Shakespeare, William

4to (7 1/8 x 5 3/8 in.; 182 x 136 mm). Woodcut printer's device on title-page (McKerrow 283), woodcut initial and head- and tailpiece; a few trifling scattered stains. Blue morocco by W. Mansell, covers gilt-paneled, smooth spine gilt-letter, marbled endpapers, gilt edges.

Abbie Ellen Hanscom Pope (died 1895; sold, 1896, with a large portion of her library by Dodd, Mead to) — Robert Hoe (morocco label; Anderson, 18 January 1912, lot 3032) — P. A. Valentine (Bartlett Census) — Hannah D. Rabinowitz (morocco label). acquisition: Seven Gables, 1965

 

 

STC 22297; ESTC S111195; Bartlett 70; Bartlett Census 650; Greg I:172b; Greg III:1107–08; Greg, "On Certain False Dates in Shakespearean Quartors," in The Library 9 (1908): 113–31, 381–409; Pollard, Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, pp. 81–104

4to (7 1/8 x 5 3/8 in.; 182 x 136 mm). Woodcut printer's device on title-page (McKerrow), Woodcut initial and head- and tailpiece; a few trifling scattered stains. Blue morocco by W. Mansell, covers gilt-paneled, smooth spine gilt-letter, marbled endpapers, gilt edges.
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Second edition, a superb unwashed and entirely unsophisticated copy of one of the rarest of the Pavier-Jaggard quartos.

In a brilliant piece of bibliographical detective work, Greg proved in 1908 that this quarto and eight others were all printed in the first half of 1619 and were intended as a collected issue of Shakespeare's plays. However, the project was abandoned about midyear, probably due to copyright difficulties. The nine plays were subsequently sold singly or, possibly, as a group to be bound up by purchasers. This discovery—that there had been a collected Shakespeare before the First Folio—still ranks as one of the highest achievements in Shakespearean bibliography.

Just two years after Shakespeare's death, and fully four years before the First Folio, Pavier and Jaggard conceived the idea of issuing a collection of Shakespeare's plays: they began with 2–3 Henry VI (with a single title-page) and Pericles, printed together with continuous signatures; continued with the apocryphal Yorkshire Tragedy, Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer-Night's Dream, King Lear, and Henry V; and concluded with the apocryphal Sir John Oldcastle—all of these last seven with individual signatures. If the false or undated imprints on most of these quartos had been intended to fool the Lord Chamberlain, they failed in their purpose, for on 3 May 1610 he wrote to the Stationers' Company asserting copyright, and the Pavier-Jaggard venture was abandoned shortly thereafter.

The Pirie copy is one of about twenty-six surviving copies of the 1619 Merchant of Venice. The copy text for the Pavier-Jaggard issue was the first quarto, which was actually printed in 1600 by James Roberts. All complete copies of the first quarto edition are in institutions, so the Pavier-Jaggard issue is the earliest obtainable printing.

The 1619 quarto is a considerable rarity in its own right: at least one copy of the other eight Pavier-Jaggard titles has appeared at auction since the last public sale of The Merchant of Venice, from the library of J. T. Adams of Snaithfield, Sheffield, at Sotheby's London, 7 December 1931, lot 227.