William Shakespeare | Julius Caesar, [?1695]

William Shakespeare.

Julius Caesar. A Tragedy. As it is now Acted at the Theatre Royal. London: printed by H.H. Jun. for Henry Herringman, and R. Bentley in Russel-street in Covent-Garden, and sold by Joseph Knight and Francis Saunders at the Blew-Anchor in the Lower Walk of the Nuw-Exchange in the Strand, [?1695]

4to (225 x 170mm), one of four undated editions, with a period after "Caesar" on the title page, the penultimate line of text on F2r ending "wander forth of doors,", and with pp. 46-47 misnumbered 47-46, manuscript corrections to B3r and D3r, early-twentieth century red morocco gilt, dust-staining to title page and final page of text, small burn-hole to E4 not affecting text, a few leaves short (such as E1 and E4, H2 and H3)

A TALL AND ATTRACTIVE COPY OF A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SHAKESPEARE QUARTO.

Henry Herringman was a prominent stationer who from 1674 had the publishing rights to the majority of Shakespeare's plays. He was the lead publisher of the Fourth Folio (1685) and also published a number of particularly popular plays in quarto. Herringman's 1684 edition of Julius Caesar was the first separate edition of the play, making it one of only three plays to first appear in quarto after the publication of the First Folio (the others being Macbeth and The Taming of the Shrew). A second edition of the play followed in 1691. It is now believed that the four nearly indistinguishable undated editions (of which this is one) come after the 1691 edition and date from around 1695, and that none of the four have established priority. Bartlett, however, placed the undated editions between 1684 and 1691, and gave them a likely order - this is a copy of Bartlett's third edition.

As the title-pages indicate, all these editions were published to capitalise on the success of the Theatre Royal production of the play with Thomas Betterton as Brutus. Twelve copies of this particular edition are recorded in ESTC.

PROVENANCE:

Henry B. Wheatley (1838-1917), author and bibliophile (leaf of bookseller's catalogue, Pedigree Books, October 1937, loosely inserted); purchased by Arthur Barwick Lloyd-Baker (1888-1979); thence by descent

LITERATURE:

Bartlett 114; ESTC R35172