The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays

A title page that, when modernized, reads: The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the Two Famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, with the Death of the Good Duke Humpphrey.
The title page of the quarto of the play later called Henry the Sixth, Part One. Courtesy of Wikimedia. Public Domain.
Para1William Shakespeare’s first plays to be published did not have his name on the title page. In the 16th century, plays were not generally considered literature bur rather were viewed as commercial entertainment. Prior to Shakespeare’s death, about half of his 38 plays were published in quarto versions, a small book equivalent to a thin modern paperback.
Para2Nineteen of Shakespeare’s plays were published in his lifetime, the later ones with his name on the title page. The name clearly became a selling point as his reputation grew; in fact, some plays clearly not by Shakespeare were published with his name on the title page during the 17th century in an apparent attempt to make them more attractive to the buyer.

Play Publication Practices

Para3In general, playing companies did not publish their plays. They kept them closely guarded as important intellectuall property until the play lost popularity. This may be the reason why, apart from 147 lines of the play Sir Thomas More, none of Shakespeare’s plays survive in his handwriting. No one knows what became of the playbooks in his hand owned by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.
No alternative text available.
Sir Thomas More play text c. 1604 in Shakespeare’s handwriting. Courtesy of Shakespeare Documented and the British Library. Public Domain.

Early Plays in Print

Para4Scholars have long speculated how Shakespeare’s early plays came into print. His two earliest plays in print, Titus Andronicus and Henry VI, Part One both appeared in print in 1594, neither with Shakespeare’s name on the title page. In fact, the first version of Henry VI, Part Two which appeared in 1594 may be one of the untidy and problematic texts that are sometimes thought to have been pirated, or reconstructed from memory by an actor, spectator, or rival playwright. Some of the quarto publications are substantially shorter than the versions later prepared by his colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell for publication in 1623. This version, which is now called the First Folio, proclaims on its title page that it is from the True Originall Copies, presumably meaning the manuscript pages in Shakespeare’s hand.
Para5In any case the appearance of both Titus Andronicus and Henry VI, Part One suggest they were popular enough with audiences that a printing house believed it could make a profit on selling them. We know that Titus was popular enough that a man named Henry Peachum made a sketch of one of its scenes, the only illustration we have presumably made from an audience member.
A black and white sketch of a scene of the play Titus Andronicus. A man with a spear stands with wide arms in front of a woman in a crown. Two guards with weapons stand behind him. The woman is kneeling with her hands held together in front of her. Behind her two men kneel. All the figures are white in skin tone except for a man on the far right, who has black shaded skin. He stands and points, although the subject of his pointing could be the woman or the tip of the sword he holds in his other hand.
Henry Peacham’s sketch of Titus Andronicus. Based on the original in the possession of the Marquis of Bath. Courtesy of Wikimedia. Public Domain.

16th Century Printing Practices

Para6Plays were much more difficult to print than poems or sermons because of early modern printing practices. A book printed in quarto is made from sheets of paper folded twice so that there are eight sides on which to print. The pages were not typeset or printed in order, but instead pages 1, 8, 4, and 5 were printed on one side (called recto, or “right” in Latin), with pages 2, 7, 3, and 6 on the reverse (called verso, or “reverse”). Because plays mix lines of speech in poetry with lines in prose, and because characters speak partial lines, interrupt each other, and the language features other things that mimic human speech, it is much more complicated to typeset a play on a page.

Key Print Sources

Berger, Thomas L. and Jesse M. Lander. Shakespeare in Print, 1593–1640. A Companion to Shakespeare, edited by David Scott Kastan, Blackwell, 1999, pp. 395–413.
Farley-Hills, David. The Date of Titus Andronicus. Notes and Queries, vol. 47, no. 4, 2000, pp.441–444.
The New Oxford Shakespeare. Edited by Gary Taylor et al., Oxford UP, 2016.
Taylor, Gary, and Rory Loughnane. The Canon and Chronology of Shakespeare’s Works. The New Oxford Shakespeare, edited by Gary Taylor et al., Oxford UP, 2016, pp. 417–602.

Key Online Sources

Best, Michael. Experimental Plays: from about 1589 to 1594. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/youth/earlyplaygroup.html. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023.
Best, Michael. Popularity and Publication. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/youth/publication.html. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023.
Best, Michael. Years 1593–1594. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/reference/chronology/years1593-1594.html. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023.
Timeline of Shakespeare’s Plays. The Royal Shakespeare Company, https://www.rsc.org.uk/shakespeares-plays/histories-timeline/timeline. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023.
Wolfe, Heather. Titus Andronicus, First Edition: Only Surviving Copy of Shakespeare’s First Printed Play. Shakespeare Documented, 23 Feb. 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.37078/87.

Image Sources

Munday, Anthony et. al.. Hand D, The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore. Wikimedia Commons, 1591–1593, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_Thomas_More_Hand_D.jpg.
Shakespeare, William. Title Page of the First Quarto of Henry VI. Wikimedia, 1594, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_VI_pt_2_quarto.jpg.

Prosopography

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
Sponsor(s)

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status published, peer-reviewed
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship
Utah Valley University
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