Kastan 2001

Kastan, David Scott. Shakespeare and the Book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

"Focus on the documentary particularities of a text frees our reading from the fantasy of literary autonomy. It demystifies the act of writing, clarifying the actual conditions of creativity, locating the text within a network of inentions, within which the author's, however dominant, are still only some among many -- and intentions, it should be noted, that are incapable of producing the book itself." (5)

"The printed play is neither a pre-theatrical text nor a post-theatrical one; it is a non-theatrical text, even when it claims to offer a version of the play 'as it was played'." (8)

"Text and performance are, then, not partial and congruent aspects of some unity that we think of as the play, but are two discrete modes of production. Performance operates according to a theatrical logic of its own rather than one derived from the text; the pritned play operates according to a textual logic that is not derived from performance." (9)

From playhouse to printing house; or, making a good impression

"We, of course, engage Shakespeare only in mediated form. One could say that this means that we never actually engage Shakespeare, but to the degree that this is true it is merely an uninteresting literalism. Shakespeare is available precisely because 'Shakespeare,' in any meaningful sense other than the biographical, is -- and has always been -- a synecdoche for the involved mediations of the playhouse and printing house through which he is produced." (16)

18/37 plays published in his lifetime; "none in an edition that Shakespeare avowed as his own"; 10 reprinted, so 42 separate editions reached print before his death -- 45 surviving editions of 19 plays if you count The Taming of A Shrew (20)

At his death, # of editions of Shakespeare's plays far exceeded that of any contemporary playwrights; "no single play to that time had sold as well as 1 Henry IV" (21)

some competitors for theatrical preeminence during his lifetime, "but what has often been overlooked is that as a publisehd dramatist he had none. ... Ironically, although he never sought his success as in print, he is the period's leading published playwright." (21)

in 1630s, booksellers sold ~20x as many religious books as plays -- which were considered ephemera. "Publishers did regularly assume the risk of printing plays (though, between 1590 and 1615, on average only about ten were published a year), but they could not have done so imagining either that they were preserving the nation's cultural heritage or about to make their own fortune." (22)

pirates were not those who stole a playwright's work and published w/o permission but "those publishers who undertook to print a book that properly belong to another stationer.' (25)

8 of Sh's plays published over 4 years before one appeared in print with his name on it; plays often advertised as played in a particular place; "all advertise the authority of the text as theatrical rather than authorial" -- printed plays tied to theatrical success (31)

"title pages usually advertised their plays as the records of performance rather than as the registers of a literary intention"; display of author's name "offered no particular commercial advantage", although 'at least in Shakespeare's case, this was int he process of changing"; Richard II and Richard III published with his name in reprints of 1598 (33) -- Kastan traces the development of including Sh's name on title pages

but "Shakespeare is here always the publishers Shakespeare, not the author himself, a simulacrum invented to protect and promote the publisher's property" (35)

"year by year on the bookstalls the commercial cachet of an old acting company weakend, whilt he commercial cachet of an old playwright grew" (40)

discussion of Danter; not the villain publisher supposed by new bibliographers (46)

example of Romeo and Juliet

• "Since its first appearance in 1597, then, the play had belonged to four men, none of whom had felt obligated by either bibliographic scruple or commercial consideration to acknowledge Shakespeare's authorship. As the play became a less familiar element in the repertory of the King's men (and indeed no record survives of any production after 1598) the recurring title place claim that the play was printed 'as it hath beene sundrie times publiquely acted' inevitably became more gestural than descriptive, and as Shakespeare's name had become increasingly 'vendible' in the marketplace of print, it is hard to imagine that if he were recognized as the play's author his name would not have been used to help sell the editions (as indeed it is on the variant 1622 title page)." (48)

From quarto to folio; or, size matters

18c; Capell, Malone

"The theatrical authorizations that mark the quartos are gone; there is no mention that any text is here 'as it was played'; indeed the acting companies are never mentioned by name. The names of the principal players are printed, though interestingly enough on a page that is part of an afterthought to the preliminaries and indeed one which is headed 'the Workes of William Shakespeare.' The texts themselves are offered as new and improved, or, more precisely, as original and still uncontaminated, the title page promising that the plays are 'Truly set forth according to their first ORIGINALL.'" (71)

"But that Heminge and Condell, both of whom had spent their lives happily working in the theater and who knew Shakespeare primarily from the theater, would so readily disregard the theater in the commemorative volume is much more surprising." (71)

playbooks famously not entered in Bodleian collection; but in early 1624 had a copy of the Shakespeare folio, had it expensively bound (72)

"At a pound, the book was expensive and its market obviously more limited than that for the six-penny play quartos. Though there are some examples of collectors of playbooks in all formats, the buys of the folio were probably on balance different from those that bought quartos, both wealthier and more desirous of having their literary tastes flattered by the book they would buy. Thus the book presents itself as literary. the texts that ahve been 'collected & publish'd' are said to be set forth exactly as they flowed from their author's imaginings, uncontaminated by the contingencies of the printing shop or of the playhouse. it is the ideal text of editorial desire, or so it claims: a collection of plays 'Published acording to the True Originall Copies.' It cannot, of course, be so." (72)

"In Heminge and Condell's account, Shakespeare's absolute authority is left uncontested and intact -- or, more exactly, their account does not leave Shakespeare's authority unchallenged, it is the very means by which that authority is invented. Shakespeare never had it, and, unlike Jonson, he had never tried to claim it." (77)

"The commercial context of the folio must not be forgotten. Today it seems obvious to us that the volume was the necessary and appropriate memorial to England's greatest playwright, but at the time all that was clear to Blound and his partners was that they had undertaken an expensive publishing project with no certainty of recovering their considerable investment. If Shakespeare the writing must inevitably be found decentered and dispersed in the communities and collaborations of early modern play and book production, he has been purposefully and powerfully reconstituted as an 'AVTHOR' in the commercial desires of the early modern book trade." (78)