8-4WorksPublished

How were Shakespeare's works- plays and poems- published during his life time? What are "Folios" and "Quartos," and how do these two terms relate to Shakespeare's plays?

//Answer prepared by Sophie Vick.//

One of the greatest inventions of the Elizabethan Period was the printing press. With this new tool available during Shakespeare’s lifetime, his ideas and literature could be distributed to the masses. Ironically, neither William Shakespeare’s poems nor his plays were published while he was alive. Like other Renaissance playwrights, Shakespeare would have written rough manuscripts specifically for the actors. These drafts are called “foul papers”. As soon as these actors’ manuscripts were written, the play was sold to Shakespeare’s own theatre company and then immediately produced into plays. There was money to be made in original productions so theatre companies had to hurry before rival companies plagiarized or stole and reproduced the play. The unauthorized and plagiarized drafts of William Shakespeare’s plays were often inferior to the original script. Competitors would attend Shakespearean plays and quickly scrawl notes during the production. These texts were written down on a quarto which is a piece of paper folded in half and then in half again to create four sections. They would then be copied and produced into plays. The copies of these Shakespearean scripts are known as “Quarto Texts”. Without copyright laws to protect manuscripts, William Shakespeare and other sixteenth century playwrights attempted to keep their plays out of print. However, John Hemminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors from his theatrical company obtained copies of the “Quarto Texts” following Shakespeare’s death. According to the website www.william-shakespeare.info and the article William Shakespeare – The First Folio, these colleagues turned Shakespeare’s plays over to Ralph Crane, a scribe. The job of a scribe was to clearly handwrite a manuscript. This copy was called a folio. A folio could then be turned over to a printer and publisher. The collection of Shakespeare’s thirty six plays of over 900 pages was called the First Folio. The same website article states that “500 copies of the ‘First Folio’ were printed at a price of one pound each.” In fact, one third of the original copies are still in existence at the Shakespeare Folger Library in Washington, D.C.!



Works Cited “The Basics” 7 April 2009.  “The Elizabethan Period” 6 April 2009.  Fallon, Robert Thomas. //How to Enjoy Shakespeare//. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005. “The First Folio” 9 April 2009.  “The First Folio” 9 April 2009.  McEvoy, Sean. //Shakespeare: The Basics//. New York: Rout Ledge, 2000.  “Shakespeare’s Quartos” 9 April 2009.  Stirling, Nora. //Who Wrote the Classics?// New York: The John Day Company, Inc., 1965.