Old Plays: Shakespeare, Robert Dodsley, and the Early Modern Dramatic Canon

Abstract

oday we readily assert the timeless relevance of Shakespeare’s works, yet before the plays and playwright becamemodern, they were first outdated. t Indeed, following the close of the theaters in the seventeenth century, printers, readers, and spectators of Shakespeare’s plays regularly cast the works as part of an older time. There was a textual reality to those judgments. After the successful printing of a second edition ofMr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies in 1632, a new edition of the folio would not follow until the 1660s. And the most widely available imprint of that third edition (1664’s second issue) was padded out by the inclusion of six apocryphal titles (plus Pericles), advertised for their newness: “And unto this Impression is added seven Playes, never before Printed in Folio.” The printing of quarto editions also declined in the period following Shakespeare’s death in 1616, and especially once the folios were issued. Although a dozen single-play editions came into print between 1623 and 1637, only two quartos were printed after that through the interregnum—TheMerchant of Venice (1652) andOthello (1655).Therewere a few singleplay editions that circulated in the late seventeenth century: Othello remained