeared in The Sonnets, or his play, Love's Labour's Lost [4].…”

“…Then, England's Helicon also printed a version of poem 20, attributing it to Christopher Marlowe, although its reply (signed Ignato) was later said to be by Sir Walter Raleigh [2]. Jaggard persisted with his claim, and in the 1612 third edition added a number of poems from Thomas Heywood, however, after complaints, Jaggard removed Shakespeare's name from the title [1]. By then, the authorship of 12 unknown poems lay in doubt, something that has remained for over 400 years.…”