The First Folio is the usual name for the book published in 1623 as Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. It was the first publication to collect together the dramatic works of Shakespeare. Half of the plays between its covers had previously been published in single (quarto) editions; the other half were being published for the first time. This handsome folio volume, dedicated to William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke and his brother Philip, Earl of Montgomery, was fronted by two letters (one to the noble dedicatees, one to the readers) by John Heminge and Henry Condell of the King's Men. The prefatory material also included an engraved portrait of the author, two poems by Ben Jonson, and three further poems by less famous writers: Hugh Holland, Leonard Digges, and someone calling themselves 'I.M.' - thought to be James Mabbe. I and J were interchangeable at this time. Published seven years after William Shakspere's death, the First Folio is the earliest dateable document that seems to connect the author to Stratford-upon-Avon. Not that it does so in a direct manner. The words 'Stratford' and 'Avon' appear in two separate poems. For many orthodox scholars these references are clinching proof that William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the plays that follow. Ben Jonson, they argue' knew Shakspere personally' and Leonard Digges' one of the poets of the preface' was the stepson of Thomas Russell' who lived just outside Stratford-upon-Avon and oversaw Shakspere's will. We'll look into that claim more closely in this section of the course. Ben Jonson's Folio poems to and about Shakespeare are particularly important to study. Jonson's relationship with Shakspere, or Shakespeare, is decidedly ambiguous, as you may have guessed from our brief look at his character Insulso Sogliardo. In essence, the slippery nature of texts, let alone Elizabethan texts, let alone poetry, mean that the First Folio is not the clinching proof of authorship that some people believe it to be. Jonson may be more important to the First Folio - and indeed the wider authorship question - than the poems in the preface. Jonson's biographer David Riggs has argued persuasively for Jonson being the editor of the First Folio. The First Folio 'follows the same methods of punctuation that Jonson used in his own Works instead of that of previously published quarto editions'. In addition, according to Riggs, 'the extensive use of parentheses, semicolons, and end-stopped lines in the 1623 folio owes more to Jonson's example than to Shakespeare's habits of composition'. It has even been suggested that Jonson wrote the letters attributed to Heminge and Condell which launch the volume. Early critic George Steevens noted that the letter 'had much of the manner of Ben Jonson' and after studying it further stated, 'I do not hesitate now to assert that the greater part of it was written by him'. Evidence to support Jonson's being the editor of the First Folio includes the fact that in his private notebooks he derided as ridiculous a particular line of Julius Caesar - a line which has been silently corrected in the folio. And of all the contributors to the volume, it is Jonson's two poems - the poem facing the engraving and the two-page eulogy - which have been given the most prominence. As we have come to expect from Jonson, they are not straightforward. Before we move on to the texts in the First Folio preface, it's useful to have a little more context about Jonson's seemingly two-faced relationship with Shakespeare. Jonson was the most successful satirist of his age. His stock-in-trade was the veiled reference and the double-meaning. As a man who had been jailed for his writing, and had spies set upon him while in prison, he knew the defensive value of language that works on a number of levels. As a satirist writing under a repressive regime, he had developed the self-preservational qualities of ambiguity and deniability on all subjects, whether they were immediately and obviously dangerous, or not. Perhaps he was inconsistent about Shakespeare for all the usual reasons that people become hypocrites, spouting one set of opinions in private and another in public; he wanted to remain in favor with the powers-that-be. In 1618, Jonson told Sir William Drummond that Shakespeare 'wanted Art' - which suggests he thought Shakespeare lacked study in the art and craft of writing. But five years later, in the main Folio poem, Jonson praised him extremely, calling him 'Soule of the Age' and 'Starre of Poets'. If one holds the orthodox line, Jonson is simply two-faced. But he addresses his Folio eulogy to Shakespeare with a seemingly pointed, capitalized, larger font qualifier, 'To ... The AUTHOR Mr. William Shakespeare'. Why make so much of the words 'The Author'? It is perfectly possible to read Jonson as making a distinction between this man - the author of the works contained within - and the broker Shakspere, who many scholars argue he lampooned in the character of Insulso Sogliardo, and non-Stratford audience believe was his 'Poet-Ape'. Jonson arguably made another distinction. The cast lists in Jonson's Works, a large folio edition which he carefully edited and published in the year of Shakspere's death, lists 'William Shakespeare' as a principal actor in two of his plays. One should recognize that even from the perspective of orthodox scholar, these cast lists are not exactly truthful. We have no evidence to corroborate that Shakspere was ever the principal actor in anything. Then as now, principal actors were noticeable and remarked upon. No one ever remarked on Shakspere's acting, and scholars generally concur that if he took on acting role, they were very small ones. So why would Jonson list him as a principal actor, with his name, along with that of Richard Burbage, topping these lists? Some non-Stratfordians feel it is significant that Jonson spells the name differently in the two lists. Jonson has a 'Will Shakespeare' a 'Principall Comedian' in Every Man out of His Humour. But a hyphenated 'Will. Shake-hyphen-Speare' as 'Principall Tragedian' in Sejanus. Given Johnson's reputation for taking meticulous care in the presentation of his texts, and given the hyphenation is not explained by the requirements of font or layout, one may read the two forms if the name is deliberately distinct. Does the hyphenated form stand for the author beneath a pseudonym? It would be, one might imagine, a tragedy for an author not to be able to lay claim to his works of genius, making him, indeed, a 'principal tragedian'. Does the unhyphenated form stand for Shakspere of Stratford, the broker and 'front'? Giving him the title of 'Principall Comedian' would fit with the depiction of Sogliardo as a clown and Drayton's focus on his 'comic vein'. As you've learned, we can't argue that hyphenating a name means that it is automatically a pseudonym, but when the two different forms arise in these two contexts under the hand of a man as precise and as wily as Jonson, it certainly raises a question or two. I hope you'll have a few more questions by the end of this module.
