The Player's Shakespeare: The Tragedie of Macbeth Printed from the Folio of 1623. (A Single Volume)*Finely Bound by Zaehnsdorf, Art by Charles Ricketts*

Shakespeare, William

Published by Ernest Benn Limited, 8, Bouverie Street, London, 1923

About this Item

Hard cover, 4to (measuring 9 1/2 x 13 inches) in a limited edition, (No. 97 of 100 copies) letterpress printed, in the original fine binding of green morocco, with the boards decorated in gilt and blind in an Italianate architectural frame (Grolier style) featuring torches blazing in both inner and outer corners, fleurs de lis and other shapes, such as small x-crossed ogees (which imitate crossed marks made by a calligraphic pen, in outline) bound by Zaehnsdorf, 1923 with their oval tooled gilt figural insignia of a man at a book finisher's worktable on the lower rear endpaper. The spine has five raised bands, the title tooled to the second, and the other compartments tooled with the crossed ogee. Half-title reads: "The Player's Shakespeare/ The Tragedie of Macbeth." Title page: "Shakespeare's The Tragedie of Macbeth Printed/ from the Folio of 1623/London 1923, in black and red inks. Printed upon Batchelor's Kelmscott rag paper with their hammer and anvil watermark, all as identified in the"Publisher's Advertisement". ***ILLUSTRATED AND SIGNED by the very influential, Swiss-born early twentieth-century British Arts and Crafts book design Artist, CHARLES DE SOUCY RICKETTS (1866-1931), once principal book designer at John Lane's Bodley Head, co-publisher of the magazine "The Dial," principal partner of publishers Hacon and Ricketts (circa 1890- 1898), and, with Charles Shannon, the Vale Press, as well as an early mentor and publisher in collaboration with the Eragny Press's Lucien Pissarro, from about 1890. Ricketts's work represented the best of its time, evolving the fine press craft traditions of printer Emery Walker and designer William Morris into the twentieth century. The second signatory to this volume is by the Author of the "Introduction," HARLEY GRANVILLE-BARKER (1877-1946). Author, playwright, critic and producer, G-B was a major player in the staging of Shakespeare, (as well as other modern playwrights such as Ibsen and Shaw,) called by various the "Father of modern British theatre." His notes here provide useful information on how and why the original text was adapted by other pens, with remarks on the specifics of "The Scottish Play"; a worthy introduction to whet the readers' appetite for the series as a whole. Granville-Barker's own stage-craft book series "Prefaces to Shakespeare" appeared in print beginning in 1927; some passages from the text of this 1923 "Introduction" to Macbeth were directly translated into his Macbeth chapter in Vol. I of that series, and so it is not difficult to conclude this commission was a direct inspiration to the latter publication. Third signatory was ALBERT RUTHERSTON, Art-Editor, (1881-1953). **ILLUSTRATIONS : Ricketts provides 13 full page, tissue-guarded illustrations reproduced by the fine-art facsimile collotype printmaking method. This expensive, finicky technique involved the use of photographically exposed gelatine-covered plates, which enabled the resultant images to closely resemble the original Ricketts's fine-art watercolor drawings or other etchings. (The technique was being replaced in the 1920's with the advent of less expensive offset lithography.) **CONDITION: Near Fine. Oxidation to the spine has turned it brown in color. Minor touching up to joints, more at exterior rear joint. A couple of instances of very light soiling within, affecting margin of one plate. A few penciled notes to endpaper. Otherwise, hinges are in order, there is no foxing and overall the pages remain very bright, generally clean and sound. BOOKBINDER Joseph W. Zaehnsdorf, of Austrian-Hungarian descent, (1853-1930) son of that firm's founder, who had relocated to Britain by 1841. The Player's Shakespeare series was ambitiously conceived as a passion project of the publishers and printed between 1923 and 1927, in seven volumes; this was the first of those published. It is difficult to find full sets in matching bindings. The project was apparently abandoned because of the expense. REFS: Granv.

Seller Inventory # 9465

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Player's Shakespeare: The Tragedie of Macbeth Printed from the Folio of 1623. (A Single Volume)*Finely Bound by Zaehnsdorf, Art by Charles Ricketts*
• Publisher: Ernest Benn Limited, 8, Bouverie Street, London
• Publication Date: 1923
• Binding: Hard Cover
• Edition: Limited Edition, No. 97 of 100 copies.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • FRONT PAGE
  • Literature - Shakespeare
  • ILLUSTRATED