The Dissemination of Shakespeare's Plays circa 1714

The Dissemination of Shakespeare's Plays Circa 1714

Don-John Dugas

Robert D. Hume

How readily available to readers were Shakespeare's plays early in the eighteenth century? Students of Shakespeare's dissemination and reception have generally agreed that the six-volume octavo edition published by Jacob Tonson in 1709 was crucially important in making the whole canon widely available. Most seem further to agree that Tonson's eight-volume duodecimo edition of 1714 brought the price within the reach of ordinary bookbuyers. ¹ Public response to these editions, however, was curiously minimal, and their impact on production in the theatre was virtually nil—facts that scholars have largely ignored. Trying to improve our understanding of what was happening in the realms of Shakespeare distribution and reception around the time of the 1714 Tonson edition, we want to ask three questions. Did Tonson issue most of Shakespeare's plays as separates in 1714? (This claim was made a generation ago and has never yet been challenged, so far as we are aware.) How affordable were Tonson's editions? (Almost all scholars have ignored their price.) And if—as we maintain—most of Shakespeare's plays were not issued separately until the 1730s, why not? The idea of marketing Shakespeare separates as early as circa 1714 was by no means implausible in the theatrical and bookselling contexts of the day, and we shall offer evidence that the publisher William Mears had every intention of doing just that, though his hitherto unnoticed scheme came to nothing.

Were Shakespeare's Plays Separately Published in 1714?

This question may seem surprising. H. L. Ford's Shakespeare bibliography lists only a few scattered instances of unadapted plays being issued in separate editions between 1700 and the 1730s. ² Shakespeare bibliographers have for more than half a century emphasized the importance of the Tonson-Walker competition of 1734-35 in generating systematic separate publication of the whole canon, a battle that apparently brought the retail price of a Shakespeare play as low as two or three pennies. ³ Why then does any question arise?

Writing a quarter-century ago in what is still an important account of Jacob Tonson, Harry M. Geduld says flatly that "During 1714, he [Tonson] issued twenty-five of the plays in separate octavo volumes," and lists them in a footnote. ⁴ If this statement has been challenged, we are not aware of it. The implication is that at this time Tonson published single editions of all the plays he considered important or attractive. Geduld appears to be the direct source of Jonathan Bate's statement concerning Tonson's 1714 edition that "individual plays were sold separately, so the popular ones could be obtained extremely cheaply." ⁵

If individual plays were made available in 1714, this fact is of great importance: the inaccessibility of most of Shakespeare's plays in single editions prior to the 1730s has long been a given among students of his reputation. Granting that one cannot prove negatives, we doubt the existence of these "separates," and we shall attempt to demonstrate the extreme unlikelihood of Tonson having published them. Geduld says further that these were a " `stage edition,'—produced especially for sale at the theatres," and this claim we will also dispute. We can find no evidence that the books actually existed, but we will show that even if they had existed most of them could not have been intended as "stage editions."

Taking them in alphabetical order, the plays Geduld claims were issued in separate, octavo editions in 1714 are All's Well that Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, 1 Henry IV, Henry VIII, King John, King Lear, Richard II, Richard III, Love's Labour's Lost, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Timon of Athens, Titus Andronicus, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, and The...