Paper / Ink

This chapter combines close textual analysis with analytical bibliography to explore what paper and ink—the primary materials used to produce Shakespeare’s poems and plays in both manuscript and print—can teach us about Shakespeare’s texts. Paper and ink often take on metaphorical significance in Shakespeare’s works. For example, Othello describes Desdemona as “fair paper,” asking if such a “goodly book” was “made to write ‘whore’ upon.” Similarly, Leontes of The Winter’s Tale deems Florizel’s mother faithful because she accurately “print[ed]” his “Royal father off” when she conceived him, thus punning on the paper size, “Royal,” whilst alluding to commonplace links between printing and parenting. At the heart of both examples are concerns over honesty, legitimacy and reliable copying. It is perhaps ironic,
then, that in recent years paper and ink have enabled researchers to expose seemingly “goodly,” legitimate print editions of Shakespeare’s texts as piracies and forgeries. The chapter will approach the
relationship between paper, ink, and the Shakespearean text by adhering to textual allusions to paper and ink within his plays and poems; to traces of ink accidentally transferred between the paper of Shakespeare
books once bound together; and to examples where the dates of Shakespeare editions are contradicted by watermarks hidden within the paper onto which they were printed. As I intend to demonstrate, these
forms of invisible writing, these intersections of paper and ink, have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the material forms in which Shakespeare’s texts first circulated.