University of Virginia Library

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:

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.