Read The Shakespeare Thefts Online
Authors: Eric Rasmussen
4
.
See Graham Parry, “The Great Picture of Lady Anne Clifford,” in David Howarth, ed. Art and Patronage in the Caroline Court (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 210–217
.
5
.
Richard T. Spence, Lady Anne Clifford (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1997), p. 194
.
1
.
Trecentale Bodleianum
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), p. 34.
2
. Edmund Craster,
History of the Bodleian Library, 1845–1945
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 179.
3
. See L. W. Hanson, “The Shakespeare Collection in the Bodleian Library, Oxford,”
Shakespeare Survey
4 (1951): 82.
4
. When Anthony James West asked to examine the Bodleian First Folio in January 2000, Oxford said no. The premier scholar of First Folios who was looking at every copy in the world, and he was told no! Eventually Oxford relented. In June 2008, Lara Hansen and Sarah Stewart were allowed to examine the “deposit copy.” The difference between how the book was viewed in the seventeenth century and in the twenty-first century is fascinating. Once it was there for people to read, albeit chained; now it is an artifact to be preserved.
1
. A. N. L. Munby,
Phillipps Studies
, 5 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951–1960), 1.38.
2
. See Marvin Spevack,
James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps: The Life and Works of the Shakespearean
Scholar and Bookman
(London: Shepheard-Walwyw, 2001), p. 34.
3
. D. A. Winstanley, “Halliwell Phillipps and the Trinity College Library,”
The Library
, 5th ser. 3, no. 2 (1947–48): 277.
4
.
Catalogue of Printed Books at Middle Hill
(privately printed, 1847), entry 3084.
5
. W. A. Jackson, “Did Halliwell Steal and Mutilate the Phillipps Copy of
Hamlet
, 1603?”
Phillipps Studies
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952), II, p. 117.
6
. Jackson claimed to have seen these newspaper accounts but was unable to locate them subsequently.
7
. See Arthur and Janet Ing Freeman, “Did Halliwell Steal and Mutilate the First Quarto of
Hamlet?
”
The Library
, 7th ser., 2 (2001): 349–363, who provide evidence that the Dublin bookseller M. W. Rooney acquired the 1603
Hamlet
from a student at Trinity College, Dublin, and that Rooney then sold it to a bookseller who sold it to Halliwell-Phillipps, who, in turn, sold it to the British Museum. The Freemans argue that the entry in the Phillipps catalog may refer to the facsimile that was produced in 1825, shortly after the first copy was discovered.
8
. Peter W. M. Blayney, “Exploring the Halliwell-Phillipps Scrapbooks,” Shakespeare Association of America Meeting (Chicago, 1995; unpublished).
9
. A. N. L. Munby,
Phillipps Studies No. 4: The Formation of the Phillipps Library 1841 to 1872
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), p. 17, n. 3.
1
. See Janet Ing Freeman, “John Harris 1791–1873,”
Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons
, ed. C. S. Nicholls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
1
.
The Hill-Top Magazine
, July 5, 1914.
2
.
“Accident at Moosehead Lake: Particulars of the Drowning of a Providence Gentleman and His Wife,” New York Times, October 6, 1881
.
3
.
Ibid
.
4
.
The Harrises are not the only owners to have drowned: A First Folio currently in the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore once belonged to T. Harrison Garrett, who led a brief but interesting life. At the age of twelve, he twice ran away from home and unsuccessfully tried to join the Confederate Army. At the precocious age of fourteen, he started his college career at Princeton, where he began to satisfy his lifelong passion for collecting rare books and coins. According to notes found in the volume
,
Garrett acquired his copy of the First Folio in 1865 when he was only fifteen. A sophomore at Princeton that year and the son of a wealthy man, he clearly had the means, and obviously the interest, to buy one. Garrett’s life ended dramatically in 1888 when his yacht,
Gleam
, was struck by a steamer,
Joppa
, in Chesapeake Bay, and he drowned.
5
. Sidney Lee,
Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: A Census of Extant Copies
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), p. 34.
6
.
Bulletin of the New York Public Library
18 (May 1914), p. 438.
1
. An interesting canine aside: One First Folio, now found in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, has the paw print of a small dog next to Henry V’s wooing of Princess Katherine. In another copy that my team has examined, one belonging to the Marquis of Northampton, five paw prints appear toward the beginning of
Love’s Labour’s Lost
. They give the distinct impression that a cat with dirty paws jumped up onto the volume as it lay sitting on a table or a lap. It then appears that before it could take a full sixth step, the cat was snatched off of the book.
1
. John Milton,
Eikonoclastes
(London: Matthew Simmons, 1649).
2
. See Herbert’s will, dated December 20, 1679, cited in Ronald H. Fritze’s entry on Thomas Herbert in the
Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
3
. Herbert published an account of his experiences during Charles I’s captivity entitled
Threnodia Carolina
in 1678. After Herbert’s death, Anthony Wood published an extended extract of this account in
Athenae Oxoniensis
(London, 1691). Herbert’s narrative was then republished in full in
Memoirs of the Last Two Years of the Reign of the Unparalleled Prince of Very Blessed Memory, King Charles I
(London, 1702).
4
. Thomas Herbert,
A Relation of Some Yeares Travaile Begunne Anno 1626. Into Afrique and the Greater Asia
. (London: William Stansby, 1634).
5
. T. A. Birrell,
English Monarchs and Their Books: from Henry VII to Charles II
, The Panizzi Lectures (London: British Library, 1986), p. 46.
6
. Fritze, entry on Thomas Herbert,
Dictionary of National Biography
.
7
. British Library MS Egerton 2358 folio 124. Cited in ibid.
8
. Edward Edwards,
Memoirs of Libraries
(London: Trubner & Co., 1859), p. 129.
1
. Alice Ford-Smith, “‘Is This a Fortune that I See before Me?’ The Sale of Dr. Williams’s Library First Folio,”
Rare Books Newsletter
87 (March 2010): 13.
1
. FBI file number I.C. 87-1672, August 30, 1941, National Stolen Property Act.
2
. The list of Kwiatowski’s aliases is given by Lawrence S. Thompson, “Notes on Bibliokleptomania,”
Bulletin of the New York Public Library
(September 1944), reissued as
Bibliokleptomania
(Berkeley, Calif.: Peacock Press, 1968), p. 35.
3
. Robert M. Hitchcock, “Case of a Missing Shakespeare,”
Esquire
16 (December 1941): 93.
4
. Philip Brooks, “Notes on Rare Books,”
New York Times
, November 3, 1940, p. 110.
5
. Frederick Rudolph,
Perspectives: A Williams Anthology
(Williamstown, Mass.: Williams College, 1983), p. 266.
6
. The forged letter is preserved in the Chapin Library’s archives.
7
. Hitchcock, “Case of a Missing Shakespeare,” 93.
8
. Lucy Eugenia Osborne’s typed deposition concerning the theft is preserved in the Chapin Library’s archives.
9
. William Mangil, “They’ve Kidnapped Shakespeare,”
True Detective Mysteries
32 (1941). Reprinted in Rudolph,
Perspectives: A Williams Anthology
, p. 268.
10
. Ibid., p. 273.
11
. Ibid., p. 275.
12
. Copy in the Chapin Library archives dated February 25, 1940.
13
. Quoted in Mark E. Rondeau, “The Bard’s Wild Ride: The Almost Forgotten Theft of a Shakespeare First Folio from Williams College,”
Williams College Commencement Newspaper
(2006).
14
. Mangil, “They’ve Kidnapped Shakespeare,” in Rudolph,
Perspectives: A Williams Anthology
, p. 277.
15
. Ibid.
16
. Ibid., p. 278.
17
. Ibid.
18
. Ibid., p. 281.
19
. Ibid., p. 282.
20
. Hitchcock, “Case of a Missing Shakespeare,” 258.
21
. Mangil, “They’ve Kidnapped Shakespeare,” in Rudolph, p. 284.
22
. Hitchcock, “Case of a Missing Shakespeare,” p. 260.
23
. Mangil, “They’ve Kidnapped Shakespeare,” in Rudolph, p. 285.
24
. Hitchcock, “Case of a Missing Shakespeare,” p. 260.
1
. See F. C. Morgan, “Hereford Cathedral. The Vicars’ Choral Library,”
Transactions of the Wool-hope Naturalists Field Club
35, Part III (1958): 207–358; see also Anthony James West, “Two Early Gifts,”
The Library
, 6th ser., 3 (1995): 271– 272.
2
. The authority for this account is Sir John Harington, the inventor of the flush toilet, from whom the euphuism “john” derives.
1
.
Aubrey’s Brief Lives
, edited from the original manuscript and with a life of John Aubrey by Oliver Lawson Dick (Jaffrey, N.H.: David R. Godine, 1999), pp. 275–276.
2
. See Jane Milling and Peter Thomson, eds.,
The Cambridge History of British Theatre
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 450.
3
. Quoted in E. A. J. Honigmann and Susan Brock,
Playhouse Wills, 1558–1642: An Edition of Wills
by Shakespeare and His Contemporaries in the London Theatre
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 243.
1
.
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).
2
. Paul Collins, “Folioed Again! Why Shakespeare Is the World’s Worst Stolen Treasure,”
Slate.com
, July 17, 2008.
3
. Ibid.
4
. Robert K. Wittman,
Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures
(New York: Crown, 2010), p. 15.
5
. Wittman notes: “In the early 1980s a drug dealer who couldn’t find anyone to buy a stolen Rembrandt worth $1 million sold it to an undercover FBI agent for a mere $23,000. When undercover police in Norway sought to buy back
The Scream
, Edvard Munch’s stolen masterpiece known around the world, the thieves agreed to a deal for $750,000. The painting is worth $75 million” (ibid., pp. 15–16).
1
. The discussion in this chapter is adapted from my essay “The Texts of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
and Their Origins,” in
The Three-Text Hamlet: Parallel Texts of the First and Second Quartos and First Folio
, 2nd ed., edited by Bernice W. Kliman and Paul Bertram (New York: AMS Press, 2003), pp. ix–xxiii. Used by permission.
2
. William Prynne, “To the Christian Reader” address in
Histrio-Mastix. The Players Scourge, or, Actors Tragedie
(London: Michael Sparke, 1632).
3
. Charlton Hinman,
The Printing and Proof-Reading of the First Folio of Shakespeare
, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963).
Aasand, Hardin,
191n6
Abbott, Charles David,
131
Actor: A Treatise on the Art of Playing, The
(Hill),
141
Allen, Paul,
xv
Annals
(Camden),
xii
Anne, Queen of England,
120
Anthony, Henry Bowen,
104
Arctic
, sinking of,
18
Around the World in Eighty Days
(Verne),
22
Art Loss Register,
18
Arundell, Lord Thomas,
19
Arundel Castle,
108–12
Askew, Anthony,
120
Astor, William Waldorf,
105
Aubrey, John,
163
Baker, Sir Frederick Francis,
49–50
Barrymore, John,
165
Bartlett, John Russell,
102
Beatles,
148
Bedford, Francis,
134
Beeston, Christopher,
161–5
Beeston, William,
161–6
Benfield, Robert,
68