ABSTRACT
1623, the Shakespeare Folio year': when Judith Simmons used this phrase at a meeting of the Bibliographical Society in 1965, she was merely stating the obvious; for three centuries or more, despite assaults from a wave of new critical movements. Mr. William Shakespeare's comedies, histories, & tragedies has been considered not only the most important imprint of 1623 but, so far as literary scholarship is concerned, its most significant event. The Sculler's writings often display an undisguised hostility to Spanish Catholicism and his jokes at the expense of Spanish soldiers appear to have made popular reading across the social spectrum later in the decade. Complexity is not a term generally applied to the prolific output of the Water-Poet: indeed, the text that would seem more relevant for an exploration of Taylor's approach to the Spanish visit.
