What is the Fourth Folio of William Shakespeare?
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Whether or not, as is often remarked, the Great Fire of London in 1666
caused the loss of a large number of copies of the Third Folio and
eventually prompted the publication of yet another edition, the Fourth
Folio was published in 1685. W.W. Greg, in A Bibliography of English
Printed Drama to the Restoration, registers three different title page
imprints of this edition. Here you can see each of them, [*], [†],
and [Reissue], as W.W. Greg registers them, reproduced
from the copies in the holdings of the Meisei University Library:
The Fourth Folio imprint (MR 793 : Greg [*])
The Fourth Folio imprint (MR 839 : Greg [†])
The Fourth Folio imprint (MR 789 : Greg [Reissue])
Henry Herringman, the only name given as publishers in all these
imprints is apparently the main copy rights-holder for this
publication although the traceable copy right transfers are only those
of Ellen Cotes to J. Martin and H. Herringman dated 6th of August
1674, and of J. Martin to R. Scott dated 21st of August 1683.
This is the only edition among the four Shakespeare Folios in which
each play does not begin a fresh page. Unlike other three folios, the
Fourth Folio is not a page-for-page reprint of the earlier edition.
The text is clearly divided into three sections, each starting a fresh
set of pagination: the Comedies (Sigs. A-Z, paged 1-272), the
Histories and the Tragedies up to the end of Romeo and Juliet
(Sigs. 2B-2Z, *3A-*3E, paged 1-328), and the rest of the Tragedies and
the seven apocryphal plays (Sigs. 3A-4C, paged 1-303). The first
section together with preliminaries is known to be printed by Robert
Roberts while identification of the printer responsible for the other
sections is yet to be confirmed.
Two pages of Love's Labour's Lost (Sig. L1 and L1v) are conspicuous
in that the text is set continuously and in smaller type. They were
apparently reset to print the text equivalent to three F3 pages in
length into two F4 pages presumably when they noticed they had omitted
one F3 page as Dawson first detected (`Some Bibliographical
Irregularities in the Shakespeare Fourth Folio', Studies in
Bibliography, vol. 4 (1951-52), 93-94). MUSC's TLN references will
show you quite clearly what the printer had been doing in these two
pages.
Black and Shaaber write that the nature of the editorial work by
people in charge for each of the three sections can be said to be the
same, although the second section seems to be conducted by the most
alert person of the three. The following example is from the second
section. The change made by the Fourth Folio has been followed by
subsequent editions.
Romeo and Juliet, 3.2. Where Juliet is told the tragic accident by the Nurse:
F1: Iul. O God!
Did Rom'os hand shed Tybalts blood
It did, it did, alas the day, it did.
Nur. O Serpent heart, hid with a flowring face.
Iul. Did euer Dragon keepe so faire a Caue?
F2: Iuli. O God!
Nur. Did Romeos hand shed Tybalts blood
It did, it did, alas the day, it did.
Iuli. O Serpent heart, hid with a flowring face.
Did ever Dragon keepe so faire a Cave?
F3: Juli. O God!
Nur. Did Romeos hand shed Tybalts blood
It did, it did, alas the day, it did.
Juli. O Serpent heart, hid with a flowring face.
Did ever Dragon keep so faire a Cave?
F4: Juli. O God!
Did Romeo's hand shed Tybalt's blood
Nur. It did, it did, alas the day, it did.
Juli. O Serpent Heart, hid with a flowring face.
Did ever Dragon keep so fair a Cave?
August 31, 2007
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