The Stationers' Register was a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers (better known as the Stationers' Company) is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London The company is a trade guild given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with the publishing industry, including printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers in England. England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland The Register itself allowed publishers to document their right to produce a particular printed work, and constituted an early form of copyright law. Copyright is a legal concept enacted by Governments, giving the creator of an original work of authorship Exclusive rights to control its distribution usually for The Company's charter gave it the right to seize illicit editions and bar the publication of unlicensed books.
For the study of English literature of the later sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries—for the Elizabethan era, the Jacobean era, the Caroline era, and especially for English Renaissance theatre—the Stationers' Register is a crucial and essential resource: it provides factual information and hard data that is available nowhere else. Romance and reality The Victorian era and the early twentieth century idealised the Elizabethan era Highlights of the Jacobean Era The practical if not formal unification of England and Scotland under one ruler was a development of the first order of importance for both Highlights of the Caroline Era The Caroline era was dominated by the growing religious political and social conflict between the King and his supporters termed the Royalist party English Renaissance theatre is English drama written between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642. Together with the records of the Master of the Revels (which relate to dramatic performance rather than publication), the Stationers' Register supplies many of the certain facts scholars possess on the works of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and all of their immediate predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. The Master of the Revels was a position within the British royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally William Shakespeare ( baptised Benjamin Jonson ( c 11 June 1572 &ndash 6 August 1637) was an English Renaissance Dramatist [1]
By paying a fee of 4 to 6 pence, a bookseller could register his right to publish a given work. One example: the Stationers' Register reveals that on November 26, 1607, the stationers John Busby and Nathaniel Butter claimed the right to print "A booke called Master William Shakespeare his historye of Kinge Lear, as yt was played before the Kinges maiestie at Whitehall vppon Sainct Stephens night at Christmas Last, by his maiesties servantes playinge vsually at the Globe on the Banksyde. " (They paid sixpence. )[2]
Enforcement of regulations in this historical era was never as thorough as in the modern world; books were sometimes published without registration, and other irregulairites also occurred. In some cases, the companies of actors appear to have registered plays through co-operative stationers, with the express purpose of forestalling the publication of a play when publication was not in their interest. In Renaissance London, playing company was the usual term for a company of Actors These companies were organized around a group of ten or so Shareholders [3]
In 1710, the Copyright Act or Statute of Anne entered into force, superseding company provisions pertaining to the Register. The Statute of Anne ( Short title Copyright Act 1709 8 Anne c The company continued to offer some form of registration of works until February 2000.
Notes
- ^ Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 3, pp. 164-77.
- ^ Halliday, Shakespeare Companion, pp. 265 and 474.
- ^ Much Ado About Nothing, Henry V, As You Like It, and Every Man in His Humour were registered, apparently for such a purpose ("to be stayed"), on August 4, 1600. Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy by William Shakespeare. First published in 1600 it is likely to have been first performed in the autumn or winter As You Like It is a Pastoral Comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published Every Man in His Humour is a 1598 play by the English Playwright Ben Jonson. Yet if this interpretation is correct, the strategy to forestall publication had limited success; the first two plays were published later in 1600, and the last in 1601. Only As You Like It remained out of print at the time. Chambers, Vol. 3, p. 359; Halliday, pp. 216, 326.
References
- Arber, Edward, ed. Edward Arber ( December 4, 1836 - 1912 was an English academic and writer A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London 1554–1640 A. D. 5 Volumes, London, privately printed, 1875–94.
- Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. Sir Edmund Kerchever Chambers (1866&ndash1954 was an English literary critic and Shakespearean scholar 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
- Eyre, G. E. B. , and G. R. Rivington, eds. A Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers from 1640–1708. 3 Volumes, London, privately printed, 1913–14.
- Greg, W. W., and E. Sir Walter Wilson Greg ( 9 July 1875 &ndash 4 March 1959) was one of the leading bibliographers and Shakespeare scholars of the 20th Boswell, eds. Records of the Court of the Stationer's Company, 1576 to 1602. London, The Bibliographical Society, 1930.
- Halliday, F. E. A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Baltimore, Penguin, 1964.
- Jackson, William A. , ed. Records of the Court of the Stationers' Company 1602 to 1640. London, The Bibliographical Society, 1957.
External links
- The Stationers' and Newspaper Makers' Company Official site of the Stationers' Company in its current incarnation.
Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic