Weever, John

Estimate

10,000 - 15,000 USD

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Description

Weever, John
The Mirror of Martyrs, or The life and death of that thrice valiant Capitaine, and most godly Martyr Sir Iohn Old castle knight Lord Cobham. London: by V.S [immes]. for William Wood, 1601
ink, paper, leather

16mo (4 3/4 x 3 1/4 ins.; 120 x 85 mm). Title with woodcut device (McKerrow 331) and border woodcut initial and headpieces; title-page mounted, F2 with closed tear within page not extending to edge, blank leaf F4 lacking (as in all copies). Modern black morocco.

Provenance

Frank Loveday (bookseller's note laid in). acquisition: Seven Gables

Literature

STC 25226; Bartlett 298

Catalogue Note

Rare first and only edition of this volume of important Shakespearean interest; of seven copies known the present is the only in private hands.

The verso of A3 has the following verses:

"The many-headed multitudes were drawne / By Brutus speech, that Caesar ambitious, / When eloquent Mark Antoinie had showne / His vertues, who but Brutus, then was vicious: / Mans memory, with new, forgets the old, / One tale is good vntill another's told."

The above lines are believed to be the earliest known allusion to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and are, aside from internal evidence of metrical features, the only means of determining the date the tragedy was written. There is no speech by Brutus on Caesar's ambition in Plutarch (from which Shakespeare founded the play), nor anything from Appian's "Chronicles of the Roman Wars" that fits the words either.

The other extant copies are to be found at the Bodleian, Cambridge (Pepys), Huntington (Huth-Clawson), Lilly (lacking title), British Museum (title in facsimile) and two at the Folger (Ben Jonson's and Britwell).

Of note is that the present title varies from the one reproduced in the Clawson catalogue, with the "e" dropped from "Martyre" in the sixth line and the figures of the woodcut title are reversed.