1474 - Histories of Troy, printed by Johann Valdener, with his apprentice William Caxton; the first book printed in English (63).
Caxton set up a bookshop in Westminster in 1476, and set up a press shortly thereafter in Almonry, west of the Abbey. A Papal Indulgence, with a date filled in of 13 December 1476, is the earliest extant document from this print shop, and the earliest book printed was the early 1477 History of Jason, which is the first book printed in England (63 - 64).
In 1495 Wynkyn de Worde printed the first book to be made of English paper (milled by John Tate at Stevenage in Hertfordshire). Richard Pynson of Normandy introduced roman type to English print shops in 1509, De Worde printed the first Greek characters in England in 1517, and printed the first Hebrew and Arabic type in 1528 (67).
The Company of Stationers pre-dates printing in London; the guild existed as a group of scribes, illuminators, binders, and book sellers, and while overwhelmed by the influx of new books, they appear to have embraced the new technology and peaceably integrated printing into their professional community (67).
The Stationers company received control of printing in England via a royal charter from Queen Mary in 1557. This allowed them to determine the number of presses a printer could have, the maximum number of books printed in an edition (the maximum was 1500 copies), and the number of journeyman and apprentices a master printer could keep. Perhaps more significantly, it established a primitive method of copyright, allowing a printer to record the title of works he had purchased and his intention to publish (70).
The Company of Stationers formed a self-regulating body, mostly of book sellers and printers by their chartering, which kept out foreign influence, which pleased the crown, as it helped prevent the publication of foreign, seditious, or heretical works (70).
Summary
The development of printing in England came after printing had spread to the continent, but printed books easily integrated within the professional framework of scribes, and book binders and sellers. As on the continent, the production of books increased at a geometric rate after the introduction of the press. Royal charter gave official sanction to the Company of Stationers, which served as a self-regulating body to ensure fair trade among its members, and while a book did not have to be registered with the Stationer's Company to be printed, doing so provided legal protection should someone else attempt to print it.
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
Making Shakespeare Notes: Chapter One
I suppose I ought to have prefaced my last post with a reminder that this blog is serving as my research journal, and presently that involves reading Tiffany Stern's Making Shakespeare. I'll be posting my notes on this and other research materials for some time.
There were two ways for most Londoners to get to the playhouses on the Bank side; either by ferry or by the bridge, both of which required paying a toll (7).
London bridge was decorated with the severed heads of executed traitors, which as a result of parboiling and taring (to prevent decomposition) were black in appearance. Thus the black faced characters (i.e. devils) that appeared on the stage would bear a striking resemblance to the visages of the condemned that playgoers had recently looked upon (8-9).
"Even the ways by which Londoners approached the playhouses might, as shown, have an affect on what they understood from the plays they saw there" (9).
Plays of the time were performed in the provinces as well as in London, and the reference to London would have only been familiar to the London audiences, which is why they are not more present (11). We can see echoes of this in modern plays, however, such as I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, in which it is customary to localize certain place names that would be unfamiliar to a non-NYC audience.
The Theatre became the Globe when reconstructed on the Bankside, and the Chamberlain's first play in the new space, Ad You Like It, is peppered with referenced to the stage and the world being one in the same. The audiences knew that the Globe was the Theatre, and the playwright has written these jokes for his new space (14).
Henry V was probably written for the Curtain and not for the Globe, and thus the apology for he inadequate space in the prologue serves as an advertisement for the Globe, which would open shortly thereafter (15).
The proximity of the theatres in the Bankeside to the bear baiting pits created competition with those venues for the same audiences, and the spectacular use of blood and bear baiting imagery is probably a result of this proximity and competition (19-20).
The physical structure of the playhouse gains meaning in the text of the plays when considering the location of music. Music from from heaven (above) is positive and marks a turning point towards a joyous resolution of the action. Music from hell (below) is ominous and portends the downfall of the hero (25). The entrances points for certain characters would also be determined by this context; audiences would have likely assumed that the Ghost of Hamlet's father, ascending from the trap, was an evil spirit, and thus would have been more sympathetic toward Hamlet's reluctance to obey his command (26).
"The play on paper often does not record the play performed" (27).
The move to the Blackfriars clearly had an influence on Shakespeare's playwriting, as the action of a play now needed to stop every half hour or so to accommodate maintenance to the candles needed to light an indoor space; thus his fave-act structure emerges (31). Also, the closer proximity of the smaller Blackfriars stage, coupled with the more courtly conscientiousness of its audience, creates a natural shift towards topics of art and beauty (32). Brash spectacle is limited, and the audience is asked to imagine more.
Summary:
The physical space of the London playhouses, their location on the Bankside, and the tastes of the audiences all have demonstrable impacts on the plays Shakespeare (and his contemporaries) wrote. They fashioned their works to provoke responses from their audiences to keep their audiences coming back for more, and an understanding of the physical context of Shakespeare's plays is necessary for understanding how they work.
At the end of the chapter, Stern introduces evidence suggesting that the sole copy of Macbeth extant from the period may be the result of a one off court performance designed to flatter James' descent from Banquo and his attitudes towards witchcraft. Shakespeare revised not just individual plays, but his over all writing style to suite the needs of differing performance venues and their larger contexts. There's no reason we should be afraid to do likewise.
There were two ways for most Londoners to get to the playhouses on the Bank side; either by ferry or by the bridge, both of which required paying a toll (7).
London bridge was decorated with the severed heads of executed traitors, which as a result of parboiling and taring (to prevent decomposition) were black in appearance. Thus the black faced characters (i.e. devils) that appeared on the stage would bear a striking resemblance to the visages of the condemned that playgoers had recently looked upon (8-9).
"Even the ways by which Londoners approached the playhouses might, as shown, have an affect on what they understood from the plays they saw there" (9).
Plays of the time were performed in the provinces as well as in London, and the reference to London would have only been familiar to the London audiences, which is why they are not more present (11). We can see echoes of this in modern plays, however, such as I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, in which it is customary to localize certain place names that would be unfamiliar to a non-NYC audience.
The Theatre became the Globe when reconstructed on the Bankside, and the Chamberlain's first play in the new space, Ad You Like It, is peppered with referenced to the stage and the world being one in the same. The audiences knew that the Globe was the Theatre, and the playwright has written these jokes for his new space (14).
Henry V was probably written for the Curtain and not for the Globe, and thus the apology for he inadequate space in the prologue serves as an advertisement for the Globe, which would open shortly thereafter (15).
The proximity of the theatres in the Bankeside to the bear baiting pits created competition with those venues for the same audiences, and the spectacular use of blood and bear baiting imagery is probably a result of this proximity and competition (19-20).
The physical structure of the playhouse gains meaning in the text of the plays when considering the location of music. Music from from heaven (above) is positive and marks a turning point towards a joyous resolution of the action. Music from hell (below) is ominous and portends the downfall of the hero (25). The entrances points for certain characters would also be determined by this context; audiences would have likely assumed that the Ghost of Hamlet's father, ascending from the trap, was an evil spirit, and thus would have been more sympathetic toward Hamlet's reluctance to obey his command (26).
"The play on paper often does not record the play performed" (27).
The move to the Blackfriars clearly had an influence on Shakespeare's playwriting, as the action of a play now needed to stop every half hour or so to accommodate maintenance to the candles needed to light an indoor space; thus his fave-act structure emerges (31). Also, the closer proximity of the smaller Blackfriars stage, coupled with the more courtly conscientiousness of its audience, creates a natural shift towards topics of art and beauty (32). Brash spectacle is limited, and the audience is asked to imagine more.
Summary:
The physical space of the London playhouses, their location on the Bankside, and the tastes of the audiences all have demonstrable impacts on the plays Shakespeare (and his contemporaries) wrote. They fashioned their works to provoke responses from their audiences to keep their audiences coming back for more, and an understanding of the physical context of Shakespeare's plays is necessary for understanding how they work.
At the end of the chapter, Stern introduces evidence suggesting that the sole copy of Macbeth extant from the period may be the result of a one off court performance designed to flatter James' descent from Banquo and his attitudes towards witchcraft. Shakespeare revised not just individual plays, but his over all writing style to suite the needs of differing performance venues and their larger contexts. There's no reason we should be afraid to do likewise.
Friday, February 5, 2010
On whose authority?
We don't know who wrote The Merry Devil, as I've previously pointed out, which raises the question, on whose authority do we authorize a text? This same question, of course, can be turned to the plays of William Shakespeare himself. The theatricians of Renaissance London didn't know or care about our post-enlightenment concept of the author, that solitary genius motivated by the divine spark to create "art." They cared about putting on a good show, defined as one which would make money.
If Mr. Henslowe buys a play and decides it needs some fixing, great. He'll probably hire someone to do it. He did it with Dr. Faustus, afterall (and documented the transaction), and there's no reason to think that the Chamberlain's/King's Men didn't do exactly the same thing. Remember, Shakespeare produced about two plays a year, and the playhouses (when not closed due to plague) liked to perform 6 days a week. They performed many more plays than Shakespeare could have possibly written. Merry Devil was one of them.
So here's the thing; if one of the reasons that Shakespeare's plays are so good (as Gary Taylor would argue) is that they were the product of the best playwright working with the best players; in other words, if the company revised Shakespeare's plays while performing them (as is not uncommonly done today), they would have most assuredly done so with another playwright. Like whomever wrote Merry Devil.
So when this play is finally published in quarto format in 1608, how did they "authorize" it? In other words, how did they establish it as a piece of work worth paying money to own? Dr. Menzer directed me to look at the title page, so lets see what that says....
I'm finding that there are two primary types of editions of a text that I'm likely to work with: documentary editions, which seek to re-create the specific instance of a specific text (like the first quarto, completely disregarding anything that might have happened in the five subsequent quartos). That type of edition is authorized by the fact that it is a preservation of the way the text once looked, no more no less.
The critical edition is the one we're more familiar with. That's the kind where, in an ideal world, an editor has examined all possible editions of a text and based on sound logical judgment creates an accessible version replete with foot and end notes for the modern reader. The authority of this type of text derives from it's having compared and contrasted several different printings.
When I started this project, I was aiming towards the latter edition, and to some degree, that's still the trajectory that I'm following, but creating a text for performance is a little bit different than a text for study. To be sure, the performance text usually derives from the critical text (at least in my productions), which requires an appeal to another sort of authority: my experience as a director.
Here's the rub: I trust myself more as a director than I do as a scholar. My performance text of this play will therefore speak with more authority to me than my critical text will. That just gives me more of an incentive to make sure that I've looked at as many editions of this text as possible, and that my judgment in making emendations is very, very sound.
That said, I've just finished going over my transcription of Q1 with a fine tooth comb, and notating it liberally where something even seemed a little bit odd to me. Next, I'll be moving on to a line by line comparison between my Q1 transcription and, you guessed it, the second quarto (Q2) of 1612. I read somewhere that Q2 and Q3 were little more than reprints of Q1; if so, that may be even more reason to go over them with a fine tooth comb as well: what better way to make sure I have missed, or misinterpreted, anything from my Q1 transcription?
If Mr. Henslowe buys a play and decides it needs some fixing, great. He'll probably hire someone to do it. He did it with Dr. Faustus, afterall (and documented the transaction), and there's no reason to think that the Chamberlain's/King's Men didn't do exactly the same thing. Remember, Shakespeare produced about two plays a year, and the playhouses (when not closed due to plague) liked to perform 6 days a week. They performed many more plays than Shakespeare could have possibly written. Merry Devil was one of them.
So here's the thing; if one of the reasons that Shakespeare's plays are so good (as Gary Taylor would argue) is that they were the product of the best playwright working with the best players; in other words, if the company revised Shakespeare's plays while performing them (as is not uncommonly done today), they would have most assuredly done so with another playwright. Like whomever wrote Merry Devil.
So when this play is finally published in quarto format in 1608, how did they "authorize" it? In other words, how did they establish it as a piece of work worth paying money to own? Dr. Menzer directed me to look at the title page, so lets see what that says....
The line I want to draw your attention to is the one that reads "As it hath been sundry times acted, by his Majesties Servants, at the Globe, on the bank-side." The authority this play is claiming is not that it was written by a specific individual, but first that it was performed "sundry times" (and plays that suck don't get sundry performances), second that it was performed by the servants of the king, and third that it was performed in their large, public theatre. In other words, both the audience and the king are implicitly referenced as the authorizing authorities for this publication.
I'm finding that there are two primary types of editions of a text that I'm likely to work with: documentary editions, which seek to re-create the specific instance of a specific text (like the first quarto, completely disregarding anything that might have happened in the five subsequent quartos). That type of edition is authorized by the fact that it is a preservation of the way the text once looked, no more no less.
The critical edition is the one we're more familiar with. That's the kind where, in an ideal world, an editor has examined all possible editions of a text and based on sound logical judgment creates an accessible version replete with foot and end notes for the modern reader. The authority of this type of text derives from it's having compared and contrasted several different printings.
When I started this project, I was aiming towards the latter edition, and to some degree, that's still the trajectory that I'm following, but creating a text for performance is a little bit different than a text for study. To be sure, the performance text usually derives from the critical text (at least in my productions), which requires an appeal to another sort of authority: my experience as a director.
Here's the rub: I trust myself more as a director than I do as a scholar. My performance text of this play will therefore speak with more authority to me than my critical text will. That just gives me more of an incentive to make sure that I've looked at as many editions of this text as possible, and that my judgment in making emendations is very, very sound.
That said, I've just finished going over my transcription of Q1 with a fine tooth comb, and notating it liberally where something even seemed a little bit odd to me. Next, I'll be moving on to a line by line comparison between my Q1 transcription and, you guessed it, the second quarto (Q2) of 1612. I read somewhere that Q2 and Q3 were little more than reprints of Q1; if so, that may be even more reason to go over them with a fine tooth comb as well: what better way to make sure I have missed, or misinterpreted, anything from my Q1 transcription?
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
How those Oxfordians do go on.
Some people out in the world think that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote most (or all) of Shakespeare's plays. To prove their claim, some of the more industrious among them have resorted to such highly respected methods as ouigi boards. I don't think I've ever met an Oxfordian, but I have met adults who believe in unicorns. While I won't go so far as to call Oxfordians "stupid," because some very intelligent people have subscribed to this theory, there is not a single shred of concrete evidence to support the convoluted narrative that they create to justify de Vere as the author of the canon.
I mention this because, while doing a little bit of research, I stumbled across this article, which as you've probably guessed proposes de Vere as the author of Merry Devil. Is it impossible? Yes, but the evidence that this apparently anonymous author puts forth doesn't even come close to suggesting it. Lets look at his argument, you know, for fun. I'll sumarize in bullet points:
The fact is, while Fabell the Cambridge scholar and his student are portrayed sympathetically, you could substitute just about any school name in there and it wouldn't change a thing. Even so, a lot of people went to Cambridge, Christopher Marlowe, for example. Also, a lot of people probably were familiar enough with the area in which the play takes place to have written about it. Just about every other point that the author makes in this article begs the question: de Vere could have written it, therefore he may have.
Still, the references to the fate of Howard and Jerningham are rather intriguing, and might be worth some further investigation.
I mention this because, while doing a little bit of research, I stumbled across this article, which as you've probably guessed proposes de Vere as the author of Merry Devil. Is it impossible? Yes, but the evidence that this apparently anonymous author puts forth doesn't even come close to suggesting it. Lets look at his argument, you know, for fun. I'll sumarize in bullet points:
- Merry Devil was probably written by a Cambridge graduate because it refers to Cambridge in a positive way.
- The author was familiar with an area 15 miles south of London, as evidenced by the references to specific locales.
- The play was probably written before 1572, because there was no Duke of Norfolk after 1572.
- Merry Devil is about young men in love, and must have been written by a young man in love. Coincidentally, de Vere was a young man at that time.
- de Vere was a friend of Thomas Howard, the 4th Duke of Norfolk
- de Vere was proclaimed as a comedy writer
The fact is, while Fabell the Cambridge scholar and his student are portrayed sympathetically, you could substitute just about any school name in there and it wouldn't change a thing. Even so, a lot of people went to Cambridge, Christopher Marlowe, for example. Also, a lot of people probably were familiar enough with the area in which the play takes place to have written about it. Just about every other point that the author makes in this article begs the question: de Vere could have written it, therefore he may have.
Still, the references to the fate of Howard and Jerningham are rather intriguing, and might be worth some further investigation.
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