ABSTRACT
In view of all the evidence of Shakespeare’s popularity as a dramatist, modern readers are often surprised to learn that only about half of his plays were printed during his lifetime. These plays appeared separately in thin quarto volumes. * The care exercised on the different plays varied widely from printer to printer, but even at best the quartos fall short of what modern publishers set as basic standards of accuracy. Furthermore, scholars who have worked seriously with these plays in their original quarto editions report that Shakespeare appears not to have made the slightest effort to bring them before the public in attractive and accurate texts. Some other dramatists showed at least a minimal concern for the printed versions of their plays by providing dedications and addresses to the reader, as we can see in printed plays of Dekker, Marston, Middleton, Jonson, Chapman, Hey wood, Field, and Fletcher, but there is no such evidence of this or any other kind of concern on Shakespeare’s part. When his plays appeared, they contained no lists of dramatis personae, though such lists appear in many Elizabethan play quartos prior to 1600 and in a majority of those appearing after 1600. Furthermore, none of the Shakespeare quartos published during his lifetime has act and scene divisions (only Romeo and Juliet and Pericles provide some irregular typographical indications of scene breaks), whereas in many non-Shakespearian play quartos such divisions are clearly marked. Finally, there is such a staggering number of obvious errors in Shakespeare’s quartos that it is impossible to believe the author gave them even the most superficial proofreading. Nor did he make any attempt to get his unpublished plays into print. When he died, he could not know that anyone other than theatrical directors, prompters, and actors learning their roles would ever read Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, As You hihe It, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, and a dozen other plays (including also Othello, which, however, did appear in quarto in 1622). Fortunately, Shakespeare’s old friends and colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell saw to it that his plays (“absolute in their numbers, as he conceived them”) were collected and published in 1623 in a thick folio volume, now called the First Folio. The two editors said nothing about any request from Shakespeare that the collection be issued; on the contrary, they made it quite clear that the initiative was their own.
