The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: A Timeline

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Shakespeare as Author: The First Folio

The First Folio of Shakespeare is perhaps the single more important piece of literature in the English language. Twenty of Shakespeare's plays appear in print for the first time in the Folio; plays such as Julius Caesar, All's Well that Ends Well, Macbeth, Antony & Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, would be lost to us if not for the Folio.

Prefatory poem by Ben Jonson
and title page of the 1623 First Folio.

After Shakespeare's death in 1616, his friends and fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell assembled 36 of the 38 known plays (Pericles did not appear in the First Folio, but the Third Folio in 1663; The Two Noble Kinsmen did not appear in any Folio but finally a quarto in 1634; another play, Cardenio, is lost) for publication in a Folio-sized book. At the time, a Folio was a size and publication reserved mainly for history, religious, and other weighty subjects, not plays. The First Folio was approximately 13 inches tall and 8.5 inches wide, weighing almost five pounds. Publishing the Folio was a way to not only preserve their friend's work, but also to control the forms the plays appeared in, as there had been many unauthorized and "bad" quartos of plays over the years. Working from what appear to have been either manuscripts by Shakespeare himself or original play scripts, the Folio solidified the texts (mostly) of the plays and elevated Shakespeare from playwright to national poet. As Ben Jonson, who published his own collected works in Folio format in 1616, said in his dedicatory eulogy in the Folio,

To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name,

Am I thus ample to thy Booke, and fame;

While I confess thy writings to be such,

As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too much.

To have another playwright and poet such as Jonson eulogize him in such as way (and called the "sweet swan of Avon"), as well as a Folio of his works was to immortalize Shakespeare as a great writer. While his place in the pantheon of great English writers has ebbed and flowed, it has never been in doubt since. Without the Folio, an unauthorized-by-the-author publication, Shakespeare would not be the Shakespeare we know.

Shakespeare was not an author as we know an author to be today, with intellectual rights ingrained in his psyche and a desire for his works to be under his control, but the effects of the works that were printed had long-lasting effects on English literature as a whole and on our idea of what an author is.

Shakespeare as Author: The Plays

Shakespeare's plays were printed mainly as quartos until the First Folio of 1623 when they were collected in one place for the first time. Only eighteen of the 38 plays were printed as quartos, leaving the bulk of his plays known to us only from the Folio.

The plays were printed mainly without any involvement from Shakespeare himself.

[A]t least in his role as playwright, Shakespeare had no obvious interest in the printed book. Performance was the only form of publication he sought for his plays. He made no effort to have them published and none to stop the publication of the often poorly printed versions that did reach the bookstalls.

Shakespeare made his money, solidifying the plays at least in his mind as commodities to be used and profited from, by the performances on stage. As we've seen, he was involved in the printing of the two long poems under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, but there is no indication he had anything to do with the plays. As a result, the quality of the quarto editions of plays varies greatly. King Lear, for example, was printed in a quarto in 1608 (Q1), then in 1619 (Q2) after Shakespeare's 1616 death, and then in the First Folio (F1).

This version [First Folio] of the play is markedly different than Q1: there are about 100 lines that are in F1 but not Q1, and about 300 lines (including the entirety of [act.scene] 4.3) that are in Q1 but omitted in F1; there are also differences in about 800 words between the two versions. 

Q2 included lines not present in either of the other two versions. It's believed Q1, known as the bad quarto, was a reconstruction by a member of the cast and perhaps shows an "as acted" script of one performance. If Shakespeare had been involved in the publication, it is likely he would have provided a manuscript or authorized version in order to keep a "bad" quarto from being published in the first place.

King Lear's 1608 quarto title page

Other plays were printed in numerous editions; for example, Richard III went through seven printings from its initial publication in 1597, through the Folio, and to 1634, showing how popular the plays were and demonstrating a demand for them as printed works, not just performances. 

Works Cited:

Kastan, David Scott (2001). Shakespeare and the Book. Cambridge University Press. Preview Available: http://books.google.com/books?id=h7RlBXLunicC

https://www.folger.edu/shakespeares-works

Shakespeare as Author: The Epic Poems

Shakespeare wrote two long, epic poems early in his career, both of which he dedicated to his patron, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton. It's understood Shakespeare probably turned his attention from writing plays to poems during one of the closures of the theatres in London due to plague in the early 1590s, probably in an attempt to continue making money to support his wife and children at home in Stratford-upon-Avon.

For his first poem, Shakespeare chose the story of the goddess Venus falling in love with a beautiful young boy named Adonis and pursuing him for his love. Shakespeare's take on the old story was what happens if the youth rejects the goddess? It was published in 1593 and repeatedly throughout the 17th century. The care and effort taken in the printing shows a marked difference with that of the printing of the sonnet sequence of 1609.

The 1595 edition title page for Venus & Adonis

The 1595 dedication page for Venus & Adonis

The Rape of Lucrece was published in 1594 as Lucrece and then in four more printings through 1623. As with Venus, Lucrece features a beautiful title page and a complete dedication page, demonstrating it, too, was published with Shakespeare's authorization and involvement.

The 1594 quarto title page for Lucrece

The 1594 dedication page for Lucrece

The fact there were dedication pages with Shakespeare's name listed demonstrates these were authorized publications, done in conjunction with his patron. How much profit, if any, Shakespeare saw is unknown, as he would have seen his recompense earlier in the process. His patron would have reaped any benefits, including prestige, by the publication of these poems, which were popular and elevated Shakespeare from the mere ranks of just a playwright, although he didn't return in such ways to poetry the rest of his career.

[T]he major relations of exchange for authors occurred within a traditional patronage system in which, through a complex set of symbolic and materials transactions, patrons received honor and status in the form of service from their clients and in return provided both materials and immaterial rewards... the concept of an author owning a work did not quite fit the circumstances of literary production in the traditional patronage system. Even the printing privileges sometimes granted to authors as well as to guildsmen are best understood as versions of patronage rather than of ownership.

Work Cited: Rose, Mark (1993). Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright. Harvard University Press. Preview Available: http://books.google.com/books?id=HMB4hdF4lTMC

Shakespeare as Author: The Sonnet Sequence

At the time he was active, Shakespeare was known as a poet and a playwright. He wrote two long, epic poems, 154 sonnets in a cycle, 38 plays, and some other poems. During his lifetime, many of his works were printed/published. The most common format was the quarto, or a small paperback book-sized publication. It wasn't until seven years after his death, in 1623, that the First Folio was published, which collected his plays into one volume the size of a coffee-table book.

The 1609 quarto

His sonnet cycle of 154 sonnets, though written as early as 1590 and possibly as late as the early 1600s, was not published until 1609 and then in what is assumed was an unauthorized format, probably because they were intended for a private audience and not to be published. Only thirteen copies of the sonnets quarto have survived; there was only one printing. The dedication page of the quarto has spurred all sorts of speculation:

TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF.
THESE.INSUING.SONNETS.
Mr.W.H.   ALL.HAPPINESSE.
AND.THAT.ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OUR.EVER-LIVING.POET.
WISHETH.
THE.WELL-WISHING.
ADVENTURER.IN.SETTING.
FORTH.
T.T.

The initials of T.T. are those of the publisher, Thomas Thorpe. It is widely believed that because his initials appear instead of Shakespeare's it means the publication was done without Shakespeare's authorization. If this is the case, it is an instance of the author not only not having any input into the publication of the work, but also one that possibly violates privacy, as the sonnets in the sequence are considered very private, emotional poems. It's also possible Shakespeare authorized the printing, but because May 1609 was a time of upheaval for the theatres in London, having been closed for the plague once again, Thorpe wasn't able to get final approvals and had to print without Shakespeare "signing-off" on them.

In any case, there was only one printing of the sonnet sequence until a 1640 printing in which the sonnets were rearranged. Two of the sonnets, 138 and 144, were published in a 1599 collection called The Passionate Pilgrim. This printing is interesting because the poems are all ascribed to Shakespeare, but are from a number of different authors. The appearance of the two sonnets in Pilgrim demonstrate these two, at least, were written far before 1609, and probably the sonnets surrounding them the 1609 quarto order, as they are thematically linked. It also demonstrates how little control over printing authors had, since it's unlikely Shakespeare had any involvement in Pilgrim; if he had, it's likely he would not have allowed other poems of dubious quality to be linked to his name.

Shakespeare as Author: His Times

In order to talk about Shakespeare as an author in our modern definition, we should first place him in his times so we can know what authorship was like then. Shakespeare was active in London, England, from c. 1590 to c. 1614. Writers weren't known as "authors" at the time; that term was a general term for someone who created or originated something, such as the author of a crime. There were different "varieties" of writers at the time: poets who wrote poetry, playwrights who wrote plays, scientists and mathematicians who wrote tracts. Shakespeare was known as a poet and a playwright, as he wrote poems and plays.

During this time, authors did not have control over their publications, mainly because they were not seen to have control over their works. They usually wrote material for a patron, such as Shakespeare did with his poems and sonnets, or for a purpose, as he did with his plays. The works he created for his patron, the Earl of Southampton, would have then become the property of the Earl, who could decide when and where they were published and who could read them. The plays he wrote would have been intended for performance by his acting troupe, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men), and would have been the property of the acting company.

While plays were sometimes published as stand-alone works, there wasn't the type of reading population that would have supported the practice of publishing everything he or other playwrights created. The act of entering a work into the stationers' register, a way of copyrighting the material, was more for business purposes so others couldn't profit off the works of a particular acting company. Many of Shakespeare's plays were entered for publication, but were not printed immediately, so it appears they were entered to record them in order to protect the acting troupe's interests associated with the script.

Stationers' Register for
2 Henry VI

Shakespeare as Author

William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in English. His writings are required reading in both literature and drama classes. We have the idea Shakespeare was an author, toiling away by himself to produce his masterworks, but was he really? 

"[T]he notion of author is a relatively recent formation, and, as a cultural formation, it is inseparable form the commodification of literature. The distinguishing characteristic of the modern author, I propose, is proprietorship; the author is conceived as the originator and therefore the owner of a special kind of commodity, the work."

Given this definition of author, Shakespeare does not mainly qualify, as we will explore in this blog through examining his role in how his works were published.

Work Cited: Rose, Mark (1993). Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright. Harvard University Press. Preview Available: http://books.google.com/books?id=HMB4hdF4l