Shakespeare and the Book Trade by Erne Lukas & Lukas Erne

Author:Erne, Lukas & Lukas Erne [Erne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2013-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

The chief publishers of Shakespeare’s plays

James Roberts, like Richard Field, could have published several of Shakespeare’s works but chose not to do so. He was the playbill printer from 1594 to 1615, which must have brought him into regular contact with the theatre companies in London.103 His dealings with Shakespeare or his company are confirmed by the fact that he entered three Shakespeare plays in the Stationers’ Register: The Merchant of Venice on 22 July 1598, Hamlet on 26 July 1602 and Troilus and Cressida on 7 February 1603. Yet he published none of them. He transferred The Merchant of Venice on 28 October 1600 to Thomas Hayes, who had it printed by Roberts before the end of the year. Q1 Hamlet was published by Nicholas Ling and John Trundle in 1603 and Q2 Hamlet (1604/5) by Ling alone, who had it printed by Roberts.104 Troilus and Cressida was entered on 28 January 1609 to Richard Bonian and Henry Walley who had the play printed by George Eld the same year.

A recent scholar has tried to account for Roberts’s unwillingness to publish these plays by arguing that he was ‘a printer rather than a publisher’, but for an accurate assessment of Roberts’s attitude towards playbooks, it is important to know that he was both.105 As early as 1594, Roberts published Fiue godly and learned sermons (STC 19858), by George Phillips, which Roberts had entered on 13 December 1593. As late as 1606, he published an edition (following his earlier one of 1600) of Spiritus est vicarius Christi in terra. The poore mans garden (STC 18669). In between, he published several works by Edward Dering, the evangelical preacher and Puritan spokesman (not to be confused with the slightly later antiquary and religious controversialist, Sir Edward Dering), whose early death in 1576 at the age of thirty-six made him a ‘living legend’:106 three editions (1596–1603) of A sermon preached before the Queenes Maiestie (STC 6708–10), four editions (1595–1603) of A short catechisme for housholders (STC 6715.7–17) and four editions (1597–1605) of A briefe and necessarie catechisme or instruction, very needfull to be known of all housholders (STC 6681–3). Roberts also published works of satire, including Marston’s The scourge of villanie (1598, STC 17485) and, in the last years of his career, several anti-Catholic tracts, among them Samuel Harsnett’s A declaration of egregious popish impostures (1603, STC 12880) and Jean Chassanion’s The merchandises of Popish priests (1604, STC 5062).107 All in all, Roberts was the publisher of almost forty books, of which by far the greatest share was religious.

Given that Roberts printed two of the three Shakespeare plays he had entered, it has been argued that Roberts pursued the strategy of selling copyrights so as to secure the printing rights in the process: ‘The entries seem to be for him usually a way of reserving work for himself without risking the capital that publication would involve.’ What is adduced as evidence is that ‘Roberts . . . had on numerous occasions entered material that was eventually published by another stationer but that Roberts himself printed.

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