What Shakespeare Ate On Menu At 47th California Rare Book Fair

by Stephen J. Gertz

The California International Antiquarian Book Fair returns to the Pasadena Convention Center next weekend, February 7-9, 2014. Now in its 47th year, the Fair will celebrate the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare's birth.

The bi-annual Southern California rare book extravaganza brings together the world’s foremost dealers, collectors and scholars; it is now the largest such book fair in the world. This year the Book Fair will present special exhibits featuring some of the finest expressions of Shakespeare through the centuries, and a mouth-watering panel discussion on What Shakespeare Ate: Dining in the Elizabethan Age.
 
The Huntington Library, which holds a world-class collection of early editions of Shakespeare's works, will offer an enlightening display on Shakespeare scholarship throughout the 90-plus years of its history. On view will be highlights of scholarly work researched, written, and published at the Huntington, as well as facsimiles based on Huntington holdings and items that illustrate the institution's focus on all facets of the history and culture of Renaissance England.

Fine press and artists’ books from the Ella Strong Denison Library at Scripps College will show how Shakespeare has inspired the art of the book.  Highlights include:

• Early 20th Century “Hamlet” from Doves Press, the British private press that was one of the exemplars of the Arts and Crafts movement.

• “The Tragedie of King Lear,” illustrated with spectacular woodcut prints by American artist Claire Van Vliet that eloquently convey the pain and drama of the play; printed in limited edition in 1986.

• “R&J: The Txt Msg Edition,” this limited edition, contemporary artists’ book created by Elizabeth Pendergrass and John Hastings in 2008 presents Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene in the form of text messages printed on accordion folded pages fitted into a retro cell phone cover that is cradled in a miniature leopard-print, high-heeled shoe.

Poster images from the collections of the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will spotlight memorable film adaptations of Shakespeare from around the world.  

The Honnold/Mudd Library at the Claremont Colleges Library will offer insights into stage productions with items that include:

• Photos of renowned Victorian actors Ellen Terry and Henry Irving in some of their most famous Shakespeare roles.

• Original 20th century costume studies.

• Prompt books with actors’ handwritten notes.

• “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke” (Weimar, Cranach Press, 1930) with illustrations by Edward Gordon Craig.

Rare books on food and cookery in Elizabethan times from the University of California San Diego Library will also be exhibited.  Highlights include:

• Ann Clutterbuck, “Her Book.” A English family manuscript book containing recipes for foods and for medicinal needs from 1693.

• Gervase Markham, “The English House-Wife” dated 1675.

• Bartolomeo Scappi, “Opera…dell’ Arte del Cucinare” from 1660 which includes fabulous woodcuts of the Renaissance kitchen and all its gadgets; first time knife, fork, and spoon shown together.

A related special panel on Saturday, February 8 at 1 p.m. entitled "What Shakespeare Ate: Dining in the Elizabethan Age" will further immerse Book Fair visitors into the world of the Bard.  Panelists include the Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic for the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Gold; noted food historian Charles Perry; cookbook author and founder of the Ecole de Cuisine La Varenne Anne Willan; and bookseller Ben Kinmont who specializes in antiquarian books on gastronomy. Two-time co-Pulitzer Prize winner, Los Angeles Times columnist, and NPR correspondent Patt Morrison will moderate.

To be or not to be at the Fair? That is the question. But if you love books there is no question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune - fugetaboutit! Just go. You'll be glad you did.

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The Best Literary Coffee Cups

by Stephen J. Gertz

Shakespearean Insult Mug.

Cry havoc, and let's sip the dregs of warm. Forsooth, the best mugs for book lovers drinking hot beverages have been produced, courtesy of The Unemployed Philosopher's Guild, whose motto is "The Unexamined Gift is Not Worth Giving." (Somewhere Socrates is begging his executioner, "Make that a double").

Shakespearean Love Mug.

The origins of the Unemployed Philosophers Guild are shrouded in mystery but the UPG, somewhere in Turin, rips the shroud off:



"Some accounts trace the Guild’s birth to Athens in the latter half of the 4th century BCE.  Allegedly, several lesser philosophers grew weary of the endless Socratic dialogue endemic in their trade and turned to crafting household implements and playthings.  (Hence the assertions that Socrates quaffed his hemlock poison from a Guild-designed chalice, though vigorous debate surrounds the question of whether it was a 'disappearing' chalice).

 Others argue that the UPG dates from the High Middle Ages, when the Philosophers Guild entered the world of commerce  by selling bawdy pamphlets to pilgrims facing long lines for the restroom.   Business boomed until 1211 when Pope Innocent III condemned the publications.  Not surprisingly, this led to increased sales, even as half our membership was burned at the stake.
 


"More recently, revisionist historians have pinpointed the birth of the Guild to the time it was still cool to live in New York City’s Lower East Side.  Two brothers turned their inner creativity and love of paying rent towards fulfilling the people’s needs for finger puppets, warm slippers, coffee cups, and cracking up at stuff.

"There’s a bad joke: The engineer asks ‘how can I build that?’ the scientist asks ‘how does it work?’ and the philosopher asks ‘do you want fries with that?’  In all fairness to the Philosopher, he’s probably not referring to ontological French fries, but the 18th centrury thinker Jacob Fries.  Anyway, some people think unemployed philosophers are funny.  But why?  Was it funny when philosophers gave us Democracy, Justice, Truth, Science, a sensible analysis of intramundane social practices or Freudian Slippers?" (from About Us).

Banned Books Mug.

The Unemployed Philosopher's Guild has many mugs in its line but for book lovers seeking something to pour their heart into it features the Shakespearean Insult Mug, the Shakespearean Love Mug, the Banned Books Mug, and the First Lines Literature Mug. Each is $12.50.

First Lines Literature Mug.

Henceforth, mugs simply emblazoned with "I ♥ Books" will make your coffee taste like last week's grounds and hot chocolate not so hot.

The Dorothy Parker Martini Glass.
"I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most;
Three, I'm under the table,
Four, I'm under my host."

Book lovers who enjoy imbibing liquids whose psychotropic effects exceed those of caffeine will be pleased to learn that the UPG hasn't forgotten you. The Dorothy Parker Martini Glass will gently cradle dry vermouth and wet gin in whatever proportion you desire, whether shaken or stirred, for only $14.95. Olives and pearl onions not included.

"For Best Results Use Other Side."

It has long troubled me that while manufacturers warn us not to pour liquids into television sets, spray underarm deodorant into eyes, use toilet brushes for oral hygiene, and that table salt is high in sodium, etc., mug-makers never provide directions for proper use or safety tips.

 

 The Unemployed Philosopher's Guild, in contrast, wants you to know that they care about your safety and wish you many happy years of satisfying and successful mug use. To that end, they provide a handy tip on the bottom of each cup and a little printed insert found inside them (the mugs, not the Philosophers) that leads owners to a specially produced video that presents all you need to know about the proper use of your new mug:

Moreover, the bottom of each box declares that UPG mugs are FDA approved and in compliance with California Prop. 65, the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act. You can drink with confidence.

I've yet to determine whether or not Eddie Lawrence, "The Old Philosopher," is a member of the UPG but, based upon the confluence of cracked minds, it seems he was a founding father.


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Sangorski & Sutcliffe Celebrate Elizabethan Poets

by Stephen J. Gertz

Around  1920, Sangorski & Sutcliffe, the famed London bindery established in 1901 by Francis Sangorski (1875-1912) and George Sutcliffe (1875-1943), designed and bound a first edition copy of Charles Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespeare, published in 1808.

It's an extravagant theme binding in full teal crushed morocco with double fillet, gilt-rolled dog's tooth and dotted borders surrounding an inner band of onlaid crimson morocco with quote by vicar and poet Robert Herrick (1591-1674) in gilt with gilt tools, and a gilt-tooled frame with gilt cornerpieces enclosing a central medallion of massed gilt tools encircling an onlaid crimson morocco disc featuring stylized gilt initials, "C.L." (Charles Lamb) to the front cover. The spine is in black morocco.

The rear cover reiterates the design but with a different Herrick quote and a wreath/torch/bow & arrow motif in gilt to the central crimson disc, rather than Lamb's initials.

Deep purple morocco doublures with quote in gilt by Herrick (to upper) and lyre and laurel gilt-tooled cornerpieces highlight the inner covers, the whole framed by multiple gilt-rolled borders. Mauve silk free-endpapers with gilt-rolled border are an attractive detail. Gilt rolled and ornamented compartments, gilt ruled raised bands, and top edge gilt finish it.

The quotes by English poet, Rev. Robert Herrick, that adorn the covers and upper doublure  are pulled from his poem, Upon Master Fletcher's Incomparable Plays (1647). To upper cover band: Here's words with lines, and lines with scenes consent / To raise an Act to full astonishment. To lower cover band: Here melting numbers, words of power to move / Young men to swoon and maids to die for love. To upper doublure: To Master Fletcher / Apollo sings, his harp resounds; give room / For now behold the golden Pomp is come / Thy pomp of plays.

Elizabethan poets whose work is represented by Lamb include Thomas Sackville; Thomas Kyd; Christopher Marlowe; Thomas Decker; Ben Jonson; William Rowley; John Fletcher; Francis Beaumont; etc.

Charles Lamb was born in London in 1775. He studied at Christ's Hospital where he met and formed a lifelong friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. When he was twenty years old he endured a bout of insanity and was confined to an asylum. The next year, 1796, his sister, Mary Ann, murdered their mother and was declared a "lunatic." She, too, was confined to an asylum but was eventually discharged into the care of her brother. Charles became friends with a group of young writers who supported political reform, including Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt, Henry Brougham, Lord Byron, Thomas Barnes and Leigh Hunt.

In 1796 Lamb contributed four sonnets to Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects (1796). This was followed by Blank Verse (1798) and Pride's Cure (1802). He worked for the East India Company in London but moonlighted as a contributor to several journals and newspapers including London Magazine, The Morning Chronicle, Morning Post and the The Quarterly Review. He is best known for his pseudonymous essays for London Magazine, collected and published as Essays of Elia (1823), and for Tales From Shakespeare (1807), a wildly successful collaboration with his sister. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespeare went a long way to re-introducing and popularizing Shakespeare's contemporaries. He died in 1834. 

Stamp-signed to lower doublure.
S&S were proud of this binding;
it is rare to find "Designed and bound"
in their signature. "Bound by" is the usual.

Robert Herrick was a 17th century poet of the tempus fugit-carpe diem school who wrote at least one poem that has earned enduring fame in English literature, with an immortal first line known to everyone even if they don't know the poem or poet.

TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME

by Robert Herrick

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
    Old time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
    To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
    The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
    And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
    When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
    Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
    And while ye may go marry:
For having lost but once your prime
    You may for ever tarry.

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[SANGORSKI & SUTCLIFFE, binders]. LAMB, Charles. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespeare. With Notes. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808.

First edition. Octavo (7 1/8 x 4 1/4 in; 181 x 108 mm). xii, 484 pp.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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A Thrilling Dust Jacket By Paul Davis

by Stephen J. Gertz

First edition, 1963.

In 1963, after publishing seven James Bond novels, Ian Fleming wrote something entirely different after being offered a writer's dream assignment. At the behest of his friend, Charles Denis Hamilton, editor of the Sunday Times of London, Fleming undertook a five-week, all-expenses paid trip to visit and report on the world's most exciting cities.

The result was Thrilling Cities (London: Jonathan Cape, 1963), its material ultimately providing Fleming with background for the five Bond novels and seven short stories that followed.

The book featured a stunning dust jacket design by Paul Davis.

Three Penny Opera. 1976.
Raul Julia.

Anyone alive, awake  and living in New York City during the 1970s knows the work of Paul Davis, whose posters for Joseph Papp's Public Theater and Shakespeare in the Park were instantly iconic and remain indelible images.

"The revolution was already in full swing when in the late 1950s a young artist named Paul Davis entered the fray. Some renegade illustrators and art directors had already begun to revolt against the saccharine realism and sentimental concepts prevalent in most American magazines and advertising...

Henry V. 1976.
Paul Rudd.

"Although Paul Davis was not among this first wave, he was swept up by it and soon contributed to the illustration and design of the epoch. By the early 1960s, he had developed a distinct visual persona which, owing to a unique confluence of primitive and folk arts, brought a fresh new American look to illustration. In a relatively short time he was among the most prolific of the new illustrators, and his style had a staggering impact on the field...

"From the sixties to the present, he has contributed some paradigmatic approaches to the eclectic mix of American graphic art" (1989 AIGA Award, biography by Steven Heller).

Hamlet. 1975.
Sam Waterston.

Davis, born in 1938 in Oklahoma, told Heller of his early years during the 50s. “It was a turning point in American illustration, It was a rejection of Norman Rockwell, who was at his best a great Flemish painter and at his worst a bad cartoonist, as well as of the entrenched Westport style of romantic illustration.”

Gaining confidence, he took his portfolio to Push Pin, Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast's design shop, at the time the hottest in the business. After initial rejection they asked to rep his work. Influenced by many, including Thomas Hart Benton, Davis was attracted to American folk art. "There was no school here," he said, "there was no academia."

Measure For Measure. 1976.
Meryl Streep and John Cazale.

His style ultimately developed into fusion of American indigenous art and the surrealism of René Magritte. In 1963 he left Push Pin to work as an independent. The dust jacket for Thrilling Cities followed in that year. As the 60s evolved, so did Davis, who now began to incorporate elements of social realism into his work. By the end of the 60s, however, he made a conscious decision to "rid my work of all the elements that referred to other styles."

The Taming of the Shrew. 1978.
Meryl Streep and Raul Julia.

Yet those influences could not be extinguished and they are seen in what became his lasting contribution to American graphic art: his posters for Joseph Papp. They "challenged the conventions of contemporary theater advertising (particularly posters) in three ways: First, they were not encumbered by the usual bank of ”ego“ copy...Second, without mimicking style, Davis' posters referred to the late 19th-century European tradition of poster art which was ignored by the contemporary posterists...The third, and final, challenge to conventional theater posters was his basic methodology. Davis read the play, went to the rehearsals or readings, and talked to the actors and directors. 'They seemed to think,' he says, 'that I was doing this revolutionary thing by actually reading the scripts'" (ibid., Heller).

First edition, 1968.
The influence of American folk art  is clear.

The stylistic journey of Paul Davis from Thrilling Cities in 1963 to True Grit in 1968 through his theater posters during the mid-1970s encapsulates American graphic design during the latter half of the 20th century, and captures an artist avoiding the faddism of '60s pop and psychedelia to follow his own path toward an instantly recognizable and lasting body of work.

First edition, 1976.

In a declarative meow to make cat lovers purr, Davis brought his chops to bear on the feline side of life with his dust jacket for Jean-Claude Suares and Seymour Chwast's The Illustrated Cat (1976).

LEEUW, Hendrik De. Sinful Cities of the Western World.
NY: Pyramid #27, 1951. First edition in paperback.
Cover by Fred. W. Meyer.
First edition: NY: Citadel, 1946.

Ian Fleming's Thrilling Cities is not to be confused with Hendrik De Leeuw's Sinful Cities of the Western World which deals with an altogether different sort of thrilling urban adventure.

Fleming dedicated Thrilling Cities to Charles Denis Hamilton, the Times editor who was responsible for Fleming's assignment. Hamilton's copy, the dedication copy inscribed by Fleming, in fine condition as seen in today's header image, recently came to market. It sold for £12,500 ($20,200).

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Image of Thrilling Cities courtesy of Peter Harrington, with our thanks.
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My Kingdom for a Hoax

by Alastair Johnston

Shakespeare's Richard the Third left us a few memorable phrases that have been delivered by everyone from Larry Olivier in a wig and mascara to Al Pacino in a backward baseball cap (but resisting the Brooklyn accent that would have made the king Richard da Turd), from Ian McKellen in jazz era Fascist drag to prize ham Richard Dreyfus in The Goodbye Girl, to Peter Cook in Black Adder. Richard the Third was even filmed thrice in the silent film era. Everyone knows, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse"; the opening lines are also familiar:

Now is the winter of our discontent
made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds, that lowr'd upon our house,
In the deep bosom of the ocean bury'd.

The opening of Richard the Third in the First Folio of Shakespeare, 1623

In December 1960 my father was pleased to note a sign of literacy in Britain when a camping & sporting goods store ran an ad reading, "Now is the winter of our discount tents." But Shakespeare played fast and loose with the saga of this king, making him more of a Quentin Tarantino anti-hero than a real historical figure. He telescoped the action, making Richard's rise to the throne seem an overnight trajectory, though the time between Henry VI's murder (by his successor Edward IV) and funeral (1471), Clarence's imprisonment in the Tower (1477), to the Battle of Bosworth (1485), was fourteen years. 

The play was (probably) written and first performed in 1597. Shakespeare seems to have ignored published historical sources, but subsequently his version of the story has been taken as factual. The murder of Clarence (stabbed and drowned in a butt of malmsey) was pinned on Richard by the Lancastrians without much evidence. The princes in the Tower may have been killed by orders of Henry VII. Who knows? Did Prince Philip order the murder of Princess Diana for sleeping with Arab playboys?

Dr Johnson thought the play was overrated and Shakespeare "praised most, when praise is not most deserved; some parts are trifling, some shocking and some improbable."

Boydell's Shakspeare, 1803. Steevens' third edition, but a monumental work in English publishing. Printed by William Bulmer at the Shakspeare Printing-Office on Whatman paper and illustrated with numerous engravings. Reproduced from Peter Isaac's William Bulmer: the fine printer in context (London: Bain & Williams, 1993)

But George Steevens, Shakespeare's great editor, understood the secret of the play's success: it was an ideal role for actors like Burbage or Garrick because it showed a gamut of emotions from hero to lover, statesman to buffoon, from hypocrite to repenting sinner.

It was only a generation after Richard that Henry VIII sacked the monasteries in 1538. There was a free-for-all as the high-living priests were stripped of their accumulated wealth and luxuries, books, jewels and the like, while religious icons were smashed and destroyed, even graves were robbed. And the last Plantagenet King was forgotten — apart from a minor play. We know from Shakespeare that Richard's personal avatar was a boar.

The wretched, bloody, and usurping boar,
That spoil'd your summer fields and fruitful vines,
Swills your warm blood like wash, and makes his trough
In your embowell'd bosoms...

Things took an odd turn in May 2010 when someone with a metal detector found a silver boar pin and decided they had found the true site of the battle of Bosworth Field. Some coincidence. Like walking in Giza and stubbing your toe on an ankh ornament inscribed KLPTR in hieroglyphics. Even more coincidental is the discovery of the site of Greyfriars under a parking lot in Leicester (after others had searched for centuries), ten days ago, and, in less than a week, archaeologists had dug a trench, found the garden of alderman Robert Herrick (not that Robert Herrick) which had been located on the site, and soon hit upon the exact spot where the King was wrapped in a shroud and buried humbly over 500 years ago. Perhaps the posthumous saga of Richard 3 is a bit too Hollywood to be believed.

Many people have wondered what happened to the king after his death at the battle of Bosworth Field. Henry VII, not a pretty figure himself, didn't want him becoming sanctified, which might have happened if he had been returned to York and buried in the majestic minster there, so, after his naked corpse was paraded through Leicester (not as a warning to his followers, but to establish definitively his demise), he was turned over to some friars for a quiet interment. Bin Ladin disposal — burial at sea — wasn't thought of as an option.

York Minster (construction started in 627 C.E., still ongoing)

So the legendary King rises from the grave. It's better than Dracula! Today's news is that Richard wasn't a hunchback but had scoliosis — curvature of the spine — that made his right shoulder higher. He had an arrow in his back and an ax or sword blow to the skull that had finished him off. Maybe his last thought was "A hearse, a hearse! My kingdom for a hearse..." It's an incredible story, but could it be a hoax? We won't know until DNA tests are completed in a month or so, but it does seem as though they've found the ambitious duke who laid waste all rivals for the throne. If only the House of Windsor (né Battenberg) were so lively, instead of the sullen German upstarts they continue to be.

Shakespeare himself was almost lost to history, partly due to debased editions of his works but also perpetual copyright laws prevented their circulation. In 1680 one Crowne took Shakespeare's Henry VI, retitled the work The Miseries of Civil War, and claimed it as his own. Shakespeare's revival was due to Elizabethan scholar George Steevens, who restored the plays, and, since Steevens's re-edition, they have been continually performed and admired throughout the English-speaking world.

Steveens' edition, reprinted by Bensley in 1805, with a vignette after John Thurston, engraved by Charlton Nesbit: "Wisdom recovers from the grip of Time the laurels of which he had despoiled the tomb of Shakspeare."

Oddly, Steevens himself was involved in a hoax about another dead English monarch, the obscure Hardicanute. Steevens' dad was a director of the East India Company and young George had everything: "Every luxury was lavished on you — atheism, breast-feeding, circumcision." Well perhaps not as luxurious as Joe Orton's character — but he went to Eton and King's College, Cambridge. Then, with all the ease of a young gentleman born to a life of reading, dropped out of college. His life of privilege continued in a house on Hampstead Heath where he built a library of Elizabethan literature and collected Hogarths. He made daily rounds of the London bookshops and then came back to Hampstead to discuss his finds with his pal, Isaac Reed.

1803 stereotype edition of Steevens' Shakespeare, issued by Isaac Reed

In 1773 he produced his ten-volume Shakspeare. It was so good Dr Johnson deigned to add his name to the edition, though he didn't contribute much. But soon Edmond Malone and others muscled in on Steevens' turf so he turned his energies to subversion. While he was one of the first to expose the Chatterton-Rowley forgeries, and knew right off that William Henry Ireland's Shakespeare manuscripts were fakes, he also wrote a fictitious account of the Javanese upas tree, derived from the writing of an (imaginary) Dutch traveller (shades of Psalmanazaar). The Irelands' Shakespeare manuscripts had fooled a lot of people for a long time and certainly made an impact.

Reed published a new edition of Steevens' Shakespeare in 1785. At that point Steevens felt his authority had been usurped, so to reassert himself he created variorum editions, adding many valuable passages from Shakespeare's contemporaries to his notes.

Steevens last spectacular hoax was that of Hardicanute's tombstone. (A similar trick was pulled off in 1936 when members of the E Clampus Vitus fraternity conspired to plant the "Plate of Brasse" along the Northern California shoreline to give credibility to the notion that Francis Drake had anchored in Bolinas lagoon, or nearby, in his world tour of 1579. The perpetrators knew that Herbert Bolton, Director of the Bancroft Library at U C Berkeley, was desperately seeking the plate, so obliged him by planting a fake that was considered authentic for 40 years.)

Steevens's stunt was to get back at another Hogarth collector who had some early works that Steevens coveted, but who snubbed his advances for a trade. The Society of Antiquaries fell for the ruse, that a stone monument to King Hardaknut had been unearthed in the London suburb of Kennington, and the Gentleman's Magazine published this etching [above] of the inscription in Anglo-Saxon (concocted by Steevens). Son of King Canute, Hardy was another murderous monarch who eliminated rivals, taxed the bejesus out of his serfs, and when they objected, razed their cities. But right away someone noticed the etching technique of the inscription was modern, so the hoax didn't fly. 

Was Steevens malicious, or just a wry guy having fun at others' expense? I think the latter. And he had spent long hours poring over manuscripts and early printed books, reading "for my sake" and seeing "for my fake" over and over.

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Meet John Guttemberg, Printer

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1657, London stationer William Lee issued the fifth (sixth) edition of Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Lives. of the Noble Greeks and Romans. In addition to the usual suspects, Lee added twenty biographies of people Plutarch never wrote a word about, including (in translations mostly by the playwright George Gerbier d’Ouvilly) Aristotle, Homer, Sappho, Charlemagne, Tamburlaine, Atabalipa King of Peru, and Johann Gutenberg, with a two-page paean celebrating his life and "the Excellency of the Art of Printing."

"Amongst the rarest and laudablest Inventions which were derived by the Ingenuity of man, we must needs confess, The Art of Printing may at present justly claim the best and highest esteem; whereby all the other Arts and Sciences are so plainly and accurately rendered unto us; and whereby two men, in one day, may dispatch and Print off more Books then several men could before have written in a whole year. This Art (as it is generally believed) was first invented in Moguntia, or Mentz, a City in Germany, in the year of our Lord one thousand four hundred forty and two, by John Guttemberg, a German Knight from honorable Family; who first of all did there make the experiment of the said Art, so did also make the first trial of that Ink which to this very day is used by the Printers: Although some other Writers do affirm that John Faustus, and Yves Shefey, two years before invented this said Art, and so gave them praise of it; And only say that this John Guttemberg, John Mantel, John Pres, Adolph Rusch, Peter Shesser, Martin Flache, Uldric Hen, John Froben, Adam Peter, Thomas Wolff, and others did all at once very much perfect this said Art of Printing, which they did spread throughout all Germany and the adjacent Countries. And indeed Conradus did use this Art at Rome, in the year fourteen hundred. In the beginning of which Profession on the grounds of it were known but to a very few persons; for at such times as they had any thing to Set, they brought their Characters with them in bags, and when they had done, they carried them back again. And in those daies, both the Printers, and such as did make the Letter-Moulds, were in great repute, wealthy and opulent, and reverenced as Noble personages, making a vast profit by the said Art.  But at present, by reason of the infinite multitude of Books which are printed, and that all men are permitted to profess that Science, although they have never so little insight in it; it so fals out, that both the composers and Printers, reap thereby neither profit no praise, but only imply their labour and time to the benefit of the Publick, with a very little profit or Thanks to themselves…"  

Encouraged "to venture upon a new and fifth impression,"  Lee, desirous to render it "both acceptable to the present Age, and famous to Posterity,"  added  the "quintessence" of André Thevet’s Pourtraits et vies des Hommes illustres Grecz, Latin, et Payens (Paris, 1584), as they were "the very marrow of his observations during his twenty three yeers travails and Peregrinations, throughout the chiefest and remotest parts in the world … (never as yet extant nor seen in English)."

Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch, first appearing in 1579 and immediately celebrated, was a major resource for Shakespeare, providing the background material for Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, Timon of Athens, and Coriolanus. More than that, however,  North's "long passages of … magnificent prose" were so impressive that Shakespeare rendered them "into blank verse with little change" (F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion). Halliwell-Phillipps asserts of North's translation that “it is one of the books that can positively be said to have been in [Shakespeare's] own hands.”

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PLUTARCH.  The Lives of the noble Grecians & Romans, compared together by that grave learned Philosopher & Historiographer Plutarch of Chæronea. Translated out of Greek into French by James Amiot … With the Lives of Hannibal & Scipio African; translated out of Latin into French, by Charles del’Escluse, and out of French into English by Sir Thomas North, Knight. Hereunto are added the Lives of Epaminondas, of Philip of Macedon, of Dionysius the Elder, Tyrant of Sicilia, of Augustus Cæsar, of Plutarch, and of Seneca: with the Lives of nine other excellent Chieftains of Warre: collected out of Æmylius Probus, by S. G. S. and Englished by the aforesaid Translator. And now also in this Edition are further added, the Lives of twenty selected eminent Persons, of ancient and latter Times; translated out of the Work of that famous Historiographer to the King of France and Poland, Andrew Thevet …   London, Printed by Abraham Miller, and are to be sold by William Lee … 1657.

Folio, mostly in sixes, pp. [16], 443, 446-1031, [27], 76, [34], with an engraved title, dated 1656, designed by Francis Barlow, and integral engraved portrait vignettes.  Title printed in red and black. Separate title pages for ‘The Lives of Epaminondas [etc.]’, dated 1656, and for ‘Prosopographia: or some select Pourtraitures and Lives … by Andrew Thevet’, dated 1657 (mistakenly bound before the ‘Notes and Explanations’ at 3T1); with an advertisement leaf and thirty-four pages of index.

Wing P 2633.
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Image courtesy of Bernard Quaritch Ltd, currently offering this title, with our thanks.

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A Spelunker In The Cave Of Poverty

By Stephen J. Gertz

In 1715, Lewis Theobald, a British lawyer and budding poet with literary ambitions just beginning to be realized through translations of classical Greek dramas, stood at the entrance of an immense allegorical cavern and, ropes, hard hat, and lantern at the ready, stepped inside the gaping hole.

Journeying through an immense labyrinth with more underground byways than Mammoth Cave National Park, he beheld horrors at every turn. He took notes. The result was a proto-Desolation Row, Bob Dylan in wig and tricorne writing an infernal travel brochure in iambic pentameter inspired by Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser.

Meet the Goddess of the Cave, the Queen of Poverty, a Gorgonesque creature out of Clive Barker, basking in squalor and her power over the world:

Far in the Dungeon's Depth, in sullen Pride,
On matted Straw the gloomy Regent sat:
Famine, Despair, and Sickness by her side,
The Motions of her envious Pleasure wait.
Behind her violent Deaths attend; which, when
Inrag'd, she sends to tempt unwary Men.

Pale was her Face, and shrivell'd was her Skin,
Eyes sunk, and starting Bones; as she were now
The Skeleton of what she once had bin;
So lean and wretched did the Daemon shew:
Her Locks with Filth so clotted, she appears
A Fury, hung with Snakes, instead of Hairs.

Plain was her Furniture, of homely Wood;
And mean, and squallid, was her whole Attire;
Some far-fetch'd Roots and Water were her Food,
And Furz of Heaths the Fewel of her Fire.
On Earthen Lamp twice Twenty Glow-worms lay,
Whose spangled Light supplies the want of Day.

By the light of this worm-infested Tiffany lamp, the walls of the cavern are revealed. Verbal cave paintings, 127 stanzas worth, they are inscribed with woes and deprivations.

Two tubes extend from deep within the cave as telephone party lines. Listening through one, the Goddess eavesdrops upon a voice damning poverty and praising wealth. Through the other, she overhears a case praising poverty and cursing wealth. The Goddess is pleased; it's a delightful dirge to her ears. For the rest of us, it's a dreary prospectus perhaps foreshadowing the 2012 U.S. Presidential campaign, class warfare to some, yawning income gap to others.

By journey's end, our intrepid spelunker has encountered the foul agents of poverty and experienced a filthy laundry list of human misery and ills. The tube in praise of poverty (in this context we presume a tin can with string)  has the last word:

Thus spake the Tube: When lo! on Eastern Cloud,
That sullenly receiv'd her early Light,
The chearful Rosy-finger'd Morning glow'd;
With Blushes, like a rifled Maid, bedight:
Th' Enamour'd Sun, holding the Nymph in Chase,
O'er her young Beauties shed redoubled Grace.

In short, the sun shines on the noble poor. Those living below the poverty line may appreciate the initial warmth of the sun but for them it shines hard and relentlessly, and they are unlikely to appreciate an upside to sunstroke.

Theobald was not a great poet, and this is not a great poem. One contemporary Tweeted this review: "Here in one bed two shiv'ring sisters lye / The cave of Poverty and Poetry" (Alexander Pope, The Dunciad 1:31-32).

Pope and Theobald were arch enemies. Theobald, if not a worthy poet did, however, evolve into one of the great editors of Shakespeare. In 1726, he published Shakespeare Restored, or a Specimen of the many Errors as well Committed as Unamended by Mr Pope in his late edition of this poet; designed not only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the true Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever published. Pope was not pleased, hence the wisecrack in The Dunciad two years later.

It is ironic, and to this eye just plain weird, that this copy of Theobald's paean to poverty is elegantly bound in a rich Art Nouveau binding by Alfred De Sauty.

"Alfred de Sauty (1870-1949) was a bookbinder who produced tooled bindings of exceptional delicacy. De Sauty was active in London from approximately 1898 to 1923 and in Chicago from 1923 to 1935. His finest work is thought to be have been accomplished between 1905 and 1914. Many aspects of his life are poorly documented. For instance, scholars are unsure whether, when in London, de Sauty worked independently, for the firm of Riviere & Sons, or both. While in London, he may also have been a designer for the Hampstead Bindery and a teacher at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. When he lived in Chicago, de Sauty worked for the hand bindery of R. R. Donnelley & Sons. He signed his work at the foot of the front doublure, if present, and at the center of the bottom turn-in of the front upper board, if not. Works he produced in London are signed "de S" or "De Sauty." Works he produced in Chicago are signed with his employer's name, 'R. R. Donnelly'" (Bound in Intrigue, Harvard Botany Libraries Online Exhibit).

It's as if Theobald consulted with a binder to find the perfect design to capture the patronizing spirit of noblesse oblige.

A truly appropriate binding for The Cave of Poverty might be cataloged as, Contemporary full mouldering and mildewed crushed and trampled upon morocco from a goat that died of starvation for want of food stamps, ruled in blind by the blind, with elaborate excuses in faux gilt, raised hackles, spine compartments as run-down, over-crowded, and pestilential tenements. All edges lead.

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THEOBALD, Lewis. The Cave of Poverty, A Poem. Written in Imitation of Shakespeare.  London: Printed for Jonas Browne at the Black Swan...and Sold by J. Roberts..., 1715.

First (only) Edition. Octavo (7 5/8 x 4 1/2 in; 193 x 115 mm). [8], 48 pp. Woodcut head- tailpieces, initials.

In an elegant Art Nouveau binding, c. 1905-1910, by Alfred de Sauty (stamp-signed to upper turn-in) in full emerald morocco with a central panel of inlaid red morocco tulips, dark green morocco leaves, and vines outlined in black, repeated on the rear board. Dual gilt fillet borders. All edges gilt. Gilt ruled turn-ins. Raised bands. Gilt ruled compartments with inlaid dark green morocco leaves. Gilt rolled edges.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books with the exception of the titlepage to Shakespeare Restored, which is courtesy of Terry A. Gray of Palomar College. Our thanks to both.

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Fame, Fortune, And First Folios At The Folger

By Nancy Mattoon

Title Page From
Folger First Folio Number 75.
(All Images Courtesy of Folger Shakespeare Library.)

The First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623, is one of the most studied and influential books in the English language. In Summer 2011, the Folger Shakespeare Library, home to nearly a third of the world’s extant First Folios, explores the limitless allure of this volume in Fame, Fortune, and Theft: The Shakespeare First Folio. According to the library's press release, "The exhibition will feature eleven complete First Folios drawn from the Folger collection, as well as artwork and illustrations, portions of other First Folios, and items related to the library’s founder and avid Shakespeare collector Henry Clay Folger. The exhibition includes over one hundred items from the Folger collection, as well as materials from the Bodleian Library, Williams College, and other institutions."

Portrait Of Henry Clay Folger,
By Frank O. Salisbury.
Oil On Canvas, 1927.

Exhibition co-curator Owen Williams stresses the literary importance of the volume, "The First Folio is so significant because fewer than half of the thirty-six plays contained in the Shakespeare First Folio had appeared in print before. Since Shakespeare died seven years earlier and no original manuscripts of Shakespeare’s plays exist, eighteen plays would likely have been lost had they not been included in the First Folio. These include some of his most famous comedies, such as The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Tempest, and tragedies like Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra."

Eminent commentators
and editors of Shakespeare's works.
A 19th Century Print
By Charles Michel Geoffroy.

Despite the high value placed on them by collectors--in 2001 a copy sold for a record $6.2 million--First Folios are not particularly rare. Exhibition co-curator Anthony James West notes that 232 copies exist today in institutions around the world as well as in private libraries. Although each copy was produced on a printing press, no two are exactly identical. "Each one of the 232 copies is unique, each with its individual history" says West. "One thing that interests me is the provenance, the succession of owners. And it’s not just the individual but also their collective history that is fascinating—for example, when and how the volumes spread around the world. If you handle a book that’s 400 years old, and you think of all its owners and readers, you have a feeling you’re as close as you can get to these people."

Table Of Contents From
The Stolen And Vandalized
Durham University First Folio.

A book this valuable is a magnet for thieves. Three First Folios were stolen in the twentieth century--one from Williams College, Massachusetts in 1940; one from John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester, England in 1972; and one from Durham University in 1998. Sadly, only two of these copies have been recovered. The Williams College copy was returned the same year it was stolen, but the whereabouts of the Durham copy remained a mystery for 10 years. In 2008 it was brought to the Folger by a man who said he was a book dealer, and who claimed he had acquired the volume in Cuba. Evidence submitted by Folger staff and other experts to the FBI and Durham police, proving that the "Cuban copy" was in fact the volume stolen from Durham, is included in the exhibition.

A 1623 Etching Of Constantine Huygens,
The First Man Outside Of England
To Own A First Folio.

A 2003 publication by exhibition co-curator Anthony James West, A New Worldwide Census of First Folios, was instrumental in identifying Durham's stolen folio, which had been stripped of its binding. The census meticulously documents all known copies of the First Folio around the world. (Since its publication, four more copies have surfaced, bringing the grand total of known Folios to 232.) West's census shows that the earliest known First Folio to go abroad belonged to the Dutch diplomat, poet, and book collector Constantine Huygens, who purchased it in 1647. (It is now Folger Library Copy Number 75.)

12 First Folios at Kodama Memorial Library,
Meisei Univeristy, Tokyo.

The majority of the known copies of the First Folio changed hands between 1850 and 1950. But Kodama Library at Meisei University in Tokyo acquired twelve First Folios in the 1980s. Kodama is now the second largest repository of First Folios in the world, behind only the Folger Library. Only about twenty First Folios remain in private hands, making sales infrequent, but two First Folios have gone under the hammer in the 21st century. Exhibition Co-curator Owen Williams, Assistant Director of the Folger Institute, has edited a new publication in conjunction with Fame, Fortune, and Theft: The Shakespeare First Folio, entitled Foliomania! Stories behind Shakespeare’s Most Important Book.

Fame, Fortune, and Theft: The Shakespeare First Folio continues through September 3, 2011 at the Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

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The Bard Or Not the Bard? That Is The Question.

By Nancy Mattoon

Cobbe Portrait.
Claimed to be a portrait of William Shakespeare
done while he was alive, ca 1610.
(Images Courtesy of Morgan Library and Museum.)

What some experts claim is the one and only portrait of Shakespeare painted during his lifetime is the centerpiece of a new exhibit at the Morgan Library and Museum. The painting was unveiled in 2009 by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, and according to the Morgan, "Recent technical analysis—as well as the portrait's superior quality—has established it as the original of a long series of portraits traditionally identified as Shakespeare."

The Jacobean painting had hung unrecognized for centuries in an Irish country house belonging to the Cobbe family. Both this portrait and a recently identified portrait of Shakespeare's patron Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, were part of the estate of Archbishop Charles Cobbe (1686-1765). According to the exhibit, "The Cobbe portrait has significant resemblances in costume and design to Martin Droeshout's engraving of Shakespeare published in the First Folio (1623), and bears a Latin inscription, taken from a poem by Horace, addressed to a playwright."

Martin Droeshout's Engraving of Shakespeare, 1623.

All of which sounds pretty convincing, and it has convinced some very respected Shakespearean scholars that the Cobbe portrait is the real deal. (Chiefly the Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stanley Wells, the Head of Education for the Trust, Paul Edmondson, and Mark Broch, the curator of the Cobbe Collection.) On the other hand, several scholars immediately took exception to the identification of the subject of the portrait as Shakespeare, most notably Katherine Duncan-Jones, professor of English at Oxford University, and Tarnya Cooper, the curator of 16th-century portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, London, who curated that institution's 2006 Searching for Shakespeare exhibition.

And even the Morgan curator, Declan Kiely, was guarded when asked about the Cobbe portrait: "The position the Morgan takes is that the Cobbe portrait is authentic—that is, it is a painting dating from 1610 and depicts a sitter who may be identified as Shakespeare." The Cobbe portrait is, in fact, a dead ringer for another "Shakespeare portrait" that has been branded a fake. Known as the "Janssen Portrait," this painting has been called "the earliest proven example of a genuine portrait altered to look like Shakespeare," by Erin Blake, Curator of Art and Special Collections at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

The altered balding hairline in the "original"
Janssen portrait,
as it appeared when purchased by the
Folger Shakespeare Library in the early 1930s.

Blake notes that the Folger "owns about forty painted portraits of Shakespeare (including miniatures), and none of them are authentic portraits from life. About half were never intended to be considered life-portraits, but are honest representations of the artist's conception of Shakespeare. These are sometimes known as 'memorial portraits' and were particularly popular in the Victorian period. The rest are fakes, being either pictures once asserted to be Shakespeare from life but actually painted in recent times, or genuine portraits from Shakespeare’s era that were later altered to look Shakespearean."

The Janssen portrait after 1988 restoration.

Fake Shakespeare portraits are a virtual cottage industry. According to the Wikipedia article on Portraits of Shakespeare, "Within four decades of its foundation in 1856, upwards of 60 portraits were offered for sale to the National Portrait Gallery purporting to be of Shakespeare, but there are only two definitively accepted as portraying him, both of which are posthumous. One is the engraving that appears on the cover of the First Folio (1623) and the other is the sculpture that adorns his memorial in Stratford upon Avon, which dates from before 1623."

The bottom line on Shakespeare portraits is that:

A. There is no physical description of Shakespeare in existence.

B. There is no evidence Shakespeare ever sat for a portrait.

Nevertheless, just as there are scholars who are convinced that somebody else wrote Shakespeare, there are scholars who are convinced that somebody sat Shakespeare down and painted his portrait. But they can't agree on exactly who it was, in either case.

The Changing Face of Shakespeare continues through May 1, 2011 at the Morgan Library and Museum.
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