Last November, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., received a printing press similar to the type used to print Shakespeare’s First Folios. The printing press was to be part of the Folger’s recent expansion of its exhibit space.
Although Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises: Or, the Doctrine of Handy-works: Applied to the Art of Printing” was published six decades after the First Folios were printed, Alan May, an experienced hand at building historic presses, used Moxon’s descriptions as a guide to build the Folger’s press. He also traveled from England to Washington to assemble it.
May notes that Moxon mentions the old-fashioned presses used in England, but is really pushing, and provides much more details on, a new-fashioned press from the Netherlands. Here’s the passage written by Moxon:
Plates 3 and 4, below, show the old-fashioned press (left) and the new-fashioned press (right).
A link to an article about the Folger’s printing press, including May’s approach to building the press and a short video, can be found here.
The Folger has digitized copies of the plays from the First Folio. I pulled up the opening page to “The Tragedie of Julius Caesar,” one of Shakespeare’s plays that mentions a carpenter. As the play begins, the citizens of Rome are taking a day off to celebrate the return of a triumphant Julius Caesar. Two tribunes, Marullus and Flavius, encounter and scold two “certaine Commoners” for not working and not wearing the clothing that signifies their professions. A cobbler accompanying the carpenter, responds to the tribunes’ challenge with some sauciness.
As for Julius Caesar, we know his fate. Don’t we, Marcus Junius Brutus?
— Suzanne Ellison
Very nice piece! It was really fun to read, especially Moxon having an agenda…
Thanks! I imaging Moxon very grudgingly included the plate with the old-fashioned press.
No matter how many old texts I read, I’ll never get used to the long s. In my mind’s voice Joseph Moxon, hydrographer to the king’s moft excellent majefty, has quite a speech impediment.
Using the long s and older spelling, saucy would be written fawcie.
“but I think for no other reason, than because many Press-men have scarce reason enough to distinguish between an excellently improved invention, and a make-shift slovenly contrivance, practiced in a minority of this art.”
A wonderful putdown of the old fashioned style press.
As for the First Folio, isn’t this the section where one of the jokes is that the term “cobbler” was used as a term for an “idiot” or “moron”, while also being the term for a “shoemaker” ?
I’m still trying to figure out how the derogatory meaning came about.
Did leatherworkers use a chemical similar to the mercury compounds hatmakers used, that made the “cobblers” dimwitted?
I’m not sure how far back the term dates, but in British English the term “a load of cobblers” meant nonsense. Although the cobbler refers to himself as a “Surgeon to old fhooes,” he only repairs shoes and would not be nearly as skilled as a shoemaker. Nevertheless, he is taking his day off to go to the parade and the busybody tribunes aren’t about to stop him.