Page:A Census of Shakespeare's Plays in Quarto (1916).djvu/23

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INTRODUCTION
Intermediate Editions Before 1623.
  Public Ownership. Private Ownership. Totals.
Titus Andronicus, 1600 1 1 2
Titus Andronicus, 1611 6 (7) 8 (9) 14 (16)
Richard II, 1598a 4 4 8
Richard II, 1598b 0 1 1
Richard II, 1608 3 5 8
Richard II, 1615 6 (13) 7 (17) 13 (30)
Richard III, 1598 4 3 7
Richard III, 1602 2 1 3
Richard III, 1605 2 2 4
Richard III, 1612 6 4 10
Richard III, 1622 5 (19) 1 (11) 6 (30)
Romeo and Juliet, 1609 3 3 6
Romeo and Juliet, n. d.[1] 6 (9) 4 (7) 10 (16)
Henry IV, Part I, 1599 6 5 11
Henry IV, Part I, 1604 2 0 2
Henry IV, Part I, 1608 2 5 1
Henry IV, Part I, 1613 6 4 10
Henry IV, Part I, 1622 6 (21) 6 (21) 12 (42)
Merchant of Venice, 1600 [1619] 11 12 23
Henry V, 1602 1 1 2
Hany V, 1608 [1619] 12 (13) 18 (19) 30 (32)
Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1600 [1619] 11 14[2] 25
Merry Wives of Windsor, 1619 12 16 28
Hamlet, 1611 9 7 16
Hamlet, n. d.[1] 7 (16) 8 (15) 15 (31)
King Lear, 1608 [1619] 11 17[3] 28
  ——— ——— ———
  144 157 301

The number of editions registered in this table is twenty-six, giving an average of five and one half copies in public, and six in private ownership, or a total of eleven and one half copies extant per edition, a result, however, which, as will be shown, is affected by a special circumstance, and hardly entitles us to say that these intermediate quartos as a class are less rare than the First Editions, which yielded an average of eight. The lowest figures in our new list are one for the single copy of the the newly differentiated third quarto (the second of 1598) of Richard II, two apiece for Titus Andronicus (1600), Henry IV, Part I (1604) and Henry V (1602), three for Richard III (1603) and four for Richard III (1605).: As to the rarity of Titus Andronicus we may recall the fact that of the original edition of 1594 only one copy survives without attempting any further explanation. The other five editions are all of popular chronicle plays and the figures are not in themselves very surprising. It may be just worth noting, however, as the dates lie so close together, that in 1599 Sir

  1. 1.0 1.1 Perhaps after 1623.
  2. No. 557 assumed to be of this edition.
  3. No. 358 assumed to be of this edition.
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