Shakspere & Typography

In one of his pedantic speeches Holofernes exclaims:

Venetia! Venetia!
Chi non te vede non ti pretia.
Old Mantuan! Old Mantuan! who understandeth thee not, loveth thee not.

    Love’s Labour Lost, iv, 2.
Where did Shakspere learn his Italian, which, although then a court language, he quotes but rarely, and in an awkward manner? Surely at second-hand, and probably quoting the phrases current at the period, or still more probably from conning in his spare moments:

An Italian Grammer, written in Latin by M. Scipio Lentulo: and turned into Englishe by Henry Grantham. Typis Tho. Vautrolerij.

    London, 16mo., 1578.

This was put to press again in 1587. In Vautrollier’s ‘shop’ he would also have often in his hands:

Campo di Fior; or else the Flourie field of foure Languages, for the furtherance of the learners of the Latine, French, English, but chiefly of the Italian tongue. Imprinted at London, by Thos. Vautrollier, dwelling in the Black Friers by Ludgate.

    16mo., 1583.

Here, again, we have a very extensive Italian vocabulary upon all common subjects quite sufficient for an occasional quotation; as to the plots taken from Italian sources, such as ‘Romeo and Juliet’, it seems to be now generally admitted that Shakspere in every instance followed the English translations.

But Shakspere knew also a little French, and uses a few colloquial sentences here and there. In one play indeed, Henry V, iii. 4, there is a short scene between the Princess and her attendant, in alternate French and English, which reads almost like a page of a Vocabulary. Shakspere’s knowledge of Latin was apparently about the same in extent; and for the uses to which he has applied both tongues, the Flourie Field of Four Languages, already quoted as the source of his Italian, would be quite sufficient. If not, he had the opportunity of consulting under his master’s roof

A Treatise on French Verbs.

    8vo., 1580.

A most easie, perfect, and absolute way to learne the Frenche tongue.

    8vo., 1581; and

Phrases Linguæ Latinæ. 8vo., 1579;

the last compiled from the writings of that great Printer, Aldus Manutius.

Some of Shakspere’s biographers have maintained that he must have been acquainted with Plutarch and other classical writers, because he quotes from their works. Dr. Farmer in his masterly essay on the learning of Shakspere, has shown that the Poet took all his quotations, even to the blunders, from the edition of Plutarch, in English, printed and published by Vautrollier, a year or two before we suppose that Shakspere entered into his service:

Plutarch’s Lives, from the French of Amyott, by Sir Tho. North. Licensed.

    Folio, 1579.

Moreover, Vautrollier, who was a good scholar, appears to have had a great liking for Ovid. He printed Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Ovid’s Epistles, and Ovid’s Art of Love. Now it is a notable fact that although Shakspere, unlike contemporary writers who abound in classical allusions, scarcely ever mentions a Latin poet, and still more seldom a Greek poet, yet he quotes Ovid several times:

As Ovid, be an outcast quite abjured.

    Taming of the Shrew, i, 1.
Tit. Lucius, what book is that she tosseth so?
Luc. Grandsire, ’tis Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

    Titus, iv, 1.
I am here with thee and thy goats as the most
capricious poet, honest Ovid was among the Goths.

    As You Like It, iii, 3.
Ovidius Naso was the man.

    Love’s Labour Lost, iv, 2.
Of Cicero’s Oration Vautrollier issued several editions, and had the privilege ‘ad imprimendum solum’ granted him; and to this work also, on at least two occasions, Shakspere refers:

Hath read to thee
Sweet poetry and Tully’s Orator.

    Titus, iv, 1.
Sweet Tully.

    2 Henry VI, iv, 1.
The fact to be noted with reference to these classical quotations is this: Shakspere quotes those Latin authors, and those only, of which Vautrollier had a ‘license’; and makes no reference to other and popular writers, such as Virgil, Pliny, Aurelius, and Terence, editions of whose works Vautrollier was not allowed to issue, but all of which, and especially the last, were great favorites in the sixteenth century, as is shown by the numerous editions which issued from the presses of Vautrollier’s fellow-craftsmen.

Among other publications of Vautrollier was an English translation of Ludovico Guicciardini’s Description of the Low Countries, originally printed in 1567. In this work is one of the earliest accounts of the invention of printing at Haarlem, which is thus described in the Batavia of Adrianus Junius, 1575. ‘This person [Coster] during his afternoon walk, in the vicinity of Haarlem, amused himself with cutting letters out of the bark of the beech tree, and with these, the characters being inverted as in seals, he printed small sentences.’ The idea is cleverly adapted by Orlando:

these trees shall be my books,

And in their barks my thoughts I’ll character.

    As You Like It, iii, 2.

Lastly, it would be an interesting task to compare the Mad Folk of Shakspere, most of whom have the melancholy fit, with

A Treatise of Melancholie: containing the Causes thereof and Reasons of the Strange Effects it worketh in our Minds and Bodies.

    London, 8vo., 1586.

This was printed by Vautrollier, and probably read carefully for press by the youthful Poet.

The disinclination of Shakspere to see his plays in print has often been noticed by his biographers, and is generally accounted for by the theory that reading the plays in print would diminish the desire to hear them at the theatre. This is a very unsatisfactory reason, and not so plausible as the supposition that, sickened with reading other people’s proofs for a livelihood, he shrunk from the same task on his own behalf. His contemporaries do not appear to have shared in the same typographical aversion. The plays of Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher were all printed in the life-time of their authors. Francis Quarles had the satisfaction and pride of seeing all his works in printed form, and showed his appreciation and knowledge of Typography by the following quaint lines, which we quote from the first edition, literatim:

On a Printing-house

The world’s a Printing-house: our words, our thoughts,
Our deeds, are Characters of sev’rall sizes:
Each Soule is a Compos’ter; of whose faults
The Levits are Correctors: Heav’n revises;
Death is the common Press; fro whence, being driven,
W’ are gathered Sheet by Sheet, & bound for Heaven.

    From Divine Fancies, 1632, lib. iv, p. 164.

II. THE TECHNICALITIES OF PRINTING, AS USED BY SHAKSPERE