University of Virginia Library

M. W. Black and M. A. Shaaber call attention to the three separately-printed sections in Shakespeare's Seventeenth-Century Editors, 1632-1685 (1937). Bowers' identification is in "Robert Roberts: A Printer of Shakespeare's Fourth Folio," Shakespeare Quarterly, II (1951), 240-246.

The strikingly different appearance of these partially unruled pages is noticed in Contributions to a Catalogue of the Lenox Library, No. V. Works of Shakespeare, Etc. (New York, 1880), p. 41, where the lack of side rules in 2O3:4 is commented on. A previous owner of Folger 7 also observed at least some of the pages without side rules and pencilled inside the front cover a note attempting to explain the conditions: 'Some lls appear to be in proof state before lined borders were printed in.' It was this note which first drew my attention to the reprinted leaves.

At least I have found no exception. It is conceivable that some sheets were reprinted with all rules, but if they were they have escaped me, for they could be discovered only by chance or by an exhaustive (and exhausting) collation, which I have not attempted; I have only borne the possibility in mind and been on the lookout for such sheets.

I have not collated the whole of the 70 pages, but instead made a spot check, collating some fifteen or twenty scattered columns. It then began to appear doubtful that further hours of collating would reveal more significant facts than I had already found.

I cannot claim to have looked at every sheet or nearly every one, but I have seen a great many of them. Edward Heawood, Watermarks (Hilversum, 1950), reproduces (nos. 654, 671) two very similar but not identical DVAVLEGARD marks. Others may be seen in the second folio Beaumont and Fletcher, Fifty Comedies and Tragedies, 1679. The bearings on the shields are various and always complex and unheraldic in appearance. In all I have distinguished four markedly different DVAVLEGARD marks in F4.

Ia a large crowned shield bearing a post horn, with initials WR; Ib a large crowned shield bearing a fleur-de-lis, with initials WR over IG; Ic the same but without IG; IIa grapes with a crooked stem at the top and initials MLP (or M P?); IIb grapes with small fleur-de-lis at top and initials IP. In every sheet except two of the F5 sheets the same mark appears throughout all copies. Nor is that all, for they tend to occur in groups. All the sheets (as shown in the table) from 2I3:4 through 2O3:4 contain IIb; from 2T3:4 through 2Y1:6 contain Ia; from 2Z2:5 through 3B2:5 contain IIa.

G. E. Dawson "The Copyright of Shakespeare's Dramatic Works," Studies in Honor of A.H.R.Fairchild (University of Missouri Studies, 1946), pp. 11-35.

I say 'probably did possess' because one, the NYPL Lenox copy, now has the Knight-Saunders imprint; but Mr. P. N. Rice, chief of the reference department (to whom and to whose assistants I am much indebted for skilful, prompt, and patient help in examining the NYPL copies and answering my troublesome questions) writes that this copy, which has been rebound by Bedford, is sophisticated and that the title and frontispiece 'might well have been inserted in the place of others.' Four of the other five copies have the first title. Of the Folger copies no. 7 appears to be in the original binding and perfect throughout; 28 (rebound) has had at least one interior leaf added (see note 2 above), but all the preliminaries appear to be indigenous; 33 is rebound, but handwriting on the title and on many other leaves proves its title to be the original; for 13, which has no title, see note 3 above. Of the twenty-nine Folger copies of F4 having titles, twenty-three have the first imprint, two the second, and four the third.

Herringman did not die until 1704, but he had turned his retail trade over to Knight and Saunders as early as 1684, as C. W. Miller has shown in "Henry Herringman, Restoration Bookseller-Publisher," Papers of the Bibl. Soc. of Amer., XLII (1948), 292-306. If any stock of the Fourth Folio remained as late as 1700 it is unknown who may have held it.

The fifty-seven which I have seen are: Folger 37, B.M. 4, Trinity College Cambridge 4, Trinity College Dublin 4, Huntington 4, Bodleian 1, Cambridge University 1, Library of Congress 1, Rugby School 1. The nine which I have not seen are: NYPL 6, Harvard 1, Birmingham Public Library (England) 1, University of Virginia 1.

The validity of my statistical approach to this question would be affected adversely if it were to be assumed that H. C. Folger was aware of the existence in some copies of the reprinted sheets and made special efforts to acquire copies possessing them, but all indications are that he was not aware of them and that he acquired the four copies just as he did the other thirty-three. The fact that four out of the thirty-seven copies contain F5 sheets, then, is the result of pure chance which might equally well recur in any other thirty-seven copies. I hope that owners or custodians of Fourth Folios not mentioned in note 12 who find F5 sheets will communicate their findings to me or to Professor Bowers or otherwise make them known.

The use of 8-point type was first pointed out to me in April 1950 by Professor D. S. Robertson, Vice-Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, who had observed it in a fragment of F4 which he owns.