ABSTRACT
As Margareta De Grazia has discussed in Shakespeare Verbatim, the mid-century publications of William Shakespeare’s, Ben Jonson’s, and Francis Beaumont’s and John Fletcher’s folios are central in determining the value accorded to each playwright’s works during the seventeenth century. 1 The shifting legacies granted to each playwright in the period—legacies that prepare for the gradual ascension of Shakespeare as the greatest playwright of all time—are in large part produced through these significant publishing ventures. Shakespeare’s 1623 folio is reprinted in 1632 and then again in 1664, Jonson’s 1616 folio is reprinted in 1640, while the Beaumont and Fletcher edition, which focuses much more on John Fletcher, is a latecomer to the folio market: it doesn’t appear until 1647. As Michael Dobson and De Grazia have illustrated, each writer was labeled with a characteristic aesthetic as a result of these volumes: Jonson was accorded the descriptor of “Art,” while Shakespeare becomes the one who could depict “Nature.” 2 Fletcher’s advocates would build upon this division of aesthetic power between these two playwrights, usurping for their man a fusion, rather than a division, of “Art” and “Nature” into what was also called “Wit” 3 ; John Denham’s prefatory poem to the 1647 Fletcher volume solidifies these monikers, in particular presenting Fletcher as the playwright who combines these two, previously distinct, traits into one artist. 4
