History of the Book

            Much of what we do here at the ASC Theatre Camp has the campers up on their feet working with the text, but a certain portion of our efforts go to ensuring that the campers learn about the significance and history of the texts that they are working with. During the course of our three-week camp, we bring in lecturers that teach the campers about their different specialty areas. Sarah Enloe, our Director of Education at the ASC, introduced guest lecturer William Proctor Williams as being something of a “Scholar Adventurer."  Part of his career has involved “finding buried texts” and ensuring that they are properly preserved for future generations. One of his biggest finds was unearthing twenty-three dramatic manuscripts from the seventeenth century. While this is one of his largest successes, William Proctor Williams has been salvaging Early Modern texts from being discarded since grad school.

            If we had had more time than the two and a half hours that were set aside for this lecture, I am sure that we would have been treated to a full history of the written word. Williams was extremely thorough during his lecture, and he answered the campers' questions down to the most specific detail. Despite the time constraint, Williams’s lecture covered lots of ground. Williams began his lecture by explaining the evolution of the book, beginning with 3000 BCE and the use of the papyrus scroll. As he described the evolving forms of binding, he passed around a text with a cover made from vellum (calf-skin) on it. With the development of the printing press, he explained, Gutenberg combined the three major technologies of the day. One of these was the type of binding that was in use. Were it not for this shift, Williams said, we would all be vegetarians since the increase of demand for text would have caused veal to disappear altogether!

Williams’s lecture then transitioned from technological developments in printing to the working conditions that Jaggard, the manufacturer of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, would have worked in. The way we think Jaggard’s shop was run worked remained the standard from 1450-1750. His shop is thought to have contained three compositors, one compositor’s apprentice, two pressmen, two or three additional apprentices, a master printer, and a full or part time scribe. The average printer’s workday went from 5am-8pm, during which time they churned out somewhere between 900-1200 copies of a text per day. Ha, and the campers think we work them hard! Learning about the expected productivity of Jaggard’s shop seemed to make everyone a little more appreciative of our own work hours.

Williams ended the lecture explaining that part of working with Shakespeare’s text is learning about the historical conditions in which it was printed. This includes how the printed format that we now work with may have been adapted from the stage to the page.  Williams’s lecture was in-depth and informative. He was able to provide the campers with a vivid image of the history of the book in addition to answering questions that the campers had for him. All in all, it was an immersing and engaging lecture chalked full of information that will be useful to the campers as they work through their text for our upcoming productions!

-Madeleine M. Oulevey