Shakespeare bound: The Tonson editions and the making of a literary classic

摘要

Shakespeare Bound examines one of the great publishing accomplishments of the eighteenth century, the six collected editions of Shakespeare's plays produced over the course of almost sixty years by Jacob Tonson and his successors. To stir consumer interest in their editions, the Tonsons engaged as editors some of the leading literary and scholarly figures of the age: Nicholas Rowe, Alexander Pope, Lewis Theobald, William Warburton, Samuel Johnson, and Edward Capell. In contrast to the practices of the eighteenth-century acting companies, which reworked the plays to suit a range of theatrical needs and tastes, the Tonson editors approached Shakespeare with a sense of textual sanctity and, in general, cautiously worked to establish the text as they believed Shakespeare intended it. I explore the manner in which each of these editors conceived his task and distinguished his editorial method from his predecessors'. The editor not only had to discredit the previous editions, but he also had to declare the authority of his own, to promise readers a restored and authentic text as Shakespeare had written it. The printed shape of the Tonson editions and their material features, I argue, played a crucial role in projecting this authenticity. I examine how the publishing practices of the Tonsons, in response to the tastes and vicissitudes of the print market, determined the graphic and physical design of the respective editions. To authenticate his work, each editor employed a variety of paratexts that included commentaries, indices to the speeches and characters, notes to the plays, prefaces, as well as various historical documents related to Shakespeare's life and work. The editors' labor encased Shakespeare's text in an increasingly complex scholarly apparatus, and at the same time helped the Tonsons strengthen their proprietary claims to Shakespeare's plays. Examination of these editions reveals how the eighteenth-century editorial culture insulated itself from the activities of the stage. This editorial activity, in effect, sought to fashion a literary Shakespeare, a separate figure distinct from the playwright whose works were performed with increasing frequency on the English stage.