William 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.

Nineteen 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

In 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 , 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.

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

Scholars have long speculated how Shakespeare’s early plays came into print. His two earliest plays in print, and both appeared in print in 1594, neither with Shakespeare’s name on the title page. In fact, the first version of 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.

In any case the appearance of both and suggest they were popular enough with audiences that a printing house believed it could make a profit on selling them. We know that 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 . 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 . Based on the original in the possession of the Marquis of Bath. Courtesy of Wikimedia. Public Domain.

16th Century Printing Practices

Plays 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. . , edited by David Scott Kastan, Blackwell, 1999, pp. 395–413. Farley-Hills, David. . , vol. 47, no. 4, 2000, pp.441–444. . Edited by Gary Taylor et al., Oxford UP, 2016. Taylor, Gary, and Rory Loughnane. . , edited by Gary Taylor et al., Oxford UP, 2016, pp. 417–602.

Key Online Sources Best, Michael. . . , https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/youth/earlyplaygroup.html. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023. Best, Michael. . . , https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/youth/publication.html. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023. Best, Michael. . . , https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/reference/chronology/years1593-1594.html. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023. . , https://www.rsc.org.uk/shakespeares-plays/histories-timeline/timeline. Accessed 2 Mar. 2023. Wolfe, Heather. . , 23 Feb. 2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.37078/87.

Image Sources Munday, Anthony et. al.. . , 1591–1593, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_Thomas_More_Hand_D.jpg. Peacham, Henry. . , 1595, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Peacham_drawing_%281595%29_Titus_Andronicus.jpg. Shakespeare, William. . , 1594, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_VI_pt_2_quarto.jpg.