September 10, 2004

Shakespeare In Quarto On this site you will find the British Library’s 93 copies of the 21 plays by Shakespeare printed in quarto before the theatres were closed in 1642.
posted by dt118 20 years ago
  • great find, dt, thanks! wonderful reference. my pal and i have season tix to the Shakespeare Theatre in d.c., just saw "macbeth" last night. oh, pardon me, i mean, "the scottish play." (knock wood, spit three times.)
  • *wipes off spittle, glowers*
  • Fantastic. Thank you.
  • Wow, there's some proof that everybody needs rewrites. Check out the oldest Hamlet quarto, read the soliloquy (starts bottom of p. 24). Not nearly as good as the finished product.
  • I think some of the early printed versions of the plays are actually bootlegs -- taken from actors who had been in previous productions, or audience members, etc. Copyright violations from an age before copyright. So, they can be quite inaccurate.
  • How odd that Titus Andronicus should have been popular enough already in 1594 that it needed to be published. They were just waiting for John Webster, apparently.