59072, title page
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Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The historie of Troylus and Cresseida. As it was acted by the Kings Maiesties seruants at the Globe. Written by William Shakespeare
Date: London : Imprinted by G. Eld for R. Bonian and H. Walley, and are to be sold at the spred Eagle in Paules Church-yeard, ouer against the great north doore, 1609
Repository: The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, USA
Call number and opening: 59072, title page
View online bibliographic record
Terms of use
The Huntington Library has graciously contributed the above images from their collections. Visitors may link to or download these images for personal research or non-commercial publication. As a matter of good scholarly practice and for the benefit of future researchers, we ask that researchers using reproductions of our materials give appropriate credit when quoting from or reproducing an item in the Huntington collections. Images should be captioned with information about the original source, and quotations should be footnoted. For more information about The Huntington's reproduction policy and citation guidelines, please visit their webpages.
Copy-specific information
Creator: William Shakespeare
Title: The historie of Troylus and Cresseida. As it was acted by the Kings Maiesties seruants at the Globe. Written by William Shakespeare
Date: London : Imprinted by G. Eld for R. Bonian and H. Walley, and are to be sold at the spred Eagle in Paules Church-yeard, ouer against the great north doore, 1609
Repository: The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA, USA
Call number and opening: 59072, title page
View online bibliographic record
Alan H. Nelson, "Humphrey Dyson's inscription and bibliographical note on Troilus and Cressida," Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/612.
Huntington Library, 59072. See Shakespeare Documented, https://doi.org/10.37078/612.
Humphrey Dyson (1582-1633) was probably the first owner of this copy of the first edition of Troilus and Cressida (1609), now in the Huntington Library. Dyson signed his name on the title page, as he did with many other volumes in his extensive library. He further annotated his Troilus and Cressida with a note following Shakespeare’s name as printed on the title page (Dyson’s manuscript annotation is given in bold):
Written by William Shakespeare & printed
amongest his workes.
Dyson may have purchased the volume and signed his name to the title-page any time in or after 1609, but his additional note must have been written between the publication of the Shakespeare First Folio in 1623 and Dyson’s death in January 1633. His annotation records his recognition that the text of Troilus and Cressida, first printed in 1609, was printed again in the First Folio of 1623. The note clearly treats both publications (1609, 1623) as the works of William Shakespeare.
Dyson owned a copy of the First Folio of Ben Jonson’s works (1616) (now in private hands, having been sold at auction in 2010). Although no surviving Shakespeare First Folio contains Humphrey Dyson’s signature, his annotation clearly indicates his familiarity with the work. Indeed, since Troilus and Cressida, alone of all plays in the First Folio, is not listed in its Table of Contents, Dyson must have searched the First Folio itself to discover that Troilus and Cressida was “printed amongest [Shakespeare’s] workes.”
John Philip Kemble (1757-1823), a later owner, added further notes on the title page: “Collated and Perfect JPK 1798” and “First Edition.” These last inscriptions do not influence an analysis of Humphrey Dyson’s two inscriptions, but do contribute to the copy’s provenance.
The peculiar appearance of the title page in our photograph stems from the fact that the entire volume has been “inlaid” by a former owner. Instead of being left in its original condition, the book was cut apart, each leaf being set into a “window” cut into a blank paper leaf. The old leaf is secured to the new by paste along its edges. Missing text (see “THE”) has been supplied in modern ink. Fashionable in the 18th and 19th centuries, and adopted for the sake of enlarging margins, or producing volumes of uniform size, inlaying is no longer a common practice.
[in Dyson's hand]
Humphrey Dyson
& printed amongst his workes
[in Kemble's hand]
Collated & Perfect.
John Philip Kemble 1798./
First Edition.
[in Dyson's hand]
Humphrey Dyson
& printed
amongest his workes
[in Kemble's hand]
Collated
&
Perfect.
John Philip Kemble 1798./
First Edition.
Written by Alan H. Nelson
Sources
Alan H. Nelson, "Shakespeare and the Bibliophiles: from the earliest years to 1616," pp. 49-73, in Robin Myers, Michael Harris, and Giles Mandelbrote (eds.), Owners, Annotators and the Signs of Reading (London: British Library, 2005).
For Humphrey Dyson and John Philip Kemble, see Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online edition consulted 3/4/2016.
Last updated January 25, 2020
