AN ELIZABETHAN CORNERSTONE, A MAJOR SOURCE FOR SHAKESPEARE: FIRST EDITION OF HOLINSHED’S CHRONICLES, 1577, WITH HUNDREDS OF WOODCUTS OF HISTORICAL EVENTS

HOLINSHED, Raphael. The Firste (and Laste) Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande. London: [Henry Bynneman] for John (and Lucas) Harrison, 1577. Two volumes. Thick folio (8-1/2 by 11-1/2 inches), period-style full brown calf, raised bands, red morocco spine labels.

Scarce and important first edition of the foremost Elizabethan repository of English history, being the primary source for nearly all of Shakespeare’shistorical plays, as well as Macbeth, King Lear, and part of Cymbeline (he used the 1587 unillustrated edition). This edition contains hundreds of in-text woodcuts (omitted from later editions), numerous portraits of kings and dignitaries, large two-column battle scenes, and such notable events as Macbeth’s encounter with the three “weird sisters… women in straunge and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder worlde.”

“Whatever the long-range intellectual goals of Holinshed, he had the journalist’s eye for sensationalism; he stresses crimes, both political and erotic, physical mutilations, marvels, monstrosities and absurdities” (Sargent, 25). An immediate success upon publication, Holinshed’s Chronicles “form a very valuable repertory of historical information… The chronicler fully justified his claim ‘to have had an especial eye unto the truth of things” (DNB). The Chronicles was the foremost British history available at the time and did more to shape Elizabethan literature than any other English historical work. “Elizabethan dramatists drew many of their plots from Holinshed’s pages,” and Shakespearian scholars have shown that it was Holinshed “which Shakespeare employed as the source, sole or part, of ten of his plays” (Pforzheimer 494 note). “Nearly all of the historical plays, as well as Macbeth, King Lear, and part of Cymbeline, are based on Holinshed” (DNB). Though it is generally agreed that Shakespeare probably culled his plots from the second 1587 edition of the Chronicles, this much rarer first edition contains the complete story of the rise and fall of Macbeth (Volume I, pages 239-252). Here depicted in woodcuts are such events as the three “weird sisters… women in straunge and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder worlde,” delivering the fateful prophecies to Macbeth and Banquo; Macbeth being crowned king following Duncan’s murder (“His wife [Lady Macbeth had] lay sore upon him to attempt the thing, as she that was very ambitious brenning [burning] in unquenchable desire to beare the name of a Queene”); and the building of Macbeth’s castle at Dunsinnane. Shakespeare not only drew his plots from Holinshed, but occasionally his phrases. Holinshed’s eloquent descriptions intimate at times the very wording of Shakespeare’s drama. Macbeth, for example, is described as “a valiant gentleman, and one that if he had not beene somewhat cruell of nature, might have beene thought most worthie the governement of a realme.” And, in the final battle, Macduffe reveals that “I am even he that thy wizzards have told thee of, who was never borne out of my mother, but ripped out of her wombe… Then cutting his heade from the shoulders, he set it upon a poll, and brought it unto Malcolme. This was the end of Makbeth” (see Whitaker, Shakespeare’s Use of Learning). This copy is the second state, in which gathering F of The Historie of Irelande in Volume I (pages 75-90) is a cancel, and with E6-8 excised. STC 13568. Pforzheimer 494. Lowndes, 1086-87. Grolier 100 6. See Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare III, 13-15. Early signatures, one of William Slater (possibly the author of the 1621 Palae-Albion) on the Scotland title page, and one of Thomas Daye at end of Volume II.

Volume I: bottom corner of dedication leaf torn (with loss of a few words), small hole in D4, Scotland title page supplied from another copy with fore-edge margin heavily chipped (no loss of woodcut border), last leaf of “Ireland” Index silked with loss of some entries under “S” and “W.” Volume II: title page silked (probably supplied from another copy), expert tissue repairs to first two gatherings, t3-4 supplied from another copy, L2-3, 8 in facsimile, Siege of Edinburgh (often absent) in facsimile, last leaf of Index repaired with loss of entries under “W.”