{"id":3320,"date":"2023-03-16T20:22:05","date_gmt":"2023-03-16T20:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/folio400.com\/?post_type=phernalia&p=3320"},"modified":"2023-03-16T20:23:31","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T20:23:31","slug":"revising-shakespeare-the-quartos","status":"publish","type":"phernalia","link":"https:\/\/folio400.com\/phernalia\/revising-shakespeare-the-quartos\/","title":{"rendered":"Revising Shakespeare, or why we need to celebrate the Quartos as well as the First Folio"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
We rightly celebrate the 1623 First Folio for preserving the canon of thirty-six of Shakespeare\u2019s plays, providing us for the first time with texts of The Tempest <\/i>and Macbeth<\/i> and sixteen other plays that had never been printed, as far as we know. So we have only one \u2018authoritative\u2019 text of each of these eighteen plays and cannot compare them with other versions of the plays printed during or shortly after Shakespeare\u2019s lifetime.<\/p>\n
However half of the plays in the Folio had been published previously in Quarto format. For a Quarto, the printer would use a Folio-sized piece of paper to create eight pages of text\u2014four on each side (to understand this format, fold a piece of paper twice–once horizontally and once vertically–cut open the uncut pages and number all the pages in sequence). When put into printing frames, the compositor could then set the type of four pages on each side of the sheet, with, for example, pages 1, 4, 5 and 8 on one side of the sheet and pages 2, 3, 6 and 7 on the other side This required much more complicated typesetting than for a Folio (fold a piece of paper once, numbering the pages 1-4, with pages 1 and 4 on one side and 2 and 3 on the other). The Quarto compositors would have to \u2018cast off\u2019 lines of his source text to anticipate which lines would appear on page 4, 5 and 8 while printing page 1 before turning over his frame to print pages 2,3 6 and 7. Thus for a Quarto, usually sold unbound and cheaply, almost as a forerunner of a modern paperback, there was a higher rate of printing error than for a Folio, printed with page 1 and 4 on one side and 2 and 3 on the other. However, the First Folio format didn\u2019t make for easier reading than the Quartos, for the Folio text of the plays was set in two columns per page to save space, meaning that a reader had to read down one column then go back to the top of the page to read down the next column. The Quartos were set as we are used to seeing modern texts printed with, in effect, one column of the text before a reader turned the page. Thus, for all its fabulousness as a grand volume, and much heavier weight, the Folio makes for more difficult reading and carrying than a lowly Quarto, which could fit into a pocket and be carried. The Folio would sit on a desk; a portable Quarto could go anywhere.<\/p>\n
Even if occasionally sloppy or misprinted, the extant Shakespearean plays printed in Quarto form give us us a fantastic opportunity to compare earlier versions with later versions in the Folio, giving us almost certain evidence of text revised, altered, updated or adapted by Shakespeare himself. Unusually for an early modern dramatist, Shakespeare profited from at least three stages of the transmission of each play he wrote: first when he sold it to his acting company (the Lord Chamberlain\u2019s, later the King\u2019s Men), second from a share of the box office receipts for its performances (both as an acting company shareholder and a shareholder both in the Globe and Blackfriars playhouses) and again from a share when the play was sold to a printer (copyright did not exist, and once sold, a text belonged to the printer, although Shakespeare seemed to have had mutually beneficial business relationships with his usual printers).<\/p>\n