George Washington University

Some Aspects and Problems of London Publishing between 1550 and 1650. by W. W. GregReview by: Giles E. DawsonShakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Autumn, 1958), pp. 563-564Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2867148 .

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Rgvziews

Some Aspects and Problems of London Publishing between 1550 and 1650. By w. W. GREG.

The Clarendon Press, I957. Pp. viii + I3I. 21S.

In these six Lyell lectures, delivered in Oxford in i955, Sir Walter Greg pro- vides answers to many problems with which students of Elizabethan literary texts have wrestled for half a century. The incisive clarity of closely-reasoned argument which we have come to expect from the dean of biliographers is due first to his easy familiarity with the relevant documents and texts but also to his distinguished skill in expository writing.

After a review of the decrees and ordinances affecting the Elizabethan book trade and a description of the extant records of the Stationers' Company to whose fortunate preservation we owe so much of our knowledge, two central lectures treat of licensing for the press and of copyright as a function of the com- pany. The final lectures discuss imprints and patents, the role of the Master of the Revels as press licenser, and the troublesome problem of blocking entries. On the subject of licensing Greg provides the documentary evidence as to the con- stantly varying operation of the system by which Government effectually watched and controlled the output of the press.

But much remains and must continue to remain obscure unless more evi- dence comes to light than seems likely to occur. In the several decrees and ordi- nances creating licensing authority no exceptions are made for any class of books: all must be licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, or certain other officials or deputies from time to time clearly specified. Yet we find a wide variety of persons, great and small, licensing books, and their authoriza- tions appear with rare exceptions to satisfy the wardens of the Company. The wardens, indeed, one of whose chief concerns before "allowing" a book was with proper licensing, appear in a great number of cases to have been satisfied with no license but their own. No official sanction for these domestic licenses, as Greg calls them, is known, but neither is it known that a warden was ever dis- ciplined for this apparent usurpation or neglect of authority. I believe the prob- able explanation to be that the wardens, understanding the objectives of the licensing regulations, knew how far they could go, knew that it was to the inter- est of the trade to observe the spirit of the law, and were eager by exercising such authority as they could to extend the power and importance of the Com- pany. The bishops and other designated officials on their part, knowing the Sta- tioners to be a reasonable and well-governed body, were content to leave to them the routine daily decisions so long as they exercised good judgment. We must never overlook the part played, in the Elizabethan conduct of government, by influence, personal contact, and oral agreement, all of which by their nature tend to leave no trace in the record.

In Chapter IV, Entrance and Copyright, Greg discusses the origin and growth of the concept of copyright, entrance in the Stationers' Register as essen- tial to copyright, and the effect of the widespread neglect of entrance in defiance of the regulation requiring it. He supports Sidney Lee's contention that, the offi- cers of the Company being little concerned with the quality of a text when they

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564 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

approved the entrance of a work, the right to a "stolne, and surreptitious" copy was valid and could if the owner wished constitute a bar to the substitution of a more acceptable version. These are important things to be said about copyright. But the subject of transfer, or assignment, of copies is not so unimportant as by allowing to it only a little more than two pages the author seems to imply. For the history of an individual copyright is likely to be more concerned with succes- sive assignments than with initial entrance. He makes the point that entrance of an assignment could, and in some cases was clearly intended to, create a copy- right where entrance had been neglected. But the case which he cites is a special one, for, though incidentally it records an assignment, it is in effect and wording a belated initial entrance. One could not, as the author shows, transfer what did not exist, and no copyright existed that was not entered. But in my opinion a significant point about transfer, and one on which the Stationers' Register con- tains abundant evidence, is that it was a private transaction between a buyer and a seller not in any degree dependent upon the recording of it in the Register, though the buyer of it often did have it entered as a matter of record, and for a fee the clerk was willing to make such an entry.

To students of Shakespeare the portion of the book of most immediate con- cern is that treating of the blocking entries of James Roberts, for Roberts ap- pears to have been acting for Shakespeare's company and three of the five plays involved are Shakespeare's. In Greg's view, which was essentially Pollard's, Ro- berts between i598 and i603 entered the plays as an agent of the Chamberlain's Men, not with any view to immediate publication but to block their publica- tion until such time as the acting company saw fit to release them. The precau- tionary step appears to have been successful for every play but Hamlet, of which a bad quarto made its appearance during the year after the entry. Hamlet is ex- ceptional in another way as well, for there is, as Greg notes, nothing in the wording of the entrance to suggest that it is a blocking entry. What is hard to understand is that Ling and Trundle, the pirates (if such they were) who pub- lished the bad quarto of i603, seem to have received not so much as a reprimand. If other blocking entries were successful it is most odd that this one should be ignored with impunity and that a flagrant challenge of the whole principle of copyright should be accepted with meek acquiescence. Is no alternative explana- tion possible? Might it not be that by i602, when he entered Hamlet, Roberts' arrangement with the Chamberlain's Men was no longer operative, that his copy was the "bad" text, and that he then by a perfectly normal private assignment transferred it to Ling and Trundle? This would imply some breach in the rela- tions between Roberts and the Chamberlain's Men, but such might have come only after the publication of the bad quarto in i603 and after his last entrance of a Chamberlain's play, Troilus, early in February i603. I do not mean to pro- pose this as a probable explanation of the evidence-only to suggest that in dis- cussing the Hamlet entry one must not be too ready to see it as a blocking entry and Qi as a piracy, a violation of copyright.

Such shortcomings as I have found in this book are due mainly to the lecture form, in which of necessity the subject is cut into six neat segments. If I have thought two or three of these faults deserved attention in a review and have left little space for praise, it is with the feeling that the importance and the general excellence of the work will be rightly taken for granted. Any book by Greg will be automatically received as carrying the highest authority, and so this one should be received.

Folger Shakespeare Library GILES E. DAWSON

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