Everything about John Smethwick totally explained
John Smethwick (died
1641) was a
London publisher of the
Elizabethan,
Jacobean, and
Caroline eras. Along with colleague
William Aspley, Smethwick was one of the "junior partners" in the publishing syndicate that issued the First Folio collection of
Shakespeare's plays in
1623. As his title pages specify, his shop was "in St. Dunstan's Churchyard in
Fleet Street, under the Dial."
Career
He was the son of a London draper, and began a nine-year apprenticeship under a Thomas Newman at Christmas
1589 (though he was emancipated early by his master's widow). Like Aspley, Smethwick enjoyed a career of unusual longetivity: he became a "freeman" (a full member) of the
Stationers Company on January 17,
1597, and continued in business for more than four decades. In the earlier phases of his career, Smethwick was repeatedly fined for selling privileged books to which he lacked the rights; but in later years he rose to be successively Junior Warden (
1631), Senior Warden (
1635), and Master (
1639) of the Stationers Company. For a portion of his career Smethwick was partnered with John Jaggard, the brother of
William Jaggard, the printer of the First Folio.
Shakespeare
Smethwick's connection with the Shakespeare canon began in
1607: in an entry in the
Stationers' Register dated November 19 of that year, stationer Nicholas Ling transferred the copyrights of
Romeo and Juliet, Love's Labor's Lost, and
Hamlet to Smethwick. (At the same time, Smethwick acquired from Ling the rights to
The Taming of a Shrew, the early alternative version of Shakespeare's
The Shrew.) Two of these plays were subsequently published in
quarto by Smethwick —
Romeo and Juliet in 1609 (Q3) and
Hamlet in 1611 (Q3 also).
Smethwick's possession of these copyrights eventually involved him in the First Folio project. When
Edward Blount and William and Isaac Jaggard were preparing to print the Folio, c. 1620, they'd to obtain the rights to eighteen plays that had already been printed. Two copyright holders, Aspley and Smethwick, chose to participate in the Folio project as partners with Blount and the Jaggards. Again like Aspley, Smethwick retained his Shakespearean copyrights to join in
Robert Allot's
Second Folio in
1632.
A few Shakespearean plays continued to be printed in quarto editions after 1623 — and Smethwick was responsible for several of these late quartos. He issued the
second quarto of
Love's labor's Lost in 1631. Perhaps around 1630, he published the undated Q4 of
Romeo and Juliet, and followed it with Q5 in 1637. In the same era he issued the undated Q4 of
Hamlet, and the Q5 of 1637.
Others
Inevitably, Smethwick also published a large body of non-Shakespearean literature as well. Notably, he issued an important collection of the
Poems of
Michael Drayton, in seven editions from
1608 to
1637. He published Sir David Murray's
The Tragical Death of Sophonisba in
1611, and an edition of
Thomas Lodge's
Rosalynde: Euphues' Golden Legacy in
1612. He produced the second and third edition of
Francis Beaumont's
The Knight of the Burning Pestle (both 1635).
Further Information
Get more info on 'John Smethwick'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://john_smethwick.totallyexplained.com">John Smethwick Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
