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Peter Short (printer)
Peter Short (died 1603) was an English printer based in London in the later Elizabethan era. He printed several first editions and early texts of Shakespeare's works. Career Short became a "freeman" (full member) of the Stationers Company on 1 March 1589, and operated his own business from that year until his death; he was partnered with Richard Yardley until 1593. His shop was at the sign of the star on Bread Street Hill. About a third of his titles involved translations from Latin or contemporary European languages. Short began publishing music in 1597; he issued Thomas Morley's ''A Plaine and Easy Introduction'' and both ''Canzonets'', Dowland's '' First Book of Songs'', Holborne's ''Cittharn School'', and Hunnis's '' Seven Sobs''. Short used type which was passed on and used by his successors (Humphrey Lownes, James Young). In an era when the functions of publisher and printer were often largely (though not entirely) separate, Short was primarily a printer and only seconda ...
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Elizabethan Era
The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia (a female personification of Great Britain) was first used in 1572, and often thereafter, to mark the Elizabethan age as a renaissance that inspired national pride through classical ideals, international expansion, and naval triumph over Spain. This "golden age" represented the apogee of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of poetry, music and literature. The era is most famous for its theatre, as William Shakespeare and many others composed plays that broke free of England's past style of theatre. It was an age of exploration and expansion abroad, while back at home, the Protestant Reformation became more acceptable to the people, most certainly after the Spanish Armada was repelled. It was also the end of the period when England was a separate r ...
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Marcus Annaeus Lucanus
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (3 November 39 AD – 30 April 65 AD), better known in English as Lucan (), was a Roman poet, born in Corduba (modern-day Córdoba), in Hispania Baetica. He is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial Latin period, known in particular for his epic ''Pharsalia''. His youth and speed of composition set him apart from other poets. Life Three brief ancient accounts allow for the reconstruction of a modest biography – the earliest attributed to Suetonius, another to an otherwise unknown Vacca, and the third anonymous and undated – along with references in Martial, Cassius Dio, Tacitus's ''Annals'', and one of Statius's ''Silvae''. Lucan was the son of Marcus Annaeus Mela and grandson of Seneca the Elder; he grew up under the tutelage of his uncle Seneca the Younger. Born into a wealthy family, he studied rhetoric at Athens and was probably provided with a philosophical and Stoic education by his uncle. His wife was Polla Argentar ...
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1598 In Literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1598. Events *Before September – A second edition of '' Love's Labour's Lost'' appears in London as the first known printing of a Shakespeare play to have his name on the title page ("Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere"). * February 23 – Thomas Bodley refounds the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. *March 28 – Philip Henslowe contracts Edward Alleyn and Thomas Heywood to act for the Admiral's Men in London for two years. *April 30 – A comedy, by anonymous playwriter about an expedition of soldiers, is very first theatrical performance in North America staged near El Paso for Spanish colonists. *May 3 – The Spanish playwright Lope de Vega marries for the second time, to Juana de Guardo. *c. May – The premiėre of William Haughton's '' Englishmen for My Money, or, A Woman Will Have Her Will'' introduces what is seen as the first city comedy, probably by the Admi ...
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Cuthbert Burby
Cuthbert Burby (died 1607) was a London bookseller and publisher of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. He is known for publishing a series of significant volumes of English Renaissance drama, including works by William Shakespeare, Robert Greene, John Lyly, and Thomas Nashe. Beginnings Burby ("sometimes confused with Cuthbert Burbage," though there is no known connection between the two men) was the son of Edmund Burby, a farmer in Erlsey, Bedfordshire. Cuthbert Burby was apprenticed to the stationer William Wright for eight years as of Christmas 1584, and became a "freeman" (full member) of the Stationers Company on 13 January 1592. He did business in London between 1592 and 1607. As his title pages attest, his shops were located 1) "under Saint Mildred's Church in the Poultry," 2) "at the Royal Exchange," and 3) "in Paul's Churchyard at the sign of the Swan." He had "a large, flourishing, respectable business...." Early in his career as a publisher, Burby issued works ...
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Venus And Adonis (Shakespeare Poem)
''Venus and Adonis'' is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare published in 1593. It is probably Shakespeare's first publication. The poem tells the story of Venus, the goddess of Love; of her unrequited love; and of her attempted seduction of Adonis, an extremely handsome young man, who would rather go hunting. The poem is pastoral, and at times erotic, comic and tragic. It contains discourses on the nature of love, and observations of nature. It is written in stanzas of six lines of iambic pentameter rhyming ABABCC; although this verse form was known before Shakespeare's use, it is now commonly known as the ''Venus and Adonis'' stanza, after this poem. This form was also used by Edmund Spenser and Thomas Lodge. The poem consists of 199 stanzas or 1,194 lines. It was published originally as a quarto pamphlet and published with great care. It was probably printed using Shakespeare's fair copy. The printer was Richard Field, who, like Shakespeare, was from Stratford. ''Venus ...
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The Rape Of Lucrece
''The Rape of Lucrece'' (1594) is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare about the legendary Roman noblewoman Lucretia. In his previous narrative poem, '' Venus and Adonis'' (1593), Shakespeare had included a dedicatory letter to his patron, the Earl of Southampton, in which he promised to compose a "graver labour". Accordingly, ''The Rape of Lucrece'' has a serious tone throughout. The poem begins with a prose dedication addressed directly to the Earl of Southampton, which begins, "The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end." It refers to the poem as a pamphlet, which describes the form of its original publication of 1594. The dedication is followed by "The Argument", a prose paragraph that summarizes the historical context of the poem, which begins ''in medias res''. The poem contains 1,855 lines, divided into 265 stanzas of seven lines each. The meter of each line is iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme for each stanza is ABABBCC, a format known as "rhyme royal" ...
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Henry IV, Part 1
''Henry IV, Part 1'' (often written as ''1 Henry IV'') is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written no later than 1597. The play dramatises part of the reign of King Henry IV of England, beginning with the battle at Homildon Hill late in 1402, and ending with King Henry's victory in the Battle of Shrewsbury in mid-1403. In parallel to the political conflict between King Henry and a rebellious faction of nobles, the play depicts the escapades of King Henry's son, Prince Hal (the future King Henry V), and his eventual return to court and favour. ''Henry IV, Part 1'' is the first of Shakespeare's two plays which deal with the reign of Henry IV (the other being '' Henry IV, Part 2''), and the second play in the Henriad, a modern designation for the tetralogy of plays that deal with the successive reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, and Henry V. From its first performance on, it has been an extremely popular work both with the public and critics. Characte ...
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Book Size
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from ''folio'' (the largest), to ''quarto'' (smaller) and ''octavo'' (still smaller). Historically, these terms referred to the format of the book, a technical term used by printers and bibliographers to indicate the size of a leaf in terms of the size of the original sheet. For example, a quarto (from Latin ''quartō'', ablative form of ''quartus'', fourth) historically was a book printed on sheets of paper folded in half twice, with the first fold at right angles to the second, to produce 4 leaves (or 8 pages), each leaf one fourth the size of the original sheet printed – note that a ''leaf'' refers to the single piece of paper, whereas a ''page'' is one side of a leaf. Because the actual format of many modern books cannot be determined fro ...
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Bad Quarto
A bad quarto, in Shakespearean scholarship, is a quarto-sized printed edition of one of Shakespeare's plays that is considered to be unauthorised, and is theorised to have been pirated from a theatrical performance without permission by someone in the audience writing it down as it was spoken or, alternatively, written down later from memory by an actor or group of actors in the cast – the latter process has been termed "memorial reconstruction". Since the quarto derives from a performance, hence lacks a direct link to the author's original manuscript, the text would be expected to be "bad", i.e. to contain corruptions, abridgements and paraphrasings.Duthie, George Ian. "Introduction; the good and bad quartos". ''The Bad Quarto of Hamlet''. CUP Archive (1941). pp. 1-4 In contrast, a "good quarto" is considered to be a text that is authorised and which may have been printed from the author's manuscript (or a working draft thereof, known as his ''foul papers''), or from a scribal ...
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Henry VI, Part 3
''Henry VI, Part 3'' (often written as ''3 Henry VI'') is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1591 and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. Whereas '' 1 Henry VI'' deals with the loss of England's French territories and the political machinations leading up to the Wars of the Roses and '' 2 Henry VI'' focuses on the King's inability to quell the bickering of his nobles, and the inevitability of armed conflict, ''3 Henry VI'' deals primarily with the horrors of that conflict, with the once stable nation thrown into chaos and barbarism as families break down and moral codes are subverted in the pursuit of revenge and power. Although the ''Henry VI'' trilogy may not have been written in chronological order, the three plays are often grouped together with ''Richard III'' to form a tetralogy covering the entire Wars of the Roses saga, from the death of Henry V in 1422 to the rise to power of Henry VII in 1485. It was the succes ...
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First Quarto
The earliest texts of William Shakespeare's works were published during the 16th and 17th centuries in quarto or folio format. Folios are large, tall volumes; quartos are smaller, roughly half the size. The publications of the latter are usually abbreviated to Q1, Q2, etc., where the letter stands for "quarto" and the number for the first, second, or third edition published. Plays Eighteen of the 36 plays in the First Folio were printed in separate and individual editions prior to 1623. ''Pericles'' (1609) and ''The Two Noble Kinsmen'' (1634) also appeared separately before their inclusions in folio collections (the Shakespeare Third Folio and the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio, respectively). All of these were quarto editions, with two exceptions: ''The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York'', the first edition of ''Henry VI, Part 3'', was printed in octavo form in 1595, as was the 1611 edition of ''The most lamentable tragedy of Titus Andronicus''. In chronological order, t ...
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The First Book Of Songs (1597)
The First Book of Songs (title in Early Modern English: ''First Booke of Songes or Ayres'') is a collection of songs by John Dowland which includes one instrumental piece. The book was published in London in 1597 and was reprinted four times during the composer's lifetime. The first edition was printed by Peter Short. It contains a dedication to the Lord Chamberlain, Sir George Carey, Baron Hunsdon, and his wife Elizabeth, Lady Hunsdon (née Elizabeth Spencer). Music The vocal writing is often described as lute songs, implying that it is written for solo voice and accompaniment. The music is set out this way in the Stainer & Bell edition, for example. However, the editions printed in the composer's lifetime give a different picture of the composer's intentions, because he offered more than one way of performing his music. All the songs in the ''First Book of Songs'' can be performed in a four-part version (as the title page suggests) and they thus come into the category of m ...
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