An extraordinary presentation....." an encounter with the 1st Folio is an encounter with authorship and doubt"....thankyou for your scholarship and the unique cut of your jib!
An extremely edifying tour of first folio historiography. One can only hope to await the publishing of the ""The First Folio: A Long History of Fixing"" implied in Mr. Ready's opening remarks.
Great presentation. The descriptions of refurbishments of First Folios had me cringing. To think what was cut away and discarded in the interest of prettying up their old editions is quite horrifying!
The editing was left to the professionals, Ben Jonson and John Florio with more than 150 unique Florio words having been found by preliminary research. Playhouses in those days were nests of bush league Peaky Blinders who were good at helping theater patrons spend their money, gambling, prostitutes and alcohol. Shakespeare made enough money to buy a grand house back home before buying stock in a more upscale group headed by Burbage. Lords did not write plays, it was considered beneath their station. No one person wrote Shakespeare which it is why one can find Thomas North and John Florio and dozens of unrecognized stock theater company rewriters in between.
Great presentation. Do you think Susan (de Vere) Herbert might have been listed as one of the first editors? I think that she is just as likely, if not more so, to have had a hand in the preparation of the First Folio as her husband and brother-in-law.
Ooh, can I refute something here? Given that the front matter contains dozens of clues, hints, and puzzles that identify the real author as Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford (and only him), it follows that the front matter was supposed to be included in every edition so that the memory of the real playwright - "our Friend and Fellow" as Jonson says in the epistle dedicatory - was not lost. Ready's assessment that the paratext was optional is therefore likely mistaken. That aside, this is an excellent presentation outlining the history of the First Folio and how it has been approached and manipulated over the centuries. Thanks go to Gabriel for placing the First Folio in its political context. The patrons William Herbert and his brother Philip Herbert were powerful men who opposed the proposed marriage of Prince Henry to the Spanish Infanta, Maria Ana which would have placed England within the influence of Spain and the Vatican and would have undermined England's political and religious independence. Scholars like Dickson and Waugh paved the way for Ready to place the First Folio in a political context which Stratfordians dare not do. It's ironic that the year of publication of Nicholas Rowe's edition has digits that add to 17: 1709.
Thanks Ron for your comments. On the front matter being an optional gathering, let me offer a clarification: For hundreds of years now the FF's front matter section has been treated as an optional gathering by binders/owners rather than a fixed gathering (e.g. the pages are present in different sequential order in surviving copies). In other words, the publishers designed an assembly with options. This atypical design makes the FF a bit of a puzzle. For a long time Orthodoxy theorized that the poetic material by the hispanophiles Mabbe and Digges arrived late, spawning various order types in surviving copies. In "Model of Disorder" I argue that the textual material for 3 sheets arrived early but that that material was at the last moment printed over 4 sheets instead so binders/owners had options in re-arranging the sheets during sewing and binding. I do not claim that the preliminary material was designed so that it could be removed altogether from the volume; that is not one of the dozens of options I considered in my research. I recommend you read "Model of Disorder" that presents my theory in detail, including a discussion on the various options, or what I call order types. Kind regards, Gabe
Is there a theory that these '3 businessmen' were basically approached by caretakers of Oxford's work and offered/told that would be the facade of this endeavor? like Trading Places, except the movie never ends.
Hello. An interesting video. However, makes little mention of the Jaggard printers. They are the key the whole Shakespeare story as they are in the centre of the action closely related to Digges and Mabbe, George Bryan, Hemmings & more plus neighbours in Coleman Street to so many involved in the early days of the London theatre. All is explained in my book Shakespeare Re-invented, which was first published in 2016 and now edited for a revised 2023 edition. I'm making a pdf version free to anyone who requests one.
An extraordinary presentation....." an encounter with the 1st Folio is an encounter with authorship and doubt"....thankyou for your scholarship and the unique cut of your jib!
An extremely edifying tour of first folio historiography. One can only hope to await the publishing of the ""The First Folio: A Long History of Fixing"" implied in Mr. Ready's opening remarks.
Great work!
Great presentation. The descriptions of refurbishments of First Folios had me cringing. To think what was cut away and discarded in the interest of prettying up their old editions is quite horrifying!
Most informative. Thank you.
The editing was left to the professionals, Ben Jonson and John Florio with more than 150 unique Florio words having been found by preliminary research. Playhouses in those days were nests of bush league Peaky Blinders who were good at helping theater patrons spend their money, gambling, prostitutes and alcohol. Shakespeare made enough money to buy a grand house back home before buying stock in a more upscale group headed by Burbage. Lords did not write plays, it was considered beneath their station. No one person wrote Shakespeare which it is why one can find Thomas North and John Florio and dozens of unrecognized stock theater company rewriters in between.
Great presentation. Do you think Susan (de Vere) Herbert might have been listed as one of the first editors? I think that she is just as likely, if not more so, to have had a hand in the preparation of the First Folio as her husband and brother-in-law.
Ooh, can I refute something here?
Given that the front matter contains dozens of clues, hints, and puzzles that identify the real author as Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford (and only him), it follows that the front matter was supposed to be included in every edition so that the memory of the real playwright - "our Friend and Fellow" as Jonson says in the epistle dedicatory - was not lost. Ready's assessment that the paratext was optional is therefore likely mistaken.
That aside, this is an excellent presentation outlining the history of the First Folio and how it has been approached and manipulated over the centuries.
Thanks go to Gabriel for placing the First Folio in its political context. The patrons William Herbert and his brother Philip Herbert were powerful men who opposed the proposed marriage of Prince Henry to the Spanish Infanta, Maria Ana which would have placed England within the influence of Spain and the Vatican and would have undermined England's political and religious independence. Scholars like Dickson and Waugh paved the way for Ready to place the First Folio in a political context which Stratfordians dare not do.
It's ironic that the year of publication of Nicholas Rowe's edition has digits that add to 17: 1709.
Thanks Ron for your comments. On the front matter being an optional gathering, let me offer a clarification:
For hundreds of years now the FF's front matter section has been treated as an optional gathering by binders/owners rather than a fixed gathering (e.g. the pages are present in different sequential order in surviving copies). In other words, the publishers designed an assembly with options. This atypical design makes the FF a bit of a puzzle. For a long time Orthodoxy theorized that the poetic material by the hispanophiles Mabbe and Digges arrived late, spawning various order types in surviving copies. In "Model of Disorder" I argue that the textual material for 3 sheets arrived early but that that material was at the last moment printed over 4 sheets instead so binders/owners had options in re-arranging the sheets during sewing and binding. I do not claim that the preliminary material was designed so that it could be removed altogether from the volume; that is not one of the dozens of options I considered in my research. I recommend you read "Model of Disorder" that presents my theory in detail, including a discussion on the various options, or what I call order types. Kind regards, Gabe
Is there a theory that these '3 businessmen' were basically approached by caretakers of Oxford's work and offered/told that would be the facade of this endeavor? like Trading Places, except the movie never ends.
Hello. An interesting video. However, makes little mention of the Jaggard printers. They are the key the whole Shakespeare story as they are in the centre of the action closely related to Digges and Mabbe, George Bryan, Hemmings & more plus neighbours in Coleman Street to so many involved in the early days of the London theatre. All is explained in my book Shakespeare Re-invented, which was first published in 2016 and now edited for a revised 2023 edition. I'm making a pdf version free to anyone who requests one.
I would suggest the book was designed to look like a Bible, to be displayed like a Bible and not read like the Bible.