PRODUCTION – PRINTING AS A LITERARY MODE OF PRODUCTION

• The international influence of printing houses upon Shakespeare’s printing process( Korea, Belgium, London) and the level of artisan skill which was involved. This influenced how we perceive books and early modern printing as scholars today.
• The process itself of printing, the evolution of such process during the 16th century, and how this influences the texts within them. For example, the order pages were printed on was not chronological (as I had originally presumed) and therefore explains some of the gaps in Early Modern texts, adding an interesting mode of production element to the study of Shakespeare’s plays. We also learnt that the “folio is the most expensive type of book because materials were more expensive than human production of printing”. 
• We learnt about the commercial capital attached to print culture and printing shops for example, in St. Pauls, which allowed us to contextualise the First Folio and Shakespeare’s play scripts as products/artefacts as well as literary items.

Paratext

• How to use online archive websites such as the ESTC, ODNB and the EEBO to search for information regarding the various editions of books. The ODNB was useful for finding out further biographical details of the author. The information that I received from the ESTC informed my interpretation of the works contributors and contemporaries. For example, The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginal Scot provided scarce detail on those who contributed to publishing the work. Using the various websites it allowed me to find out more about the history behind the printing of The Discoverie of Witchcraft which was left out of the title page. Thus, I was able to find out other information surrounding the publisher Henry Denham and his contribution to other types of similar work.
• As well as this, looking at a physical copy of the text which has been passed through various owners we applied our study of annotations as paratexts. We scrutinised the annotations and noticed patterns in locations of notes that were placed in margins next to Bible references, suggesting a previous owner with Christian interests.

Authorship

The concept of authorship was radically different in the early modern period to our idea of it now. We learnt in week 4 that play scripts, let alone their authors, were not held in the same regard they are today. Published scripts were often sold without the author’s knowledge or permission. A playwright’s original script was less important to printers and publishers than the version of it closest to the one they and their readers would remember from stage performances. Without the publishing of scripts playwrights like Shakespeare and Marlowe would have almost no control of their plays. They would be performed year on year by companies that would adapt the stories to their performances, making the plays almost akin to stories told by word of mouth. In some ways this is understandable as plays would often be collaborative projects. Even if one author had written the original text, editors, civil servants in charge of censoring scripts would have a hand in altering them. Actors might improvise in their performances. Additionally publishers might add paratextual materials, make notes in the margins or even make corrections to the texts. Through these aspects of the theatre industry the authors relation to the finished product of a published script is less direct than it might be today.

Outcome 

The various materials on printing that we have looked at over the last 2 weeks, will be very useful in relation to other aspects that we have observed over the rest of the module. We have better understood the printing process and the intricate thinking that went into these publications, in order to appeal to their targeted audience within the period, such as the order in which the plays were published in his ‘Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies’ introduction page. Keeping their targeted audience stimulated and entertained was obviously the priority of publishers, in a similar way that it was a priority for the Shakespearean company; the large variety of different plays on offer and the actors ability to play a variety of different roles parallels the importance of these respective intricacies. The various online archival websites that we have been given access to will also greater inform our understanding in the wider context of other materials we have observed. Furthermore, though not specifically related to the literal printing process, we have observed the fact that though writers such as Ben Jonson may have been rivals to Shakespeare, even they were able to appreciate his undeniable ability as a playwright: his respective praises include, “Thou art a monument without a tomb” and the “Sweet Swan of Avon”. 

By Sarah Thompson, Olivia Varty, Ally Cloke, Guy Seddon

Soso Ayika, Sophie Hamilton, Abi Dickson, Ellie Simmonite, Raveena Mehta, Leanne Francis

The first printing press in England was set up in 1476 by William Caxton. Its arrival enabled English printers to publish the early works of writers in quarto and folio form.

There were various stages involved in the publication of an early modern text. At the time, publishing industries consisted of printers, compositors, stationers, and publishers, each contributing to different stages of the printing process.

Printers manufactured the physical book, compositors worked the press, stationers bound and covered the pages, and publishers paid stationers license fees and provided printers with paper.

During the 1550s, some printers rose to popularity for their impressive craftsmanship and skillfulness. Christopher Moretus, a Frenchman who worked as a printer-publisher in Antwerp, was well known for his printing. At the height of his career, Plantin printed around 50 texts a year on at least 16 different presses. His work was symbolised by a golden compass around which the words ‘labore et constantia’ were written, meaning ‘work and persistency’.

Producing an early modern text required different tools.

Letters would be cut using files and chisels, with unreachable parts being removed by a negative punch. The punch creates the matrix in which the type was cast, then placed on a tray, inked and pressed onto paper.”

The printed pages were proof-read for mistakes made in production, such as incorrect grammar, punctuation or spelling, and would then be corrected.

Once this process was complete, the text would be ready for print.

Close Reading of Paratext:

The Discoverie of Witchcraft title page is useful as it tells us the original owner of the book (Cuthbert Cockson) and tells us who the book was dedicated to. Throughout the text we see various examples of what looks like people practicing their handwriting, which suggests a lack of access to paper. We also see notes handwritten at the side of some of the pages whereby one of the owners of the book can make comments about it and express their opinions. 

Helen Smith noted that scholars of the early modern period have questioned the historical authority of the author, arguing that “textual production was a substantially more collaborative process than is assumed by post-Romantic notions of the solitary genius” [Smith, P.8]. So essentially, paratexts are inevitable and will entail some sort of collaborative process be it from the printer, binder or reader themself.

If you wanted to make a book today you would only really need to open your laptop, type it out, then print it. In theory its simple. If we go back a good few hundred years, we see a very different process. The printing of ‘books’ in the 15^th century is obviously a more laborious task than it is today. This is not just due to the founding of electricity and the creation of the printer but also some of the specifications that some of these texts would need. 

Having a play printed would mean people at the time could now read plays at home instead of having to go into the depths of London and past the Baiting pits, brothels and gambling dens. This did not mean in any way that plays getting performed would be stopped but now the writers could have their name to a play that might be in the reading room of the high classes. 

This brings us onto how these plays were printed. Print shops would receive a commission from the stationers and then they would have the text onto the sheets using the large wooden printing press. The text would be laid out with individual metal letters, backwards nonetheless, and then coated with ink before being pressed onto the paper. The paper would come in the form of the large folio pages: being the most expensive to print due to them being the largest pages they would have been on one side of the paper and not be cramped onto it, and then you would get down to the cheaper quarto pieces that are folded down into four to make a ‘booklet’. These Quartos could be bound together with thread or even have a cover made for you by the stationers to protect it even more (for an extra cost of course) This was already a  well-established system, from as early as Chaucer’s period where we saw manuscripts being formed in this way. 

Yet what is now different to these old manuscripts is that we now have the addition of Paratexts! Paratexts are some of the most important features of old printed texts. Paratexts are pieces written around the play, adverts, letters written by other authors praising the text, notes in the margins and mages to name a few. Today Paratexts are still relevant, (Helen coopers most excellent example of ‘Paratext-ception’ in the introduction to her article sums this up) but not as well written and detailed as those included in the books from the 15^th century. One example being Benjamin Johnsons collected works. This book that was first printed in 1616 had many dedications to the author. There were multiple from Francis Beaumont praising Johnson, readers would see these ‘fluff’ pieces before the main piece and would perhaps give them a more certain idea of the work that they were about to read. 

Looking closer at some of the Paratexts, specifically the very vivid and striking image that awaits on the opening page of Johnsons collected works (As pictured). This image that consumes the first page of the works is full of references to the plays within. The characters with Latin inscriptions around them signify that the works will have classical allusions to them and maybe also a signifier to the court for the ‘Masques’ that are included within the works as well. Even more interestingly the two characters at the top have the words Tragedy and Comedy underneath them showing what type of plays are in these works. As he was most notable for those two genres. 

For a product that we now take for granted it is certainly interesting to get an understanding of how much effort went into printing these texts back then.

Group: Louis Linsey, Amy Sandbach, Helena Eades, Helena Hussey, Ruairidh Watt

[Image; from collected works of Benjamin Johnson]

By Sarah Thompson & Olivia Varty

The Social life history of Scot’s “On the Discoverie of Witches”  is complicated, to say the least. What began its life as one man’s reasoning and skepticism of the legitimacy of the witch problem, can in 2019 be read as a rare book, both in print and ideology. Also,it is an example of proto-feminism, as Scot argues it is mainly women, especially poor women, who are accused, as they do not hold power in society.

The book was scathed by King James VI of Scotland (who was obsessed with finding witches, even writing his own famous book Daemonolgie and having Macbeth tailored to his odd hobby), meaning it was not reprinted and circulated so much in the late-Stuart era. However, the copy we viewed at the Philip Robinson Special Collections still remains, and as we viewed, heavily annotated in both Latin and English. There are frequent references to religion, both throughout Scot’s original text and within these mysterious, inked scribblings. We discussed in Dr. De Rycker’s lecture, the significance of marginalia and annotations as Renaissance paratexts, how they reveal to us what Early Modern readers were thinking when they first read the book, and which parts were of importance to them. The illustrations of Scot’s book seem crude to a modern reader, but physically in this copy are some of the most fragile, suggesting they have endured wear-and-tear from eager scholars fascinated by the “tricks” and theatrical mechanisms used by supposed “witches”.

The 1584 printing of The Discoverie of Witchcraft is particularly fascinating as the information surrounding the paratext of the work is excluded from this printed version. Instead, we are provided with the provenance of the copy, which it is shown to have been placed under the ownership of the historian Robert White. It was not until 1942 that the copy was donated to King’s College the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne by Amy Potts. Although the identities of the printers are absent from the copy, we used the ESTC and the ODNB to uncover more information regarding the work’s imprinting. The copy was published by Henry Denham in 1984 for William Brome in London. This information is crucial for establishing the authenticity of The Discoverie of Witchcraft, as the printers have control over the final text. It is important to note that Henry Denham was responsible for the publishing of various religious texts from 1563-1587.

Vastly different from the process of producing books today, books in the early modern period were printed in a sheet-by-sheet process that were then folded, bound together, covered, and thus completed. The folding of these sheets was synonymous to the price of the book; a folio for example being considerably more expensive that an octavo. This was due to price of paper as a commodity in this era, and therefore, a folio version of a text, where each sheet was folded once, required much more paper than an octavo, where each sheet was folded eight times.

We can see the number of sheets used in a book made in the early modern period as they generally feature at the bottom of the page an ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’ etc. or a similar way of marking that enables those who bound the sheets together to understand what order they go in. Much like the writing of plays, it appears that the printing process itself too was very collabarative.

Designed by Johannas Gutenberg but brought to England by William Caxton in 1476, printing presses were used to print the text onto the sheets. This process originally involved the use of woodblock where letters were lined up and placed on a wooden board called a ‘galley’. This galley is then bound with chord to stabalise the individual matrix / letters in place and placed on a wooden frame upon a strone press. The text / letter cut-outs are then inked and moistened paper is laid over the structure. This is then rolled under the carriage and the printed page is removed.

Another comparison with early modern book production and today’s is the authority that the publishers had over the construction of a book, rather than the author. Firstly, the printers manufactured and created the physical sheets / pages of the book. These sheets were then bound by the stationers and covered according to the customers wishes. The publishers, however had the most authority over the book’s production, and were responsible for paying the author, the stationers’ licensing fees and providing the printers with paper. However, they did not just control the money aspect of a book’s creation, but held authority over what could be included or discluded from the content of the title pages, including dedications, commissioned dedicatory verses to the author or even the author’s name.

The Fairie Queene and The Shepeardes Calendar, together with the other works of England’s arch-poet, Edm. Spenser 1611. 

• This collection, an updated version from the original publication of Edmund Spenser’s The Fairie Queene 1590&1596 and his other works, was interesting to look at and compare to the previous publication of it as there was distinctive differences in the two published texts. The collection published later, was published as a Folio as opposed to the first publication which was a Quarto. 
• Furthermore, the paratext in the collection of works was far more elaborate, not just because of the extra text added to the dedications, but also the printed text was far neater, and the print more elaborate. 
• According to ESTC this particular edition was the first of these as it was printed as a collection, with only one other edition of it having been published.  

The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia, Philip Sidney. 1633. 

• ESTC indicates that this particular edition is a second edition of the text, whilst the title page revealed that this was the 8th time of the author being published, with the edition having ‘never before printed sonnets’ from the Sidney.   
• Furthermore, this edition also featured a supplementary passage by Sir W.A Knight, which when consulting ESTC could be identified Sir William Alexander, the Earl of Stirling. In addition to this, the second edition also features a dedication from the author to his sister and a letter to the reader signed by a H.S.; Hugh Stanford on behalf of the countess. 

• Fundamentally, when examining the additional material in later versions of printed texts, we can usually observe an increase in paratextual material that in turn can alter the meaning and reception of the texts as a literary entity. 

Sophia, Elli, Kelly, Becky, Luke

This week’s debate will discuss whether theatre still stands as a legitimate art form for the public to indulge. We introduce Pastor Peter Day and actor Walter Wright from the Chamberlain’s Men.

Day:

The theatre needs to go. Every week there are fewer supporters of my sermons and I have started to note, and almost expected, a rise in the shift of public morals. The theatre’s surrounding areas are riddled with brothels, gambling houses, and public drinking places. Passers-by flirt dangerously with these immoral habits, even on holy days.

Wright:

Yet, the theatre blesses us all with entertainment, financial gain and explicit education on our country’s history and culture. The stories we share are before our time, and the revival of dead playwrights’ work means that I, as an actor, can express their once lively rhetoric. How are those without the ability to read allowed to learn about their own country’s heritage without a visual retelling of our past? These histories ‘plant understanding in the hearts of the ignorant.’

Day:

I cannot fathom the disrespect towards the church that has become ingrained within the theatre, as our society abides by explicit biblical readings and teaching of these through religious worship. If our society is seeing bad examples of this onstage, then they will abide by this in life itself. The minds of the idle are easily tainted by visual example and spectacle. Misbehaviour could lead to rebellion against our Lord. This will not do. How can religious minds like mine remain unscathed by the bad example that theatre brings? Even I have the potential to be persuaded by their grandeur and noble garments.

Wright:

I know some might refute these statements with idle chatter about the display of immoral behaviour and cause for this to become riotous, however when the public are within the walls of our Globe, they are neither out whoring or gambling, they are being enlightened, educated and entertained.

Day:

At the very least, these plays need to be censored and abandoned. The mass grouping of immoral citizens could easily insight a moral rebellion, leading to idol minds going into promiscuous professions, such as pick-pocketing, conning the vulnerable and, even at some lengths, prostitution. Furthermore, the succeeding unproductivity of those not at work has the potential to lead to social unrest and idleness, especially with the volatile religious climate as Catholicism takes reign.

Wright:

We are supported generously by our sovereign Queen’s opinions of the stage. Surely her opinion should be paramount for our populous. As she is the earth’s representative of God, how can this not be enjoyed by the religious? ‘Since God has provided us of these pastimes, why may we not use them to his glory?’

By Felix, Ross, Joumana, Rebecca and Francesca