Julius Caesar
London: by H[enry]. H[ills]. Jun. for Hen Herringman and R Bentley, and sold by Joseph Knight and Francis Saunders, 1691. Second or third separate edition, internally fine. As rare as any seventeenth-century edition of Julius Caesar, including the first, of 1684, though census data for these editions remains thin and difficult to rank with confidence. Early twentieth-century full red morocco by Rivière & Son, spine gilt-titled and ruled in gilt with a French fillet, intricate gilt inner dentelles, gilt edges. A small paper flaw to the blank margin of c4, else near fine and rare in this condition, with generous margins throughout and, more importantly, pages that are fresh and entirely unrepaired. 4to (233 x 172mm), pp. [2], 64. Cloth case. Item #926
No edition of Julius Caesar was printed during Shakespeare's lifetime; the posthumous First Folio remains the play's sole textual authority. Thomas Killigrew's King's Company revived it in 1672, using the original text, with Charles Hart originally cast as Brutus, though no edition accompanied that production. Thomas Betterton later took the role, and is named as such in the cast list printed in this edition, alongside his boyhood friend Edward Kynaston as Antony. The first separate edition, the most commonly encountered of the quartos, was published by Herringman in 1684, the same year he transferred the retail side of his business to Francis Saunders and Joseph Knight, and the year before he published Shakespeare's Fourth Folio. Four undated editions followed, with closely similar imprints, along with this dated 1691 edition, whose imprint names only Herringman and Bentley.
No evidence firmly establishes the order of these editions. John Velz's 1969 bibliography, which superseded Henrietta Bartlett's of 1913, argues that the dated 1691 edition was the authorized one, and identifies the present edition as the first (Q1) of three unauthorized editions printed by Henry Hills Jr., the same printer responsible for the 1684 edition, issued in direct competition with Herringman's authorized 1691 printing, for which Hills was pointedly not reengaged. That competitive relationship suggests a date at or near 1691 for this edition; an unauthorized rival sheet would have made little commercial sense issued long after the market it was meant to compete in had closed. The evidence remains too thin to settle the question definitively, and the present ranking of rarity among these editions, though it appears solid, could well be revised by a future discovery. Ref: John W. Velz, "'Pirate' Hills and the Quartos of Julius Caesar," Bibliographical Society of America Papers, v. 63 (1969), pp. 177–193.
Price: $27,500.00