Shakspere & Typography

Which admits of no Rejection;
With which our Souls being joined about,
Not the least Grace can then fall out.

Here, the idea of joining together by quoins so that nothing shall fall out, is just the same as in the couplet quoted from Shakspere.

The tightening of these quoins by means of a wooden-headed mallet, is called ‘locking up’, an exclusively technical term. The expression, however, occurs in ‘Measure for Measure’, IV, 2, where the idea conveyed is the same.

(There is no more conceit in him than is in a mallet,

    2 Henry IV, ii, 4),
Fast locked up in sleep,

The ‘Forme’ worked off and the metal chase removed, leaving the pages ‘naked’, affords the Poet the following simile, which although not carrying to the popular ear any typographical meaning, was doubtless suggested by Shakspere’s former experience of the workshop:

And he but naked though locked up in steel.

    2 Henry VI, iii, 2.
The primary idea of ‘locking up’ had, doubtless, reference to ‘armour’; the secondary to printing, as shown by the use of the word ‘naked’.

The forme then went to the Press-room, where considerable ingenuity was required to make ‘register’; that is, to print one side so exactly upon the other, that when the sheet was held up to the light the lines on each side would exactly back one another. The accuracy of judgment required for this is thus glanced at:

Eno. But let the world rank me in register
A master-leaver and a fugitive.

    Antony and Cleopatra, iv, 9.
When the green-eyed Othello takes his wife’s hand and exclaims:

Here’s a young and sweating devil,

    Othello, iii, 4,
we fail at first to catch the idea of the Poet in calling a hand a ‘devil’; but take the word as synonymous with ‘messenger’, and we see at once how the moist plump palm of Desdemona suggested to the intensely jealous husband the idea of its having been the lascivious messenger of her impure desires. In this sense of ‘messenger’, the word ‘devil’ has a special fitness; for it is, and always has been among Printers, and Printers only, another word for ‘errand-boy’. In olden times, when speed was required, a boy stood at the off-side of the press, and as soon as the frisket was raised, whipped the printed sheet off the tympan. When not at work, he ran on messages between printer and author, who, on account of his inky defilement, dubbed him ‘devil’. All Printers’ boys go now by the same name:

Old Lucifer, both kind and civil,
To ev’ry Printer lends a Devil;
But balancing accounts each winter,
For ev’ry Devil takes a Printer.

Moxon, in 1683, quotes it as an old trade word, and it was doubtless the same in Shakspere’s time, a century earlier, as it is now two centuries later. But where could Shakspere have picked up the word if not in the Printing-office?

Any one accustomed to collate old MSS. must have noticed how very seldom the copyist would, in transcribing, add nothing and omit nothing. If what the scribe considered a good idea entered his mind while his pen was travelling over the page, he was a very modest penman indeed, if he did not incorporate it in the text. From this cause, and from genuine unintentional blunders, the texts of all the old authors had become gradually very corrupt – a source of great trouble to the early Printers. With this in his mind Shakspere defines it as one of the qualities of Time

To blot old books and alter their contents.

    Lucrece, l. 948.
Many of Vautrollier’s publications must have been printed from discolored old manuscripts; and these papers Shakspere, if he read ‘proof’ for his employer, would have to study carefully. Does he call this to mind in Sonnet XVII?

My papers yellowed with their age.

Was it, after admiring some beautifully illuminated Horæ, that he wrote:

O that record could with a backward look,
E’en of five hundred courses of the sun;
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done.

    Sonnet lix.
Does the Poet refer to its wonderfully burnished gold initials, and the red dominical letters which he must often have seen in the printed calendars, when he exclaims in tones of admiration:

My red dominical – my golden letter!

    Love’s Labour Lost, v, 2.
The old calendar had a golden number and a dominical letter, but not a golden letter, which last must refer specifically to the practice of gilding important initials. ‘Golden Letters’ are mentioned in ‘King John’, III, 1, and in ‘Pericles’, IV, 4, while the red initials, which were common to both manuscripts and printed books of the fifteenth century, are made by Shakspere the death warrant of the unfortunate Clerk of Chatham, against whom is brought the fatal accusation that he

Has a book in his pocket with red letters in ’t.

    2 Henry VI, iv, 2.
In Shakspere’s time, as we have already noticed (p. 41, ante), the press laboured under great restrictions. All books with a profitable circulation were monopolised by favored stationers or printers who held special patents or licenses from the Crown. Thus Reynold Wolfe, in 1543, held a monopoly of all books printed in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. Seres was privileged to print all psalters, primers, and prayer books; Denham might print the New Testament in Welch; others held grants for scholastic or legal books, for almanacs, and even for broadsides, or as the grant says ‘for any piece of paper printed on one side of the sheet only’. In these favored books it was customary to place the patent granting the monopoly at the end, as a ‘caveat’ for other printers, and occasionally the phrase ‘Cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum’ would appear in a conspicuous part of the title. Among the printers in London, who secured such special privileges, was Vautrollier, Shakspere’s presumed employer. ‘In the sixteenth year of Elizabeth, 19th June, 1574’, says Ames, ‘a patent or license was granted him which he often printed at the end of the New Testament’; this was a monopoly of Beza’s New Testament which Vautrollier had the privilege ‘ad imprimendum solum’, for the term of ten years. We have already seen the curious connection between the products of Vautrollier’s press and the writings of Shakspere, and we now plainly perceive what was floating in the Poet’s brain when he placed the following speech in Biondello’s mouth, who urges Lucentio to marry Bianca, while her father and the pedant are discussing the marriage treaty:

Luc. And what of all this?

Bion. I cannot tell; expect they are busied about a counterfeit[3 - This word ‘counterfeit’ in the sense of ‘reprint’ or ‘duplicate’, is certainly not used now-a-days by English printers; yet I find this in Marahren’s Parallel List of technical Typographical terms: – ‘Counterfeit, to, or to Reprint, v., Nachdrucken. – Ré-imprimer.’ With Bibliographers the word is still retained; e. g. ‘Lyons counterfeits of the Aldine editions.’] assurance: Take your assurance of her cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum: to the church; – take the priest, clerk, and some sufficient honest witnesses.

    Taming of the Shrew, iv, 4.

These protective privileges, ‘ad imprimendum solum’, instead of a benefit were a great hindrance to the growth of Printing. Many master-printers even then felt them to be so, and by all legal and sometimes illegal means, tried to procure the abolition of laws which were oppressive and restrictive. They saw works of merit die out of memory for want of enterprise in the patentee – they saw folly, in the shape of a Star-chamber, controlling skill; or as Shakspere himself expresses it,

Art made tongue-tied by authority,
And Folly (doctor-like),[4 - And Folly (doctor-like) controlling skill. It is worth noting, that in none of the various volumes written to show Shakspere’s knowledge of medicine and medical men, has the truth of this passage been brought forward in evidence.] controlling skill.

    Sonnet lxvi.
Shakspere abounds in kisses of every hue, from shadowy, frozen, and Judas kisses, to holy, true, gentle, tender, warm, sweet, loving, dainty, kind, soft, long, hard, zealous, burning, and even the unrequited kiss:

But my kisses bring again
Seals of love, but seal’d in vain.

    Measure for Measure, iii, 1.
The ‘burning’ kiss might be thought passionate and even durable enough for any extremity – yet Shakspere prefers, perhaps from an unconscious association of ideas, the durability of which Printing is the emblem when he makes the Goddess of Love exclaim:

Pure lips, sweet seals on my soft lips imprinted.

    Venus and Adonis, l. 511.
The same idea of durability is expressed in the cry of Henry’s guilty Queen, when parting with Suffolk:

Oh, could this kiss be printed on thy hand!

    2 Henry VI, iii, 2.
The idea has been still further developed in the following anonymous quatrain:

A PRINTER’S KISSES