University of Virginia Library

The Printer of Hamlet Q3
by
J. A. Lavin

Nicholas Ling, for whom the good second quarto of Hamlet had been printed by James Roberts in 1604-5, transferred his rights in the play to John Smethwick on 19 November 1607. The third quarto (STC 22277) appeared in 1611 with Smethwick's device (McKerrow 376) on the titlepage, but without a printer's name in the imprint. W. W. Greg thought that the printer was "probably Valentine Simmes" (Bibliography, I, 311), because of the one ornament it displays, a headpiece on sig B1r (see fig. 1).

W. Craig Ferguson has quite rightly pointed out that this ornament "cannot be taken as evidence that Simmes printed the book," for he had used the ornament in question once only, in 1604, seven years before the printing of Hamlet Q3 in 1611, by which time "Simmes's old ornament stock had been taken over by other printers or had disappeared."[1] The question of who owned this block in 1611 and employed it in the printing of Hamlet Q3 in that year is complicated by the fact that the last title bearing the name of Simmes as printer is dated 1612, The most famous . . . historie of . . . Mervine (STC 17844), which he printed jointly with Ralph Blower. However, Ferguson has shown that Simmes virtually ceased printing after 1607, for he published nothing more until 1610, when a solitary reprint was done for him by Thomas Purfoot. Of the three Simmes titles dated 1611, one was printed for him, and the other two, although claiming to be printed by Simmes, contain none of his old ornament stock.[2]

Apart from the unlikelihood that Simmes still owned the Hamlet headpiece in 1611, there are other reasons, as Ferguson indicates, for not attributing Q3 to Simmes: the fount of small capitals on the titlepage is not found in any other of Simmes's books; the signatures on sheets D-G and L have periods between the letters and the numerals, a practice never adopted by Simmes; stage-directions and exits are not uniformly treated; italic is introduced into the roman of the text, and roman into italic stage-directions (practices avoided by Simmes); and speech-prefixes are almost always abbreviated, in contrast to Simmes's habit of using unabbreviated tags.[3] Some other printer must therefore be sought for Hamlet Q3.

It is apparent that a portion of Simmes's materials passed to Henry Ballard, as might be suggested by an entry in the list of printers appended to Arber (III.703): "1608 Henry Ballard from Simmes." In fact, as Ferguson

notes, "Ballard seems to have acquired some of Simmes's stock as early as 1607, when no less than four Simmes ornaments and a device (379) appear in one book (STC 25057)."[4] He used a Simmes device (McKerrow 142) in printing STC 17888 in 1608, and in Ferguson's list of Simmes's ornaments and initials the following are noted as having "passed to Ballard": ornaments nos. 1, 5, 10, 11, 12a, 19; flowers 1 and 2; factotum 2; initials C2, G1, G2, H3, I9, N2, O2, O4, R1, R2, R3, S4, T2, T5, Y2. To this list the following uses of Simmes's material by Ballard may be added: ornament 20 in 1608 17888, and 23 in 1607 25057; initial A1 in 1608 24577, C3 in 1608 24577, C4 in 1609 6499, I5 in 1608 1233, T9 in 1607 25057, and Y3 in 1608 7493. According to Ferguson two Simmes ornaments, nos. 14 and 19, passed to Ralph Blower. It should be added that a little later Felix Kingston is found using part of Simmes's stock: device 332; ornaments 2, 12a*, 23*; factotum 2; initials C4*, F1, F5, G1*, H1, H3*, I3, I6, I8, L2, M1, O1, O2*, O4*, R2*, R3*, T2*, T3, T5*, T8, T9*. The blocks marked with an asterisk were probably acquired from Ballard rather than directly from Simmes since they do not appear in Kingston's work until 1610 or later. It should also be noted that because of the conventional design of some of these blocks, which seem to have been cast, positive identification is not always possible. In other instances damage to the ornament makes identification easy.

The above information should suffice to show that although five books printed by or for Simmes were published in the three-year period 1610-12, he had disposed of at least part of his stock in 1607. Nevertheless, the Hamlet Q3 headpiece is not found used by Blower, Ballard, or Kingston.

However, though not noted by Ferguson, other Simmes materials were acquired by George Eld. Once again it is impossible to be certain that initials used by Eld which resemble Simmes's A1, L3, O4, T5, and T7, are not duplicate blocks. We have seen that O4 and T5 seem to have passed to Ballard and then to Kingston, but there may have been several such ornaments. The initials B5 and N5 pose a different problem, for although their chipped rules and less conventional design show the blocks used by Eld and those allegedly belonging to Simmes to be identical, they appear in only one Simmes title, in 1603. Since the initial N5 was in continuous use by Simson, Read and Eld consecutively from 1590 to 1622 it is clear that it did not belong to Simmes in 1603; the same is almost certainly true of B5 also. Shared printing is the likely explanation of their occurrence in a Simmes book.[5]

On the other hand, Eld did use Simmes ornaments as follows: no. 3 1613 11309 14516 14697; no. 4 1613 14516; no. 6 1610 20290 to 1615 25240;

no. 7 1613 11309 to 1620 3989; no. 8 1622 19321; no. 22 1616 1196. Eld also had ornaments which appear identical to Simmes's nos. 1, 10, 11, and 14, the first three of which Ferguson says went to Ballard, and the last to Blower; they may therefore either be cast duplicates, or 1, 10, and 11 were acquired by Eld after they passed through Ballard's hands. The latter supposition is supported by the fact that no. 1 does not occur in Eld's work until 1609 15485; no. 10 until 1609 22353; and no. 11 until 1610 24603. It appears that the Simmes materials used by Ballard from 1607 to 1609 were then divided between Kingston and Eld.

Among the other Simmes ornaments which passed to Eld was the Hamlet Q3 headpiece (no. 26 in Ferguson's study). Eld employed it in 1610 in Rowland Vaughan's Most approved and long experienced water-workes (STC 24603), sig. D1r (see fig. 2), and in 1611 on the title-page of

Doctor Faustus Q3 (STC 17431). It was still in his possession in 1621, when he used it in Joseph Martyn's New epigrams and a satyre (STC 17525), sig. D2r. The various breaks in the ornament as it appears in Hamlet Q3 and these other three works show it to be the same block. Thus Hamlet Q3 was a product of George Eld's press.

Apart from Shakespeare's play, Eld seems to have printed only one other work for Smethwick, Sir David Murray's The tragicall death of Sophonisba, which, perhaps significantly, is also dated 1611. However, he printed many plays for other publishers between 1605 and 1618, including Troilus and Cressida (1609) for Bonian and Walley, for whom he also printed Your Five Gallants. He was employed extensively by John Wright, for whom he printed Return from Parnassus, Caesar and Pompey, Travels of Three English Brothers, The Devils Charter, Doctor Faustus Q2 and Q3, The Shoemakers' Holiday Q2, and, according to Greg, three editions of Mucedorus. Another publisher of plays who used his services on several occasions was Thomas Thorpe, for whom he printed not only the first edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets, but also All Fools, Sejanus, What You Will, and The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Byron. There was therefore nothing odd in Smethwick's choosing him to reprint Hamlet.

Notes