1437950 1623 Shakespeare. Loves Labour's Lost. Complete.

 

SHAKESPEARE.  Loues Labour’s lost. Complete. [London: Isaac Jaggard and Ed. Blount, 1623]. Folio (8 by 12-1/2 inches), modern half orange morocco gilt; 22 leaves.

 

Eleven leaves extracted from the landmark First Folio (1623) "intrinsically the most valuable volume in the whole range of English Literature" (Grolier 100 19) Containing the complete text of one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies, Love’s Labour’s Lost.

 

First performed in 1594 or 1595, Love’s Labour’s Lost is presumably one of the earliest plays from Shakespeare’s pen, written around the same time as Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is surely among his wittiest and linguistically nimblest; more of its lines are rhymed than in any other of the Bard’s works.

 

Shakespeare’s associates John Heminges and Henry Condell prepared the First Folio; in 1623, William and Isaac Jaggard along with the bookseller Edward Blount published it. Of Shakespeare’s 39 undisputed plays, 18 survive solely because they appear in the 1623 Folio, making the book "intrinsically the most valuable volume in the whole range of English Literature" (Grolier 100 19). Fewer than 250 copies of the First Folio survive, and most of those copies are incomplete. The earliest extant printed text of Loues Labour’s Lost is the 1598 quarto edition. See Jaggard, 378, 418. A fine copy.

 

The only quarto of Loves Labors Lost to precede the First Folio was printed in London by W. White for Cutbert Burby in 1598.  There are only eleven known copies, (three of which are in the Folger Museum??) so for all intents and purposes the Folio represents the earliest obtainable copy of the play, considered by many to be Shakespeare’s first complete play.

 

Love’s Labors Lost is alone among all of Shakespeare’s works as having no antecedent.  The work is entirely original, being based on no known story or characters, and thus it could be said that the present copy is about as close as one is likely to get to having a Shakespeare original.

 

There is a fascinating passage toward the end of Act IV in the Folio text in which Shakespeare can be seen “reworking” a crucial lengthy speech given by Berowne about love.  A full twenty-three lines of text (lines 297 thru 319) are immediately followed by a substantially reworked passage suggesting that the printed text retains elements of Shakespeare’s first draft as well as the final version.

 

Inclusion of Loves Labors Lost in the First Folio was made possible by the printer Jaggard forming a partnership with John Smethwick who also owned the rights to Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.  In Elizabethan times a play was originally owned by the acting company who first performed it, the company then free to sell the rights to whomever they chose, typically a bookseller or printer.  The new owner would then register his ownership with the Stationer’s company which would provide a rather limited enforcement of his rights.