Shakespeare Apocrypha

4to (7 x 5 1/4 in.; 177 x 133 mm). Woodcut printer's device on title-page (McKerrow 283), woodcut initial and headpiece, type-ornament headpiece; tiny rusthole on A3 touching a couple of letters verso, H2 with small repair to fore-edge margin, some finger-soiling and staining. Red morocco gilt by Hayday, marbled endpapers, gilt edges; extremities rubbed.

John L. Clawson (morocco label; Anderson, 25 May 1926, lot 736). acquisition: John Fleming, 1972

 

 

STC 18796; ESTC S106328; Bartlett 144; Greg I:166b

4to (7 x 5 1/4 in.; 177 x 133 mm). Woodcut printer's device on title-page (McKerrow 283), woodcut initial and headpiece, type-ornament headpiece; tiny rusthole on A3 touching a couple of letters verso, H2 with small repair to fore-edge margin, some finger-soiling and staining. Red morocco gilt by Hayday, marbled endpapers, gilt edges; extremities rubbed.
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Second edition of a play partly inspired by Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1, and the first to be ascribed to the Bard. The play was subsequently included in the Third Folio of 1664.

From a payment of ten pounds to the authors by Philip Henslowe, the owner of the Rose Theatre, Sir John Oldcastle is now know to have been written in collaboration by Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, Robert Wilson, and Richard Hathaway. The quartet did write a second part, which Dekker revised, but this has not survived. 

This is one of the nine titles printed by Jaggard for Pavier for their Shakespearian collection of 1619; the false publication date was intended to evade copyright restrictions. It is somewhat odd that Shakespeare's name was added to the title-page because Sir John Oldcastle "was originally written ostensibly to remove the slur which Shakespeare was supposed to have cast upon the historical Oldcastle by giving his name to the fat knight in Henry IV and Henry V. Indeed such an exception was taken by Oldcastle's descendants that the name was chaged to Falstaff in Shakespeare's play" (Bartlett). Uncommon.