The Shakespeare Thefts (18 page)

To Steve Urkowitz, for making the world so much fun. To Bernice W. Kliman, Nick Clary, and Hardin Aasand, for two decades of warm and wonderful collaboration. To Jonathan Bate, for the drinks in New Orleans that started it all. To Michael Warren, whose eyes
actually
twinkle, for being the first person I ever saw buy
one of my books. To George Walton Williams, for literally showing me the ropes in the belfry of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon (
sweet bells jangled out of time
). To Noriko Sumimoto, for many acts of kindness in Japan. To Laurie Maguire, for thinking that I had a career worth watching before I did. To Stanley Wells, for sending his
Shakespeare Quiz Book
with travelers’ checks tucked into the “answer” pocket, the most charming stipend a reviewer ever received. To Peter Holland, for good-naturedly watching those episodes of CBS’s
Sunday Morning
in which I did not appear.

To James Mardock, for being the best colleague on the planet. To Stephen Orgel, for pretending that my collection is in his league. To Judy Sternlight, for seeing the right way. To my OLLI “granny groupies,” for making Reno such a vibrant place. To Rob Gander, for unaccountably thinking things I suggest are worth trying. To Mike Branch, for his Manhattan recipe. To Chris Coake, for confabbing advice. To Michael Best, for his vision of Shakespeare in the digital age. To Arthur and Janet Ing Freeman, for many evenings in “the most gracious room in London.” To David Fenimore, for being joined at the hip. To Lars and Richard, for the supreme pleasure of our annual dinners. And to Cami Allen and Alec Ausbrooks, for being the best support staff ever.

1
. “To the great Variety of Readers,” in
Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies
(London: Jaggard, 1623). See photo section. Reprinted in Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, eds.,
The RSC Complete Works of Shakespeare
(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. lxii.

2
. William Prynne, “To the Christian Reader” address in
Histrio-Mastix. The Players Scourge, or, Actors Tragedie
(London: Michael Sparke, 1632).

1
. H. Montgomery Hyde,
The Love that Dared Not Speak Its Name
(London: Heinemann, 1970), pp. 43–44.

2
. See Charles H. Carter, “Gondomar: Ambassador to James I,”
Historical Journal
7 (1964): 189–208.

3
. Thomas Scott,
The Second Part of Vox Populi, or Gondomar Appearing in the Likenes of Matchiavell
(London: William Jones, 1624) (see photo section); Richard Dugdale, “A Narrative of the Wicked Plots Carried on by Seignior Gondamore for Advancing the Popish Religion and Spanish Faction. Heartily Recommended to all Protestants,” reprinted in
Harleian Miscellany
, III, (London: T. Osborne, 1810), pp. 313–326.

4
. See Pauline Croft,
King James
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 23–24.

5
. See Glyn Redworth’s entry, “Diego Sarmiento de Acuña,”
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

6
. Carter, “Gondomar,” p. 205; they are called “the two James’s” in a manuscript in the Madrid Biblioteca Nacional, MS 9408.

7
. Redworth, “Diego Sarmiento de Acuña,” p. 246.

8
. Cited in
Diplomacia Hispano-Inglesa en el Siglo XVIII
, ed. Porfino Sanz Carnanes (Cuenca, Spain: Universidad de Castilia-La Mancha, 2002), p. 186.

9
. Melissa D. Aaron,
Global Economics: A History of the Theatre Business, the Chamberlain’s/King’s Men, and Their Plays, 1599–1642
(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003), p. 120.

10
. Edward M. Wilson and Olga Turner, “The Spanish Protest against
A Game at Chesse
,”
Modern Language Review
44 (1949): 480.

11
. See Sidney Lee, “Shakespeare and the Spanish Inquisition,”
London Times
, April 10–11, 1922, p. 15; reprinted in
The Living Age
313 (1922): pp. 460–466.

12
. Richard Ford,
Handbook for Travelers in Spain
, 3rd ed. (London: John Murray, 1855), p. 581.

13
. The letter is reproduced by José Antonio Calderón Quijano in “Correspondencia de Don Pascual de Gayangosy de su hija Emilia G. de Riaño en el Museo Británico,”
Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia
182 (1985): 288–289. Cited by Anthony James West,
The Shakespeare First Folio: The History of the Book. Volume II. A New Worldwide Census of First Folios
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 10.

14
. Cited in ibid., 288.

15
. Cited in ibid., 289.

16
. Cited in ibid.

17
. Mrs. Humphry Ward,
A Writer’s Recollections
(New York: Harper Brothers, 1918), pp. 256–257.

18
. Ibid., p. 257.

19
. West, pp. 9–12.

20
. Enrique Fernández de Cordóba and José Cortijo Medina, “Noticias Sobre la Venta de la Librería del
Conde de Gondomar al Rey Carlos IV y su Traslado al Palacio Nueva de Madrid,”
Cuadernos Para La Investigacion De La Literatura Hispanica
(Madrid), no. 24 (1999): 309–328, esp. p. 311, n. 8. See also Antonio Rodríguez-Moñino,
Historia de una Infamia Bibliográfica
(Madrid, 1965). Cited by West,
Shakespeare First Folio
, p. 12.

21
. See Cristina-Alvarez Millan and Claudia Heide,
Pascual de Gayangos: A Nineteenth-Century Spanish Arabist
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), p. 98.

22
. See Fernández de Cordóba and Cortijo Medina, “Noticias Sobre la Venta de la Librería,” p. 311, n. 8. Cited by West,
Shakespeare First Folio
, p. 12.

23
.
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art
23 (1876): 1.

1
. Cited by Robert K. Wittman,
Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures
(New York: Crown, 2010), p. 15.

2
.
The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue
, edited by Eric Rasmussen and Anthony James West, with Donald L. Bailey, Mark Farnsworth, Lara Hansen, Trey Jansen, and Sarah Stewart (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

3
. Lee,
Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: A Census of Extant Copies
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), p. 9.

4
. Cited by Anthony James West,
The Shakespeare First Folio: The History of the Book, Volume II: A New Worldwide Census of First Folios
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 307.

5
.
The Dorset County Chronicle
(1899), p. 4. Cited in West, p. 307.

6
.
In the fifteen years since I presented that prototype to the World Shakespeare Congress, the four editors of the New Variorum Hamlet project—Bernice W. Kliman, Nick Clary, Hardin Aasand, and I—along with scores of graduate students and research assistants working in research libraries throughout the world have recorded electronically the full text of all known commentary relating to Hamlet from over twelve thousand sources spanning four centuries, all of which is linked to the line number of the play that the comment addresses. Working in concert with Jeffery Triggs (who designed the electronic versions of the Oxford English Dictionary and the Scottish National Dictionary), we have now mounted the database on a website,
Hamlet-Works.org
, where it is freely available to all interested users
.

7
. Rasmussen and West, eds.,
The Shakespeare First Folios
.

1
. “Librarian’s ‘Heart Sank’ on Seeing Damaged Shakespeare First Edition,”
Telegraph
, June 21, 2010.

2
. In 1845, the folio had been rebound by Charles C. Tuckett & Son, of London. As was common with nineteenth-century bindings, the leather was a thick brown goatskin (presumably chosen because it could stand up to heavy use), all the edges were gilded, and Tuckett added two clasps to the fore-edges of the front and back covers. He trimmed the edges before he gilded them, after which the book measured precisely 330 mm × 210 mm.

3
. Mary Jordan and David Montgomery, “A Man Walked into a Bard One Day: Suspect in Folio Theft Is Something of a Character,”
Washington Post
, July 17, 2008, p. C1.

4
. “Raymond Scott’s Life of Deceit,”
Telegraph
, July 9, 2010.

5
. Stephen Adams, “Unemployed Book Dealer Guilty of Handling Stolen Shakespeare Folio,”
Telegraph
, July 10, 2010.

6
. Jordon and Montgomery, “A Man Walked into a Bard One Day,” p. C1.

7
. Ibid.

8
. Kathryn Knight, “Shakespeare in Lust: Meet the Eccentric Character at the Center of a Very Strange Tale,”
Daily Mail
, July 19, 2008.

9
. “Book Dealer Raymond Scott Denies Stealing Shakespeare First Folio,”
London Sunday Times
, February 27, 2010.

10
. Mark Tallentire, “Prison for Playboy Who Lost the Plot,”
Northern Echo
, August 3, 2010.

11
. Reported by Knight, “Shakespeare in Lust.”

12
. Quoted in the
Sunderland Echo
, August 2, 2010.

13
. Quoted in Knight, “Shakespeare in Lust.”

14
. Ibid.

15
. The claims are made on the book jacket of Scott and Kelly’s
Shakespeare & Love
(Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Tonto Books, 2010).

16
. Gavin Havery, “Accused Quoted Oil Tycoon during Police Questioning,”
Durham Times
, June 30, 2010.

17
. “Antiques Dealer Guilty of Handling Stolen Shakespeare Folio,”
Telegraph
, July 9, 2010.

18
. Gavin Havery, “Priceless First Edition Was ‘Brutalised,’”
Northern Echo
, June 18, 2010.

19
. Richard Savill, “Jobless Man ‘Mutilated’ Stolen Shakespeare Folio,”
Telegraph
, June 17, 2010.

20
. “Man Accused of Stealing Shakespeare First Edition in Court,”
Telegraph
, August 22, 2009.

21
. Mark Tallentire, “Shakespeare Folio Trial: ‘My Client Is an Old Fool,’”
Northern Echo
, July 8, 2010.

22
. “Shakespeare Accused Hands Antique Dictionary to Police,”
Northern Echo
, July 2, 2010.

23
. Mike Kelly, “Focus on the Life of Raymond Scott as He Faces Jail,”
Sunday Sun
, July 11, 2010.

24
. “Fantasist Raymond Scott Jailed for Eight Years,”
Sunderland Echo
, August 2, 2010.

25
. “Antique Dealer Who Handled Stolen Shakespeare Folio Jailed for Eight Years,”
Telegraph
, August 2, 2010.

26
. Kathryn Knight and David Wilkes, “‘Tome Raider’ Conman Jailed for Trying to Sell Stolen Shakespeare Manuscript for £m in Bid to Bring Cuban Showgirl to Britain,”
Daily Mail
, August 3, 2010.

27
. In a neat twist, another First Folio that now resides permanently at the Folger Shakespeare Library was the first known copy to leave England. In the seventeenth century, it belonged to Constantine Huygens, a Dutch polyglot and polymath diplomat, whose custom was to use “Constanter” as his autograph. Anthony James West discovered that “Constanter” appears in very pale brown ink above Shakespeare’s head on the title page of this volume, and ultraviolet photography confirms the presence of the date “1647” in the same hand. Huygens probably
purchased his folio in The Hague from an English bookseller who had escaped to Holland in 1646 during the English Civil War.

28
. Quoted in Sarah Gordon, “Man Jailed over Stolen Shakespeare Book,”
Sky News
, August 2, 2010.

29
. Tom Mullen, “Bill Bryson Welcomes Shakespeare’s First Folio Back to Durham,”
JournalLive—News
, July 15, 2010.

1
. Reported in Anthony James West,
The Shakespeare First Folio: The History of the Book. Volume II: A New Worldwide Census of First Folios
, p. 280.

2
. Mitsuo Nitta, e-mail to Eric Rasmussen, August 3, 2010.

3
. See Louis Jury, “Shakespeare First Edition Breaks Sotheby’s Record with £2.8m Sale,”
Independent
, July 14, 2006; Amy Iggulden, “Shakespeare First Folio Sells for £2.8m,”
Daily Telegraph
, July 14, 2006.

4
. Geoffrey Marcus,
The Maiden Voyage
(New York: Viking Press, 1969), p. 132.

1
. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s First Folio was given to the city of Stratford-upon-Avon in 1889 by Charles Flower, a local brewer who played a pivotal
role in establishing protective trusts of buildings associated with Shakespeare.

2
. “Address of Paul VI for the Fourth Centenary of the Birth of William Shakespeare,” Thursday, November 12, 1964,
Vatican Archives
,
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/speeches/1964/documents/hf_p-vi_spe_19641112_shakespeare_en.html
.

1
.
Calendar of State Papers Venetian
1603–1607, p. 77,
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=95604
.

2
.
See Katherine Duncan-Jones’s introductory discussion in her revised Arden edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (London: Methuen, 2010), pp. 66–69
.

3
.
“To the most noble and incomparable pair of brethren, William Earl of Pembroke, etc. Lord Chamberlain to the King’s most excellent majesty, and Philip Earl of Montgomery, etc.” in Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (London: Jaggard, 1623). See photo section
.