The Millionaire and the Bard
Page 37
2For more detailed price information on Henry Folger’s purchases, see West, The Shakespeare First Folio: The History of the Book, Volume I, 101–104.
3West believes that any edition of this Shakespeare work that is more than fifty percent intact should be deemed a First Folio. Accordingly, Folger First Folios numbered 80, 81, and 82 fit into this category with some plays and fragments bound in leather. For a complete discussion of this topic, see West, The Shakespeare First Folio: The History of the Book, Volume I, 53–63 (“What to Count as a Copy and Copies 80 to 82 at the Folger’s Library”). Folger 80 was purchased in December 1926 and Folger 82 in 1920. The price paid for the “fragment” 82 plus additional plays and leaves was £1,250.
Notes
Prologue: “He Was Not of an Age, but for All Time!”
1. A. S. W. Rosenbach, Henry Folger as a Collector, privately printed, 1931, 76.
2. Ibid., 75.
3. The First Folio contains thirty-six plays and excludes Pericles. To bring the count to thirty-nine, two other plays that were published after 1623, Two Noble Kinsmen and Cardenio, collaborations with John Fletcher, with no copy of the latter-surviving.
Chapter 1: “The Good [That Men Do] Is Oft Interred with Their Bones”
1. David Bevington, ed., The Complete Works of Shakespeare, seventh edition (New York: Longman, 2012), Act IV, Scene 5, lines 179–180.
2. James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, The Last Days of Shakespeare (London: Chiswick Press, 1863); David Cressy, Birth, Marriage & Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 428–431.
3. Halliwell-Phillipps, The Last Days of Shakespeare, 11.
4. A famous example of iambic pentameter is: “Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, / And burnt the topless towers of Illium?” (Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus, Scene 13). Shakespeare employed groups of five iambs or “feet,” called iambic pentameter, which comes close to the sound of a natural speaking voice, to great effect: “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?” Romeo and Juliet (Act II, Scene 2, line 2).
5. Charles Connell, They Gave Us Shakespeare (London: Oriel Press, 1982), 26.
6. Ibid., 25.
7. Marchette Chute, Stories from Shakespeare (New York: Meridian, 1987), 92.
8. S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare: The Globe and the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 95.
9. James Shapiro, A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 (New York: Harper-Collins, 2005), 190–193. Also see the preface to Folger reprint of The Passionate Pilgrim (New York: Scribner, 1940), ix. Also see Bevington, The Complete Works, lxix.
10. Chute, Stories from Shakespeare, 92.
11. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare: The Globe and the World, 87, quoting Francis Meres’s 1598 Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury. Meres cites Love’s Labor’s Won. Meres’s writings helped greatly with the establishment of the chronology of the writing of the plays.
12. The tally is thirty-nine by 1616 if you count The Two Noble Kinsmen and Cardenio, plays Shakespeare wrote in collaboration with Fletcher. And the count is zero if you don’t believe he wrote any plays.
13. Jonathan Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
14. Gary Taylor, Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present (New York: Vintage, 1991), 96.
15. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in Bevington, Act V, Scene 1, lines 15–18.
Chapter 2: “Adieu . . . Remember Me”
1. Connell, They Gave Us Shakespeare, 3. Contemporary records spell their names, as well as Shakespeare’s, in a multitude of ways—Hemings, Heminges, Hemmings, Hemminge, Heming, Condell, Condall, Cundell, Condy. Shakespeare himself refers to “my fellows John Hemynges and Henry Cundell.” In a time where few people could write, orthography was not uniform. Even the spelling of Shakespeare’s own name was not universally agreed upon. With the exception of the signature on his will, Shakespeare signed his name “Shakspere.” On his will he spelled it “Shakspeare.”
2. Ibid., 10.
3. Stanley Wells, Shakespeare & Co.: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and the Other Players in His Story (New York: Vintage, 2008), 242–243. Footnote to A Supplement to Dodsley’s Old Plays. http://www.archive.org/stream/asupplementtodo01hallgoog/asupplementtodo01hallgoog_djvu.txt.
4. This is part of the text of A Sonnet upon the Pitiful Burning of the Globe Playhouse in London, which, though listed in the Stationers’ Register at the time, survives only in manuscript. See Peter Beal, “The Burning of the Globe,” Times Literary Supplement, June 20, 1986, 689–90.
5. Excerpt from Anonymous, A Funerall Elegye on the Death of the famous Actor Richard Burbage who died on Saturday in Lent the 13 of March 1619.
6. Stationers’ Company Court Book C, 110. Also in Charlton Hinman, The Printing and Proof-reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare, Volume 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 27.
7. Butter Quarto 1608 and falsely dated Pavier Quarto 1608 (1610).
8. The manuscript, written by Eusebius Pamphilius, 260–340, Bishop of Caesarea, is Historia Ecclesiastica, translated by Tyrranius Rufinus, 640–650. The fragment was sold at auction to Sir Paul Getty.
9. Franklin Mowery, chief conservator at the Folger, uncovered the earliest manuscript written in England, bound as scrap paper inside the spine of a book that had been bound with printers’ waste in 1578.
10. William Shakespeare, Hamlet, First Quarto, 1603 (Menston, UK: Scolar Press, 1972).
11. Bevington, The Complete Works, 90–92, 1108.
Chapter 3: “Whatever You Do, Buy”
1. Charlton Hinman, The Printing and Proof-reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare, Volume 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 17.
2. William Prynne, “To the Christian Reader,” address in Histrio-Mastix: The Players Scourge, or, Actors Tragedie (London: Michael Sparke, 1632).
3. Epigrams 269 and 270, Wits Recreations, 1640. Also quoted in Herford and Simpson, Ben Jonson, 11 vols. (London: Clarendon Press, 1925), 13.
4. Ben Jonson, “To the Great Variety of Readers,” dedicatory verse to Shakespeare’s First Folio.
5. Peter W. M. Blayney, introduction to the second edition of The First Folio of Shakespeare: The Norton Facsimile (New York: Norton, 1996), xxxiii.
6. Prynne, “To the Christian Reader.” This was the third dedication in the Histrio-Mastix, which was published at the time of the Second Folio in 1632. Prynne, a lawyer, author, and politician, expressed his opinion on all manner of subjects, from the ideal length of hair for men, to the desirability of state control over all matters religious.
7. Peter Blayney, The First Folio of Shakespeare (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library), 16–17, illustrates the corrected proof and corrected pages from Othello; W 105, F 47, contains the proof sheet of page 333 of the Tragedies, with the corrected state on the page opposite.
8. William Blades, The Pentateuch of Printing with a Chapter on Judges (Chicago: A. C. McClure, 1891).
9. Anthony James West, “The First Shakespeare Folio to Travel Abroad: Constantine Hugyens’s Copy,” in Foliomania! Stories Behind Shakespeare’s Most Important Book, ed. Owen Williams (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2010). This volume was published to accompany the Folger Shakespeare Library’s 2010 First Folio Exhibition: Fame, Fortune, and Theft: Shakespeare’s First Folio. To our knowledge, Shakespeare’s image had not been preserved during his lifetime. No painting, no engraving, no likeness of him, has ever been found. Sometime between 1616 and 1623, a small bust of Shakespeare was placed along the north wall of the chancel in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. The sculpture is mentioned by the poet Leonard Digges in one of the prefatory poems to the First Folio. It is possible but not known that the sculptor, Gerard Johnson, knew William Shakespeare, at least by sight. The bust depicts Shakespeare in a red jacket, blue vest, and white collar and sleeves.
The playwright holds a piece of paper in his left hand, a quill in his right. Above him is the Shakespeare coat of arms, hard won through the efforts of first John, then William Shakespeare. He is flanked by the figures of “Labor,” holding a a shovel, and “Rest,” holding a skull and torch. Inscribed under the figure of Shakespeare is:
“IVDICIO PYLIUM, GENIO SOCRATEM, ARTE MARONEM,
TERRA TEGIT, POPULUS MAERET, OLYMPUS HABET”
The first line translates as “A Pylian in judgment, a Socrates in genius, a Maro in art.” The verse compares Shakespeare with Nestor, the wise king of Pylus, the Greek philosopher Socrates, and the Roman poet Virgil, whose last name was Maro. The second line translates as “The earth buries him, the people mourn him, Olympus possesses him.”
Below the Latin inscription is a poem in English:
STAY PASSENGER, WHY GOEST THOV BY SO FAST?
READ IF THOV CANST, WHOM ENVIOVS DEATH HATH PLAST
WITH IN THIS MONVMENT SHAKSPEARE: WITH WHOME,
QVICK NATVRE DIDE: WHOSE NAME, DOTH DECK YS TOMBE,
FAR MORE, THEN COST: SIEH ALL, YT HE HATH WRITT,
LEAVES LIVING ART, BVT PAGE, TO SERVE HIS WIT
10. An image of the frontispiece of Favyn’s book has been transferred by contact with the tympan and is visible on one of the pages of W 123, F 65. This is illustrated in Blayney, The First Folio, 7.
11. Peter Blayney and F. P. Wilson, “The Jaggards and the First Folio of Shakespeare,” Times Literary Supplement 5 (November 1927): 737. Also Anthony J. West, The Shakespeare First Folio: The History of the Book (London: Oxford University Press, 2001), Volume 1, 5, quoting Wilson.
12. By 1728, the last known manuscript, Cardenio, also known as Double Falsehood, a joint effort by Shakespeare and his junior, John Fletcher, survived only in an adaptation.
13. The full title is Windsor Herald of Arms in Ordinary. Ordinary in his title signifies a lifetime appointment. His duties included control over issuance of arms, participation in state parades and ceremonies, and preservation of heraldic records.
14. Thomas Moule, Bibliotheca heraldica Magnæ Britanniæ. An analytical catalogue of books on genealogy, heraldry, nobility, knighthood & ceremonies (London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mayor and Lepard, 1822).
Chapter 4: “My Shakespeare, Rise”
1. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare: The Globe and the World, 191.
2. Justin Cartwright, Oxford Revisited (New York: Bloomsbury, 2008), 121.
3. James Leasor, The Plague and the Fire (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1962), 15.
4. Diary of John Evelyn, September 4, 1666.
5. Diary of Samuel Pepys, September 26, 1666. There were two main diarists of the era, John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys. Both of their diaries, in searchable form, are online.
6. Catalogues in the late seventeenth century listed the First Folio “under ‘Miscellanies, viz. History, Philology, etc. in Folio,’ on another it can only be under the ‘Etc.’ ” West, The Shakespeare First Folio, 1:15.
7. Gerald Eades Bentley, “Shakespeare’s Reputation—Then Till Now,” in William Shakespeare: His World, His Work, His Influence, 3 vols., ed. John F. Andrews (New York: Scribner, 1985), III: His Influence, 705–716.
8. F. E. Halliday, A Shakespeare Companion,1564–1964 (Baltimore: Penguin, 1964), 148.
9. Gary Taylor, Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), 114.
10. Brian Vickers, ed., Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage, 6 vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), 10.
11. Christian Deelman, The Great Shakespeare Jubilee (London: Joseph, 1964), 138–143, 214–215. The text of the ode can be found in Brian Vickers, William Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge), 4:349.
12. Goethe’s speech, “Shakespeare’s Day,” given at University of Duisburg, October 14, 1771.
13. Winifred H. Friedman, Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery (New York: Garland Publishing, 1976). Ann R. Hawkins and Georgianna Ziegler, curators, Marketing Shakespeare: The Boydell Gallery (1789–1805) and Beyond, at the Folger Shakespeare Library, September 20, 2007, through Janury 5, 2008.
14. West, The Shakespeare First Folio, 1:27.
15. Seymour de Ricci, English Collectors of Books and Manuscripts (1530–1930) and Their Marks of Ownership (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960), 145.
16. The full title is Catalogue of Shakespeare Reliques: Some Account of the Antiquities, Coins, Manuscripts, Rare Books, Ancient Documents and Other Reliques Illustrative of the Life and Works of Shakespeare (Brixton Hill, 1852). Four to eighty copies were published. Also cited in de Ricci, English Collectors of Books and Manuscripts, 145. Phillips frequently sold his collections, and then started building fresh ones on new subjects. Sotheby’s conducted an auction of his materials every year from 1856 through 1859. The 1857 auction lasted three days and “very high prices were realized.” He sold quartos and other items that he used in editing his edition of the First Folio. See the entry for James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps in the Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 118.
17. Thomas Carlyle, “The Hero as Poet,” in On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (London: Fraser, 1841). Also cited in West, The Shakespeare First Folio, 1:31.
18. Performances of plays were banned in some of the colonies beginning in 1700, and, with some reprieves, periodically thereafter through 1776.
19. Neil Harris, Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
20. Nigel Cliff, The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Random House, 2007).
Chapter 5: “Had I the Money, You Would Come . . .”
1. www.nha.org/history/hn/HNMooney-coffee.htm, accessed 1/3/2011. See also Summer 1997 issue of Nantucket Magazine.
2. Folger Shakespeare Library, Folger Collection, box 28.
3. Folger Collection, box 21, correspondence.
4. September 8, 1875, autograph letter signed, Folger archive, box 21.
5. October 24, 1875, autograph letter signed, Folger archive, box 21.
6. January 9, 1876, autograph letter signed, Folger archive, box 21.
7. January 12, 1876, autograph letter signed, Folger archive, box 21.
8. January 2, 1875, autograph letter signed, Folger archive, box 21.
9. January16, 1876, autograph letter signed, Folger archive, box 21.
10. January 22, 1876, autograph letter signed, Folger archive, box 21.
11. January 22, 1876, autograph letter signed, Folger archive, box 21.
12. November 7, 1875, autograph letter signed, Folger archive, box 21.
13. Letter to Henry C. Folger Sr., April 5, 1876. Folger archive, box 21.
14. Betty Ann Kane, The Widening Circle: The Story of the Folger Shakespeare Library and Its Collections (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1976), 5.
15. Letter to Eliza Jane Folger, March 23, 1879, Folger archive, box 23.
16. The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1904), XI, Miscellanies XXIII.
17. That ticket is on permanent display in the Founders’ Room at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
18. The Complete Works of Ralph Walso Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1904), XI, Miscellanies, XXIII.
19. June 1879, Folger archives, box 21.
20. Autograph letter signed, to Eliza Jane Folger, Folger archive, box 21.
21. George F. Whicher, “Henry Clay Folger and the Shakespeare Library,” reprinted from the Amherst Graduates’ Quarterly (November, 1930), 2–16.
22. Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (New York: Vintage Books, 1998).
23. Allan Nevins, Study in Power: John D. Rockefeller, Industrialist and Philanthropist, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953), 477, 652.
24. Although the cost savings enjoyed by Standard allowed it to expand its market, such savings did n
ot enable it to control the retail market in the sense of being able to raise prices. Far from being an example of why antitrust law is necessary, the early Standard Oil history is a cautionary tale of how manipulation of the press, the legal system, and political influence can benefit small inefficient competitors at the expense of competition and consumer well-being.
25. Standard continually improved methods of production; in previous decades, by-products and residues of the refining process—including gasoline—were dumped, sometimes right into rivers and lakes. Kerosene lamps were smoky and prone to explosion, resulting in house fires and many deaths. Rockefeller invested in research and development that resulted in improvements in yields of refining lubricants, waxes, and eventually gasoline. The company found ways to make the product safer and less volatile. “And when customers found,” Rockefeller boasted, “that they could buy for twenty or thirty or thirty-five-cents-a-gallon products that they had been made to believe were difficult to produce at seventy or eighty, they were not slow to avail themselves of the advantages offered by the Standard Oil Company.” Rockefeller archive records to Henry C. Folger.
26. Rockefeller archive records, to W. P. Thompson, March 2, 1885. Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York.
27. In 1870, a mere five years after entering the refining business, Rockefeller incorporated the Standard Oil Company with $1 million in capital. Though it was the largest refinery in Cleveland, it had just a four percent market share.