The Tragedie of Anthony and Cleopatra

(Hammersmith): (The Doves Press), 1912. Doves Press edition of William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra ("Antony" given as "Anthony," following the First Folio), the third of the Doves Shakespeare productions, one of 200 copies on paper out of a total print run of 215. Inspired by Thomas North's great Renaissance translation of Plutarch, and first performed in 1607, the play features one of Shakespeare's most complex heroines: "Age cannot wither her, nor custome stale / Her infinite variety: other women cloy / The appetites they feede, but she makes hungry, / Where most she satisfies." Founded by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker, the Doves Press departed from the decorative medievalism favored by earlier English private presses: "The publication of the first Doves book, a few days after the death of Queen Victoria, marked the end of that age, and set the standard for printing in the twentieth century." One year after the appearance of Anthony and Cleopatra, as his partnership with Walker was breaking down, Cobden-Sanderson would begin surreptitiously casting the original Doves type, punches, and matrices off the Hammersmith Bridge into the Thames, where most of them remain to this day. Tidcombe DP-29. A fine copy. Small quarto, measuring 9.25 x 6.5 inches: [6], 7-140, [4]. Original full limp vellum, spine lettered in gilt. Colophon and list of corrections to the 1623 folio text at rear. Printed in Doves type in red and black ink. Housed in a custom clamshell box.