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00:01Soul of the age, the applause delight, the wonder of our stage, my Shakespeare, rise.
00:14If you publish plays as pamphlets, you're saying they're very contemporary, they're very modern,
00:20do what you like with them. If you publish them in folio, you're saying they're going to be here,
00:24they're going to be here for centuries. Don't think for a moment that putting together the
00:29first folio was easy. It was the bringing together and the production of a solid piece of work,
00:37of volume, a desert island book as it's become famously in our age, along with the Bible.
00:42That book made it through the Interregnum, where for 18 years we had no theatre, we were busy killing
00:48our king. He made it because he was in a tremendous lasting book. So that book is everything. That
00:57book gave us Shakespeare.
01:05It is required. You do awake your faith. Then all stand still.
01:20This is the command of Paulina to characters and audience at the end of The Winter's Tale.
01:26Her aim is to bring an inanimate object, the statue of Hermione, back to full human life.
01:33All those that think it is unlawful business I'm about, let them depart.
01:37Proceed. No foot shall stir. Music. Awake her. Strike.
01:52Tis time. Descend.
01:59Be stoned no more. The wonder of this moment is one
02:04repeated every time we see this play or any of Shakespeare's performed. Old stories become freshly
02:11relevant. Dead words spark new life. Written characters become flesh and blood.
02:18Stir. Nay, come away. But this play may well have been lost to us,
02:25along with 17 others, had it not been for the making of one of history's most remarkable books.
02:33You perceive she stirs? Start not. Her actions shall be holy as
02:40you hear my spell is lawful. Do not shun her. The first folio. First published 400 years ago in 1623.
02:50In this film, we will tell the story of how two friends of Shakespeare's, along with a team of
02:57collaborators, stationers, publishers, printers, apprentices, engravers, saved Shakespeare for us.
03:24The world would have been much poorer without the first folio. We'd have lost half of Shakespeare's plays.
03:33Half of Shakespeare's plays, and a treasure trove of words, ideas, songs, relationships and insights,
03:40which have, for four centuries, helped us to understand ourselves.
03:45All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
03:53But, Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom, Kate of Kate Hall, my super dainty Kate,
04:02Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
04:13I do lean upon justice, sir, and do bring in here, before your good honour, two notorious benefactors.
04:23How now, Malvoli? Oh.
04:30Tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.
04:34May it please your grace. No, sir! It does not please me!
04:40Mine eyes smell onions.
04:45We are such stuff.
04:51As dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
05:03All those marvels, and all these too.
05:06We know the wonder of these plays on stage.
05:09But in the age of King James, what did they mean on the page?
05:15For writers of recent eras, publication of their plays has been seen as a crowning glory.
05:20But what did it mean for Jacobean playwrights?
05:25So, Shakespeare himself was remarkably absent from the negotiations for the publication of his individual plays.
05:35That actually wasn't at all unusual.
05:39Very few playwrights would have got involved with such negotiations.
05:43Or, indeed, would have been that concerned with how their plays were printed.
05:47It's a really open question whether Shakespeare did show no interest, as we always used to say in the publishing
05:53of his plays.
05:54If Shakespeare were interested in seeing his plays through the press, why didn't he take more care over how they
06:00appeared?
06:01Why didn't he seem to supervise that more actively?
06:07And why do we have some plays and not others?
06:11I think that, at least for most of his career,
06:13Shakespeare didn't particularly care whether his plays appeared in print or not.
06:18Of course, about half of them did appear in print.
06:20Most of them in what we call the quarto format, the small paperback format.
06:25But he appears to have had no involvement whatever in the printing of the quarters.
06:31Some of them were printed against his wishes, what we call the bad quarters.
06:36It must have been the case that writing two or three big plays a year,
06:41he's got a lot of forward momentum and not so much time to look back.
06:46In fact, the prospect of going back over a career of work,
06:50of checking the rightness of almost a million words,
06:53and of correcting the punctuation of thousands of lines, may have filled him with despair.
06:59Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
07:09to the last syllable of recorded time.
07:15And all our yesterdays
07:19have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
07:24Out.
07:27Out.
07:31Brief candle.
07:39Life's but a walking shadow.
07:44A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.
07:49It is a tale
07:52told by an idiot
07:58full of sound
08:01and fury
08:04signifying
08:07nothing.
08:15Shakespeare's life began here in Stratford-upon-Avon.
08:18And this is where he first learnt the power of language and imagination.
08:22His memorial in Holy Trinity Church refers to the living art of his plays.
08:29Some believe that Shakespeare may have discussed with friends the possibility of publishing his
08:34plays before his death. In his will, he leaves money for three of his friends to buy mourning rings.
08:41Was this a sort of publishing pact?
08:44I suspect that in his final years, the last three years of his life during which he was
08:51doing no playwriting, that in those years he may have discussed with his theatrical colleagues
08:57the possibility of his plays getting into print.
09:02And he does leave money in his will. He leaves money to John Hemmings, Henry Cundall, and the great
09:08actor Richard Burbage, a great actor and an old friend who had acted in all his plays.
09:13is probably from the very beginning of his career.
09:16The statement is that it is so that they can buy mourning rings.
09:21So people have questioned what the mourning rings mean.
09:25Are they simply a gift, remember me?
09:29These are words of course that are very important to Shakespeare, remember me.
09:34Or are they a bit of a contract for Hemmings and Cundall and possibly Burbage, though Burbage then died,
09:41to publish Shakespeare's works. And it's a little difficult to say, because one could say,
09:47if Shakespeare really, really wanted his works published, why didn't he do it?
09:51But one could also say, he suddenly starts thinking about legacy as he dies.
09:57And he thinks, who might see through my work to the press? Well, that would be my dear friends,
10:04who are also managers of the company.
10:06One of the reasons I think The First Folio is an unusual book is that it brings together the world
10:12theatre and the world of books. It clearly involved sustained collaboration between those two groups
10:19of people. The fact that so much of The First Folio's language and its opening pages is soused
10:24in the world of the theatre. The fact that it conjures into being the sound of a busking boot
10:29upon a board upon the stage, you know, is a testament, I think, to how important it was for this
10:36book
10:36to activate the world of the theatre. John Hemmings and Henry Cundall are in some ways opposites
10:42of Shakespeare. They're very London men, they have families, they are church wardens. Hemmings,
10:48we think, takes up a role with the king's men, which is more towards kind of treasurer. Condell,
10:55we know from his will, he's also, Condell is a man that's often the executor of other actor's wills,
11:01which makes me think he's a steady guy, he's someone you could rely on. They were money guys,
11:06and they were shrewd investors. And Hemmings also ran The Globe's tap house, so that means he ran the
11:14place that supplied the food and drink to the people at The Globe, so he ran the concessions.
11:21Hemmings had, I think, 14 children and Condell had nine children and they were church wardens and they
11:28were shareholders in the Blackfriars and The Globe and all of this going on and somehow,
11:34somehow doing the folio, I suppose, in their spare time. An immense labour of love.
11:41Love of Shakespeare and love of profit may both have driven the making of the folio,
11:47but so might the actions of one of his close friends and rival playwrights.
11:52So Ben Johnson in 1616 published a folio of his plays and there had been folios of classical plays or
12:05carefully written closet dramas that were never performed published before, but no one had ever
12:10published a normal public play in folio form as though it were magnificent, as though it were the
12:20works of Terence or Virgil. I mean, this is Johnson's ego in book form. I guess everybody must have known
12:27that he was doing it and it's a landmark publication because it's really more or less the first
12:37large format, expensively produced book, which contains English language drama, which in this
12:44period is not a high status form at all. So Johnson is making a big claim for himself, but also
12:48for the
12:50for the field more generally. And I think we have to see that that's a spur to the kind of
12:55publication
12:56that might emerge to capture Shakespeare's works. Although the two books are very different,
13:03not least because the Shakespeare one has so much more content, so many more plays,
13:09and therefore it's much more crammed in on the page. Those double columns which are so characteristic
13:15of the Shakespeare first folio are in Johnson a single column with loads of white space around it,
13:21so the Johnson folio speaks of a kind of luxury. Where's Malvolio? He's sad and civil and suits
13:28well for a servant with my fortunes. Where is Malvolio? He's coming, madam.
13:40But in very strange manner, he is sure possessed, madam. Why, what's the matter? Does he raise? No,
13:46madam, he does nothing but smile. Your ladyship, we're best to have some guard about you if he come,
13:50for sure the man is tainted in his wits. Go call him hither! I am as mad as he if
13:57sad and merry
13:59madness equal be. How now, Malvolio? Oh.
14:22Sweet lady.
14:40Smilest thou I sent for thee upon a sad occasion.
14:46Having taken on this huge task, where did they begin?
14:52It was a big job to assemble the manuscripts of the plays, to say in some cases to decide between
15:00a manuscript and a printed copy. It was a big organisational task for men whose primary job
15:08was not putting plays in the print. When you've decided to put on a play, you have to send a
15:15neat,
15:15beautiful copy of it to the master of the revels. And he's a sort of censor and he will read
15:21through
15:22and say if the play can be performed. And if it can be performed, he will write a note of
15:27approval at the
15:28back of it. And that manuscript is then called the approved copy. A company keeps its approved copies
15:35because without the approved copy, they cannot put on the play.
15:38Where they were, I mean, it's a completely sort of wonderful question. They're probably stored in a
15:45chest. All books and papers are in, you know, chests, not shelves or filing cabinets.
15:51There was a big fire, wasn't there, at the Globe on the 29th of June, 1613. Some of those plays
15:57were lost,
15:58I reckon. And for three of the plays, The Twelfth Night of What You Will, The Comedy of Errors and
16:05Antony and Cleopatra, somehow the theatre scripts of those plays did not survive. I suppose they were
16:12lost in the Globe fire or they were just forgotten about. So where would they go to try and retrieve
16:19those works? There are all kinds of wonderful, beautiful ideas that did him, did the company
16:27which came to Stratford in 1622, did they do that because they wanted to go to Anne Hathaway and get
16:34some of Shakespeare's manuscript? That's, it's a wonderful romantic idea. I live in Stratford,
16:39so I hope it's the case. So we know they came here, presumably to pay their respects to their late
16:45friend,
16:45to see his monument, possibly for the first time. And they popped into New Place. I wonder if they've
16:50got, I wonder if Anne's still got those three, you know, comedy and the one about Illyria and the
16:58Egyptian one. And yes, she had, and that's why they're in the folio. Hemmings and Condell had to
17:06find the plays. But what exactly were they looking for? What paper records did writers, actors and
17:12theatre makers leave behind? There are other documents too from the theatre that must have
17:17existed in really large numbers, but were not thought to be important and largely haven't survived.
17:22Plays probably had plots, sometimes called plaits, and they were sort of overview documents really,
17:29a sense what's the overall structure of the play, who's needed when. At the back of the theatre,
17:35in the Tiring House, there may have been this document, a document similar to this,
17:41which is obviously an aid memoir, which will remind the actors where they are, where they're going,
17:47who they're acting with, when the sound effects come in. So it gives us some sort of sense of the
17:53running order of a play, but also the panic that might be happening in the Tiring House,
18:02when the actors are all saying, which play are we doing? Because the turnover of plays was obviously
18:07huge. The other thing that must have existed in huge quantities is cue scripts. So cue scripts were
18:14the actor's own lines, the character's own lines, and the two or three words that were their cue
18:21from the previous speech. And we see those, they're probably in roles, they're probably understood
18:28in that way. You know, when the actors get their parts given out in the forest before Pyramus,
18:33and this being Midsummer Night's Dream, they're getting cue scripts, they're getting scripts in
18:37which they are the central character, as they each sort of very comically set up. Even the lion,
18:43you know, has probably got a script that says Roar. What we have here is Edward Alleyne's part for
18:49a character who's playing in Orlando Furioso. And at the bottom, there would have been a part where
18:57they'd been glued on to the next piece of paper, so it would form a scroll, almost as though you
19:03could
19:03have it up your costume if you've forgotten your lines. The lines indicate where his part finishes.
19:10Behind the first folio, there's a whole lot of paper documents, manuscript documents that we mostly
19:17have lost, but we can try and conjecture what they are. So for half of the plays, we've got printed
19:23editions, quarto editions, those smalls, pamphlet format, single play works. And we can see that
19:32somebody has put in act divisions, perhaps seen divisions sometimes. Here we've got an example of
19:39how that might have looked. So I reckon if you were working in the print shop, that's what you
19:43would hope for. You would hope that you would have a print copy which would be easy to read with
19:46just a
19:47few annotations. The other kinds of documents are all working documents, and they either come from
19:53the author or the author via the theatre. These other two, I think, would make that a bit easier.
20:01One is what we would imagine a prompt copy to look like. So this is the single copy in the
20:07theatre
20:07that the stage manager is using. And then there's an overall kind of scrivener copy, probably, of each
20:15play. That's to say a tidy copy made by a scribe.
20:19In the printing house, the printer wants a clean, neat manuscript that is easy to read. So what he
20:27absolutely does not want is any kind of authorial manuscript that's near the process of creation,
20:34because he doesn't want any overwriting, any rethinking, any little arrows move this bit
20:39here. He doesn't want that. He would also hate to have a prompt book, a theatrical prompt book,
20:44which may or may not have been the Shakespeare manuscript. He would hate that because the theatre
20:50has used it. And for one thing, it will be maybe a bit tattered in a state. But for another,
20:57it may have
20:58got theatrical notes on it, and then he wouldn't know whether to set them or not.
21:02We know that Ralph Crane is the scribe that the Kingsmen employ, and he certainly provides very
21:09tidy, organised, Ralph Crane-ified manuscripts for the first plays in the folio, the first of those
21:18comedies. Whether he gives up on that, whether something changes, we don't know. I mean,
21:24the key to the folio is actually variety. This is not a book that has had a single
21:32managing intelligence producing it as a book.
21:37The first folio had to be registered with the Stationers Company. This was based in Stationers
21:44Hall off Ludgate Hill in London. The book was authorised for sale on the 8th of November, 1623.
21:52The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers began in 1403. Its origins were in the medieval
22:00guild, which was the craftsmen that were manuscript writers and illuminators that plied their wares,
22:08not as itinerant tradesmen, but from stalls or what they called stations around St Paul's Cathedral,
22:13and that's where the name comes from. Later, when the printing press was invented, then printers joined,
22:18and before too long, then the majority of members were printers. In the early 17th century,
22:24the Stationers Company was well established. It had got its Royal Charter in 1557,
22:30and this had given them the right to regulate printing and publishing. Everyone was supposed
22:35to register their publications with the Stationers. Therefore, if it was seditious, if it was heretical,
22:42if it was a pirated copy, they could seize it, they could destroy it, and both the seller and the
22:49printer
22:49could be imprisoned, fined, or both. So, the Stationers actually had the power of search and
22:57seizure, which was very unusual for a livery company. They would go with a couple of sheriffs of the city,
23:06and actually literally go into somebody's publishing house and carry out this breaking up of presses.
23:13And one of the things that we have in the court books, in fact, is we have several receipts of
23:18payments to sheriffs, and also a lot of pub bills, because clearly breaking up people's presses was very
23:27thirsty work. So, when someone came to register a publication or a book, they were already a member
23:34of Stationers, so they would know the people here. They may be friends, they may be colleagues, they may
23:39be rivals. The clerk, or whoever had received the books and the information, would make an entry,
23:44and it goes into the entries of copies, and this was really the start of copyright.
23:49When Hemming and Condell decided that they wanted to publish the first folio, what they were actually
23:56faced with was a mammoth task. The right to copy the quartos was assigned in a somewhat piecemeal
24:05fashion to quite a wide range of different printers, and then, of course, went through this chain of
24:12reassignment, of being sold off, of being bought back. We actually have a scenario where the rights to
24:21publish Shakespeare are extremely scattered. My sense is that by the 1620s, Shakespeare's
24:30commercial reputation might be quite low. These look like the kind of plays your dad went to,
24:39even your grandfather. You know, these are the old standards of a previous age. Romantic comedy,
24:49English sort of history plays from the theatre and the globe era. These look a bit, you know,
24:56so what, so what. So I am not sure that the job of getting those rights was so difficult. I
25:05think
25:05probably quite a lot of those quarto holders were quite ready to give them up. Now, how they did that
25:14is probably to another of their own, another member of the stationers' company. And there, I think,
25:19Edward Blunt, who is, you know, Blunt starts to look like something like a kind of literary
25:26publisher. He's got a good eye for what he thinks is important. He's publishing Montaigne,
25:31he's publishing Don Quixote. So maybe there is some sense he wants to invest
25:36in this because of its value and he thinks he can make, he thinks he can make it work commercially.
25:43One of the amazing things about working with these registers is actually seeing the evidence of
25:50plays that have become so familiar, that have become household names, but at this point
25:54they are fresh and new and this is the first time the world has heard about them. And we,
25:59as the very fortunate inheritors of these volumes, are able to witness that moment at which what was
26:09simply a former thing becomes fixed in print. Here we have the entry into the stationers' register
26:19of what we now know of as Shakespeare's first folio. So the date is 8th of November 1623.
26:27Here on the side we have Master Blunt and Isaac Jaggard. And the text reads,
26:35entered for their copy under the hands of Master Dr. Worrell and Master Cole Warden,
26:43Master William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies, so many of the said copies as are not
26:51formerly entered to other men, viz, it proceeds to list them, The Tempest, The Two Gentlemen of Verona,
27:00Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, All's Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night, The Winter's
27:08Tale,
27:09The Third Part of Henry VI, Henry VIII, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Anthony and Cleopatra and Cymbeline.
27:23Printing the folio was a mammoth undertaking, 983 pages, almost a million words, and every letter,
27:33comma and full stop had to be individually set, a feat of detailed composition and physical endurance.
27:41William and Isaac Jaggard's print shop stood in the northwest corner of what we now know as the Barbican.
27:48What was it like to work there? The Jaggards are a really interesting firm, I think. They're a firm
27:55primarily of printers, that's to say they own the machinery and the type and they do printing jobs of
28:03all kinds, big and small. Printing the folio took over a year and they couldn't have no income
28:10during that time. So Jaggard had quite a few other little profitable printing things that he did. He
28:19was printer of playbills, so those are adverts for plays. He was a civic printer, he printed proclamations.
28:25He had the rights for printing the Ten Commandments.
28:30So they've got a lot of piece work and it's probably that kind of piece work that keeps the business
28:33going
28:34and books are probably a slightly secondary consideration. Through the 16 teens William
28:41Jaggard's eyesight is going and by the end of that decade he's blind. Some people think that's from
28:50syphilis. And his son Isaac, quite young, he is effectively taking over the business. But William
29:01is still, you know, is very active. Some of Jaggard's work probably is a bit rough and ready and some
29:07of
29:07it is brilliant. They published this book about the history of four-footed animals, Edward Topsell's
29:13book, which has loads of illustrations in and it's a very beautiful book. So they could do all kinds of
29:18stuff. So a print shop in this period is full of heavy machinery. You know, printing gear is, you know,
29:24substantial, large, effortful pieces of engineering. This is a hard-working
29:31place with an enormous amount of physical effort. The printing house was an incredibly busy place.
29:37Inside it were up to nine people who were working on picking up bits of type and they were called
29:45compositors because they were composing a page by picking up bits of type and setting it. And then there
29:52were people for later on in the process, press men. You needed two press men per press. One would
29:59pick up dampened paper and put it onto the press. The other would ink the already set bits of type
30:07and they'd then pull the wet paper down onto the type, taking a great deal of pressure. You needed
30:13kind of manly strength to do this. And it will have been loud and noisy.
30:19I think it must have been quite messy. There are these young kids who do, you know, gophering
30:27called printer's devils because they're so blackened with ink and with the sort of environment.
30:34It will have looked quite weird because it will have been filled with what looks like washing lines.
30:41And they were there so that when an impression had been pulled onto a piece of paper,
30:46paper, you would then hang the piece of paper up so that the ink on that side could dry so
30:51that you
30:52could then print the other side. At one end, the manuscripts will have been arriving. They'll have
30:58been divided into the amount of text to go onto each page. They'll then have been torn so that more
31:04than
31:05one compositor could work on it. And at the other end, you've got the drying sheets being taken down so
31:11they
31:11can be printed on the other side. So a frantic, busy place at all processes of destroying a manuscript
31:19and making a book. They work a lot under time pressure. They in fact have their own time scheme.
31:26A printer's hour is not a unit of clock time, but an amount of printed output. So, you know,
31:33they're always under time pressure. Stuff comes in and has to be done. The whole history of the jagged print
31:38shop is of interrupted, including the folio, is of interrupted printing because there's a rush job
31:43to produce these articles or this order about the plague. It is possible that Shakespeare's
31:48manuscripts were involved. If they were involved, that will have in a way been to their detriment
31:54for this reason. I've already said that they were often torn up in the process of setting them.
32:00But after the tearing up, and here's something that I'm conjecturing, but I think it is correct.
32:07In the early modern period, loo paper was very hard to get hold of and you were always using
32:15leaves and then your leaves would dry up or, you know. And I think a printer's perk was always having
32:22loo paper. And I'm convinced that the manuscripts that were set ended up down the printer's jakes.
32:29So I think it must have been quite hot, quite sweaty, quite a sort of, you know,
32:37male environment, quite a testosterone-y kind of environment.
32:42Some of that masculinity in a very physical way gets into our folios because the ink balls,
32:49these are huge balls covered, alas, in dog skin, I'm sad to say, because dogs don't sweat,
32:56so the skin has no pores, so it's very good for ink. The ink balls, which you put, you roll
33:03over the
33:04type. In the evening, the press men pee on the ink balls to keep them supple,
33:10and that means that every folio page has a tiny bit of press men's pee in it.
33:15There's one character who has come to the fore just because we've got his indenture papers,
33:22and he's a man, a young man called John Leeson. And Leeson joins the jagged print shop just at the
33:29time that it's printing the first folio. So he's an absolute newbie.
33:33We know one name of one person, and that's the one who set all the worst pages,
33:38and the pages that needed to be proved, and the pages with laughable errors.
33:43There's a wonderful, probably John Leeson mistake, where Hamlet, instead of saying,
33:49oh, treble woe, says, oh, terrible wooer. And then you're kind of, oh,
33:57that didn't strike him as rubbish, maybe because he knew or was a terrible wooer. You know, I like that
34:03kind of stuff. It tells you how many adorable, strange, silly, cute, weird people put that book together.
34:12I think why John Leeson has become such a poster boy, in a way, for this whole project is that
34:18he
34:18really embodies the mismatch between what this project was to the jaggeds. Kind of important,
34:26but not so important that it couldn't be pushed aside to do the description of Leicestershire,
34:33a book which has not had quite such an illustrious afterlife. And John Leeson's presence there as a,
34:39as a new, underqualified apprentice, fat fingering his way through, through King Lear,
34:45is just a lovely example of that. I do lean upon justice, sir, and do bring in here before your
34:51good honour two notorious benefactors. Benefactors? Well, what benefactors are they? Are they not
34:58malefactors? Oh, oh, oh dear. If it please, your honour, I know not well what they are,
35:11but precise villains they are. Oh, that I am sure of, and void of all, profanation. Look at my
35:17profanation, profanation. Will you put that over you? The monument above Shakespeare's grave is our
35:24most reliable indication of his true likeness. Some now believe it was a life portrait.
35:33The other image of the poet we can rely on appears at the front of the first folio.
35:41One of the things that Blunt and Jaggard have invested in is a portrait, an author portrait,
35:46for the front of the first folio. And that's not some kind of frontispiece, illustrative frontispiece,
35:52would have been expected, but not necessarily an authorial picture. So that's a choice in the
35:58first place. They commission Martin Druchert. We don't know if it's the elder or the younger. People who
36:04think the portrait is rather good think it must be the elder. People who think it's not very good say,
36:08well, it was only the younger and he hadn't really done very much. The engraving is done elsewhere. It's
36:12done by a different process. And so too it needs to be printed differently. So you don't just put it
36:19through the same press that's printing the letters. And it's a separate piece of paper and it comes back
36:24and it gets added in. Somebody in the process is quite pernickety about the picture. The engraving plate
36:34seems to go back twice to have what seem to us very, very minor changes. One that sort of makes
36:40Shakespeare's head look a little bit less than it's on a plate by putting a bit of shadows, and one
36:46which
36:46makes the eye a little bit more alive by putting some highlight in the in the eye. But these seem
36:52very, very small changes. You know, these are people who knew this man. And so it's the only likeness that
36:58has a really proper attested claim to be signed off by people who knew him.
37:05Artists were always looking for new ways of developing their ideas and new ways of experimenting
37:12with how to make images. And something like engraving came out of an earlier process and an earlier
37:21way of thinking about how to decorate things. Its starting point was actually the decoration of
37:28medieval armour. Rather than just simple bits of metal, they became highly decorated over time
37:34with imagery, with text and somebody found a way of rubbing ink or rubbing charcoal or rubbing something
37:44into it and that by pressing it you got that image transferred. Artists come along and the sort of
37:51commercial side of the art world which existed from the beginning of time realised its potential. So the
37:59engravers of the armour became the engravers of artists imagery and so was born this relationship,
38:08this sort of separation in some ways between the person that designs the image and the person who
38:14technically engraves and later etches the plates. And engraving is in some ways an incredibly simple
38:22process that you have a metal plate and you mark it in some way. You're scoring through the metal plate
38:33and the plough mark that you make is the mark that actually prints. It's very simple, however it's also
38:42incredibly difficult to control the tonalities, to control the mark, to control how light and dark areas
38:50are and the fineness of detail. And then by carefully wiping it down, removing the ink from the whole
38:56plate except those areas where you have made your mark, then placing a piece of damp paper on the top
39:03and running it through a press or just some way of exerting pressure onto it, that ink is transferred
39:09through the pressure onto your piece of paper and therefore you get your image. In many other instances
39:16you have an artist who draws the image and the engraver translates that image into the engraving
39:23process, both of whom are generally acknowledged on the plate. In this case you only have the engraver.
39:32That might suggest that the engraver also drew the image, hence the rather crude drawing that's there
39:39and some basic sort of simple mistakes in terms of how the folds of his costume goes. The image is
39:46rather
39:46static but it's very much of its time. Saying that there are still some very sophisticated mark making.
39:53In the background behind Shakespeare you'd almost have to look under an eyeglass to see this. There is
40:01quite a complex pattern created through different sort of points, marks, little spots of the engraving tool
40:10to create the solidity behind and that's there I would suggest to create that sort of solemnity of
40:18the portrait. The costume itself you can get an idea of the patterns, you get an idea of the cloth
40:24but it
40:25doesn't really suggest any particular material. This is just a coat put over him but that's very much in
40:33keeping with the art of the time. The idea of naturalism and relaxed portraiture is a later
40:39development. It does its job. The engraving is there to do a job and it does its job. There are
40:4510 or 11
40:46pages of prefatory material before we get to the first play The Tempest in the folio. They're really
40:53curious actually assemblage of things. The commendatory verses we always talk about Ben Johnson's and
41:01Johnson's is wonderful. It's the first sort of place to think of Shakespeare as the Swan of Avon
41:06which is something which has stuck but he also says famously not of an age but for all time.
41:12Soul of the age, the applause delight, the wonder of our stage, my Shakespeare rise.
41:22Johnson though is a bit of a renter quote in this period and he even writes a poem. It's a
41:29brilliant
41:29sort of Johnson double take that he writes a poem which is a dedicatory poem saying maybe I shouldn't
41:34write so many dedicatory poems. Thou art a monument without a tomb and art alive still while thy book
41:42doth live and we have wits to read and praise to give. So he's offering a blurb as writers do
41:49now
41:49and he's both giving his own uh aura to this work and trying to get a bit of reflected glory.
41:58Shine forth thou star of poets and with rage or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage
42:05which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like night and despair's day but for thy volumes light.
42:15So there's Johnson but then the other people are I think to put it kindly a kind of odd assortment.
42:23Hemmings and Condal were not alone I think they were galvanizers I think all of the energy that we all
42:29know
42:31is shot through a company of actors in order to get the play off the ground they were doing that
42:37with
42:37the literati of their time. The Folio is a great collaboration when you look at the names of the
42:43people writing the dedicatory poems at the beginning you've got Hugh Holland you've got James Mabb
42:47you've got Leonard Diggs. It ought to be a book that is dedicated to the king this is the king's
42:52men's
42:53plays uh lots of books are dedicated to the king it isn't dedicated to the king it's a bit unclear
42:59why
42:59why that doesn't happen. I think commendatory verses seem to be in this period about selling the book
43:06and certainly Hemmings and Condal's letter to the great variety of readers would suggest that.
43:11Well it is now public and you will stand for your privileges we know to read and censure
43:21do so but buy it first that doth best commend a book the stationer says. So there's some sense of
43:32the
43:32sales pitch uh at the beginning at the beginning of the book. But whatever you do buy.
43:46So we're standing today in St Paul's churchyard this of course is the rebuilt St Paul's designed
43:51by Sir Christopher Wren after the great fire we're currently on the north side of the churchyard going
43:57back 400 years to 1623 all around here would have been littered with bookshops. These shops and stools
44:03are huddled up against the cathedral itself so they're kind of imbricated within the columns packed
44:09densely all around the base of the cathedral in these rickety wooden sheds built into alcoves that
44:14kind of go up many many stories. Alongside that other things going on in Paul's it's a tremendous center of
44:21news traffic so people gather and congregate here to just catch up on the latest gossip the latest news from
44:27abroad but also yes what what the new titles the new books are that are here there's Paul's cross
44:32and that is probably the most important center of religion in London so the Paul's churchyard gets
44:40crowded and packed out by London citizens who come to listen to the preacher standing at the cross
44:44and declaiming and around this pulpit as the preacher speaks are the bookshops waiting for your
44:51custom it's it's quite densely packed and it's smaller than it is today as well so you're talking about
44:56a cacophonous sense of yeah commerce and life but the major feature of this place is that it is a
45:03place to come to to buy books and it becomes known as that so the churchyard becomes a metonym for
45:08the trade in books in Shakespeare's time so to go to Paul's one of the things that that means is
45:13to
45:13go and look at what the latest wares are from the writers of the day. The folio when it's finished
45:17printing exists as these these big stacks of loose sheets of paper from William Jagger's printing house
45:23the first step that those sheets of paper take is to go to the book's syndicate of publishers so that
45:30syndicate there are four of them are the book's wholesale distributors that's the first journey of
45:36Shakespeare's folio. Well a bookshop proper what typically this looks like from the front see there's
45:44a doorway and then next to it is a large window that window has a stall board on it which
45:48is essentially
45:49a hinged wooden board that flaps downwards held by two chains secured to the window above on that
45:55stall board are laid the latest books so these books jut out into the churchyard designed to catch
46:02your eye as you walk past and inside you'll find the bookseller who owns the shop and probably a couple
46:08of apprentices who as soon as you walk in that door are going to take you by the elbow and
46:12say something
46:13like what lack ye meaning what what do you want how can i help you and they'll push books into
46:17your
46:17hands you're welcome to sit and read that's a common feature of bookshops of the day if you want to
46:22try
46:22something out grab a stool get comfy grab a quill maybe uh sit and take some notes you're totally
46:28welcome to do that there's lots of accounts of people doing stuff like smoking chatting writing
46:33letters on the outside of them as well as that stall board they're going to be plastered with the
46:37latest title pages that advertise whatever the new books are that week some copies of books would be
46:42made up and bound in order for display so for customers to leaf through and decide whether or not they
46:46want to buy so you might browse your books choose a book at that point the bookseller is going to
46:50go
46:50back gather you your sheets and he'll ask you in what manner you want it bound how do you want
46:55it
46:55individuated and finished and personalized those sorts of things there are a few ways by which the
47:00folio would have been marketed so probably the first and in some ways most obvious way if i'm walking
47:05around early modern london in 1623 is going to be that uh title pages of new books are commonly pinned
47:11glued nailed posted up all over the city so when new books arrive in the city it is the job
47:18of the
47:18apprentice of the bookseller each week to go out and find spaces in the city onto which he can pin
47:25the title pages of new books this is one of the reasons why we think that the title page of
47:29the folio
47:30features such a striking visual image of shakespeare's face the idea there is that shakespeare was a well-known
47:36public presence in the city partly by virtue of his common appearance on the stage and the popularity
47:41of the stage and his theatre company so to put shakespeare's face up all over the city and to
47:46advertise the book if you think about the title as master william shakespeare's comedies histories and
47:51tragedies is also is to advertise both the book and to promote the theatrical world from which the book
47:56emerges booksellers are very commonly um enmeshed in networks of uh letter writing and they typically
48:05have a network of correspondents abroad on the continent to whom they write and part of their
48:10work there in that exchange of information and news is the explanation and um the conveying of
48:16what the exciting books are that are coming out so we think that i think it starts in the bookseller's
48:20shop and from there by social circuitry by epistolary networks and also by straightforward marketing of
48:28title pages the book radiates out through london and into the continent and beyond
48:33the first folio costs unbound about 15 shillings bound you're looking at anything up to about one
48:40pound we know this of course because of sir edward deering the earliest known buyer of the first folio
48:46who bought two of them for two pounds which is a huge sum of money one pound is is much
48:52more than a
48:53labourer's annual wage we actually have a coin here that would have been or could have been used to
49:01actually purchase the first folio at that time so this is the jacobean coin a unit coin and so this
49:10someone could have just given over to the print shop for a bound copy of the first folio the last
49:15complete copy that christie sold in 2020 sold for 10 million dollars the prices have gone up and down
49:22one of the peaks was the shakespeare mania so at the end of the 18th century into the beginning of
49:28the
49:2819th century and there's a wonderful quote by george stephens in 1793 that he's lamenting in fact that
49:35now the cost the value of the first folio is now going to make it the the most valuable single
49:41book
49:41in the english language and that is actually the case still today well turning now something a
49:48little different and a world record for any printed work of literature a book has been bought for just
49:54shy of 10 million dollars in the united states 10 million the dollars a pagadun comprador for
50:00un libro de 1623 que contiene one of the for the first time in presque 20 years the premier folio
50:06de shakespeare here at christie's eight million four hundred thousand dollars sold thank you fernando
50:13and that was just the hammer price the total coming in at 9.97 million dollars a new world auction
50:20record for any printed work of literature far exceeding the previous high of 6.16 million set in 2001
50:31235 of these books survive from the initial print run of around 750. over the last 400 years their value
50:41in financial terms has soared astronomically yet their true value of course is beyond the measurement
50:48of any currency when i first opened a folio i sort of wanted to commune with it and i was
50:54i was thinking
50:55what what do i do with this this book i should i go to all the best bits and put
51:00my hand on them
51:01or how do i how do i get get the book into me but then i realized i don't have
51:07to do dangerous things like
51:09finger all the pages because i just look at it and in it goes and i'm right there in 1623
51:17looking with
51:181623 eyes and i'm there in the moment and i'm simultaneously there in the moment of reading it
51:25but i'm also there a little bit in the print shop with those guys uh listening to them shout as
51:33they put
51:33together that fabulous oh i'm feeling moved now that incredible text there are truths in these books
51:41there are absolute fundamental truths in these books the idea of archive the idea of treasuring
51:50and passing on information particularly in the form of a book is hugely important
51:59it was a heroic endeavor and i think it was one that was inspired by love for shakespeare and and
52:06determination to preserve these these these great plays and aren't we glad they did this first page
52:16listen to that that's just a beautiful isn't that a beautiful sound beautiful the first folio
52:26is significant on so many levels for one thing it represents a massive achievement in the publishing
52:34world a massive collaboration between stationers between actors and between all the stakeholders
52:43to produce something that has preserved for posterity plays which would otherwise have been lost
52:51so what would we have lost without the folio
52:54we'd have lost a sense of shakespeare as the author of a significant body of work yes we'd have had
52:59the
52:59quartos but would we really have sort of gathered them together 18 of them and thought that shakespeare
53:05was the greatest writer of his age possibly not but we can say that with a folio and sentimentally
53:12i think it's prospero's book there's something of that in it in its very feeling it's very texture
53:18it turns shakespeare into a writer of many works that are gathered together for the first time in one
53:25place and that's why it feels like a book of spells this is strange your father's in some passion that
53:33works in strongly never till this day so i am touched with angus so distempered you do look my son
53:40in a
53:40move it sort as if you were dismayed be cheerful sir our rebels now are ended these our actors as
53:46i've
53:46told you were all spirits and are melted into air into thin air
53:56and like the baseless fabric of this vision the cloud-capped towers the gorgeous palaces the solemn
54:06temples the great globe itself yea all which it inherit shall dissolve
54:21and like this insubstantial pageant faded leave not a rack behind we are such stuff
54:36as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep sir i am vexed
54:51this is not a book you can lose and there is something about choosing this format for a book
54:59which i think has as one of its maybe unarticulated purposes uh the kind of holding together of
55:07memory the sense of an age passing the sense that the world of 1594 when hemmings and condall and
55:14shakespeare and burbage and william kemp are in this new world of the theater they get together they
55:22generate a theater and a theater energy which produces these plays among among others and i think
55:28in 1622 23 that must have felt as if it was an age that was passing in some way marked
55:36by individuals
55:37the death of william jaggard who is the printer who's you know starts this off the death of anne hathaway
55:43uh in in this same year burbage's death in 1619 and of course shakespeare's death back in 1616
55:54there is a sense that this is a kind of a a monument and i find that even when hemings
56:00and condall talk
56:01about the plays they talk about them as if um as if they're children sort of brought back you know
56:08there's
56:08some sense of gathering the clan somehow and i think that list of the actors some of whom are dead
56:15some of whom are still bearing the torch i find it incredibly moving that this um book uh gathers together
56:54these ghosts
56:55To be continued...
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