In Folio: Rare Volumes in the Stanford University Libraries

William Shakespeare, 1564-1616.
The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. Edited by J. Dover Wilson ... from the Text of the Second Quarto Printed in 1604-5 'According to the True and Perfect Coppie'. With Which Are Also Printed the Hamlet Stories from Saxo Grammaticus and Belleforest and English Translations therefrom. Illustrated by Edward Gordon Craig.
Weimar: Printed by Count Harry Kessler at the Cranach Press, 1930.

One of the finest books ever produced, this Hamlet was printed by Count Kessler at the Cranach Press in an edition of only 322 copies. Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966) designed some eighty of the woodcuts, with Eric Gill (1882-1940) contributing one. Craig, the son of actress Ellen Terry (1847-1928), had been pondering and working on woodblock illustrations for Hamlet since 1908, when The Mask advertised a grand edition of Hamlet to be illustrated by Craig. This edition that never materialized, but Kessler would print two grand editions of Hamlet, with Craig’s woodcuts: one in German in 1928, and this English version in 1930.

The earliest known edition of Hamlet, the 1603 quarto, has long been considered an imperfect unauthorized, and inferior to the play as we know it. The 1604 quarto, however, is recognized as full and legitimate (and possibly corrected by Shakespeare himself), and accordingly enjoys a certain status. Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum, a history of the Danes, contains the legend of Hamlet, as does François de Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques. This edition of Hamlet includes the 1604 text, along with Shakespeare’s probable sources for the play, Grammaticus and Belleforest—both in their original tongues and in English translation—printed as marginal glosses. The beauty of the layout, illustrations, typography, and paper are in the finest tradition of the Book Arts Revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Britain, a revival headed by William Morris of the Kelmscott Press, C.H. St. John Hornby of the Ashendene Press, and T.J. Cobden-Sanderson of the Doves Bindery. Kessler, however, was not content to issue just a fine press edition of Hamlet. He secured J. Dover Wilson, a Shakespeare scholar, to edit the edition, took pains to reproduce the source materials Shakespeare might have used, and had Edward Gordon Craig, a theatrical designer, illustrate the text. The typeface, designed by Edward Johnston, was based on the lovely gothic type used by the printers Fust and Schoeffer in their 1457 Psalter.

Previous Image

In Folio Exhibit Index