The Merry Wives of Windsor, second edition

Published in 1619, this second edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor was part of the collection of Shakespeare’s plays commonly known as the Pavier Quartos. The publisher, Arthur Johnson, also published the first edition in 1602. Although all the Pavier Quartos were printed at the same time by the same printer, William Jaggard, it seems that Pavier and Johnson reached an agreement to ensure that Johnson would be listed as publisher. At the very least, no evidence survives that Pavier’s publication of the play was unauthorized. (Nathaniel Butter, who owned the rights to King Lear, is similarly credited on the title page of the 1619 edition of that play, although its date is falsified.) Johnson continued to own the rights to Merry Wives until he sold them to Richard Meighen in 1630. The title page of this edition retains the attribution to Shakespeare.

Although this edition reproduces the text of the first, the most significant change occurs on the title page. The first edition advertises that the comedy is “Entermixed with sundrie variable and pleasing humors, of Syr Hugh the Welch knight, Iustice Shallow, and his wise cousin M. Slender.” However, that paragraph has been deleted on the 1619 title page, suggesting that by 1619 plays based on the four “humors” of Galenic medicine (melancholy, choleric, phlegmatic, and sanguine) had fallen out of style.

The copy shown above is one of eight owned by the Folger Shakespeare Library, and is also one of 27 listed in the English Short Title Catalogue. It bears the bookplate of William Gott, indicating that it is one of the books that Mr. and Mrs. Folger acquired from John Gott, Bishop of Truro.

To learn more about this The Merry Wives of Windsore, see the Folger's Shakespeare's Works and the British Library’s Shakespeare in Quarto.