A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The First Quarto, 1600 (1880)

Description

The first quarto of 1600 is one of the earliest printed witnesses of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the closest surviving text to Shakespeare’s own. In 1880 William Griggs reproduced it page for page in photo-lithography, preserving the black-letter types, the ornamental head-piece and the printer’s device of Thomas Fisher at the Signe of the White Hart in Fleetstreete. J. W. Ebsworth’s introduction sets out the quarto’s bibliographical history and its place among the early editions.Of particular value to Shakespeare scholars, textual critics and historians of early modern printing, it offers a close visual record of the play as its first readers met it.This is a faithful print-on-demand facsimile of the 1880 London (W. Griggs) edition, reproduced in full from a library copy. The historical text is reproduced without modification; only the format, margins and legibility have been reset for modern printing.