University of Virginia Library

Search this document 


  

expand section 
expand section 
expand section 
expand section 
expand section 
expand section 
expand section 
expand section 
expand section 
expand section 
expand section 
expand section 
The Printer and the Date of Romeo and Juliet Q4 by George Walton Williams
expand section 
expand section 
expand section 
expand section 
collapse section 
  
  
  
  
expand section 

expand section 

253

Page 253

The Printer and the Date of Romeo and Juliet Q4
by
George Walton Williams

The printer and the date of the fourth quarto of Romeo and Juliet (n.d.), STC 22325, "Printed for Iohn Smethwicke," have so far eluded investigators, but identification of the tailpiece on L4 and analysis of its progressive deterioration have supplied both. The printer was William Stansby, a favorite printer of Smethwick's; he used the tailpiece in many of his quartos and folios in the first decades of the seventeenth century. The breaks which progressively occur in the ornament make it reasonably definite that the quarto was printed in 1622.

                   
Unbroken  Date of  Broken  Date of 
No.  Description of Break.[1]   in STC Imprint  in STC Imprint 
1.  Right "thigh" on the herma.  4496  1615  3143  1617 
2.  Right "kidney" on the herma.  3143  1617  22772  1618 
3.  Topmost frond at extreme left.} 
3144  1619  22214  1620 
4.  Over eye of right bird.} 
5.  Smudge above break No. 1.  22634  1621  13717  1622 
6.  Circlet above left bird.  13717  1622  22325  ND 
7.  Left ribbon on left pendant.  22325  ND  7151  1622 

The first four breaks and the smudge provide cumulative evidence of deterioration; the last two breaks bracket Romeo and Juliet (STC 22325). The six copies of Q4 Romeo and Juliet [2] I have examined exhibit the first four breaks and the smudge. The sixth break does not occur in STC 22634


254

Page 254
(1621) or STC 13717 (1622), but it does occur in four copies of Romeo and Juliet (DFo, CtYEC, CSmH [2 cops.]). Romeo and Juliet Q4 was probably printed therefore after STC 13717 in 1622. At break #7, all six copies of Romeo and Juliet exhibit the left ribbon on the left pendant clearly unbroken; copies of STC 7151 (= 7143, pt. 2), printed in 1622, show the ribbon clearly broken.[3] This item, John Downame, A Treatise of Securitie, was entered in the Stationers' Register on November 1, 1622 (Arber, IV.84); it thus reveals the tailpiece late in the year. Romeo and Juliet Q4 must therefore have been printed before November 1622.

Mr. Bent Juel-Jensen, noting the omission of the date in Stansby's edition of Drayton's Poems (STC 7219), suggests that the omission was deliberate and not accidental. He observes that this octavo edition of the Poems was undated probably because "the folio edition [of 1619] was already being planned, and the octavo might sell less well once that was published, and the absence of a date would be an advantage."[4] The imminence of the Shakespeare First Folio[5] would explain the desire to present a quarto of Romeo and Juliet which would not soon become dated.

Notes

 
[1]

The tailpiece appears on these signatures: 3143 (B4,S2v), 3144 (A4,K2,Cc3), 3150 (Ee7v), 4496 (A5v), 7151 (A4), 13717 (Xx1v, Fff4v, Ggg5v, Hhh6, Iii3,8), 22214 (d6,E2v), 22325 (L4), 22634 (¶¶4,6v, C3v, 5,E6,G4v,L3v,T3v), 22772 (B2v). I have consulted the appropriate volumes at these libraries: DFo 3143, 3144, 3150, 4496, 7151, 22325, 22634, 22772; NcD 3144, 22214; NcU 13717; ViU 22634. I am grateful for the assistance of S. K. Heninger, Jr., John L. Lievsay, Robert F. Welsh for examining volumes in libraries I was not able to reach. I acknowledge with thanks the courtesy of the Trustees and Staffs of the various libraries who allowed me to consult their volumes and have them photographed.

[2]

All the copies in America: DFo; photographs MB, MH, CSmH (2 cops.), CtYEC.

[3]

It is of some interest to record that this ribbon appears broken (as one would expect) on ¶4 of the preliminaries of volume IV of Purchas his Pilgrims (STC 20509), printed by Stansby in 1625. It appears unbroken on Ii6 of volume I of the same work. It follows that the preliminaries of this massive compilation were printed in 1625 (as they acknowledge), but that the first volume was sent to press shortly after the entry in the Stationers' Register on Dec. 11, 1621, and was being printed in 1622 concurrently with Romeo and Juliet.

[4]

Works of Drayton (Rev. ed., London, 1961), V, 288. On the basis of break #2, STC 7219 is certainly in or after 1617; on the basis of no break on the inner curl of the topmost frond at the extreme left, it is before or in 1618.

[5]

Charlton Hinman dates the beginning of composition on the Folio at February 1622; Romeo and Juliet was composed in the Folio in the late spring of 1623 (The Printing and Proof-Reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare [Oxford, 1963], I, 363-365; II, 513-529).