4. Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, eds. The Plays of
Shakespeare. Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare. 3 vols., n. d.
Serially
issued in 270 weekly parts, 1864-69.
Richard Altick in The Cowden Clarkes (1948, pp. 199,
201), calling this "probably the most sumptuous edition of Shakespeare ever
prepared for the popular market," says of it, "Altogether, it was a fortunate
Victorian home whose parlour boasted [its] three heavy volumes," and
names Francis Thompson and George Bernard Shaw as two Victorian sons
known to have discovered Shakespeare in these crown-quarto volumes
attractively illustrated by the painter H. C. Selous. Unlike Knight,
Verplanck, and Staunton, the Cowden Clarkes were well known
Shakespeareans when they undertook this edition. Charles Cowden Clarke
(1787-1877), friend of Keats, Lamb, Hunt, Shelley, Hazlitt, and Dickens,
bookseller, publisher, author, and editor of English classics, was especially
famous for his immensely popular lectures on Shakespeare, delivered from
1834 to 1856 and published as Shakespeare-Characters
(1863).
Mary Victoria Novello Clarke (1809-1898) had already produced her
Concordance to
Shakespeare (1844-45), The Girlhood of Shakespeare's
Heroines (1851-52), and, as Shakespeare's first woman editor
(though
aided by her husband), a complete Works issued in New
York
by Appleton in fortnightly parts, 1859-60. Their Cassell's edition is
valuable not for its text—as required by Cassell's, they produced a
"chastened" (expurgated) text, and on their own convictions omitted
Titus altogether—but for a commentary approaching
a
Variorum's in fullness. The indefatigable Clarkes commented on thousands
of words and passages left untouched by previous editors, sometimes
pointing out Shakespeare's beauties and points of artistry and subtleties of
characterization, often in a moralizing way but usually with knowledge,
good sense, originality, and independence of judgment; the majority of the
notes, however, are linguistic, employing sometimes to excess Mary's
method of cross-reference and comparison to parallel passages in
Shakespeare. Though seldom
brilliant,
their commentary is painstaking and sensible, and it has been widely
assimilated by Furness, William J. Rolfe, and W. J. Craig and other early
editors in the Arden edition. Their edition remained popular and was
reprinted a number of times to the end of the century.
Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare, whose three bound volumes bear no
dates, has never been dated correctly. Altick (p. 254) says erroneously that
it was "issued in weekly parts, February 1864 to March 1868, and then in
three volumes." He was misled by Mary Clarke's own statement in
My Long Life (1897, p. 160): "We began the work on the 1st
of September. It was rather an anxious task, as we had to 'work to time.'
The edition was originally brought out in weekly numbers; but we never
failed once in regular presupply of the requisite matter for the printers. . .
. We finished our annotated edition on the 16th March, 1868, and began
our "Shakespeare Key" two days after." But of course her dates are for the
writing, not the publishing of the edition; significantly, in a list of Works
appended to her Centennial Biographic Sketch of Charles Cowden
Clarke (1887) she dates the edition simply 1869, the year when it
was
in fact completed. In its American issue the edition
appeared in thirty parts averaging nine sheets each; the Folger Library owns
a set of these parts, all of them unfortunately undated. In W. A. Wright's
papers in Trinity College Library, Cambridge, is a letter from Cassell's to
Wright dated 31 January 1885 describing the edition's publication in
England:
Dear Sir,
The edition of Shakespeare to which you refer was issued by us in
270 weekly numbers, and 61 monthly parts. The first weekly number was
published in February 1864, and the last about April 1869.
Since I have never run across a set of either the weekly numbers or
monthly parts, I have had to reconstruct the approximate schedule of
publication from journal notices, particularly dated notices in The
Bookseller, and from the numbering of the sheets in the bound
volumes. Each weekly part was a sheet folded into four crown-quarto
leaves, with at least one page given wholly or mainly to an engraved
illustration; these sheets are each numbered consecutively in the lower right
corner of the first page. Vol. I, Comedies, is sheets 1-91; Vol. II,
Histories, is sheets 92-166; Vol. III, Tragedies, is sheets 167-269; quire
270 is a pair of sheets including title-page and prefatory matter. At a
regular rate of one sheet a week, 270 sheets would have taken 5 years and
2 months to publish; if begun in February 1864 the edition would have been
completed by late March or early April 1869, as Cassell's letter to Wright
indicates was the case. That the publication was at a regular rate is
confirmed by the sporadic journal notices I have found. The following
conjectural timetable probably is close to the facts.
The first sheet must have appeared at the very beginning of February.
A full-page advertisement in The Bookseller for 31 Dec. 1863
(p. 981) announces a new edition of Shakespeare "In Weekly Numbers,
price One Penny, and in Monthly Parts, price Fivepence and Sixpence. .
. . No. I., ready January 29th." A notice for 30 January 1864 (p. 19)
announces "Cassell's
Illustrated Shakespeare. No. I. Now ready." From these trade notices to
booksellers and from the letter from Cassell's to Wright quoted above, I
assume that No. 1 went on sale on about 1 Feb. 1864 (a Monday, and the
beginning of the month), and I have used that approximate date as the basis
for the rest of the timetable that follows. Assuming a beginning on 1 Feb.
1864, one would expect Vol. I to be complete (with the publication of Part
91) at about 23 Oct. 1865. A notice in
The Bookseller of 30
Sept. 1865 (p. 607) announces "Vol. 1 (Comedies) . . . End of Oct.," and
another on 31 Oct. (p. 695) announces "New Volumes Now Ready,"
though the volume is not listed (p. 780) in the comprehensive list of books
published in October and so must have appeared at the very end of the
month or early in November. These dates being consistent with each other,
the schedule for Vol. I may be reconstructed as follows:
- Vol. I
- 1864: Pts. 1-6, Feb.-Mar., Tmp.; 6-11, Mar.-Apr.,
TGV; 11-17, Apr.-May, Wiv.; 17-23,
May-July,
MM; 23-27, July-Aug., Err.; 28-33,
Aug.-Sept.,
Ado; 34-40, Sept.-Oct., LLL; 41-46,
Nov.-Dec.,
MND; 46-48, Dec., MV (incomplete)
- 1865: Pts. 49-53, Jan., MV (completed); 53-60,
Jan.-Mar., AYL; 60-67, Mar.-May, Shr.;
67-75,
May-July, AWW; 76-83, July-Aug., TN;
83-91,
Aug.-Oct., WT
Similarly Vol. II, Histories, should have been completed with Part
166 on about 1 April 1867. A notice in The Bookseller for
30
March 1867 (p. 223) announces, "Now ready . . . The Second Volume of
Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare, (Tragedies [an error for Histories]
complete)." The volume is listed in the April 30 comprehensive list (p. 348)
of "principal English publications for the month ending April 30" but not
in the comparable list for 30 March (p. 268), hence it must have gone up
for sale in early April. In the April notice it is correctly listed as "Vol. 2,
Histories." The approximate schedule is:
- Vol. II.
- 1865: Pts. 92-98, Oct.-Dec., Jn.; 98, Dec.,
R2 (incomplete)
- 1866: Pts. 99-105, Jan.-Feb., R2 (completed);
105-112, Feb.-Mar., 1H4; 113-120, Mar.-May,
2H4; 121-129, May-July, H5; 129-135,
July-Aug.,
1H6; 136-143, Sept.-Oct., 2H6; 143-150,
Oct.-Dec., 3H6; 150-153, Dec., R3
(incomplete)
- 1867: Pts. 154-159, Jan.-Feb., R3 (completed);
159-166, Feb.-Apr., H8
Finally, one would expect Vol. III, or rather Part 270, to be
completed by 29 March 1869. The Bookseller for 1 March
1869
(p. 252) announces "Completion of 'Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare'. This
Magnificent crown 4to Edition . . . will be published in a few days.
Complete in Three Volumes." This statement is accurate enough. Exactly
by March 1, with the publication of the last part of Pericles
(Part 266), the main body of the edition would have been complete. All that
remained were Parts 267-9, the Life of Shakespeare, and Part 270,
containing preliminary matter, errata, colophon, etc.—the work of
"a few
days." At the rate of one sheet a week the remaining parts should have been
completed by 29 March or, if the last double part took two weeks, by 5
April. The latter date seems less likely because half the pages of that last
double part were blank or mostly blank, though perhaps press time for two
sheets extended into April. Cassell's letter to Wright says the
date of
completion was "about April," and either 29 March or 5 April fits that
description well enough. The schedule:
- 1867: Pts. 167-174, Apr.-May, Tro.; 175-184,
June-Aug., Cor.; 184-192, Aug.-Sept., Rom.;
192-199, Sept.-Nov., Tim.; 200-205, Nov.-Dec.,
JC
(incomplete)
- 1868: Pt. 206, Jan., JC (completed); 206-213,
Jan.-Feb., Mac.; 213-223, Feb.-May, Ham.;
224-223, May-July, Lr.; 233-241, July-Sept.,
Oth.;
242-250, Sept.-Nov., Ant.; 251-257, Nov.-Dec.,
Cym. (incomplete)
- 1869: Pts. 258-260, Jan., Cym. (completed);
260-266,
Jan.-Mar., Per.; 267-269, Mar., Life; 270, Mar. [-Apr.?],
Preface and accessories.
The edition was popular and was reprinted several times. One reprint
that I have seen is a completely reset folio in fours, using the plates for the
original illustrations and some new type ornaments, and holding over from
the original edition an announcement that the Preface and Life "will form
[part of] the third and concluding Volume of the Work." A later reprint is
from the same plates or stereotypes of them, which show signs of wear, and
it includes 35 full-page wood engravings and 35 photogravure plates of
19th-century actors and actresses. It was issued in 6 vols. ("Divisions").
The reprints are undated.