The Material Book

Abstract Investigations of how Shakespeare’s plays were written and pre-pared for the theatre deal with lost manuscripts and proceed largely by inference. In considering Shakespeare’s plays in print, one can access the immediate objects in question, and situate them within perhaps the best-documented industrial practice in early modern England. The printed editions of plays that appeared in London bookshops during and shortly after his life are primary evidence for the study of Shakespeare, and the basis for the editions in regular use today. The present chapter will focus on a single play, Troilus and Cressida. It will reconstruct the preparation and printing of the 1609 Quarto. But the value of Troilus and Cressida as the chosen example is that bibliographical features of both the Quarto and Folio texts provide intriguing evidence as to the publishers’ larger strategies in issuing these books. This chapter will therefore encompass both the manufacture of physical objects and the position of those objects in the marketplace of print.