James Roberts, Writing Tables, and the First Quarto of Hamlet

Against the current trend to canonize the 1603 First Quarto of Hamlet, this paper develops a new account of the origins of the text.  It examines the connection between shorthand, as the proposed mode of heavily disruptive textual transmission, and writing books with multiple erasable leaves, as the vehicle for that transmission.  My starting point is a simple observation: the monopoly on writing books was exercised by none other than James Roberts, the stationer who first entered Hamlet in the Stationers’ Register.   Though I note that the Q1 text itself contains a passage that alludes to the use of writing books in the theatre, the argument of my paper is grounded in book history.  In 1602-1603, as Roberts was about to lose his privilege to print almanacs, he attempted to redirect his activities by securing the entitlement to plays of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.  The company took strenuous measures to block his efforts to have their plays published.  Q1 Hamlet, which was neither printed nor published by Roberts, emerges as the outcome of a disruptive transmission that was fortuitously enabled by his patent.

John Jowett is Professor of Shakespeare Studies, and Deputy Director of The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. His teaching and research focuses mainly on Shakespeare and early modern drama, with particular reference to editing and all areas of textual study.

John is General Editor of the New Oxford Shakespeare, which will eventuate in a completely new print and electronic edition of Shakespeare's Complete Works. This will be a major multiplatform edition of Shakespeare in both original and moder spelling formats, freshly edited by a small, cohesive international team of scholars.

Tea and Coffee will be available in BS/008 15 minutes before the start of the seminar.