First Quarto

First Quarto
Georgelazenby · CC BY 3.0 · source
Name	First Quarto
Genre	Textual history

First Quarto is a bibliographic designation for an early printed version of a dramatic or poetic work produced using the quarto format associated with Renaissance printing press, Elizabethan theatre, stationers' company, and early modern London. The term identifies a particular edition often contrasted with later folios, Second Quarto, Third Quarto, or First Folio printings associated with authors such as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and publishing houses like Edward Blount, William Jaggard, and Isaac Jaggard. First quartos are central to studies of textual criticism, bibliography, philology, and archival research conducted in institutions such as the British Library, the Bodleian Library, and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Overview and Definition

A First Quarto denotes the earliest extant quarto impression of a play or poem, distinguished in catalogues produced by ESTC, STC, and individual stationer records, and often compared with quartos printed by Thomas Creede, James Roberts, or John Danter. The label functions within frameworks established by editors such as Nicholas Rowe, Alexander Pope, Edmond Malone, Samuel Johnson, and modern scholars including Harold Jenkins, Gary Taylor, and Stanley Wells who analyze relationships among manuscript, promptbook, and printed witnesses. Bibliographers examine features like signature marks, typefaces, and printer's devices used by firms such as Richard Field, John Smethwick, and Thomas Cotes to assign dates, provenance, and textual pedigree.

Historical Context and Early Printing

First quartos emerged amid the expansion of early modern London's print culture following regulatory shifts instituted by the Stationers' Company charter and events such as the Reformation's impact on censorship and literacy. Printers responded to popular demand for plays performed at venues like the Globe Theatre, the Blackfriars Theatre, the Rose Theatre, and by companies including the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the King's Men, and the Admiral's Men. The economic motives of publishers such as John Smethwick and booksellers operating near St Paul's Cathedral intersected with legal disputes in the Court of Star Chamber and licensing overseen by the Master of the Revels, shaping which quartos reached market and how texts circulated among readers like Samuel Pepys and collectors represented in archives like the Bodleian Library and the British Museum.

Textual Variants and Significance

First quartos often preserve variant readings that diverge from Second Quartos or the First Folio, producing variant families that editors reconcile through stemmatic methods advocated by Ludwig Traube, Karl Lachmann, and Fredson Bowers. These disparities affect attribution debates involving figures such as William Shakespeare, Robert Greene, Thomas Kyd, and John Webster and influence editorial decisions made by projects like the Cambridge Edition, the Riverside Shakespeare, and the Oxford Shakespeare. Variant features—omissions, additions, stage directions, and speech prefixes—inform reconstructions of performance practice at venues including the Globe Theatre and the Swan Theatre, and intersect with documentary evidence from courtiers like Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton and records from the Stationers' Register.

Notable First Quarto Editions

Prominent examples include early quartos of plays associated with William Shakespeare printed by printers such as Nicholas Ling and John Smethwick, quartos of works linked to Christopher Marlowe appearing in partnerships like Edward Blount and William Jaggard, and quartos of dramatists such as Ben Jonson printed by William Stansby. Specific celebrated instances are quartos that present substantially different texts from the First Folio and subsequent quartos, which have been pivotal in shaping editorial texts in editions produced by Herbert J. C. Grierson, G. B. Harrison, and later scholarly editions by E. K. Chambers and Alfred Harbage.

Scholarly Reception and Controversies

Scholars have disputed the reliability of First quartos, debating whether certain quartos derive from memorial reconstruction by actors, shorthand transcriptions from theatre promptbooks, or authorial manuscripts; controversies have engaged critics like Edmond Malone, Algernon Swinburne, J. Dover Wilson, and John Dover Wilson. Legal and attribution disputes surfaced in cases involving publishers such as William Jaggard and Isaac Jaggard and in bibliographic scholarship by F. W. B. Curzon and A. H. Bullen. The contested status of some first quarto texts has implications for literary history, affecting interpretations of authorship linked to figures like Thomas Middleton and George Peele and influencing performance editions used by companies including the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Influence on Modern Textual Criticism

First quartos remain integral to methodologies in modern textual criticism, informing collation practices developed by W. W. Greg, stemma codicum approaches refined by Jerome McGann, and editorial theory debated by D. F. McKenzie and G. Thomas Tanselle. They provide case studies for digital humanities projects at institutions like the Folger Shakespeare Library and the National Library of Scotland, and underpin scholarly editions from the Modern Language Association and university presses such as Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press. Ongoing research into quartos continues to intersect with archival discovery, provenance studies involving collectors like John Heminges and Henry Condell, and interdisciplinary inquiries spanning bibliography, performance studies, and editorial practice.

Category:Quartos Category:Textual criticism Category:Early modern printing