Shakespeare, William

Estimate

5,000 - 7,000 USD

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Description

paper

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark: A Tragedy. In Five Acts. As Performed at the Theatre in Boston. Boston: Printed for David West and John West, [1794]

8vo (8 x 5 in.; 203 x 126 mm); clean lateral tear in gutter margin of title and next two leaves, somewhat browned in first few quires, dampstain in lower portion. Stitched as issued.

Provenance

Amos T. Jenckes (exlibris on first text leaf dated 16 January 1795) — Mary S. Cushing (signature on title)

Literature

J. Sherzer, "American Editions of Shakespeare," Publications of the MLA, vol. 22 (1907), pp. 633-696; A. R. Westfall, American Shakespearean Criticism (1968); Evans 27692

Catalogue Note

The first publication of a Shakespeare play in the United States, an extraordinary survival. Theatrical performance has long been viewed with suspicion in Boston where, in 1750, the General Court of Massachusetts passed an act against stage plays and other theatrical entertainments, and no theatre opened there until 1792. This venue was called a "New Exhibition Room" where Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet were performed as "moral lectures." Legal proceedings were begun by the Puritans and arrests followed but a theatre again opened in February 1794 where Shakespeare was again presented (Sherzer, p. 639).

It is to that Boston theatre that we owe the publication of the first Shakespeare plays in the United States, the present Hamlet, and another volume of Twelfth Night, in abridged versions, probably the work of Charles Stuart Powell, the manager of the theatre, and one of its actors. Hamlet opened on 18 April 1794, and the text of the play was sold at the door as a libretto, the pages stitched together and without covers (Westfall, p. 82).

Amos Throop Jenckes, the son-in-law of John Carter (1745–1814), publisher of the Providence Gazette, spent much of his career voyaging to Cuba where he eventually settled.