#locrine

[uwmspeccoll]

Shakespeare Weekend

This weekend we are wrapping up Nicholas Rowe’s (1674-1718) The Work of Mr. William Shakespear; in Six Volumes. Published in London in 1709 by Jacob Tonson (1655–1736), this second edition holds an important place within Shakespearean publication history. The Work of Mr. William Shakespear; in Six Volumes is recognized as the first octavo edition, the first illustrated edition, the first critically edited edition, and the first to present a biography of the poet. 

Volume six is a collection of Shakespeare’s tragedies and comedies including several plays that are a part of the Shakespeare apocrypha that bear Shakespeare’s name, but do not appear in the First Folio and of which there is question about his role in writing them. Apocrypha in the sixth volume include Pericles Prince of Tyre, London Prodigal, Thomas Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle, The Puritan, A Yorkshire Tragedy, and Locrine. Volume six also includes confirmed Shakespearean plays Antony and Cleopatra and Cymbeline. 

A full-page engraving by the French Baroque artist and book illustrator François Boitard (1670-1715) and engraved by English engraver Elisha Kirkall (c.1682–1742) precedes each play. Boitard’s illustrations often place readers at the pinnacle of the plays depicting high drama in his classic Baroque style. 

In addition to Rowe’s editorial decisions to divide the plays into scenes and include notes on the entrances and exits of the players, he also normalised the spelling of names and included a dramatis personae preceding each play. The only chronicled critique of Rowe’s momentous editorial endeavor is his choice in basing his text on the corrupt Fourth Folio. 

View more volumes of The Works of Mr. William Shakespear; in Six Volumes here. 

View more Shakespeare Weekend posts. 

-Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[gailyinthedark]

The things you run across in Elizabethan literature

(Source)

[itinerarium-hic]

Scenes from today’s research...

Once thought to have been written by William Shakespeare (due to the “W. S.” attribution), Locrine (1595) is a play about the Trojan foundation of Britain. It features Locrinus, the son of Brutus, as its tragic protagonist who falls in love with the daughter of the invader Humber. The result is the drowning of his daughter Sabren (Hafren in Giraldus Cambrensis, Habren in Geoffrey of Monmouth).

The second printing of this play was in 1664 as part of a collection of Shakespeare’s plays:

Locrine was probably NOT written by Shakespeare. The lines are stiff, the meter is irregular. Perhaps Shakespeare once performed a version of the play? The source material for Locrine comes from Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gerald of Wales, probably transmitted via Raphael Holinshed. The Trojan Brutus myth of the founding of Britain saw a surge of popularity in the 16th century, so it seems likely Shakespeare would have at least known the source material (especially given that Geoffrey is the source for Lear!).