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Modern children contemplate Shakespearean theatrical institutions and historical difference in the book’s apt endpapers.

Frontispiece

Catalogue

A Doodle (left)

Title Page
Though this volume of Shakespeare’s poetry was printed on its own, its title (“Volume the Seventh”) and layout were designed to invite the owner to add it to Rowe’s 6-volume edition of Shakespeare’s plays.

Excerpt
The volume reprinted…

This 1880 photolithographic facsimile reproduces Shakespeare’s Sonnets’ title page. No evidence exists tying Shakespeare directly to the publication of his sonnets. We don’t know whether he chose the order of the poems.

By 1880, photolithography was able to convey the feel of the original pages of the book, while adding features that frame a reader’s interpretive encounter with the text, such as the line numbering here.

Following Malone’s interpretation, the 19th century was eager to read the Sonnets for evidence of Shakespeare’s intimate personal life. The introduction to the facsimile volume assumes that the “Dark Lady,” as the sonnet mistress became known, was a…

Title Page
Excerpt: The 1777 edition no longer allows readers to see where Cibber has used, adapted, or added to Shakespeare’s text.

Page 12: The opening of the dialogue between Richard and Lady Anne in Cibber’s adaptation. Note the material is all either Shakespeare’s words (indicated by italics) or what Cibber calls “generally [Shakespeare’s] thoughts” rephrased by Cibber.
Page…