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View full screen - View 1 of Lot 34. SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM | Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Published according to the true Originall Copies. The Second Impression. London: Printed by Tho. Cotes, for Robert Allot (, John Smethwick, William Aspley, Richard Hawkins, and Richard Meighen), and are to be fold [sic] at his shop at the signe of the Blacke Beare in Pauls Church-yard, 1632.

SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM | Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Published according to the true Originall Copies. The Second Impression. London: Printed by Tho. Cotes, for Robert Allot (, John Smethwick, William Aspley, Richard Hawkins, and Richard Meighen), and are to be fold [sic] at his shop at the signe of the Blacke Beare in Pauls Church-yard, 1632

Lot Closed

December 17, 05:34 PM GMT

Estimate

100,000 - 150,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Property from a Florida Collector

SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM

Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. Published according to the true Originall Copies. The Second Impression. London: Printed by Tho. Cotes, for Robert Allot (, John Smethwick, William Aspley, Richard Hawkins, and Richard Meighen), and are to be fold [sic] at his shop at the signe of the Blacke Beare in Pauls Church-yard, 1632


Folio (13¼ x 9 in.; 338 x 228 mm). Letterpress title with engraved portrait by Martin Droeshout, facing initial leaf of Jonson's verses ("To the Reader"), text in double columns, 66 lines, within typographical rules, woodcut head- and tailpieces and initials; Verses leaf offset from portrait, lightly foxed, and with a marginal stain and pen trial at deep inner margin, title-page lightly stained at deep inner margin, evidently from facing pen trial, a tiny wormhole running through the lower margin of A1–2Aa4, not affecting text and with early mend to first 8 leaves, very short marginal tear to lower corner of zz4, about 20 scattered rustholes costing a letter or two, some scattered soiling and staining, but withal a clean, fresh copy. Late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century straightgrain blue morocco, the three outer edges of the covers with central beveled panels, gilt cornerpieces, elaborately blind-tooled frame, and a central gilt curvilineal panel, spine gilt- and blind-tooled in seven compartments, gray slate endpapers, edges gilt and gauffered; extremities a bit rubbed, evidence of removal or loss of a bookplate and morocco label from front pastedown. Brown morocco solander box.


The fine Bishop-Stockhausen copy of the first issue of the second folio edition of Shakespeare's works, also containing John Milton's first appearance in print: "An Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare" (A5r). The second folio was essentially a page-for-page reprint of the first folio of 1623. This edition was printed by Thomas Cotes—who had taken over Isaac Jaggard's shop in 1627—for the five publishers listed in the colophon, each of whom had rights in one or more of the plays.


Of the nine imprint variants of this edition noted by ESTC, this is the first (Todd 1a). Among the other variants are title-page imprints for the four other publishers (Smethwick, Aspley, Hawkins and Meighen) and two reissues of the edition ca. 1641 or later.


The very handsome binding is much in the style of—and attributed by the Bishop and Stockhausen catalogues to—Christian Samuel Kalthoeber (fl. 1775–1817).

References

ESTC S111233; STC 22274; Greg III: 1113–1115; Pforzheimer 906; Todd, "The Issues and States of the Second Folio," in Studies in Bibliography V: 81-108


PROVENANCE:

Cortland Field Bishop (morocco label; AAA/Anderson, 14 November 1938, lot 2077) — Henry Walker & Nancy Reynolds Bagley (bookplate featuring their Greenwich residence) — William E. Stockhausen (Sotheby Parke Bernet, 19 November 1974, lot 399)