A NEW EDITION OF THE COMPLETE WORKS OF William Shakespeare, Britain’s leading playwright and poet, will receive a treatment of his collected works in time for the 450th anniversary of his birth. And, although printed letterpress on mould made paper and costing more than £11,000 for a complete set, the Folio Society’s Letterpress Shakespeare, is no vanity project.
Folio Society production director Joe Whitlock Blundell explains that no other edition of Shakespeare leaves the words unadorned on the page. This provides what he calls the “intellectual justification” for publishing the complete works. “All the editions of Shakespeare that I know of have lots of notes and glossaries on each page with the result that the text gets overwhelmed.
“The old editions which may not have this are no longer considered textually accurate. We wanted to use the latest scholarship for the text and leave the commentary material for a separate volume to explain the allusions and intangibles of the language. Readers need that help, but not on the same page.”
WHITLOCK BLUNDELL HAS BEEN working on the project for more than eight years, with Hamlet published in 2007 as the first play. The project is drawing to a close with April 23, Shakespeare’s birthday and date of his death, set as the deadline. “He was the greatest poet in the English language and there’s a need for a beautiful edition.”
This has been delivered thanks to the assistance of a number of highly skilled suppliers. Stan Lane, Gloucester Typesetting, was involved from the outset, working to come up with choice of 16pt Monotype Baskerville on 18pt leading. Caslon would be used for the title pages and those separating the acts of each play. “You can’t go wrong with Caslon for display pages,” he says.
Lane, who works alone, first keyed the text onto a perforated ribbon using a pneumatic Monotype keyboard to drive the caster. The page of lead was printed as a proof to be sent to Folio Society for reading and corrected according to the marks sent back. A second proof and reading was needed to ensure clean text with every punctuation mark in the appropriate place. “Their editorial and reading department is right on the ball,” he says. “I would be extremely surprised if anything at all got through.”
THE COMPLETED PAGES FOR THE INITIAL plays were send to Hand & Eye in London for Phil Abel to print. However, Lane was commissioned to print seven of the plays himself, something that makes him unique in this Shakespeare production, as with the other suppliers different people were always involved. As he had set and printed the leaves, his was a one-man effort. Like Hand & Eye, Gloucester Typesetting prints on a Heidelberg Cylinder. Most pages are black only; the title page however has the name of the play in a deep blue, almost black green or blood red to match the colour of the binding. The colour depends on whether the play is classed as a comedy, tragedy or history play.
The plays were printed four pages to view, each taking around six pallets of Zirkell paper from John Purcell says Abel. “They helped by delivery paper as we needed it and also storing sheets that had been printed,” he explains. Hand & Eye produced around 10 of the volumes he says. “It was a large project, Hamlet was the first with 2,000 copies, and a prestigious one.”
The plan had been to produce four volumes a year, but with the need to accelerate the project, a third printer needed to be brought on board. This was SchumacherGebler in Munich, a letterpress specialist which has the same version of Baskerville as Gloucester Typesetting. This business has an extensive typesetting department which took on some of the setting work, opting for a slighting different style to the English typesetter. The Germans also have a technique for levelling the height of the type and furniture to absolute smoothness before printing.
THE PRINTED SHEETS WERE SENT TO GERMANY to be bound by Lachenmaier in Reutlingen near Stuttgart. It has skills in both machine and hand binding and has worked with Folio Society since 2003. “They are superb binders, offering both hand and machine binding” says Joe. “Nobody in the UK has that facility, perhaps Hunter and Foulis 20 years ago, but cost has been everything in the UK while the Germans, Italians and Spanish have enormous pride in the quality of what they produce and will not accept second best.”
Each was quarter bound in goatskin leather with hand made marbled end papers, these also coordinating with the colour of the binding. Top edges were gilded, head bands and ribbon added. Each volume is presented with the companion book of commentary and notes in a buckram bound solander box.
Whitlock Blundell is satisfied with the result: “This is not just a pretty book, that some fine press publishing is associated with. This is something that has integrity, and a real intellectual justification.” A suitable commemoration of the landmark anniversary.
More on the Letterpress Shakespeare from the Folio Society here.
