9 “Love Is A Smoke Made With The Fume Of Sighs…” 06SHAKESPEARE, William. Romeo and Juliet. New York, 1892. Royal octavo, contemporary full dark blue morocco gilt. $5500 Limited edition, one of 50 copies on Japan paper (out of a total edition of 350 copies), illustrated with 21 plates by Jacques Wagrez and Louis Titz, this copy extra-illustrated with 64 additional plates from other editions of Shakespeare, handsomely bound. “To more effective account did Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet (his first tragedy) turn a tragic romance of Italian origin, which was already popular in the English versions of Arthur Broke in verse (1562) and William Painter in prose (in his ‘Palace of Pleasure,’ 1567). Shakespeare made little change in the plot, but he impregnated it with poetic fervor, and relieved the tragic intensity by developing the humor of Mercutio, and by grafting on the story the new comic character of the Nurse. The fineness of insight which Shakespeare here brought to the portrayal of youthful emotion is as noticeable as the lyric beauty and exuberance of the language” (DNB). Fine condition. “Since The Time Of Plato There Had Been No Composition Which… Could Be Compared To Utopia” 05MORE, Thomas. Sir Thomas Moore’s Utopia. London, 1624. Small quarto, modern threequarter mottled calf. $15,000 Scarce 1624 fourth edition in English of More’s classic of social analysis and philosophy. In this classic work, More “inveighs against the new statesmanship of all-powerful autocracy and the new economics of large enclosures and the destruction of the old common-field agriculture, just as it pleads for religious tolerance and universal education… In Utopia More is concerned to show that the old, medieval institutes, if freed from abuse, are the best; not the new theoretic reforms, which he justly feared… Utopia is not, as often imagined, More’s ideal state: it exemplifies only the virtues of wisdom, fortitude, temperance and justice. It reflects the moral poverty of the states which More knew, whose Christian rulers should possess also the Christian virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity” (PMM 47). Utopia was first published in Latin in 1516; this edition uses the 1551 translation of Ralph Robinson, the only English translation until 1684. Age-darkening to title page, as usual, text quite clean. A handsome copy.
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