Pericles, although he strongly suspects that there once existed a similar edition of Love's Labour's Lost.[1] I have no ground for dissenting from this judgement.
The question whether the actors, in protecting their property from the pirates, could look for any assistance from the official controllers of the press is one of some difficulty. We may perhaps infer, with the help of the conditional entries of The Blind Beggar of Alexandria and The Spanish Tragedy, and the special order made in the case of Dr. Faustus, that before assigning a 'copy' to one stationer the wardens of the Company took some steps to ascertain whether any other stationer laid a claim to it. It does not follow that they also inquired whether the applicant had come honestly or dishonestly by his manuscript.[2] Mr. Pollard seems inclined to think that, although they were under no formal obligation to intervene, they would not be likely, as men of common sense, to encourage dishonesty.[3] If this argument stood alone, I should not have much confidence in it. There is a Publishers' Association to-day, doubtless composed of men of common sense, but it is not a body to which one
- ↑ Pollard, Sh. F. 48; F. and Q. 64. More recently A. W. Pollard and J. D. Wilson have developed a theory (T. L. S. Jan.-Aug. 1919) that the 'bad quartos' rest upon pre-Shakespearian texts partly revised by Shakespeare, of which shortened transcripts had been made for a travelling company in 1593, and which had been roughly adapted by an actor-reporter so as to bring them into line with the later Shakespearian texts current at the time of publication. Full discussion of this theory belongs to a study of Shakespeare. The detailed application of it in J. D. Wilson, The Copy for Hamlet 1603 and the Hamlet Transcript 1593 (1918), does not convince me that Shakespeare had touched the play in 1593, although I think that the reporter was in a position to make some slight use of a pre-Shakespearian Hamlet. And although travelling companies were doubtless smaller than the largest London companies (cf. chh. xi and xiii, s.v. Pembroke's), there is no external evidence that special 'books' were prepared for travelling. For another criticism of the theory, cf. W. J. Lawrence in T. L. S. for 21 Aug. 1919. Causes other than travelling might explain the shortening of play texts: prolixity, even in an experienced dramatist (cf. t.p. of Duchess of Malfi), the approach of winter afternoons, an increased popular demand for jigs.
- ↑ Cf. G. Wither, Schollers Purgatory (c. 1625), 28, 'Yea, by the lawes and Orders of their Corporation, they can and do setle upon the particuler members thereof a perpetuall interest in such Bookes as are Registred by them at their Hall, in their several Names: and are secured in taking the ful benefit of those books, better then any Author can be by vertue of the Kings Grant, notwithstanding their first Coppies were purloyned from the true owner, or imprinted without his leave'.
- ↑ Pollard, F. and Q. 10. Mr. Pollard seems to suggest (F. and Q. 3) that copyright in a printed book did not hold as against the author. He cites the case of Nashe's Pierce Pennilesse, but there seems no special reason to assume that in this case, or in those of Gorboduc and Hamlet, the authorized second editions were not made possible by an arrangement, very likely involving blackmail, with the pirate.
