Shakespeare | Hamlet, Weimar, Cranach Press, 1930, red morocco gilt

William Shakespeare

The tragedie of Hamlet prince of Denmarke. Edited by J. Dover Wilson from the text of the Second Quarto printed in 1604-5... Illustrated by Edward Gordon Craig. Weimar: Count Harry Kessler at the Cranach Press, 1930

folio (355 x 230mm.), copy number 48 from a limited edition of 322 copies, one of 300 on hand-made paper, half-title, printed in red and black throughout, woodcut illustrations by Gordon Craig, with the "Notes on the text" by Wilson bound separately in wrappers and housed in a pocket inside the lower cover, original red morocco gilt with gilt lettering on upper cover by O. Dorfner of Weimar, spine with gilt lettering, top edge gilt, others uncut, occasional light dampstaining

The colophon describes comprehensively the people and processes involved in the production of this fine volume, which was originally inspired by a production of Hamlet designed by Edward Gordon Craig in 1911-1912 for the Moscow Art Theatre. Gordon Craig had himself acted as Hamlet on the stage and had a lifelong obsession with the play. The marginal text contains the sources thought to have been used by Shakespeare, namely Saxo Grammaticus and Belleforest. A German translation of this text with Craig's illustrations was printed in 1929. 

"This is one of the most ambitious and successful books of the Cranach Press, with a fine harmony between the type page and the illustration" (The Artist and the Book, p. 52).

LITERATURE:

The Artist and the Book 66