Everything about False Folio totally explained
False Folio is the term that
Shakespeare scholars and
bibliographers have applied to
William Jaggard's printing of ten Shakespearean and
pseudo-Shakespearean plays together in
1619, the first attempt to collect Shakespeare's work in a single volume.
The term "false folio" intentionally evokes the folio collections of Shakespeare's works that appeared later in the seventeenth century — the
First Folio of
1623 and its successors. The word "folio" isn't strictly accurate, since the ten plays were printed in a larger-than-usual
quarto format, not in folio; but the key qualifier is
false folio. The texts in question were first examined with modern bibliographic procedures primarily by
Alfred W. Pollard,
W. W. Greg, and William J. Neidig. Pollard provides a detailed account in his
Shakespeare Folios and Quartos.
In summary, the stationer and printer William Jaggard reprinted ten plays in 1619, either to be bound together in a single volume or issued separately depending on customer choice. Jaggard, however, didn't have clear title to all of the plays involved [see:
Stationers Company;
Stationers' Register], and therefore he printed some of the texts with false dates and the names of the original stationers involved on the title pages — in effect reproducing the appearance of the earlier quartos. The ten plays were:
- Henry V — "printed for T. P. 1608" on the title page. False date. Thomas Pavier was the stationer who possessed the rights to Henry V, and was an associate of Jaggard.
- King Lear — "Printed for Nathaniel Butter 1608." False date and name. Butter had printed Q1 of Lear in 1608.
- The Merchant of Venice — "Printed by J. Roberts, 1600." False date and name. This was one play to which Jaggard didn't have valid title; it belonged to stationer Laurence Hayes.
- The Merry Wives of Windsor — "Printed for Arthur Johnson, 1619." False date and name. Johnson published Q1 of Merry Wives in 1602.
- A Midsummer Night's Dream — "Printed by James Roberts, 1600." False date and name.
- Pericles, Prince of Tyre — "Printed for T. P. 1619".
- Sir John Oldcastle — "printed for T. P. 1600". False date.
- A Yorkshire Tragedy — "Printed for T. P. 1619."
- The Whole Contention Between the Two Famous Houses, Lancaster and York — "Printed at London, for T. P." This was the major innovation of the collection: Jaggard joined together two previously separate texts, The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster (the early version of Henry VI, Part 2, published by Thomas Millington in 1594 and 1600), and The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York (the early version of Henry VI, Part 3, published by Millington in 1595 and 1600). In 1602, Pavier had acquired the rights to both plays from Millington. Pericles was printed after The Whole Contention, since their signatures (the alphanumeric designations of the quires in sequence) run together; but the nine plays were apparently bound together in no particular order. (The few existing collections vary.)
As Jaggard lacked rights to Hayes'
Merchant of Venice, he may also have lacked rights to Butter's
Lear and Johnson's
Merry Wives. There is much about the False Folio affair that remains unclear, such as subjective questions of Jaggard's motivation. Jaggard had a previous odd connection with the Shakespeare canon: he'd printed the questionable miscellany
The Passionate Pilgrim as Shakespeare's in
1599 and
1612. Some Shakespeare scholars have wondered why the
King's Men used Jaggard as the printer and one of the publishers of the First Folio, just a couple of years after the False Folio affair. (Work on the First Folio began almost certainly in
1621.) It may have been a case of necessity, since Jaggard had a large-capacity print shop. (He had demonstrated his ability to print a volume of ten plays.) Pavier's role in the matter is also debated; his intitials occur on five of the nine volumes (six of the ten plays), and some contemporary commentators see Pavier's role as more significant than Jaggard's — referring to the books as the "Pavier quartos" instead of the "False Folio."
Pollard focused much of his attention on the concept of literary "piracy," and his viewpoint colored much of the scholarly attitude and approach to the False Folio during the twentieth century. By the start of the twenty-first century, some researchers began take a less melodramatic and more nuanced view of the questions involved, a view that no longer cast Jaggard and Pavier as the villains in a moral contest.
Further Information
Get more info on 'False Folio'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://false_folio.totallyexplained.com">False Folio Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
