SHAKESPEARES BK EB

Chris Laoutaris

• Publisher: William Collins
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9780008238391
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies

'A lively picture of multiple operators scrambling to steal a march on the competition . . . Lavishly detailed'
FINANCIAL TIMES

'This is Shakespearean scholarship at its best, brilliantly researched yet compulsively readable. It's a book for our times, enduringly fascinating and appealing to both enthusiasts and the general reader. Highly recommended!' ALISON WEIR

FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE SUMMER

A BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023

A BBC RADIO 4 FRONT ROW NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023

AN AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023

The year 2023 marks the 400th anniversary of Mr William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, known today simply as the First Folio. It is difficult to imagine a world without The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Antony and Cleopatra, The Winter's Tale and Macbeth, but these are just some of the plays that were only preserved thanks to the astounding labour of love that went into creating the first collection.

Shakespeare's Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio charts, for the first time, the manufacture of the First Folio against a turbulent backdrop of seismic political events and international tensions that intersected with the lives of its creators. Shakespeare scholar Dr Chris Laoutaris uncovers the friendships, bonds, social ties and professional networks that facilitated the production of Shakespeare ' s book, as well as the personal challenges, tragedies and dangers that threatened its completion. And he considers how Shakespeare himself, before his death, may have influenced the ways in which his own public identity would come to be enshrined in the First Folio, shaping the transmission of his legacy to future generations and determining how the world would remember him 'not of an age, but for all time'.

'Beautifully written and utterly compelling… comprises all the drama, intrigue and surprises of a Shakespeare play' Tracy Borman

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Dramatis Personae
• Maps
• Author’s Note
• The Preliminary Pages of the First Folio
• Prologue: The Covenant? – Shakespeare’s ‘Fellows’ and the First Folio
• Act One: 1619 – The Year of the ‘False Folio’
• 1: England’s ‘Delightful Proteus’ – The Death of Richard Burbage
• 2: ‘The loss of my old acquaintance’ – The First Folio’s Patrons and the Courtiers’ War
• 3: The ‘Pavier-Jaggard Quartos’ – A Shakespearean Printing Mystery
• 4: ‘Forged invention former times defaced’ – Negotiating and Printing the ‘False Folio’
• 5: ‘Of great living, wealth and power’ – The King’s Men’s Public and Private Enemies
• Act Two: 1621 – Negotiating the First Folio
• 6: ‘Care and pains’ – Hunting the King’s Men’s Lost Shakespeare Plays
• 7: Bears, Parrots and Angels – St Paul’s Cross Churchyard, London’s Publishing Powerhouse
• 8: Dials, Legs and Harts – In St Dunstan’s Churchyard and Fleet Street
• 9: ‘Sister of a star’ – Staging the Spanish Match
• Act Three: 1623 – Printing the First Folio
• 10: ‘The author’s genius’ – Inside the Half-Eagle and Key
• 11: ‘Our Will Shakespeare’ – Comedies, Pilgrims and Spain’s Golden Age
• 12: ‘Like an old Fencer upon the stage’ – William Jaggard’s War and the Bard’s Comeback
• 13: Calves, Cows and Cyphers – Edward Blount’s Secrets and the Comedies’ Completion
• Act Four: 1623 – Making History Making Shakespeare: Finishing the First Folio
• 14: A ‘hazardous experiment’ – Playing Lovers and Printing Histories
• 15: ‘Pursue the stars’ – An Apprentice, a Widow’s Funeral and other Tragedies
• 16: ‘The Graver had a strife’ – Portraying Shakespeare Through National Crisis
• 17: ‘Thy Stratford Monument’ – The Grave, the Folio and Selling Shakespeare’s ‘Works’
• Act Five – William Shakespeare’s Will in His Book
• 18: The ‘Sireniacal’ Fraternity – Shakespeare and Oxford
• 19: ‘Big with false greatness’ – The Enigma of Cygnus and a Lost Shakespeare Sonnet?
• 20: ‘Baseless fabric’? – Shakespeare’s Lodger and the First Folio
• Epilogue: 1623 and Beyond – From Shakespeare’s Book to the World’s Book
• Acknowledgements
• Tables
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Picture Section
• Also by Chris Laoutaris
• About the Author
• About the Publisher