Nature endows no man with knowledge, and although a quick apprehension may
go far toward making the true lover of Nature a Botanist, Zoologist, or
Entomologist, and although the society of 'Men of Law', of Doctors, or of
Musicians may, with the help of a good memory, store a man's mind with
professional phraseology, yet the _opportunity_ of learning must be there;
and no argument can be required to prove that, however highly endowed with
genius or imagination, no one could evolve from his internal consciousness
the terms, the customs, or the working implements of a trade with which he
was unacquainted. If, then, we find Shakspere's mind familiar with the
technicalities of such an art as Printing--an art which, in his day, had
no such connecting links with the common needs and daily pleasures of the
people, as now--if we find him using its terms and referring frequently to
its customs, our claims to call him a Printer stand upon a firmer base
than those of the Lawyer, the Doctor, the Soldier, or the Divine; and we
have strong grounds for asking the reader's thoughtful attention to some
quotations and arguments, which, if not conclusive that Shakspere was a
Printer, afford indubitable evidence of his having become at some period
of his career practically acquainted with the details of a Printing
Office. We propose, then, to carefully examine the works of the Poet for
any internal evidence of Typographical knowledge which they may afford.
But here, at the outset, we are met by obvious difficulties. Would
Shakspere, or any poet have made use of trade terms and technical words,
or have referred to customs peculiar to and known by only a very small
class of the community in plays addressed to the general public? They
might have been familiar enough to the mind of the writer, but would
certainly have sounded very strange in the ears of the public. Shakspere
was too artistic and too wise to have committed so glaring a blunder. His
technical terms are used unintentionally, and with the most charming
unconsciousness. Therefore, when we meet with a word or phrase in common
use by Printers, it is so amalgamated with the context, that although
some other form of expression would have been chosen had not Shakspere
been a Printer, yet the general reader or hearer is not struck by any
incongruity of language.
What simile could be more natural for a Printer-poet to use or more
appropriate for the public to hear than this:
Your mother was most true to wedlock, prince;
For she did _print_ your royal father off,
Conceiving you.
_Winter's Tale_, v, 1.
Here, surely, the Printer's daily experience of the exact agreement
between the face of the type and the impression it yields must have
suggested the image.
Printers in Shakspere's time often had patents granted them by which the
monopoly of certain works was secured; and unscrupulous printers
frequently braved all the pains and penalties to which they were liable by
pirating such editions. It is this carelessness of consequences which is
glanced at by Mistress Ford when debating with Mistress Page concerning
the insult put upon them by the heavy old Knight, Sir John Falstaff:
He cares not what he puts into the Press when he
would put us two.
_Merry Wives_, ii, 1.
What printer is there who has put to press a second edition of a book
working page for page in a smaller type and shorter measure but will
recognise the Typographer's reminiscences in the following description of
Leontes' babe by Paulina:
Behold, my Lords,
Although the _print_ be little, the whole _matter_
And _copy_ of the father ...
The very _mould_ and _frame_ of hand, nail, finger.
_Winter's Tale_, ii, 3.
Is it conceivable that a sentence of four lines containing five distinct
typographical words, three of which are especially technical, could have
proceeded from the brain of one not intimately acquainted with Typography?
Again, would Costard have so gratuitously used a typographical idea, had
not the Poet's mind been teeming with them?
I will do it, sir, in print.
_Love's Labour Lost_, iii, 1.
The deep indentation made on the receiving paper when the strong arm of a
lusty pressman had pulled the bar with too great vigour is glanced at
here:
Think when we talk of horses that you see them
_Printing_ their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth.
_Henry V_, Chorus.
The frequency with which the words _print_ or _imprint_ are used is very
noticeable:
The story that is _printed_ in her blood.
_Much Ado about Nothing_, iv, 1.
I love a ballad in _print_.
_Winter's Tale_, iv, 4.
She did _print_ your royal father off conceiving you.
_Winter's Tale_, v, 1.
You are but as a _form_ in wax, by him _imprinted_.
_Midsummer-Night's Dream_, i, 1.
His heart ... with your _print impressed_.
_Love's Labour Lost_, ii, 1.
I will do it, sir, in _print_.
_Love's Labour Lost_, iii, 1.
This weak _impress_ of love.
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, iii, 2.
To _print_ thy sorrows plain.
_Titus Andronicus_, iv, 1.
Sink thy knee i' the earth;
Of thy deep duty, more _impression_ show.
_Coriolanus_, v, 3.
Some more time
Must wear the _print_ of his remembrance out.
_Cymbeline_, ii, 3.
The _impressure_.
_Twelfth Night_, ii, 5.
He will _print_ them, out of doubt.
_Merry Wives of Windsor_, ii, 1.
We quarrel in _print_, by the book.
_As You Like It_, v, 4.
Let it _stamp_ wrinkles in her brow.
_Lear_, i, 4.
His sword death's _stamp_.
_Coriolanus_, ii, 2.
Hear how deftly Title-pages are treated:
_Sim._ Knights,
To say you're welcome were superfluous.
To place upon the _volume_ of your deeds,
As in a _title-page_, your worth of arms,
Were more than you expect, or more than's fit.
_Pericles_, ii, 3.
Hear, too, Northumberland, who thus addresses the bearer of fearful news:
This man's brow, like to a _title-leaf_,
Foretells the nature of a tragic _volume_.
_2 Henry IV_, i, 1.
Evidently Shakspere had a good idea of what a Title-page should contain.
From Title to Preface is but a turn of the leaf, and its introductory
character is thus noticed:
Is but a _Preface_ of her worthy praise,
The chief perfections of that lovely dame.
_1 Henry VI_, v, 5.
We must not forget a well-known passage about the introduction of Printing
to England, which has caused much discussion. It is where Jack Cade
accuses Lord Saye:
Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in
erecting a grammar-school: and whereas, before, our forefathers had no
other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to
be used; and, contrary to the king, his crown, and dignity, thou hast
built a paper mill.
_2 Henry VI_, iv, 7.
The early-invented fable of Faustus, and the assistance given him by the
Devil in the multiplication of the first printed bibles (certainly a most
short-sighted step on the part of his Satanic Majesty) had got fixed in
the minds of the populace, and created among the ignorant a prejudice
against the Printing-press, and it was to this feeling Jack Cade appealed.
All our Chroniclers place the erection of a Printing-press in England some
years too early, but no one except Shakspere has put the date so far back
as 1450, the date of Jack Cade's insurrection: it is simply a blunder; but
it was the Printing-press and its introduction to this country that was in
the Author's brain, and the _exact_ date of that event was unknown, being
probably as difficult to arrive at then as it is now.[1]
We have already noticed in how simple a manner originated that grand
discovery which, instead of one perishable manuscript, produced numberless
printed books, and thus enabled mankind to perpetuate for ever the
knowledge they had gained. The real superiority of the Press over the pen
was the easy multiplication of copies, and this was the idea in the Poet's
brain when he wrote:
She carved thee for her seal and meant thereby
Thou shouldst _print more_ nor let that copy die.
_Sonnet_ xi.
Type-founding has in these days arrived at such perfection, that most of
the blemishes and faults common in Shakspere's time are now unknown. Under
the old system of hand moulds a type founder was sure when commencing work
to cast a certain number of imperfect letters, because until the mould by
use got warmed, the liquid metal solidified too soon, and the body or
shank of the type was shrunk, and became no inappropriate emblem of an old
man's limbs whose hose would be
A world too wide for his shrunk shank.
_As You Like It_, ii, 7.
The names of the various sizes of type in the sixteenth century were few
compared with our modern list; Canon, Great Primer, Pica, Long Primer, and
Brevier almost complete the catalogue; and however familiar Shakspere may
have been with their names, it is difficult to imagine any scene in which
these technical names could be introduced with propriety. Yet, of one,
Nonpareil, a new small type first introduced from Holland about 1650, and
which for its beauty and excellence was much admired, Shakspere seems to
have conceived a most favorable idea. Prospero, praising his daughter,
calls her 'a Nonpareil' (_Tempest_, Act iii, Sc. 2); Olivia is the
'Nonpareil of beauty' (_Twelfth Night_, Act i, Scene 5); and Posthumus
speaks of Imogen as the 'Nonpareil of her time' (_Cymbeline_, Act ii,
Scene 5).
The exactitude and precision of everything connected with the arrangement
of printing from types is curiously hinted at by Touchstone, when
describing the preciseness of the Courtiers' quarrels:
We quarrel _in print by the book_.
_As You Like It_, v, 4;
that is, no step was taken except according to acknowledged rules.
It often happens when a book comes to its last sheet that the text runs
short, and two or three blank or vacant pages remain at the end. In the
middle of one of these it is usual to place the typographer's imprint.
What compositor is there who has rejoiced in such _fat_ pages[2] but will
not at once recognise the following allusion:
The _vacant_ leaves thy mind's _imprint_ will bear,
And of this _book_ this learning mayst thou taste.
_Sonnet_ lxxvii.
People with a grievance write now-a-days to the Newspapers, in hope of
redress. In Shakspere's time the only method to make wrongs public and to
show up abuses was by the _Broadside_, in prose or rhyme, passing from
hand to hand. Many of these have survived to the present day, and are
treasured up as curious relics of a by-gone age. They were frequently
libellous and grievously personal, and hence the point of Pistol's remark:
Fear we broadsides?
_2 Henry IV_, ii, 4.
We must not think here that the naval 'broadside'--a volley of guns from
the broadside of a ship--is meant. Shakspere does not use the word once in
that sense, nor was it a conversational word in his time. That Pistol was
indeed thinking of a printed broad sheet is evident from the whole
sentence, which, although composed of disjointed exclamations continues
with the following expressions, both strongly suggestive of the Composing
room or Reader's closet:
Come we to full points here? and are etceteras
nothing?
_2 Henry IV_, ii, 4.
'Come we to full points here?' This question is often a puzzler for both
Compositor and Reader. Indeed, few things cause more disagreements between
Author and Printer than the very loose ideas held by the former concerning
punctuation. Some writers, like Dickens in his early days, insist upon
ornamenting their sentences with little dashes and big dashes, with colons
where commas should be, and with
_Points_ that seem impossible.
_Pericles_, v, 1.
In vain does the Printer declare that in altering the Author's unregulated
punctuation,
No levelled malice infests one _comma_,
_Timon_, i, 1,
the irate Author exclaims, that he
Puts the _period_ often from his place,
_Lucrece_, l. 565,
and adds, 'Follow
My _point_ and period ... ill or well.
_Lear_, iv, 7.
You find not the apostrophes, and so miss the accent.
_Love's Labour Lost_, iv, 2.
Wherefore stand you on nice points?
_3 Henry VI_, iv, 7.
The Printer has no resource but compliance, which, however, unless the
affront be very severe, will soon
Stand a comma 'tween their amities,
_Hamlet_, v, 2,
and thus heal the breach, and end all happily with mutual
Notes of Admiration.
_Winter's Tale_, v, 2.
'And are etceteras nothing?' What a typographical question! and probably
the only occasion on which so unpoetical a figure has done duty in any
drama. The &c. makes an insignificant appearance in either MS. or type,
and yet how often it stands for whole pages of matter. Hence the point of
the question.
If a book is folio, and two pages of type have been composed, they are
placed in proper position upon the imposing stone, and enclosed within an
iron or steel frame called a 'chase', small wedges of hard wood termed
'coigns' or 'quoins' being driven in at opposite sides to make all tight.
By the four opposing coigns,
Which the world together joins.
_Pericles_, iii, 1.
This is just the description of a forme in folio where two quoins on one
side are always opposite to two quoins on the other, thus together
joining and tightening all the separate stamps. In a quaint allegorical
poem, published anonymously about the year 1700, in which the mystery of
man's redemption is symbolised by the mystery of Printing, the author
commences thus:
Great blest Master Printer, come
Into thy Composing-room;
and after 'spiritualising' the successive operations of the workman thus
touches upon the quoins:
Let the Quoins be thy sure Election,
Which admits of no Rejection;
With which our Souls being joined about,
Not the least Grace can then fall out.
Here, the idea of joining together by quoins so that nothing shall fall
out, is just the same as in the couplet quoted from Shakspere.
The tightening of these quoins by means of a wooden-headed mallet,
(There is no more conceit in him than is in a mallet,
_2 Henry IV_, ii, 4),
is called 'locking up', an exclusively technical term. The expression,
however, occurs in 'Measure for Measure', IV, 2,
Fast locked up in sleep,
where the idea conveyed is the same.
The 'Forme' worked off and the metal chase removed, leaving the pages
'naked', affords the Poet the following simile, which although not
carrying to the popular ear any typographical meaning, was doubtless
suggested by Shakspere's former experience of the workshop:
And he but _naked_ though _locked up_ in steel.
_2 Henry VI_, iii, 2.
The primary idea of 'locking up' had, doubtless, reference to 'armour';
the secondary to printing, as shown by the use of the word 'naked'.
The forme then went to the Press-room, where considerable ingenuity was
required to make 'register'; that is, to print one side so exactly upon
the other, that when the sheet was held up to the light the lines on each
side would exactly back one another. The accuracy of judgment required for
this is thus glanced at:
_Eno._ But let the world rank me in _register_
A master-leaver and a fugitive.
_Antony and Cleopatra_, iv, 9.
When the green-eyed Othello takes his wife's hand and exclaims:
Here's a young and sweating devil,
_Othello_, iii, 4,
we fail at first to catch the idea of the Poet in calling a hand a
'devil'; but take the word as synonymous with 'messenger', and we see at
once how the moist plump palm of Desdemona suggested to the intensely
jealous husband the idea of its having been the lascivious messenger of
her impure desires. In this sense of 'messenger', the word 'devil' has a
special fitness; for it is, and always has been among Printers, _and
Printers only_, another word for 'errand-boy'. In olden times, when speed
was required, a boy stood at the off-side of the press, and as soon as the
frisket was raised, whipped the printed sheet off the tympan. When not at
work, he ran on messages between printer and author, who, on account of
his inky defilement, dubbed him 'devil'. All Printers' boys go now by the
same name:
Old Lucifer, both kind and civil,
To ev'ry Printer lends a Devil;
But balancing accounts each winter,
For ev'ry Devil takes a Printer.
Moxon, in 1683, quotes it as an old trade word, and it was doubtless the
same in Shakspere's time, a century earlier, as it is now two centuries
later. But where could Shakspere have picked up the word if not in the
Printing-office?
Any one accustomed to collate old MSS. must have noticed how very seldom
the copyist would, in transcribing, add nothing and omit nothing. If what
the scribe considered a good idea entered his mind while his pen was
travelling over the page, he was a very modest penman indeed, if he did
not incorporate it in the text. From this cause, and from genuine
unintentional blunders, the texts of all the old authors had become
gradually very corrupt--a source of great trouble to the early Printers.
With this in his mind Shakspere defines it as one of the qualities of Time
To blot old books and alter their contents.
_Lucrece_, l. 948.
Many of Vautrollier's publications must have been printed from discolored
old manuscripts; and these papers Shakspere, if he read 'proof' for his
employer, would have to study carefully. Does he call this to mind in
Sonnet XVII?
My papers yellowed with their age.
Was it, after admiring some beautifully illuminated Horæ, that he wrote:
O that record could with a backward look,
E'en of five hundred courses of the sun;
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done.
_Sonnet_ lix.
Does the Poet refer to its wonderfully burnished gold initials, and the
red dominical letters which he must often have seen in the printed
calendars, when he exclaims in tones of admiration:
My red dominical--my golden letter!
_Love's Labour Lost_, v, 2.
The old calendar had a _golden number_ and a _dominical letter_, but not a
_golden letter_, which last must refer specifically to the practice of
gilding important initials. 'Golden Letters' are mentioned in 'King John',
III, 1, and in 'Pericles', IV, 4, while the red initials, which were
common to both manuscripts and printed books of the fifteenth century, are
made by Shakspere the death warrant of the unfortunate Clerk of Chatham,
against whom is brought the fatal accusation that he
Has a book in his pocket with red letters in 't.
_2 Henry VI_, iv, 2.
In Shakspere's time, as we have already noticed (p. 41, ante), the press
laboured under great restrictions. All books with a profitable
circulation were monopolised by favored stationers or printers who held
special patents or licenses from the Crown. Thus Reynold Wolfe, in 1543,
held a monopoly of all books printed in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. Seres was
privileged to print all psalters, primers, and prayer books; Denham might
print the New Testament in Welch; others held grants for scholastic or
legal books, for almanacs, and even for broadsides, or as the grant says
'for any piece of paper printed on one side of the sheet only'. In these
favored books it was customary to place the patent granting the monopoly
at the end, as a 'caveat' for other printers, and occasionally the phrase
'Cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum' would appear in a conspicuous part
of the title. Among the printers in London, who secured such special
privileges, was Vautrollier, Shakspere's presumed employer. 'In the
sixteenth year of Elizabeth, 19th June, 1574', says Ames, 'a patent or
license was granted him which he often printed at the end of the New
Testament'; this was a monopoly of Beza's New Testament which Vautrollier
had the privilege 'ad imprimendum solum', for the term of ten years. We
have already seen the curious connection between the products of
Vautrollier's press and the writings of Shakspere, and we now plainly
perceive what was floating in the Poet's brain when he placed the
following speech in Biondello's mouth, who urges Lucentio to marry Bianca,
while her father and the pedant are discussing the marriage treaty:
_Luc._ And what of all this?
_Bion._ I cannot tell; expect they are busied about a counterfeit[3]
assurance: Take your assurance of her _cum privilegio ad imprimendum
solum_: to the church;--take the priest, clerk, and some sufficient
honest witnesses.
_Taming of the Shrew_, iv, 4.
These protective privileges, 'ad imprimendum solum', instead of a benefit
were a great hindrance to the growth of Printing. Many master-printers
even then felt them to be so, and by all legal and sometimes illegal
means, tried to procure the abolition of laws which were oppressive and
restrictive. They saw works of merit die out of memory for want of
enterprise in the patentee--they saw folly, in the shape of a
Star-chamber, controlling skill; or as Shakspere himself expresses it,
Art made tongue-tied by authority,
And Folly (doctor-like),[4] controlling skill.
_Sonnet_ lxvi.
Shakspere abounds in kisses of every hue, from shadowy, frozen, and Judas
kisses, to holy, true, gentle, tender, warm, sweet, loving, dainty, kind,
soft, long, hard, zealous, burning, and even the unrequited kiss:
But my kisses bring again
Seals of love, but seal'd in vain.
_Measure for Measure_, iii, 1.
The 'burning' kiss might be thought passionate and even durable enough for
any extremity--yet Shakspere prefers, perhaps from an unconscious
association of ideas, the durability of which _Printing_ is the emblem
when he makes the Goddess of Love exclaim:
Pure lips, sweet seals on my soft lips _imprinted_.
_Venus and Adonis_, l. 511.
The same idea of durability is expressed in the cry of Henry's guilty
Queen, when parting with Suffolk:
Oh, could this kiss be _printed_ on thy hand!
_2 Henry VI_, iii, 2.
The idea has been still further developed in the following anonymous
quatrain: