Books were being published on every subject not just exploration. While the ocean was becoming less a barrier for defense, and more a means of trade, expanding knowledge and wealth, daily life everywhere that bordered the sea was rapidly being changed.
More common people were learning to read. Publishers were springing up everywhere looking for popular texts to offer the new public. By the late 1580s, the humble pamphlet began to take over the market. The freelance pamphleteer and playwright arrived to meet the demand for entertaining fare.
Among the vast range of topics the new authors offered publishing itself received considerable attention. While authors railed at the poor pay and conditions of their craft they also mentioned that the “weight” of a competitor's works was as little as “Boyes paper-dragons that they let fly with a packthrid in the fields”. They mention that play bills and title pages of popular literature were pasted up on London Stone, the columns of Saint Paul's, the walls of the universities, any convenient place that passersby would gathering around to read advertisements.
None of the playbills or kites survives but the accounts of the pamphleteers do. None of the title-page advertisements, none of the help wanted ads of soldiers between wars, of craftsmen and able bodied workmen, none of it survives. We know of them — and a great deal more — from the colorful descriptions of the playwrights and pamphleteers.
In Thomas Middleton's Father Hubburd's Tales (1604) we learn not only that Mother Hubbard was already a byword at the beginning of the 17th century but that books in the book stalls were wrapped rather than bound into covers.
To the true general patron of all Muses, Musicians, Poets and Picture - drawers, Sir Christopher Clutchfist,
*
I hear that they rail against you in booksellers' shops very dreadfully, that you have used them most unknightly, in offering to take their books, and would never return so much as would pay for the covers, beside the gilding too, which stands them in somewhat, you know, and a yard and a quarter of broad sixpenny ribband; the price of that you are not ignorant of yourself, because you wear broad shoe-string; and they cannot be persuaded but that you pull the strings off from their books, and so maintain your shoes all the year long; and think, verily, if the book be in folio, that you take off the parchment, and give it to your tailor, but save all the gilding together, which may amount in time to gild you a pair of spurs withal.1
Again, what wonderful color. Books were sold with pages loose and binding was done by order or by the customer after sale. The booksellers often found that the binding string on their quarto editions had been removed to serve as someone's shoelaces. The larger folios needing sturdier stuff were wrapped in parchment paper which penny-pinching noble customers removed to save a few pence on their tailors' bills.
What the nobleman does not do is provide patronage to authors. With modern mass printing patronage was fast going out of style.
Some 20 years later, the book-seller is so much the master of those who depend upon his shop that the situation of the author and the various other tradesmen is desperate. Not only has patronage perished but the book-seller is the new Clutchfist.
The retailer of bookes, commonly called Booke-seller is a Trade, which being well governed, and lymited within certaine bounds, might become somewhat serviceable to the rest. But as it is now (for the most part abused) the Booke-seller hath not onely made the Printer, the Binder, and the Clasp-maker a slave to him: but hath brought Authors, yea the whole Commonwealth, and all the liberal sciences, into bondage. For he makes all professors of Art, labour for his profit, at his owne price, and utters it to the Commonwealth in such fashion, and at those rates, which please himselfe.2
The author's complaint, however, is rich for us for the author gives us a picture of the common book at the time. The printer delivers the book unbound in loose sheets. The binder depends upon the bookseller for referral unless the buyer has his own man. Better books feature clasps. Clasp-makers must compete for the bookseller's business and he is a merciless negotiator. After binding and clasping, the book is ready for the customer to pick up.
By the mid-1590s, the booksellers (a.k.a. Stationers) have gathered their stalls together outside of the St. Paul's Cathedral which has become to first shopping mall in London as well as a place of worship. The aisles of the cathedral — familiarly known as “Paul's Walk” or “the Mediterranean” — are also lined with stalls offering every kind of thing. The columns are papered layers deep with title-page book advertisements, hand-lettered help-wanted ads, as mentioned.
Thomas Dekker instructs the young man of fashion not to spend too long in the Mediterranean. He will appear to have nothing else to do.
by no meanes you be seene above foure turnes; but in the fift make your selfe away, either in some of the Sempsters' shops, the new Tobacco-office, or amongst the Booke-sellers, where, if you cannot reade, exercise your smoake,...3
After having displayed himself, perhaps it is time to go get himself a pair of shoe-laces.
1 Father Hubburds Tales. The Works of Thomas Middleton, V.551.
2 Albright, Evelyn May. Dramatic Publication in England, 319. Citing Wither, George. Schollers Purgatorie (1625).
3 The Guls Hornbooke. The Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, II.231.
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”
On Shakespeare's lameness and historical-fiction biography, etc. August 5, 2023. “Those who support Sogliardo of Stratford and other authorship candidates generally stop by from time to time to remark...”
- Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”
- Robert Greene and the Construction Shakespeare Never Used. August 9, 2022. 'Our first foray “staring intently into” the texts of Robert Greene has noted that his work utilized far fewer feminine endings than Shakespeare’s.'
A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years. Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
- Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
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